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The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences: Includes All the Major, Minor (Natural, Harmonic, Melodic) & Chromatic Scales -- Plus Additional Instructions on Music Fundamentals?
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Alfred Scales and Arpeggios and Cadences
The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences: Includes All the Major, Minor (Natural, Harmonic, Melodic) & Chromatic Scales -- Plus Additional Instructions on Music Fundamentals https://www.amazon.com/dp/0739003682/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_Q3PxFbA8HRKJS
I was in your position six years ago. Restarted through jumping straight in and playing songs but I really should've picked up this book instead to work through.
Order that book and work your way through it before you do anything else.
Using the RCM and ABRSM technical requirements is a good start. I personally use RCM. Also there are "complete series" books like this (link below) that I use.
But honestly more than just doing as many exercises as you can, it's the quality of how you do them. Not rushing through techincal exercises or forcing your way through. Making sure you're relaxed at all times and having a goal in mind.
Even if you just do an octave scale you could be focus in on so many different aspects of it.
-volume and dynamics.
-consistency (in equal timing and volume).
-Phrasing (staccato, legato, etc).
-Increasing speed (gradually).
-Crossing technique.
-Articulations on certain notes.
Honing in on such levels of detail and practicing each aspect of just one scale I think is so much more helpful than just blazing through 10 different exercises (and not perfecting or doing any of them exceptionally well)
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the complete book of chords, cadences and arpeggios I know it’s not exactly what you’re asking for, but it’s a much better choice considering you can Google the answers to the other book. I always recommend it. I hope it helps.
The cadence patterns that are in this book are the absolute bedrock and you'll see these everywhere. But at someone it'll just be an issue of practicing through each inversion of every given chord type and getting comfortable at wrapping your hands around them.
A beginner's guide is still worthwhile as it will cover many of the physical aspects of piano, such as your body posture, hand posture, how far to sit from the keyboard, how to accomplish legato, etc. This stuff may seem obvious but is actually a huge part of learning to play piano, and knowing another instrument and music theory isn't going to help you with it at all. It will also introduce you to music that is at your level so you can practice the piano-specific physical skills like hand independence & coordination.
All that being said, I have this book to learn scales, chords, and arpeggios: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences/dp/0739003682
Alors j'ai commencé à faire de la musique tard aussi et j'étais une buse totale. Impossible de chanter juste, impossible de détecter une fausse note etc. Bref je partais vraiment de très loin.
J'ai tenté pas mal de trucs pour apprendre et au final le truc qui a vraiment marché c'est d'apprendre le piano, la théorie musicale, et de prendre des cours de composition et improvisation.
La théorie musicale tu peux faire sans mais ça va te prendre beaucoup plus de temps, donc franchement autant apprendre. Perso je suis pas un génie surtout musicalement donc j'ai foncé dedans tête baissée.
Ça fait 2 ans que j'en fait (commencé avec le COVID) et franchement on progresse vite.
En même temps j'apprend la production sur Ableton, mais c'est secondaire. Ableton te transforme pas en musicien alors que le piano oui. Je pense que si tu veux composer il te faut un piano de toute façon (le Roland FP10 est top et très abordable).
Bonus, quand tu apprends un instrument ton oreille s'améliore et tu apprends à chanter juste sans aucun effort conscient pour ça.
Du coup j'ai finit quelques morceaux en électronique sur Ableton, certains en "collab" avec ma femme et certains tout seul, c'est pas du Mozart mais j'en suis très fier.
Bref, achète toi un piano électrique, met toi une alarme tout les jours pour en faire 10 minutes par jour, apprend des gammes, apprend un peu de théorie musicale, et trouve un prof de composition. Dans 2 ans tu me remercieras.
Et niveau bouquins pour le piano, yen a un seul que tu dois obligatoirement acheter, Celui la
Hésite pas si tu as des questions
You might take a look at the Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios, and Cadences and see what you think of it. I include the Amazon link specifically because it lets you view sample pages, so you'd have a better idea of what you were getting.
Right now I'm using this: The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences: Includes All the Major, Minor (Natural, Harmonic, Melodic) & Chromatic Scales -- Plus Additional Instructions on Music Fundamentals https://www.amazon.com/dp/0739003682/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_KREDTKC6SDDPM9DGDSHZ
Has some interesting stuff at the beginning, then 2 pages of scales, arpeggios, chords, and variations on those for each key signature :)
I (self-taught) have started learning scales quite a while ago, and want to expand into practising chords and arpeggios.
I've seen this book recommended before:
Palmer, W - The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios an: & Cadences
What's your opinion on this book? Does this book also explain how to exactly practise them in detail? As in; play the scale two octaves up HT up at X BPM, do that 7 times, etc?
What do you mean with the third book? My plan right now is to Focus on the Alfred Basic adult Course until lvl 3 and meanwhile going through this book https://www.amazon.de/Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences-Complete/dp/0739003682/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=2MND8MRJXO2S2&keywords=chords+arpeggios+book&qid=1643630968&sprefix=chords+appegios+book%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-3
which teach me about arpeggios, chords, scales and cadences. After that I focus on anime pieces and climb until im able to play animenz pieces. Also I will try to get more information about techniques etc in YouTube or Online Courses for example. Moreover I also want to practice my ear to play improvisations later on. Is this a good plan?
Thank you very much for the post. As a Second Book I have this book https://www.amazon.de/Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences-Complete/dp/0739003682/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?crid=2MND8MRJXO2S2&keywords=chords+arpeggios+book&qid=1643630968&sprefix=chords+appegios+book%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-3.
So to the Alfred book If I focus to master every topic in this book and using the Videos as well it will work right? But it also feels complicated would you recommend me another book where the process is less complicated?
My experience: practice scales, arpeggios, and cadences + inversions and use them as your improv building blocks. In college, I went through this book page by page every week. Was the least fun exercise I did, but it paid dividends in me being able to improv ever since.
After that, just find lead sheets of songs you like (just melody and chords) and fill in the song with the chords/scales/arpeggios/cadences you've developed and experiment. If it sounds good, it's right.
I also started adding notes to chords if the song sounds too simple, like adding sus2 or maj7 and it really adds color and will lead you on your path of experimenting and playing what you hear in your head.
Good luck!
Thank you! I'll keep that in mind. I'm going to work on Chopin's Prelude in E minor later today. I also found a book by Alfred's Publishing, The Complete Book of Scales https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0739003682/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I would suggest a book like The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios, and Cadences to help with your scales. It's a great reference book for someone who wants to work on their scales and their associated chords and arpeggios.
The more experienced pianist above gave great advice. I don't really have the right to try "add on" to it.
I wouldn't want to undertake the study of scales, etc. by myself. But were I to give it a shot, I'd follow a curriculum about what you are expected to know at your level of play starting from the prep levels (I think RCM's is available publicly), and accompany it with a technical book and religiously follow their fingerings (like this one).
This is what my teacher have me get, and it’s good.
The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences: Includes All the Major, Minor (Natural, Harmonic, Melodic) & Chromatic Scales -- Plus Additional Instructions on Music Fundamentals https://www.amazon.com/dp/0739003682/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_fabt1_C59UFbVRDF0ZY
The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences: Includes All the Major, Minor (Natural, Harmonic, Melodic) & Chromatic Scales -- Plus Additional Instructions on Music Fundamentals https://www.amazon.com/dp/0739003682/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_GgWpFb21XCCY9
For scales and arpeggios, I recommend The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences. It includes all the information you need to master them including theory and fingering.
Wenn dir Englisch nichts ausmacht (was bei dem Thema mMn eh nicht so ins Gewicht fällt), kann ich und das /r/piano unter das Buch The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios an: Includes All the Major, Minor (Natural, Harmonic, Melodic) & Chromatic Scales empfehlen.
Wenn du keinen Unterricht nimmst empfiehlt es sich auch ein bisschen zur richtigen Haltung etc. zu recherchieren, schlechte Angewohnheiten wird man im Nachhinein nur schwer wieder los
Alfred has a really good book that is the complete collection of scales, arpeggios, cadences, etc. I'd really recommend picking it up: they have you go through the scales in order of accidentals (Major scales with #,s Major scales with flats, then the same with minor). All minor keys have the natural, harmonic, and melodic scales listed with fingerings. It's a cheap book with good progression and I recommend it.
lol the Liszt studies are not at all appropriate for the level of the Alfred Level 1 book.
OP, get the Alfred's Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios & Cadences:
https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences/dp/0739003682
Check out www.musictheory.net, maybe download an app like Functional Ear Trainer to get your relative pitch up to par and get Scales, Chords, Arpeggios and Cadences or a similar book. I would recommend going through it with your teacher, not trying to rush through it.
I can only give you my experience, as I was taught classically but self-taught how to improv.
My background in drilling scales, arpeggios, cadences has definitely helped me in my improv as I have insight and muscle memory of certain runs and chord progressions that sound pleasing which I can call up instantly, but is the result of years of drilling that is honestly very dull until it is put into practice.
I do believe practicing scales until recognizing appropriate notes is very helpful, so I'd start by practicing in keys that you run into very often.
After that, I'd practice harmonious chords for the key with their inversions to build muscle memory of certain chords.
Perhaps more practical would be cadences. I-V-I, I-V7-I, ii-V7-I, I-IV-I-vi-IV-V7-I, etc and their inversions helped me more than I'd like to admit, being able to close songs on the fly is very handy skill.
All this is pretty boring to do in isolation, but it lays a foundation you can base your improv off of. I used this book for years and is what I would recommend only if you're willing to put in the practice.
I would be very surprised if 123454321 is not the fingering of a five-finger pattern (i.e., the first five notes of a scale, up and back down) rather than a full scale fingering.
From what I understand there are more or less standard fingerings that you'll find in books such as this one. There may be some some variety from source to source, but there is probably large overlap. Furthermore, the fingerings in a book like that probably have technical advantages over what feels comfortable for a beginner, so if you are just starting out I would advise you to go with the book fingerings rather than what feels good at the moment.
I bought the Scales, Chords, Arpeggios and Cadences: Complete Book recently, and was surprised to see that the recommended ("used by most pianists") LH fingering for C, F and G arpeggios is 5 4 2 1. (Although it does mention that for some people 5 3 2 1 might be more comfortable.)
How the hell is 5 4 2 1 more efficient or comfortable than 5 3 2 1? Am I losing anything (i.e. making something else in the future more difficult for myself) by sticking with 5 3 2 1? I can do 5 4 2 1 too, but it feels a bit awkward, especially the 1-4 transitions.
Hanon or Czerny I think should help. I think playing scales should help too; single hand, both hands: parallel, opposite, by 3rds, 6ths, arpeggios etc. I use this book: Scales, Chords, Arpeggios and Cadences: Complete Book - it has what I listed above for each key. Part of my warmup, I pick a key or two and play their exercises.
Hi missedswing,
Is there any piano scale book that you recommend? The ones I've found the scale is placed on sheet music rather than visually on a keyboard (like this one http://www.amazon.com/Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences-Complete/dp/0739003682/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440082315&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+scales). Are all like this? I am not interested in learning sheet music if I do not have to.
Learn to read music first. Is easy. You ain't gotta be good at it, just enough to know which note is what on the staffs. Do this using mnemonics at first, but try to quickly move away from having to use them once you get involved in learning 'intervals', or the distance between notes.
Then get a scale, chord, cadence book of your choice. I know there is better ones, but this is the one I use.
That'll have you reading music, knowing scales, knowing basic progressions, knowing cadences, and knowing chords. There's some extra stuff in that book as well.
From that foundation, I'd move on to modes and the oddball scales.
Also, it is a lot easier to learn the formulas that make minor/major scales, chords, degrees, etc rather than note-for-note. Try out musictheory.net and see what you can gather from it. You'll be surprised to find out you can learn all chords, scales (major, minor and it's variances), by learning a few simple patterns; takes time and practice to put them in your hands though. Fill in the holes and learn proper fingering using the book.
Perhaps it's a good idea to purchase an inexpensive scale book like this to help you with proper fingering choices?
Flash cards can help too or write all your scales, chords, appregios on papers and draw them randomly. Then play whatever you draw. I find learning them in sequence is a crutch. I know them by order but if you randomly asked me what's sharp/flat in any given key I would struggle to provide consistently strong answers. I could easily say G major has F# but like to hell if I know what Bb major is. I could play Bb major but I can't tell you how lol. Random on the spot tests help with that I think.
>- Ideal practice time (again focused on quality)
I personally try to never practice more than 30 minutes at a time with it broken into 5 minute sections. The more of these I can get in a day, great, but not beyond whatever mental load I can take. I find forcing myself to practice out of some sort of pressure or when I'm tired can have potentially negative effects. Sometimes I have to engage in less sustainable short-term practice strategies because it's literally my job to get large amounts of music prepared in short windows much of the time.
I try to avoid longer sessions for a few reasons. If someone goes too long, they just get exhausted. So is it worth me exhausting myself for one all-out 1 hr session if it means that I'm sacrificing 3 or 4 30 minute sessions later? Not really. I'd rather leave enough executive function on the table that I can come back for more work throughout the day.
Also, the practice quality beyond that point wanes. I'm sure you're aware of the studies about attention span in lectures. It's the same idea. The insidious part is that your attention starts flagging before you're consciously aware of it and by the time you're keenly aware of it you're both exhausted and have likely spent the last 15-30 minutes in spacey, half-focused practice.
I'm just conservative with my cut off. I leave plenty of gas in the tank when I walk away from a practice session.
>- Most important skills to develop (fundamentals and basics)
Scales and arpeggios and the theory that underlies them out of the gate. Knowing your key signature and how scales and chords are constructed basically can be worked in with that technical work.
Then I'd say cadence work. The big basics are in this book. So I'd say 2 octave hands together scales (major/minor), major/minor arpeggios, cadences, then maybe dominant7 arpeggios. The other scale variations are not as useful in that book.
>- Top mistakes people do they are not aware they are doing
Too much time memorizing songs and not enough time reading. This is hard because early on you literally have no choice. You'll memorize through osmosis. You also should be "memorizing" things like scales and arpeggios, but only in the sense that you "memorize" your alphabet (or maybe kana). Those are just fundamental building blocks of language. You fully internalize letters and words, but you don't go around memorizing books and poems.
This will probably land well with you as someone working on a language, but essentially the way many people approach music is akin to never learning any vocabulary in a new language, but instead memorizing how to recite one poem after the other. Just learning how to say the phonemes by rote. But never actually learning the meanings of the words.
You get better at language (and music is one) but reading a shit load of easy material... not memorizing a small handful of very difficult things. You learn how to put language into functional use by just doing it all the time. At some point you can have a conversation not because you memorized a set of phrases to regurgitate, but because you actually can say whatever comes to your mind and just use the vocabulary you understand to express it.
Sure, early on you're gonna memorize some basic music, but you have to constantly flex the reading muscle to get better at it. The more you let yourself work on harder and harder things (because they are exciting) and allow yourself to constantly memorize before you can even play them... the worse and worse you get at reading and the harder it is to come back and fix later.
>- What are the hardest things to learn
Perfect segue. Generally I want to say reading, but it's a bit deeper than that. Realistically it's any specific modality that you ignore early on. People who learned by ear find it excruciating to try to come back later and learn to read. It's not harder... it's just harder relative the modality that use as their primary one.
All of what I call "hard musicianship skills" (not as in difficult, but as opposed to "soft musicianship skills" like networking, following a conductor, balancing with others)... these are the skills that tend to challenge people the most. Ear training, improvisation, sightreading, and theory which sort of underlies ALL of them. People just don't put the time into these that they put into brute force learning a few hard pieces of music and the further you get into piano, the harder it is to humble yourself and come back and work on them at a child's level.
I mean, I had to do this WHILE I was working as a full time musician. I had to realize that after fighting against my reading skills on piano (my sightreading was very good on trumpet, which was my primary instrument for much of my life) that to solve my problem I literally just had to work on the most basic stuff and stop trying to practice on stuff I thought should be at my level. For me that wasn't too hard to deal with, but a lot of people just are too embarrassed if they can play dense Chopin pieces but can't sightread Mary Had a Little Lamb. Rather than working on it, they just hide it and ignore it.
And then if you do get good at a specific modality, it becomes your crutch. If you're good at reading then at some point in the future it's hard to go back and start ear from scratch. You can't really work on everything, but you DO need to realize that going back to work on a weaker skill is going to take time. If it took you 2 years to get passable reading skills, you're not going to get that same level of ear skills in 2 weeks.... but people give up in that time frame when it's not instantly easy and just fall back on reading.
And if your entire learning modality is around memorization... especially memorizing a series of finger motions and not even using theory and form to help you cluster and structure your memorization... you're really fucked. And a TON of pianists find themself in that position even after a decade of lessons.
>- What are the 20% things that will yield 80% results (pareto principle or 80/20 rule)
I think about this a lot because essentially I'm trying to cut off the 80% all the time. Things I find that fall into the 80% area I just sort of try to optimize out of my practice. For most people it's that they spend 30 minutes working 8 bars of music and probably only a tiny fraction (80/20) of that is of any use. I guess for me, since it's mostly 5 minute, heavily focused jots... it's probably between minutes 3 and 4 on any given section.
There are a ton of things that I've cut out entirely. Memorization being one of them because I've just decided it's pedagogically useless. I've tried finding strong arguments for it both in music and in general... I just can't. Some people just love it because they romanticize a bygone day when people memorized bits of literature or poetry. Just like memorizing most knowledge these days, it's not that useful. You learn to use resources so that you can offload all of that bullshit memorization and use more of your mental energy toward learning more broadly. With music that's all the vocabulary and grammar bits... it's music theory... and functionally it's reading.
Some people waste HUGE amounts of time memorizing music. But think, if I told you to recite my entire post to a group of people and gave you the choice to read it off of a piece of paper, or to recite it from memory... which would take longer? If you can read at all, then just reading it off the paper would be easier. Memorizing it verbatim would take a shit load of time. Same with music... if you can read well then memorization becomes and EXTRA step. Memorization only seems like a better option if you have poor reading skills. And in my career it's just virtually never been required of me to memorize any piece of music for a paying gig. It's literally only a thing that is stuck in the culture of concert pianists for stage presence.
>On that end, I'm not trying to become a pro, nor participate in competitions, nor win any scholarships or anything like that. I just want to learn appreciate music better and to have fun playing the piano by myself :D
From my biased standpoint I think that most hobbyists will enjoy having more functional skills in the long term. Being able to just sit down and quickly learn a new piece that sparks your interest in a week or maybe just a few hours rather than months (especially when almost no adults will ever have an audience to play their 3 months of hard work for)... that's just more freeing and enjoyable.
I guess some people LIKE working on one piece for 3 months by brute force only to have nobody care to hear it and then they immediately forget it once they stop constantly buffering it into their short-term memory for 2 hours every day. I see so many people who've had more than a decade of lessons just stop piano as adults because despite all those years... this is where they are. They literally have such little functional ability that they can't just learn new songs quickly on a whim and don't have the time or give-a-shit to spend months working on pieces with seemingly little reward.
If they had instead invested in any skill that lets them just sit down and play (ear, improv, reading) then they could just casually enjoy piano as an adult.
It's pretty complicated. There are no "right" fingerings, though obviously some choices are better than others. It's mostly about what's situationally appropriate.
The thing that exercises like scales and arpeggios build in is a sense of contingency. Without even realizing it, your scales and arpeggios teach you how and when to cross for the most part. They do also build in a physical sense of distance.
The problem is, you can't get bogged down in these being the "right" fingerings for all situations because they absolutely aren't.
To some this is relieving because some people get very worried they are learning a "wrong" fingering, when in reality they are just learning another possible fingering for a given figure. The more ways you are comfortable executing a passage the less likely you are to play yourself into a corner.
But for others who like a very black and white approach, this is all concerning because they just want know the definitive answer of what THE right fingering is.
Now with regards to your specific question, 1-3-5 is probably the most comfortable way to play most triads. When all other considerations are off the table, the most comfortable and least taxing fingering is usually the one you want to use.
Now, if you were alternating between the triad and the C in the octave above, it would make more sense to use 1-2-3 and keep 5 available to hit C. For some people even 1-2-4 would feel comfortable and while it's not for me, there are also could be situations where you might actually NEED to use 1-2-4 to keep 3 available.
You also might want to look into getting this book so you have some written references for the technical exercises you're trying to do. This also solves some of the problem in your question because it has cadence exercises that will make fingering choices for triads more clear.
And while I think this book is a tremendous resource and really a good bedrock of foundational technical skills for any pianist, just be mindful that all of the fingering choices in there also won't always count in real music.
A good and easy example is a C major scale. You'd normally cross after 3 when practicing the scale. But that's because the highest note is C and that leaves you enough fingers to hit C with 5. But what if you're playing a C major scale from C up to the next D? Then you'd cross after 4 to have enough fingers even though that's not "the fingering" for a C major scale.
Fingerings are always context dependent.
As a general rule, go with written fingerings when you can. I'm trying to be careful with words here... but even if they are less "comfortable" meaning you're not as practiced at them. Don't confuse that with downright painful as often you can find pieces fingered by people who have obviously very large hands and the stretches just might not work for mere mortals or those like myself with fairly small hands.
But DO at least try to use fingerings that are unfamiliar because with practice they will become familiar and now you have one more way of executing the same idea which makes you a much more capable player. Just be aware not to get too concerned with the perfect fingering. You'll constantly grow and learn new fingering contingencies, particularly by trying some at-first-unintuitive fingerings you find in some music. The more tricks you learn and the less weakness you have, the more you'll find that you've able to solve little "puzzles" of which fingerings to use for passages in music that doesn't have written in fingerings.
And you might even change you mind. I change my mind on fingerings all the time after working at something for a while and then realizing a day or two later with a clear mind that there was a better, easier, smoother fingering. Don't get stubbornly attached to any fingering just because you've trained that one into muscle memory for that given piece and it feels like it'll take effort to relearn it. The more flexible you are with using different fingerings the less and less this becomes a concern and you can easily making fingering changes without much sweat.
Thanks!
I like this reference book, although it is technical. It's a ton to work through but manageable if you only do the ones up to your level. So if you start at level 1 (page 24), then practice daily until you feel like you could do it in your sleep.
I have it taped to my copy of the book and go through the list daily. I'm currently practicing the level 4 technical curriculum. That makes only 3 level progressions of technicals in a year. It takes longer than you think to be proficient.
There are a number of uses for scales:
- Getting used to playing a long continuous string of notes in an efficient manner with minimal tension and in good time.
- Learning what notes you might expect to see based on a key signature
- Learning good note choices when it comes to improvising, so they can be applied and utilized in any order/manner.
If you get a classical scale book like this, you'll spend time playing contrary motion, 3rds/6ths apart, etc. If you get more of a jazz scale book like this, you'll work more on applying scales to different patterns that will help you in improvisation.
I swear I'm just going to make a series of videos detailing some of foundational elements of doing this. I just made a very directed one for a single person, but I think I need to make a more general aimed especially at people essentially wanting to play piano like guitar because this question and ones similar to it come up frequently here. Of course, I'm sure if I did, the classical people on /r/piano would crucify some niggling aspect of my technique. :p
Practice playing your chords in all inversions. Majors, minors, 7ths (dom, m7, Maj7, etc.). Playing various arpeggios patterns from their chord shape (rather than the standard octave arpeggio exercises) will help you give them motion later. Do this in every key.
Practice changing to neighboring chords in a progression by working on I-IV-I-V-I type cadence exercises common in scale/arpeggio, etc. books. This one is good. Do this in every key.
So those are the most fundamental technical hurdles. You might think you can skip doing them in every key because you won't play in every key, but even though I rarely play in F#, various F# chords show up in other keys. Doing these exercises in every key creates a sort of web of good voice leading ideas as well as making your hand familiar with any of the shapes (a concept at home to a guitarist).
Beyond that, it's learning how to create rhythm at the keyboard. I used to call this "strumming" the piano, because guitar really gives you the ability to have a lot of rhythm, but pianists seem unable to find this. The thing is, you can create a lot of rhythm either in a single hand, or as a composite between the hands. You spend time listening to people who play in styles you want to play in (watching is great too) and you find ways to emulate it. There's a song with just guitars and no keyboard? Figure out a way to emulate it anyway.
So much of your underlying rhythm can just be in the bass, and to get started, especially for pop music, single note or octave bass is more than enough to make on the fly accompaniments for yourself. Being able to arpeggiate around chord shapes in your right hand will allow you to add motion to the playing. You might not be hammering all the notes at once the way you do strumming a guitar, bust just arpeggiting around and trading time with your left hand will give a song a lot of motion.
If you really want to dig deep into styles, I recently found the Hal Leonard Keybaord Style Series and I think these books are wonderful. Some are better than others and I think the ones by Mark Harrison are the best, but if you want to play/sing a particular style, they are very helpful for breaking down comping patterns, rhythms, and harmonic structures that gives a style its sound. It was very nice (and validating) for me to see things that I've discovered by ear over time written out very clearly from a theory based perspective.
I like the Alfred's book of scales, chords, arpeggios, and cadences if you want a physical book.
The exact opposite of conflict. They will cross pollinate strongly.
Reading on piano in particular will almost by osmosis reinforce what notes on a page sound like which will help your sight-singing. Also, the basic theory bits will help. Knowing what scales sounds like and how they are build will help you identify individual scale degrees when sight-singing.
Also, being able to hear chords in harmony and then mentally (or vocally) arpeggiate through them melodically (and potentially with solfege) will definitely help.
At a higher level of piano you'll be able to use basic theory knowledge to look at the piano part in your octavo and use it to help you make sense of your own part. Knowing you're not just randomly on some non-diatonic note but instead that you're on the 3rd of a secondary dominant is very instructive.
Having constantly played music with dominant 7ths and being able to really hear what that 7th sound like on its own is very useful. That's one that I noticed (when I used to be hired as a ringer for church choirs) tends to be a very difficult bit of harmony for some people, but it's just extremely native to my ear. I can hear the whole chord, sing any note from it, and easily find my note in the mix.
Playing the piano will just aurally reinforce you constantly.
Likewise, being able to sight-sing will also help to a degree with sightreading on the piano. It's something I used to not actually take very seriously, because I didn't realize how much my ear from years of trumpet playing actually was playing a part in my piano reading. It wasn't just distances physically, but I could look at the page and hear it and that created an association with distances in my hands.
It's something I've likewise found to be true on woodwind instruments I've picked up. When trying to play by ear there is a very specific physical sensation of distance aurally and physically (number of fingers being lifted up or pushed down). It's oddly intuitive and it's not because I'm just naturally talented at it.
It's a skill I developed that just found a new application.
People often make the mistake of believing one instrument or musical skill will deeply interfere with another, but it's almost never true. They almost always inform and polish one another. I can't even count the number of ways learning various instruments has impacted the way I play and conceptualize others and how often skills from one end up vastly bolstering my ability on the other just simply due to how much one might force me to think differently.
For instance, trumpet it just one note at a time. It's not taxing reading and I never really had to think about the theory stuff, but learning jazz theory on piano vastly improved a million things about my ability to play trumpet.
Singing in choirs taught me more about balance and creating a good ensemble sound that also instructed my trumpet playing.
A college woodwinds class where I had to play sax showed me how easy octaves slurs could feel and sound and while that's a much more technically difficult thing to accomplish on trumpet, the model of the sound and feel on sax help mold my approach to smoothing them out on trumpet.
Voice and wind instruments greatly affect my musical phrasing on piano. Most people don't tend to think about how we naturally phrase and breathe, but taking that and applying it to piano even though there are no breath requirements absolutely is useful.
It was common in college for us as wind players to use string players bow markings on our parts and think of of shaping a phrase the way a change of bow direction would for strings. Even without that limitation, it was instructive.
I could literally go on all day about how wind instruments affect my bellows control on accordion, or how accordion left hand mirrors barre chords and on guitar, or how fingerings for organ affect both accordion and piano playing and the approach to fingerings there.
Obviously time is a limited quantity and a serious factor, but people also tend to spend more time practicing than they need. There are harshly diminishing returns. While I think you can pour an enormous amount of time into pure technical work, especially early on, you really can't dedicate that much time to individual pieces or mentally taxing skills (sightreading, improvisation, and other on-the-spot skills). A little bit goes a really long way. And if possible, lots of short, focused stabs throughout the day work much better than long sessions anyway.
Sight-singing in particular is a skills you can pop out and work on almost any time. I'd actually highly encourage https://www.sightreadingfactory.com/ for sight-singing in particular (I'm a bit less warm on it about piano in particular and lukewarm for other instruments).
Since you can limit things like you range it will really let you dial in and focus on small bits.
I'd recommend the same as I do for improvisation more or less. For improv I usually say start with 2, then 3, 4, and 5 notes eventually spelling out the pentatonic scale so you can KNOW where you're going and not guess.
For sight-singing I'd probably recommend not outlining the pentatonic scale, but start with 3 notes (do, re, mi) and then add fa and then sol. You can do this easily with sightreading factory and give yourself very tight and constrained limits. Eventually I'd probably advise you do proceed from those 5 notes DOWN to ti, la, an sol before adding the rest of the main octave so you eventually half 1.5 octaves from low sol up to high do. If you want to push it past there I'd push up to high mi and then down to the low mi for a full two octaves of the most useful range and intervals you'll find yourself singing in real music.
You also might want to try taking basic cadence pattern exercises like this one you'll find in this book (which I recommend) and start singing through the chords regularly.
So literally reading as written the right hand. Just arpeggiate vocally do-mi-sol, (next chord) do-fa-la, do mi-sol,... then pick either V chord or combine them into ti-re-fa-sol).
You can start mixing and matching too... go up one and down the next... so do-mi-sol, la-fa-do, etc.
These really reinforce singing through your chords in a way that lets you either a melodic arpeggio harmonically OR a harmonic chord melodically.
You'll recognize yourself shaping parts of these chords in vocal music ALL the time.
And once you get this basic exercise in your ears you can practice it anytime you want... in the shower... in the car... doing whatever. You can do it out loud (especially at first) but eventually you can start to audiate it (basically hearing in your minds ear) and then you can do it even around other people so they don't think you're crazy.
You can stretch this even further to other chord progressions, different inversions of chords... there's a lot that you can do with this and literally do it anywhere.
I'm assuming you want an electric piano:
I have the cheapest Roland, it cost like 500 euros and was extremely worth it. The touch feeling is amazing. Yamaha and Casio also have some good models on the low-end, 400 to 500 euros.
Do NOT buy the 200-300 euros keyboards from cheap brands, they're a waste of money.
What to start learning:
It highly depends on what your objectives and your learning style are.
I realized after 6 months that I did NOT enjoy reading/playing other people's music, so I went full-on improvisation. I also believe improvising is the best way to master an instrument for real and develop a musical sense. But I might be biased.
Sadly, improvisation is also kind of hard to start by yourself, so a teacher would be a great help. If you can't afford one, lots of music theory on the internet is available for free, ebooks and youtube.
In any case, I would advise to learn music theory (including the most annoying part, music sheet reading). Music theory is a huge help to understand and make music.
If you have the patience for it, learning easy classical pieces is very impressive to other people, and can be very rewarding (I'm not doing this though cause I dislike it).
On the technical side, you will need to learn scales for proper fingering (lol) and developing your musical sense. There is exactly ONE book that I think you ABSOLUTELY need to buy : The complete scale guide.
Focus on the major scales for the first year. Eventually you will be able to hear when you mess up a major scale (the intervals will sound wrong). This is your ear developing and one of the pillars of being a musician.
Most important advice: assign a moment everyday when you can play for 10 minutes. You have to do at least 10 mins every day, then you progress incredibly fast.
You can do for example 2-3 mins of scales, 5 mins of playing a music sheet of your choice, and 2-3 mins of free play / improvisation.
Also I have good news, if you can't sing right: play the piano for a year or two and you will magically sing very well. It is incredible, but that's how it is, playing an instrument develop your ears which allows you to sing right. I used to sing extremely badly and now I sing extremely well, never did any efforts for that.
Other tips:
Enjoy the process, not the result, and you will go very far.
Actually listen to what you play (many beginners forget to listen themselves!).
Paying for a teacher if you can afford one will make you progress much faster and keep your motivation up
If you feel like you're giving up, just come back to the instrument as soon as you can. Feeling guilty will only make you feel worse. Sometimes you don't train for a day, then two, then 2 or 3 weeks. That's okay.
The Complete Book of Scales, Chords, Arpeggios, and Cadences is a great resource.
The reality is that it doesn't really matter that much. Sure, there are a lot of inversions, and beyond that there are vastly more ways to actually voice any given chord, but there's no black and white answer.
I'd say the biggest rule of thumb to follow is to have good voice leading. In short, you want to minimize the motion between chords.
So if you're going from C to G, you're going to going to jump from root position to root position. From a root position C you can shift up to playing G as D G B or you can shift down to playing it as B D G. Both are closest to the root position C chord you're coming from.
Your ear will tell you a lot. If you start getting too low, it will sound muddy. If you move up to high the note on the top of the voicing might stand out to much and obscure a melody line (that might be sung for example).
Some other basic rules are are that nothing matters about the inversion as a whole except the lowest note.
You could play C in any "inversion" you want in your right hand, but if you're playing a C in your left hand, it's still a root position chord. Not every chord has to be in root position and making smoother left hand motion between chords can be a desirable thing.
So say you have C - G - Am.
You might actually want to make it C - G/B - Am and walk stepwise down to the A. It makes a nice line. And the chord chart doesn't HAVE to tell you that. You can make those decisions on your own.
In fact, the deeper you get into it the more you realize that you can just straight up substitute chords for others, though it takes a bit of theory knowledge to know which. Also, you can add qualities to chords that aren't explicitly written. It's extremely common to add 9s (or 2s) to chords (I actually talked about this in a video sometime back about ambient piano music)
With increasingly dense harmony...any time you see a 7 you absolutely can add the 9. It's actually pretty common stylistically for jazz lead sheets to NOT explicitly tell you all kinds of crazy extensions to add. They are just giving you the bones and assuming you know how to make the rest of the decisions on your own.
But this applies to pop music too. There's lots of things that can be done to spice up chord progressions even if they aren't explicit.
Also, some general voicing/theory principles here... the only notes that really matter in a triad are the root and 3rd. Those define the quality of the chord. You can freely omit the 5th pretty much always if you want to without losing the quality of the chord, but you might want it for the thickness of the voicing.
Realize that chords bigger than a 9th imply the 7 (dominant or major depending on the chord symbol. So C9 is going to be C E G Bb D... but you can still omit the 5th.
If you haven't worked through this book yet, get on it immediately. The bread and butter is to practice all of the cadence patterns in all inversions in every key. Then your hands will pretty much be primed to make the best voice leading with the most minimal motion for pretty much all of triadic harmony.
Oh, and since the bass defines the chord, if you have something like a C9, you can just play the C in your left hand and E G Bb D in the right... or just E Bb D, or revoice it as D E Bb.
You could also work a bit from what little bit I've started on my own comping book. It's in a rough state and I haven't made the progress I would like (and I've recently been overwhelmed with gigs), but it straight up addresses the big part of comping practice that I see missing a lot elsewhere... learning to read and associate the chord symbols with what you're playing so that you can pretty much sight-comp anything.
I need to specifically go back and simplify some of the rhythms, so feel free to ignore those, but mostly focus on using the voicings I have there because they meant to systematically lead you through all the permutations.
Do you mean this book? Google search is coming up with Willard Palmer, not Alfred’s
I have this one, can recommend
I like this book for sort of low impact/easy exercises to get comfy with: https://wunderkeys.com/piano-book/wunderkeys-intermediate-pop-studies-for-piano-1/
And this one is a bit more complex/theory oriented but may be very helpful for your self-study: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences/dp/0739003682
This book is great. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0739003682/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_eJYYFbS0QMX46
something like https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences/dp/0739003682/ will have all of the scales written out, with fingerings for both hands. each key has a bunch of cadences and arpeggios written out as well.
i don't know that it'll particularly help with using your left hand, but at $9 or so, it isn't an unreasonable purchase regardless.
i started out with my left hand just playing the same kiddie melody my right hand was playing, an octave lower. then i worked through maybe the first 50 of these https://michaelkravchuk.com/sight-reading-354-reading-exercises-in-c-position-by-michael-kravchuk/ very painfully slowly, and then i was more or less over the initial "omg how do i two hands" hurdle.
good luck
I've been playing since January just as an idea. Pieces are important too - to make sure its still FUN! I have found that the technical stuff REALLY helped me along so I understand/can do things easier/faster. Sight Reading is REALLY important - the better you can sight read, the more you can play and songs you can learn without struggling. I do find some technical exercises fun also though - so if its fun, its fun and that's fine!
I use the Circle of Fifths too for scales practice - its nice for a guide. I've worked around both sides learning 1-2 scales at a time - saving the more difficult ones at the bottom for later. Now I am up to those bottom ones after 5-6 months. Its a MARATHON not a sprint - remember that so you don't burn out. NONE of the songs I am playing are in those keys so its not crucial anyway.
For beginner arpeggios - yes, those are triads. A one octave arpeggio would be C-E-G-C so RH would be fingers 1, 2, 3 and 5 and back down. Then there's 2 Octave arpeggios - I just recently started 2 Octaves and only in white key chords (C, G, F). This is an excellent book for that (and Scales and Chords)!
If I only had 20 minutes one day for example - I would do a scale or two as a warm up, then one exercise, then I would spend the rest of my time on my most favorite piece I was working on. So it would be something like:
3 mins Scales - 2 mins Exercise - 12 mins Piece - 3 mins playing a little song I have memorized - and these aren't EXACT times, I would set a timer for 20 mins and just ballpark those sections.
OR if I was really crunched on time and only had 10-15 mins - I would do scales and an exercise, then I would play something from a Czerny type book (I have a few different ones) and that would tackle some sight reading at the same time as a little study/exercise! Also, for me personally, if I am crunched for time - I have found I have VERY little brain power for my actual pieces - I'm too concerned about being late, or I have to do this or that before work and its just garbage practice so the technical stuff works out better for me in that respect.
Go to musictheory.net/lessons and musictheory.net/exercises and learn your fundamentals of reading sheet music and basic theory. Get this book if you don't already have it, and use it to learn your basic major scales.
From there, take a look at the ABRSM syllabus, and you should have the knowledge and resources to work on grade 1 pieces and exercises.
No I don't have a teacher. I am planning on taking some lessons before going for RCM though.
Do you think this book is good enough? It's much cheaper than the RCM too.
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Heavily recommend https://www.amazon.com/Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences-Complete/dp/0739003682 , teaches all the essential mechanics and has some exercises in the last few pages.
I do! Don't have a lot of beats so far but I'm working on it haha. You can check them out here if you want.
Also if you really want to learn music theory I recommend the book "Music Theory for Computer Musicians" by Michael Hewitt, you can also "borrow" it online if you catch my drift. It's a series of 3 books if I'm not mistaken (second covering harmony and third one composition). Then maybe you'd want a piano scales book (like this). Knowing your scales is pretty important if you want to compose music, you'll have to practice those and the book is really helpful for that. You can also find free versions online of similar books (I think r/piano has a link for one in their beginner's guide).
But again, really not that necessary for lofi hiphop unless you want to go deep. Music theory however is not wasted knowledge, so go for it if you're really motivated.
This book is a pretty great place to start for fundamental technique stuff for piano similar to rudiments for drummers.
No. Golandsky is a great teacher, but her focus on on higher-level concepts in piano technique and interpretation of the classical repertoire.
You should get a book of scales and learn the fingerings. https://www.amazon.com/Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences-Complete/dp/0739003682
Learn the basics of reading and playing music in this book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0882848186/
> I asked a some people i know if they could teach me the basics on how to play (they are like level 8 or so) and they just say i'm bad and make fun of me.
People, what a bunch of bastards.
Yea, don't go to them for help again. Everyone has a beginning, and their beginning did not (guaranteed if they're also around your age) consist of being told they were bad and made fun of.
As others have stated, get a book of scales, this is a good one
Lypurs youtube also has a fantastic series on learning music theory which is a must to watch. Also, one of the adult piano handbooks doesn't hurt (a popular one is Faber's Adult Piano Adventures), and finally, learning beginning pieces that you like the sound of will help. The "what and how to practice" in the faq will help in that respect.
Sounds like a scale book would be a good idea for you. Here's one from the FAQ or here's one I like if you have $7.
Usually: 5 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 for LH F major.
The C scale is the hardest. Start with B major or D-flat major. Also, don't go for speed just yet. Try to make sure you learn them all by heart first, and that they're very even (and slow!).
This book is invaluable: http://www.amazon.com/Scales-Chords-Arpeggios-Cadences-Complete/dp/0739003682
This one should also help you get started: http://www.amazon.com/Adult-All--Course-Level-Lesson-Theory-Technic-ebook/dp/B002Y5W5BQ
Read [http://www.reddit.com/r/piano/wiki/faq#wiki_getting_started_as_a_beginner] the getting started guide.
Get some lessons (once per fortnight). My teacher picked up on my weaknesses quite quickly. Bring sheet music of style of music you can already play, and that you want to learn.
Get this scale book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0739003682
Assess with teacher what lesson book you should get. You may be too advanced for Alfred's Adult Course, but who knows. Look also on Amazon for those books to see if they are above your level.
That'll work. I use this book with my students.
Popular alternatives to The Complete Book of Scales...
Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course: Lesson Book, Level One (Alfred's Basic Adult Piano Course, Bk 1)
