Piano Clues

Work and other things are taking up too much of my time these days to do any writing for this site.

However, here is a list of topics that I intend to cover in the future, if time permits:

• How to recognize chords from sheet music
• What are modes?
• How to put a Flash-based music-player on your own site
• How to make a leadsheet in Lilypond
• How to make a full piano score in Lilypond
• How to read leadsheets
• Playing keyboard with auto-accompaniment
• Beginning jazz
• Learning songs from MIDI files
• Chord voicings
• Quartal voicings
• Composing and improvising
• Using Transcribe!
• Chord substitutions
• Tritone substitutions
• Beginning blues
• Modulation
• Rhythm changes
• Polychords
• Walking (jazz) bass
• Ostinato patterns

Stay tuned!

If you know the melody to a tune, then how do you find the chords to accompany that melody?

My best advice: join Piano Magic

(Really, I mean it!)

In the mean time, here’s a quick summary of how to harmonize melodies:

1. Find out what key the melody is in
2. Learn the I, IV and V7 chords of that key. In the key of C these would be C, F and G7.
3. Press the I chord and play the first notes of the melody.
4. When the melody and the chord no longer seem to fit together, switch to one of the other two chords. This usually happens at the beginning of a new measure.
5. Repeat until you reach the end of the song. Usually the song will end on the I chord.

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People occasionally email me to ask which digital piano they should buy. I’m not really an expert, but I can give some tips.

There are too many brands and models to go into details, but here are some things to keep in mind:

Stage piano vs. cabinet piano

Some digital pianos are meant for performing. These are called “stage pianos”. They are extra sturdy yet light enough to carry around (if you have a strong roadie ).

Stage pianos often don’t have built-in speakers and are limited in features. If you want to get one, you’ll probably also need to buy external speakers and a stand to put it on.

My advice: if you are going to perform in a band (or carry around your piano a lot) then get a stage piano. Otherwise, don’t.

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This is what “3-over-2″ or “3 against 2″ or “2 against 3″ looks like:

It’s a complicated rhythm that takes a while to get the hang of. In the bass clef are straight quarter notes but in the treble cleff are tuplets, which means three quarter notes played in the time of two regular ones.

So for every two quarter notes in the left hand, the right hand is supposed to play three quarter notes.

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Ready for more fun with the Circle of Fifths? Here we go!

Minor keys

There is also a circle for minor keys:

I put the names of the minor keys on the inside of the circle. This is because each major key has a relative minor key.

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If you ever wonder what the order of sharps or flats is in the key signature, then you can look at the Circle of Fifths.

In the previous post we saw that the key of C major has no sharps or flats. The key of G major has one sharp, the key of D major has two, and so on.

You can find the tones that are made sharp by starting on F and then going clockwise through the circle.

Which means the order of sharps in the key signature is: F - C - G - D - A - E - B

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This is the Circle of Fifths, you may have seen it before:

Some people think it should look like this:

And there are people who call it the Circle of Fourths.

None of those differences really matter because it all comes down to the same thing. We will use the circle from the first picture.

You can find a large portion of music theory in this mysterious circle, and I’ll show you some of these fun facts in this article.

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Here is a video I recorded that demonstrates the various sounds on the Yamaha CP33 digital stage piano.

The sound was captured directly into the computer and added to the video later, so what you hear is exactly what you get.

This is the second installment of the two-part series on playing the Hanon exercises. You can find the first part here.

Exercise 2

Now that you’ve seen how Hanon works, we can go through the rest of the exercises quicker. They all work in the same fashion — a repeating pattern going up and down the keyboard — except that the notes and fingering are slightly different each time.

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“Hanon” is a famous set of exercises to train your fingers for the piano. Through this practice your finger technique will become faster, stronger, and more precise.

The name comes from French composer Charles-Louis Hanon (1819-1900), who bundled these finger workouts in his book The Virtuoso Pianist in Sixty Exercises.

This is the first article in a two-part series that explains how to play the first 5 exercises.

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to read sheet music — I’ll explain in detail what notes to play and which fingers to use.

Let’s get started!

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