Everyone who wishes to participate performs and records a solo piano piece and then uploads it to a special website.

On the day of the recital, all entries are made public on the Piano World Forums.

Last month we had our 10th recital, and it was awesome (as always )!

With 63 participants, this was our biggest recital ever. People from all over the world, old and young, ranging in experience from complete beginners to seasoned players, created over 3 and a half hours of piano music.

Any style of music goes, as long as it’s played on a piano. Last time we had classical, jazz, new age, pop, you name it.

Visit the recital here

You can also listen directly to all the tunes using the online streaming player.

Go check it out!

And if you play the piano, be sure to send in a recording for recital 11 on August 15!

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!

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.

If the I, IV or V7 chords match but aren’t completely satisfactory, then try the minor chords from the key (iv, ii, or iii). In the key of C these would be Am, Dm or Em.

If the I, IV or V7 chords don’t match at all, then try an accidental chord such as II7 or III7. In the key of C these would be D7 or E7.

In case you didn’t notice yet, there is a close relationship between the melody and the current chord: melody tones are chord tones.

That means the tones that make up the melody are the same tones that make up the chord. Consequently, if the melody switches to the tones from another chord, it is time to change chords.

For example, if you’re currently playing C chord, then the melody will focus on the tones C, E and G. The melody may still include other tones, but they will be quick passing tones.

If the melody lingers on a tone that is not in any of the chords from the key, you should find another chord that does have this tone.

For example, if you encounter an long F# tone in the key of C, then a likely candidate for the chord is D7 (which is: D-F#-A-C) but it could also be B7 (which is B-D#-F#-A).

That’s about it.

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.

Most amateur-at-home-players will want to get a digital piano in a nice cabinet. It will look good in your living room, doesn’t need any additional equipment, and has excellent speakers built into it.

The price

Very simple: get the best you can afford. There will always be better pianos with more features, but if you don’t have the money for it, then it’s no use fretting about it.

That being said: do max out your budget. More expensive pianos really are worth the money. You might not use all the additional features, but higher-end digital pianos simply sound better.

If you quickly tire of the sound of your new piano, then you’re less likely to play it and that would be a shame.

Touch vs. sound

The “touch” of the piano — how the keys feel when you press them — is more important than the sounds the piano produces.

If you find a piano that sounds wonderful but feels horrible to play, don’t buy it!

You can easily add new sounds to a digital piano by connecting an external sound module (such as the Yamaha Motif rack, which has over a 1,000 additional voices) or even your computer.

However, you can’t change the touch of the piano.

Digital piano manufacturers are always trying to figure out better ways to simulate the sound and feel of a “real” acoustic piano. Just as different types of acoustic pianos sound and feel different, so do digitals. Pick one that satisfies you on both counts.

Casio

The Casio Privia series is a good budget option. Casio has a reputation of producing “toys” instead of real instruments, but their digital pianos are actually quite good — and very affordable.

If your budget is under $1,000 then give Casio a try. I know several people who are quite happy with their Casios.

MIDI controller + computer

If you have a good computer, then an alternative to buying a digital piano is the combination of a “MIDI controller” and virtual piano software.

A MIDI controller is like a digital piano except that it has no sound generation hardware. Instead, you use your computer to produce the sound.

The disadvantage of this method is that you always have to turn on your computer to play piano, but for some people this may not be an issue.

Checklist

These are the features your digital piano should have at the very least:

Weighted keys. Electronic keyboards have organ-type keys that don’t offer any resistance when you press them down. Pianos, on the other hand, have weighted keys that are quite heavy.

If you want to (learn how to) play the piano, you want weighted keys.

88 keys. That’s the size of a full piano. You can get away with 76 keys, but 61 keys is the absolute minimum.

If you’re a beginner you can get by with 61 or 76 keys, but when you move into more advanced repertoire, 88 keys is what you want.

A sustain pedal, also called the damper pedal. The pedal is an essential part of piano playing.

Electronic keyboards usually don’t have a pedal (although you might be able to hook one up), but a digital piano should.

Higher-end models have more than one pedal but they are only for advanced playing. So is “half-pedaling” — you probably won’t use it if you’re not a concert pianist.

MIDI. This allows you to connect the piano to the computer or to external sound modules to give it more sounds.

Some digital pianos only have a USB connector so you can hook it up to the computer, but not to other MIDI devices.

Cheaper pianos only have MIDI OUT for sending MIDI data but not a MIDI IN for receiving data.

I recommend a piano that has both the round 5-pin MIDI OUT and MIDI IN connectors, and a separate USB connection.

Polyphony. As high “polyphony” as you can get. The polyphony of an instrument tells you how many notes can sound at once.

If your piano has 16-note polyphony then playing more than 16 notes at the same time will cause some notes to drop out, which isn’t very nice to hear.

If you think 16 notes is a lot, then consider this: Stereo sound cuts polyphony in half. If you “layer” two voices (for example piano and strings) you’ll use twice the notes. Big arpeggios with the sustain pedal pressed down will sound a lot of notes at the same time.

I recommend at least 64-note polyphony and preferably 128 or more.

A music rest, so you have a place to put your sheet music. Usually this comes with the piano, but on some stage pianos this is an optional accessory.

Any other features, such as a “sequencer” that allows you to record your playing, auto-accompaniment, sound effects, and so on… are great to have, but pay special attention to the above list.

More info

Places to get more information:

• The Piano World Forums have many discussions on digital pianos
• Harmony Central for user reviews of all kinds of musical gear
• The book “How to Buy, Play, and Enjoy a Digital Piano” by Dan Starr. I haven’t read it but I hear good things about it.

The main tip: go to a handful of different music stores in your area and play on a wide variety of digital pianos and acoustic pianos, even the ones outside your budget.

Get a feel for the differences between them, what you like and what you don’t like.

Don’t rush! You don’t want to be stuck with an instrument that you don’t feel like playing.

Good luck!

Each piece had to be at least 2:30 minutes in length. I aimed to produce only original pieces but once in a while I also did my own variation on an existing piece.

I posted these pieces on a blog and a podcast, not because I expected to find a big audience, but to keep the pressure on.

However, I managed just fine and actually did more than one piece per week on average, so I’m happy about the results.

Last November I decided it was enough. By then I had recorded almost 40 pieces, so it had been a worthwhile challenge and I learned a lot from it.

Even though the blog is gone, I kept the pieces online. You can listen to them here:

www.originalsolopiano.com

All the pieces are free to download (right-click in the player). Some also come with sheet music (see bottom of the page).

You can still listen to the podcast, although there will be no future updates to the feed:

Listen as podcast

And you can also listen on iTunes:

Listen on iTunes

Enjoy!

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.

You might also encounter 3-over-2 with eighth notes:

The principle is the same: two hands playing in different rhythms.

To get a feel for this rhythm, I suggest you take a walk:

1. Count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on on each step. Left foot is 1, right foot is 2, left foot is 3, right foot is 4, and so on. You’re counting a regular 4/4 beat.
2. Hold your arms by your side. Now slap both your hands on your legs as triplets: 123-123-123-123… So for each footstep, your hands hit your sides three times.
3. Now alternate your hands: RLR-LRL-RLR-LRL, …
4. Stopping hitting your leg with your left hand. Now your right hand is hitting the tuplets, i.e. the “3″ from “3-over-2″.
5. Hit your left hand twice for each foot step to play the duple notes, i.e the “2″ from “3-over-2″.

It can be rather tricky at first to coordinate this, but with some practice — a long walk — you should get the hang of it.

Another approach is to count out the rhythm:

1. First, count the triplets as one-and-two-and-three-and-, one-and-two-and-three-and-, …
2. Then count it as one-two-and-three, one-two-and-three, …
3. Play the left hand on one and the and between two and three.
4. Play the right hand on one, two and three.

I hope this picture will make it a little clearer:

Once you get a feel for this rhythm, it isn’t so hard to play anymore.

The hardest part of improvising is allowing yourself to mess up. You must give yourself the freedom to play anything, no matter how awful.

Let’s face it: your first improvisations won’t be any good. But they’ll never become any better if you don’t allow yourself to be bad at it.

If you already know how to play by ear, you have a headstart because playing by ear and improvising are in essense the same thing. Improvisation is just a little scarier because you don’t have the safety net of an existing tune.

The chords

There are several approaches to improvising:

You can play a new melody on top of an existing chord progression. That is what jazz players do: the rest of the band lays down a fixed harmonic structure and the soloist plays something on top of that.

If you’re doing this on solo piano, your left hand can bang out the same chords over and over while your right hand makes up a melody.

You can also drop the idea of a fixed chord structure and make up the harmony as you go along. Of course that is a little harder, because now you have to think of two things: the melody and the chords.

In reality the amount of possible variation in harmony is a lot smaller than in melody, so it’s not as difficult as it sounds.

It’s possible to harmonize a lot of music with just three chords (the I, IV and V chords) so if you restrict your left hand to these three chords, the number of possible chord changes is very limited.

Keeping it simple as a very good idea for the beginning improviser.

The melody

Suppose you know the chord progression beforehand, then how do you come up with a melody that fits with those chords?

There are three methods:

1. Play chord tones. Melodies consist of chord tones. That means if the current chord is C chord, then a melody consisting of the tones C, E or G will always sound good because C, E and G are the tones that make up C chord.

When you change chords, you choose the chord tones from the new chord, and so on.

If you are looking for a more advanced sound, you can also use extended chord tones such as the 7th and the 9th, or color tones such as the 6th.

Of course you can still play other tones that are not in the chord, but you should limit them to quick passing tones.

For example, if you play a long F melody tone on op of a C chord, you’ll probably annoy your listeners. Playing a quick F is fine as long as you immediately resolve it to a true chord tone.

2. Play scale tones. If you’re playing in the key of C, then you can pick your melody tone from the C major scale. If you want to be fancy, you can also choose a different scale such as the blues scale or one of the “modes”. But I won’t go into that here.

3. Play intuitively. This is my favorite method. I don’t like to think too much while I’m improvising. Instead, I try to hear the melody in my head just fractions of a second before I’m going to hit the key on the piano.

Playing intuitively

This is easier than it sounds: if you’re in the right state of mind, melodies will automatically (or should that be “magically”?) come to you. They do to me, anyway.

Does that make me weird? I don’t think so. I believe anyone can do this, but you have to silence the other “chatter” in your head first.

To practice this, play a fixed chord progression (for example C-Am-Dm-G7) over and over and try to sing, hum or whistle a melody along with it. Don’t think too hard about it, just sing anything.

If you can do that, you can improvise!

If you have a melody that you like, try and pick it out on the piano. If you keep practicing this — singing first, then picking it out on the piano — then after a short while you’ll be able to pick out the melody on the piano while you’re singing it.

Scatting along while you’re improvising is a great way to train your ears!

Remember: don’t think about it too much. Thinking is a rational process that happens in one part of the brain, while creativity is a completely different process that happens in another part of the brain.

If you’re thinking too hard, there is no room left to be creative. The best creations happen in a mind that is completely still, and with a heart that is overflowing.

Tips

If you have trouble making up a melody of your own, then pick an existing melody. As it happens, the chord progression C-Am-Dm-G7 is used for a whole lot of songs, for example “Blue Moon” or “Heart and Soul” and many others.

Sing or hum one of those melodies while you’re playing the chords, and then add in your own variations. Before you know it, you’ll be singing — and playing — a whole new melody.

Another tip for making up melodies: download lyrics to a song that you don’t know. Just google for “song lyrics” and you’ll find many websites with tons of lyrics. Then try to make up your own melody to these lyrics.

The easiest way is to simply recite the text. You’ll find that automatically you’ll put some kind of rhythm into it, even if you don’t know how the original song goes.

You could also do this with poetry, of course — or really with any kind of text as this Elton John video shows.

Take it slow. The faster you play, the less time you have to think about what you’re going to do next. You’ll learn quicker if you play slower.

An example

Above all, keep it simple! I already mentioned the chord progression C-Am-Dm-G7, which is only four chords. But you can simplify it even more. How about just playing C-G-C-G over and over?

Here is a little improvisation that I did using just these two chords. I kept it very simple: just three-note chords in the left hand and one-finger melody in the right.

Short improvisation example using only C and G chords (MIDI)

Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t really matter if this improvisation is good or not. But it is mine and I made it up on the spot.

If you learn to play from the heart, then your improvisations will be the ultimate way to creatively express yourself musically. Few things are more fulfilling!

This past weekend, Michael Anderson — who is the Piano Magic teacher — opened up the “Piano Magic Concert Hall” to the public.

In the Concert Hall, there are 20 performances of solo piano music by Piano Magic members. Everyone is playing their own arrangements — by ear.

Some of the performers have only been with the course for several months, while others have been around for one or more years (like myself).

So for some excellent free piano music, and for proof of what this course delivers, visit the Piano Magic Concert Hall!

If you look up free sheet music or chord sheets on the internet, you often run into something called “guitar tabulature” or “tabs”.

This is a simplified type of sheet music that is easier to read for guitar players than traditional notation. It basically displays the fretboard of the guitar.

What if you want to play that song on the piano and you can’t find the sheet music? Then you might get lucky with the guitar tabs.

Translating tabs to notes on the piano is not very hard but you’ll have to learn a bit about how the guitar works.

Let’s search for “Comfortable” by John Mayer. I typed the following into google:

john mayer comfortable chords tabs

After some digging around, I found a nice tab here. Below I have copied a small portion of this tab.

e--2--0--2--0--2--------------------------
b--3--3--3--1--1-------0------2------3----
g--2--0--0--0--2-------0------2------4----
d--0--2--0--2--0---0---0---0--2---2--4--0-
a-----1--2--0-----------------------------
e----------------3---3---3------3------0--

So how do you read this? There are 6 lines, one for each string on the guitar. The bottom line is the lowest string and the uppermost line represents the highest string (makes sense).

Typically guitar strings are tuned like this, from bottom to top: E, A, D, G, B, E. (Notice that this looks a lot like the Circle of Fifths!)

Other tunings are possible too, but they are less common. Usually the tab indicates the tuning of the strings. In the snippet above, each string is preceded by its note name and we can see that this tab is notated with standard tuning.

The numbers represent the guitar frets. The number 0 means you’re supposed to play an “open string”; that is, you don’t press the string down on a fret.

To translate the tab to notes, we have to do some counting. In the above snippet, the top-most line (e) begins with the number 2. That is the note F#.

How did I calculate this? Simple: the E is 0, the next tone in the chromatic scale is F (1), and the tone after that is F# (2).

So you start at the tone the string is tuned to and then count upwards through the musical alphabet. Or you simply use the table below:

(I only used sharps here, but you can substitute them with flats if necessary.)

This table is basically a representation of the guitar fretboard (up to the eighth fret).

You read tabs from left to right. If there is a number on more than one line — as is the case here — you’re supposed to play these notes at the same time.

Let’s look at the first part of the tab again:

e--2--0--
b--3--3--
g--2--0-- ...
d--0--2--
a-----1--
e--------

The first thing we should play is 0-2-3-2 on the D-G-B-E strings. Because I play guitar, I immediately recognize this shape as a D major chord.

If we count it out, we should find the D major too. Look in the table above and write down the notes. You should find, from bottom to top: D - A - D - F#. Those are indeed the notes of the D major chord.

Notice that the D tone is doubled: that is common for guitar chords. You can play this on the piano as a regular D major chord, or you can voice it some other way: that is completely up to you!

After the D major chord we’re supposed to play 1-2-0-3-0. These are the notes: A# (or Gb) - E - G - D - E. And so on…

Sometimes you’ll see special symbols in the tab, for example in:

e--0h2-----2p0----0-2-3-2-
b--3-----------3--3-------
g--2-----2--------0-------
d--0---0----------x-------
a-----------------1-------
e-------------------------

The h indicates a “hammer-on”, which is a quick finger tap on the string. The p is a “pull-off”, the opposite of a hammer-on.

You don’t really need to worry about these techniques if you’re transcribing the music for the piano because those things are impossible to do on a piano. (You could try playing them as a grace note.)

The x indicates that particular string isn’t supposed to be played.

That’s about it.

Note that often guitar tabs contain no rhythmic information, so you already need to know more-or-less how the song goes.

Happy counting!

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.

If you don’t have this handy picture around, you can still find the relative minor key. Draw a 90 degree angle from the major key through the center of the circle. The leg will point to the relative minor.

Or: Rotate the circle so the major key is at 12 o’clock. Its relative minor is now at 3 o’clock.

Or: Skip two keys in the clockwise direction. Start at Bb, skip F, skip C, then the relative minor is Gm.

You can also remember that the relative minor is the 6th tone from the major scale, or simply go 3 half-steps down. Or go three steps clockwise.

It also works the other way around: each minor key has a relative major key.

Ways to find the relative major scale:

• Draw a 90 degree angle the other way around.
• Rotate the circle so the minor key is at 12 o’clock. Its relative minor is now at 9 o’clock.
• Skip two keys in the counterclockwise direction.

You can also remember that the relative major is 3 half-steps up. Or three steps counterclockwise.

Chords and the circle

Chords that are close together in the circle sound good together in a song.

Every major key has three primary chords: the I (tonic), IV (subdominant) and V7 (dominant) chords. These are easy to find in the circle.

Go to your key, for example C. Go one step clockwise and we find the V7 chord, in this case G7. One step counterclockwise from C is the IV chord, in this case F.

The V7 chord is the dominant 7th chord. It uses the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th notes from its own major scale, but the 7th tone is flattened.

For example, the tones of the G7 chord are: G - B - D - F. Note that F is not part of the G major scale; it is “borrowed” from the key one step counterclockwise: the key of C.

If you know the V7 chord, then what key are you in? Look counterclockwise one position in the circle. For example, you can tell this way that the C7 chord belongs to the key of F. The tones of C7 are C - E - G - Bb, and that Bb comes from the scale of F.

The following picture shows the 7 “diatonic” chords that can be used in the key of C (without borrowing “accidental tones”). Note that the major chords are neatly grouped together, as are the minor chords.

Chord progressions

Chords like to move counterclockwise in the circle. The G7 chord provides the strongest pull towards the C chord. The D7 chord, in turn, provides the strongest pull towards G.

In songs in the key of C, it is common to see a chord progression such as A7 - D7 - G7 - C.

The chords are not always dominant 7ths, they could also be Am - Dm - G7 - C or Am - D7 - G7 - C. However, they do tend to follow the circle counterclockwise back to the home chord.

You may have heard of the famous ii-V-I chord progression, or 2-5-1. That’s simply a trip counterclockwise around the circle.

In key of C, ii-V-I is Dm - G7 - C. Extended versions of this chord progression exist too, like the vi-ii-V-I or 6-2-5-1 (also called a 1-6-2-5). We already saw that above: Am - Dm - G7 - C.

You can go even further and add Em in the mix to get a 3-6-2-5-1. All these chords come straight out of the circle, and the principle works just the same in any of the other major keys.

Tritone substitution

A “tritone” is an interval of three whole tones. There is a concept in jazz music called the “tritone substitution”, or the “flat 5″ substitution. You can use this technique for substituting dominant-7 chords.

For example, you could replace a G7 chord with a Db7 chord. You can do this because G7 and Db7 have 2 tones in common: the B and the F. These two tones just happen to be a tritone (i.e. three whole tones) apart. It may sound a little weird at first, but jazz cats like it.

There are several ways to figure out what the tritone substitution chord is, but you can also look into the circle. The substitution chord is the one directly across. Draw a line from G through the center of the circle and you’ll end up at Db. And that’s your tritone chord.

That’s about it for now. I’m sure there are many more interesting uses of the Circle of Fifths. If you know of any, tell me.

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

See how it works in practice:

• C major scale has no sharps, so that’s easy.
• G major scale has the same tones as C major scale, except for F, which now becomes F#.
• D major scale has the same tones as G major scale, except for C, which now becomes C#. Its two sharps are F# and C#.
• A major scale has the same tones as D major scale, except for G, and so on…

In other words, F is the first tone that is made sharp, C is the second tone that is made sharp, G the third, and so on clockwise around the circle.

You can also find the flats using the same picture but now we start on B and work backwards.

The order of flats in the key signature is: B - E - A - D - G - C - F

Let’s apply it:

• C major scale has no flats.
• F major scale has the same tones as C major scale, except for B, which now becomes Bb.
• Bb major scale has the same tones as F major scale, except for E, which now becomes Eb. Its two flats are Bb and Eb.
• Eb major scale has the same tones as Bb major scale, except for A, and so on…

Did you notice that each time you take the next step, which tone changes?

• If we go clockwise, for example from the key of C to the key of G, the tone that changes is F, which becomes F#. F is directly to the left of C. So you can look to the left (or rather, counterclockwise) of your starting key to see which tone has to be raised.
• If we go counterclockwise, it works slight differently: the tone to the left is now the one that has changed. Say we go from the key of C to the key of F. One step left from F is Bb, which means the B tone was flattened to become Bb.

So you can look in the circle to see which tone you have to change.

You can also remember which scale step to raise or lower:

• Clockwise, raise the 4th note from the scale. From C to G, we first find the 4th note from the C major scale, which is F. We raise F to get F#. The note that has changed will also be the 7th note of the new scale.
• Counterclockwise, lower the 7th note from the scale. From C to G, the 7th note from the C major scale is B. We lower B to get Bb. The note that has changed will also be the 4th note of the new scale.

What if you quickly want to know which tones need to be sharpened for a particular key signature? Look up the key in the circle, let’s say the key of A. Go counterclockwise one step (we skip this one). Then all the tones counterclockwise back to F must be sharpened. So in this case we skip D (this one doesn’t change) and sharpen G, C and F.

Getting the flats is a little harder. You move counterclockwise one step from your key signature and then go back clockwise again until you reach Bb. So in the key of Ab, we first go to Db and then back to Bb: Ab, Eb, Bb. So the key of Ab has four flats: Db, Ab, Eb, Bb. A little tricky, this one.

There is another method. Go directly across the circle from your key signature, then count clockwise to B and flat all these notes. From Ab across the circle gets us at D, then clockwise we meet A, E and finally B. We flatten these notes to find the four flats: Db, Ab, Eb, Bb. Still a little convoluted, but hey, it’s possible!

If you know which notes are flattened, how do you determine the key? The name of the key is the second-to-last flat in the list. For example, in the picture below the flats are: Bb - Eb - Ab - Db - Gb. The second-to-last is Db, so the key must be the key of Db major.

Or you could just count the number of flats and go counterclockwise that many steps in the circle, starting from the top.

For sharps it is even easier: Take the last sharp in the list and go up a half-step to find the name of the key. In the picture below the sharps are: F# - C# - G#. To find the key, raise G# by a half-step, which results in: the key of A major.

Of course, here you can also count the number of sharps starting from the top, but this time we go clockwise.

It is easy to see that the circle goes F - C - G - D - A - E - B clockwise. These are all names without sharps or flats. But because B is enharmonically equivalent with Cb, it continues Cb - Gb - Db - Ab - Eb - Bb clockwise. Do you notice, with the exception of F, that this is the same as the first list but simply with added flats?

To find the notes in the current key, read the five notes clockwise and the one note counterclockwise. You can also simply go one position counterclockwise and then read seven notes going clockwise.

So from G we go left once to find C, then we go six times clockwise to find G, D, A, E, B and F#. Put these in alphabetical order and you have the notes from the key of G.

This works for all keys, although sometimes you’ll have to turn flats into sharps for it to make sense. Applying this formula to the key of D would give you G, D, E, A, B, F#, Db but you should obviously turn that Db into a C#.

Phew! That’s a lot of crazy things you can do with the circle and key signatures.

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.

Just like a clock, the circle has 12 “dials” because there are twelve unique tones in the musical alphabet. The C is on top, or in the 12 o’clock position.

Going clockwise

It is called the Circle of Fifths because if you go in the clockwise direction, the tones are a perfect fifth interval apart.

An interval is simply a fancy name for the distance between two notes. There are many possible intervals and a “perfect fifth” is one of them.

It’s called a perfect fifth (or just “fifth”) because the distance between one tone and the next is five steps along the major scale.

Let’s start on the C, which is on top of the circle. The next note clockwise is G. Guess what? If you play the C major scale and start at C, then you’ll play five notes, C-D-E-F-G, until you hit G.

Another way to look at intervals is at the number of “half-steps” they encompass. A half-step (or “semitone”) means: go one key on the keyboard to the left or right. A whole step (or whole tone) means: skip a key.

Suppose we start at middle C. A half-step up from C is C# but a whole-step up from C is D. A half-step down from C is B but a whole-step down from C is Bb. And so on…

A perfect fifth is a distance of 7 half-steps. If you start at the middle C on your piano and then count 7 half-steps up, again you end up at G.

Try it for the other notes in the Circle of Fifths. Go clockwise from G to D. Again that is 5 steps along the major scale — of course, this time you’ll have to use the major scale of G, not C — or 7 half-steps up.

From D to A is again 5 steps, this time in the major scale of D. And so on… After stepping through all twelve possible notes, we’re back at C.

Clockwise is also called the “dominant” direction. In chord terminology, G is the dominant of C.

Going counterclockwise

In the counterclockwise direction, tones are a perfect fourth apart. That is why people sometimes call it the Circle of Fourths.

You can probably already guess by now that a “fourth” means: go to the fourth note in the major scale. Going counterclockwise from C means going to the fourth note in the C major scale, which is… F.

You can also count 5 half-steps. If you go all the way counterclockwise you end up at C again.

Going counterclockwise is also called the “subdominant” direction because F chord is the subdominant of C chord.

Upside-down

So far we have counted four or five steps upwards when we played a scale, but we can also play the scale backwards. If you go backwards from C to G on the C major scale, you’ll play C-B-A-G.

That’s only four steps, so from C to G is now a perfect fourth interval while not too long ago I told you it was a perfect fifth… What’s going on here?!

The same thing happens when you go counterclockwise but play the scale backwards: from C to F you now play C-B-A-G-F, which is a perfect fifth and not a fourth.

It is all a matter of perspective. In the end it doesn’t really matter if you call it a fourth or a fifth. That’s because these two intervals are “complementary“: going up a fourth is the same as going down a fifth, and going down a fourth is the same as going up a fifth.

Confused? No matter, they are just numbers. You don’t really need to know this in order to make practical use of the circle, but I wanted to tell you about it anyway.

Key signatures

The Circle of Fifths describes the 12 major scales and the relationships between them. The closer keys are together on the circle, the closer is their relationship.

In the clockwise direction, each step adds a sharp (#) to the key signature:

• C major scale has no sharps
• G major scale has one shars
• D major scale has two sharps
• . . . and so on until…
• C# major scale has seven sharps

Counterclockwise, each step adds a flat (b) to the key signature:

• C major scale has no flats
• F major scale has one flat
• Bb major scale has two flats
• . . . and so on until . . .
• Cb major scale has seven flats

If you remember our picture of the clock, you can see the relationship between the number of sharps and flats and the numbers of the “clock”, at least on the right side of the circle.

On the left, you would have to subtract the “time” from 12. The key of Eb, which is at 9 o’clock, has 12 - 9 = 3 flats.

Note that the left side of the circle mirrors the right, but with flats instead of sharps.

At the bottom of the circle we see three items with a double name: Db and C#, F# and Gb, and B and Cb. We call these key signatures “enharmonically equivalent”.

That means they have different names, and different numbers of sharps and flats — Db has 5 flats while C# has 7 sharps — and therefore their notes have different names BUT they sound exactly the same.

If you were to transpose a piece in Db major to C# major, it would sound exactly like before… though it may be harder to read. That’s why composers and arrangers prefer the key of B over the key of Cb: it’s easier to write and easier to read.

You could go even further and create the key of Fb, which is enharmonically equivalent to the key of E, but that would be madness!

More about the circle next time…

Here’s the trick: the only thing that really matters about a chord is whether it is major or minor. You can safely ignore anything else about the chord.

For example, you may encounter the chord symbols Am9 and D13.

The first one is an “A minor” chord with an added 7th and an added 9th.

The second one is a “D dominant-7″ chord with an added 13th but it could also have a 9th and 11th, depending on how you voice it.

If that didn’t make any sense to you and you have no clue how to form these chords, then keep what you know and throw away the rest.

In our example:

Am9 can be simplified to Am, which is A minor. That’s a very simple three-tone chord.

D13 can simply be played as D major. Again, a very simple chord.

When you play Am instead of Am9 and D major instead of D19, the tune probably won’t sound quite like it’s supposed to, but it won’t sound bad either. You can get away with it!

The only important thing to get right is the distinction between major and minor. If you mix those up, something will sound bad.

To recap:

• A chord symbol that has an “m” or “min” (or sometimes a minus sign) can be simplified to a minor chord.
• Any other chords can be simplified to a major chord.

And if you’re really not sure, you can simplify even further to a power chord.

(There are a few other chord types too, such as diminished and augmented, but we’ll ignore those for now. Just worry about major and minor.)

Playing from sheet music, you can find the key by looking at the key signature. But if you’re playing by ear, you’ll have to do some experimentation.

First, I play along with the song and try to find the scale that matches the melody.

There is a wonderful program called Transcribe! that can help you with this. It can loop endlessly through sections of the song and even slow the music down while keeping it at the same pitch. Very handy!

Most songs are in a major key and there are 12 possible major scales. If you know these scales by heart it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to find the right one.

For example, if I press the A on the piano and it sounds wrong with the music, then I can exclude all the scales that have the A tone. I know the song will be in one of the following keys: Eb, Ab, Db, F#, or B.

Now I can restrict my search to the tones of these five scales. Usually after trying a few tones you’ve found the right scale.

I already mentioned in a previous article that the same scale is used for a major key and its relative minor key. For most songs you can assume they are in a major key, but some songs are in a minor key. If you’re not sure, you’ll have to look at the chords for additional clues.

Usually the very last chord of the song — and often also the very first chord of the song — will be the home chord, or the I chord. That is, the chord that names the key. If a song ends with the E chord, then chances are it is in the key of E.

You can verify this by playing the E chord along with the song — most of the time it should sound good. In the spots where it doesn’t sound good, you’re supposed to use another chord from the key of E. (Typically the V7 chord, in this case B7. Or the IV chord, in this case A.)

If you found the E major scale works for (most of) the song but E chord sounds wrong somehow, then try C#m, which is the relative minor of E. If C#m works, then the song is in a minor key.

In a similar vein, you can listen for the final tone of the song. Just like the final chord tends to be the chord that names the key, so is the final tone. Of course, there are exceptions but 95% of the time this will be true.

Here is another tip that I found on the internet some time ago:

1. Sing along with the song for one or two lines while it’s playing, and then:
2. Sing DO-RE-MI-FA-SOL-FA-MI-RE-DO.
3. The final “DO” you land on is the key you are trying to find.

It’s not an exact science, but it works.

It works like this: the computer scans the recording to find the loudest part. Then it determines how much louder it can make this part. Finally, it amplifies the entire recording by that amount.

I explained in a previous article how to normalize your recordings with Audacity and other audio programs.

That method works fine. However, there is an alternative method and that is to use the free program MP3Gain.

MP3Gain works on MP3 files, not WAV files, and it doesn’t change the actual recording. Instead, it calculates how much the recording can still be amplified and then stores this number in a special place in the MP3 file.

Now your MP3 player program or your iPod will automatically amplify the sound by that amount during playback.

The advantage is that you can easily undo this operation later, something that isn’t possible if you normalize the WAV file.

Another benefit of MP3Gain is that it can work in “album mode”. In album mode, it analyzes a group of MP3 files instead of just one, and makes them as loud as possible relative to each other. That means all these MP3’s will have more-or-less the same loudness.

That is really convenient if you’re going to make a CD or playlist of your recordings. If you don’t do this, you may have to reach out for the volume dial on each new song because it may be a lot louder or softer than the previous one.

MP3Gain is free software and really easy to use. If you get stuck, take a look at the excellent manual.

You can download MP3Gain here.

Lead sheets are very popular with many musicians, especially those who play Jazz and popular music.

A lead sheet gives you a quick idea of how a piece is supposed to sound, but it also gives you the freedom to play it however you feel like.

Often lead sheets are sold in thick books called “fake books” that can be pretty expensive. I have a couple of them and they are well worth the money — together they contain more than 2,000 songs — but they are not exhaustive (and there is quite a bit of overlap between them).

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on buying a fake book, or you’re just looking for a song that isn’t in your collection, check out wikifonia.org.

Wikifonia collects lead sheets and publishes them online, for free. The quality of the work is sometimes debatable, but at least it will give you a starting point. You can also submit your own lead sheets for the benefit of others.

Apparently the service is perfectly legal so you won’t have to worry about that either.

For example, here is a chord progression map for the key of C.

In the key of C, the C chord is the home chord, the most important chord. This is where chord progressions begin and end.

Here is how to read the chord progression map: from the C chord you can go to any of the other chords, and then you have to follow the map back to the C chord.

So you could start at C and jump all the way up to the A chord (top-left). From A you go down to Dm, then to G to Em to Am to F to G and finally back to C.

But that is only one possibility. We could also have gone from A to the shorter route of Dm to Em to F to C.

The possibilities aren’t endless, though. If that were true, we wouldn’t need the map. The map exists because not all chord progressions sound good.

The site also has maps for all other keys and a generic map that works with Roman numerals.

Play around with it! It’s a wonderful tool for learning the rules of harmony.

A verse or chorus of a song often starts out on the home chord (the I chord in the key), then moves through a series of other chords and finally ends up on the home chord again.

Many songs (as well as classical pieces) use the same sequences of chords, and in this article we’ll look at some of the most common ones.

A very basic progression is I - IV - V. If we’re playing in the key of C that would be C - F - G. After the V chord you would typically play the I chord again.

Often the IV chord in this sequence is replaced by the ii chord. That is a minor chord. The progression then becomes I - ii - V, or C - Dm - G in the key of C.

Again, this progression leads us back to the home chord, so the next chord after ii - V is most likely to be the I chord. This progression is therefore known as ii - V - I (or 2-5-1).

Remember that the V chord is often played as V7. That is how you can recognize this progression. If you see a minor chord followed by a dominant-7 chord, followed by a major chord: it’s a ii-V-I.

An extension of this progression is the 1-6-2-5 pattern. (For some reason this progression is often written using normal numbers instead of Roman numerals.)

In the key of C, it goes like this: C - Am - Dm - G7

One of the names these chords go by is the “Blue Moon progression”, but there is a huge number of other songs that use it too.

Go play it on the piano and then hum the verse of “Blue Moon” or “Heart and Soul”. Don’t tell me it doesn’t sound familiar.

It is really easy to compose your own tunes on top of these four chords, because it will make almost any melody sound good, but we’ll get into that in a later article.

If you already know about the Circle of Fifths, notice that these chord progressions, 2-5-1 and 1-6-2-5 (or rather 6-2-5-1), are simply trips around the circle. Movement in fifths gives the strongest type of sound that our ears like, so it is no wonder that these patterns are used so much.

Because Dm can substitute for F (see above), you can also play 1-6-2-5 as 1-6-4-5, and vice versa. It’s only a small variation in the sound.

What I want you to do now is go through your stack of sheet music or leadsheets (if you have them) and see if you can find these chord progressions in those songs. Even classical pieces will have them.

You can also find the chord sheets of many tunes online. Just go to Google and type in:

name of the song chords tabs

For example:

blue moon chords tabs

The words “chords” and “tabs” will tell Google to look for websites that have chord sheets. You might have to dig around for a while but usually you can find a chord sheet for most music.

Remember that you can spot a ii-V-I by looking at the type of chords: a minor chord followed by a dominant-7 chord, followed by a major chord. This is important, because sometimes — especially in Jazz tunes — you may find a ii-V-I that uses chords that are not in the key of the song.

For example: C Am F G7 Gm C7 F …

The first four chords are in the key of C, but Gm isn’t and neither is C7. What you see here is a ii-V-I, namely Gm-C7-F, that is used to modulate to another key. The F is now the new I chord. At some point the chords will modulate back to the original key, likely using another ii-V-I. That’s a typical thing for Jazz tunes.

So much for the theory. It’s good to learn these chord patterns (1-6-2-5 and 2-5-1) in every key, so go to your piano and play around with them.

In this article we will look at this quick and relatively inexpensive method to make your digital piano sound even better. Some of this software will cost money, but we’ll also look at free options.

In another article, I explain how to convert a MIDI recording to MP3 using software instruments. Although the idea is similar, the article you’re reading now focuses on live playing: you press keys on your piano and sound comes out of your computer in real-time. Of course, you can also record your live playing and we’ll talk about that too.

NOTE: The article was written with Windows in mind. If you use another operating system such as Mac OS X, the directions are similar but the software will be different.

What you need

A fast computer

Virtual instruments (also called software instruments) have fairly heavy hardware requirements. A fast processor (CPU), lots of memory (RAM), and a fast and large hard disk are not a luxury. If you bought your computer in the past two years you’ll probably be fine.

ASIO

Most importantly, you will need a good soundcard, preferably one with an ASIO driver. ASIO is a technology that allows for very low latency.

Latency is the time between pressing a note on your piano and hearing a sound come from the computer. If this is more than a few milliseconds, you’ll notice the delay and that can be very annoying when you’re playing live. A latency of about 10ms is bearable but more than that isn’t much fun. ASIO can bring down the latency to about 3ms, which is short enough for you not to notice.

Check the documentation for your soundcard and the web site of the manufacturer if an ASIO driver is available. If not, then you can install ASIO4ALL, which pretends that you do have ASIO capability. It won’t make your soundcard perform any better, but it will enable certain virtual instruments that require ASIO to function.

MIDI

MIDI, which stands for “Musical Instrument Digital Interface”, is the protocol that electronic instruments use to talk to each other. We will use MIDI to hook up your digital piano or keyboard to the computer.

Note that MIDI does not send actual sounds to the computer, but messages that let the computer know which keys you pressed and how hard you pressed them. It’s then up to the software instrument to interpret this data and convert it into actual sounds.

No doubt your digital piano or keyboard has at least one MIDI port (MIDI OUT) but typically also a MIDI IN and maybe even a MIDI THRU. Usually these are located at the back of your instrument, and look like this:

In recent years, manufacturers have added USB capability to their instruments. If you’re lucky, your piano or keyboard has a connector like this:

In that case, you can hook up your instrument directly to a free USB port on your computer using a standard USB cable.

If your piano does not have USB but only the round 5-pin MIDI connectors, then you’ll need to invest in a USB-to-MIDI interface. You can get these at any computer store.

Another tutorial I wrote has more information on how to make your computer MIDI-ready, so check that out if you run into problems. Important: connect MIDI OUT to MIDI IN, and MIDI IN to MIDI OUT.

Using VST plugins

The most popular type of software instrument are VST plugins. VST, which stands for “Virtual Studio Technology”, is the protocol that software instruments use to talk to each other.

VST plugins can be considered software versions of fancy hardware sound modules and effects processors that you would find in a professional recording studio, and just like their hardware equivalents you can chain multiple effects together.

There are three types of VST plugins:

1. Audio effects, which take an audio signal and transform it. Typical effects are reverbs and filters.
2. MIDI effects, which process MIDI messages. An example would be a plugin that transposes all notes one octave higher.
3. Instruments, also called VSTi’s, which turn MIDI data into sounds. That’s what we will be using.

To use VST plugins you will need a “host” program. Most professional audio software can host VST’s but there are free options too. Below, I’ll use the free program Cantabile Lite. This program is limited in the number of plugins it allows you to use, but it’s sufficient for our purposes.

Using a piano plugin

1. Download and install Cantabile Lite.

Now we need to install one or more VST plugins. In order for host programs to find the plugins, they need to be installed in a common location. Typically this is C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins. It doesn’t really matter where you install the plugins, but you will need to tell the host program where it can find them.

2. Download and install 4Front Piano Module (VSTi). This is a decent free piano VST.

3. In Cantabile, go to Tools, Settings, VST Plugins tab. If the folder where you installed the plugin isn’t in the list yet, add it now. Then click OK to go back to the main screen.

4. Click Tools, Quick Scan Plugin Folder. Now Cantabile will look for new plugins in the VSTPlugins folder.

5. On the main screen there are two labels that say Choose Plugin. Pick the top one and select your new piano plugin from the Instruments list.

A new window for the “4Front Piano Module” will open. Most plugins have settings that you can edit in this window, but this one doesn’t have any.

6. Unselect Input. This will disable your computer’s microphone. For some reason, Cantabile always turns this on automatically, but that only adds background noise to your playing and we don’t want that.

Play something on your instrument. You should hear sound coming out of your computer speakers. Congratulations, you are now using a virtual instrument!

Cantabile can record your playing directly to a MIDI file or to a WAV file. Check out the MIDI Recorder and Audio Recorder sections. You can tweak the sound level with the Output volume slider. You should always record as loudly as possible, but not so loud that the sound becomes distorted.

Adding an effect

I find that digital piano usually sounds better with a little reverb, so now we’ll download a reverb plugin and put it behind the piano in the effects chain.

1. Download and install Classic Reverb. You don’t have to close Cantabile while you’re doing this. After the installation is complete, simply click Quick Scan Plugin Folder to update the list of plugins.

2. In the Choose Plugin box under the piano plugin, pick Classic Reverb from the Room Effects list. A new window with a whole bunch of knobs appears.

3. If you play something on your instrument now, you should hear reverberation added to the piano sound. Not convinced? Uncheck the box in front of Classic Reverb to disable the reverb plugin and hear the difference.

4. To the right of Classic Reverb (in the main Cantabile window) is a column called Preset that now says “Default”. Many plugins come with a list of presets (also called “programs”). Play around a little with the presets until you find one you like.

Typically, you’ll find a preset that sounds close to the sound you want and then tweak it using the knobs and sliders. The settings window of the plugin also lets you step through the presets, and even lets you save your changes as a new preset.

As I mentioned, Cantabile Lite is limited in how many plugins you can use. If you want more, you can either buy the full version or use a different program such as VSTHost. This one is slightly more confusing than Cantabile, but you’ll find the process similar.

Many other audio programs have the ability to use VST instruments and MIDI. REAPER is an inexpensive but powerful multitrack audio application that you may find useful.

Recommended VST plugins

Here are some VST plugins that I personally like and use, or that come highly recommended by other musicians.

As usual: the better quality you want, the more you’ll have to pay for it. Some of the commercial products have trial downloads available, so you can try them out before you buy.

VST instruments can be roughly classified into two categories: samplers and simulations (the latter are often referred to as “synths”).

Some virtual piano products were made by painstakingly recording a real acoustic piano. When you press a note on your keyboard, these samplers will play back those recordings. The advantage of this approach is that the sound is excellent, but the samples take up a lot of disk space, and the sound isn’t very flexible.

Simulations, on the other hand, use mathematical formulas to produce the sound. As of this writing, there are no simulations that can exactly reproduce the sound of an acoustic piano, but they are getting close. The advantage is flexibility and low storage requirements, although more CPU power is needed to perform all the calculations.

• TruePianos - This is the big brother of the free 4Front Piano we’ve used above. It uses a combination of sampling and simulation.
• Pianoteq - This is a true piano simulation that doesn’t use samples but mathematics. It sounds very promising.
• Ivory - Probably the king of sampled pianos. Other sampled piano products are Akoustik Piano, The Grand 2, and many others.
• mda Piano - A pretty good free piano plugin.
• The Classic Effects from Kjaerhus Audio - A set of pretty good effects plugins, all for free.

There are many more high quality virtual instruments available, often for free: electric pianos, synthesizers, drum modules, strings, you name it… Google is your friend!

NOTE: Some of these programs also have “standalone” players. That means you don’t need to use them as plugins in a VST host. Some of these standalone players already offer so much functionality that you may prefer to just use them like that.

Troubleshooting

This section goes into some common problems that arise when using software instruments.

CPU overload

If you are playing with a virtual instrument and you hear cracks and pops, then your processor may not be able to handle the load. Most audio software has a “CPU load” indicator that you should keep an eye on.

The sound that is produced by the virtual instruments is put in “buffers” (small chunks of memory) that are sent to the soundcard. If the CPU is taxed to its limits (i.e. 100% usage) then it does not have enough time to fill up the buffers. The soundcard will then send this incomplete data to your speakers, which isn’t a very pleasurable sound.

If this happens and you have more than one plugin enabled, you can shutdown one or more of them and try again.

Many instruments also have a setting for polyphony, which is the maximum number of tones that can be playing simultaneously. Higher polyphony means more accurate sound, especially when you’re playing lots of big arpeggios with the damper pedal down, but it also means more CPU power is needed to process everything. Lowering polyphony will increase performance.

You can also reduce the sample rate. On typical soundcards, audio consists of 44100 samples per second, which is equivalent to CD quality sound. If you reduce this to 22050 samples per second, then the software only has to work half as hard. The downside is that a lower sample rate will reduce the quality of the sound. It also increases the latency.

Of course, to get optimal performance you may want to shutdown all programs you are not currently using. That includes programs that run in the background, such as Skype, viruscheckers, a personal firewall, etc. Unplug the internet too.

Distortion

Loud cracks can also be caused by clipping distortion, which happens when the total volume exceeds the limits of the sound hardware. In that case, lower the output volume slider in your host software.

Latency

We already spoke about latency in the section on ASIO. Latency is a function of sound buffer size and sample rate. The smaller the buffers, the lower the latency (the formula is: latency = buffer size / sample rate).

Your host software might have an option for configuring the soundcard buffer size. Smaller is better. However, if the buffers are too small, the CPU may not have enough time to fill them, resulting in distorted output. You may want to experiment with different buffer sizes to see what works best.

There is no point in making the buffer size smaller than what your soundcard can handle, so if your soundcard won’t go lower than 512 bytes, your latency at a sample rate of 44100 Hz will never be lower than 11ms.

MIDI issues

MIDI can become pretty complex if you are chaining a lot of devices together. If you’re just playing digital piano with one VST plugin, you won’t really run into MIDI trouble. However, it’s good to be aware that MIDI transmits data on 16 different “channels” where each channel is assigned its own instrument.

If you want to layer multiple instruments, each one should get its own channel. To do so, you have to assign a channel number on your instrument (see your manual for details) and the same channel number in the software. So you might put piano on channel 1, strings on channel 2, drums on channel 10, and so on. Don’t put two different instruments on one channel!

Notation software

Finale Notepad - Free version of the professional Finale. Limited in features but still useful. Requires free registration before you can download.

LilyPond - Music engraving tool. It has no graphical user interface, so it is not as easy to use as other notation software (you have to type in everything) but its output looks awesome.

ScoreWriter 4 - Pretty good notation program. The best I could find for only $59. I use it a lot!

Transcribing

Transcribe! - Software to help transcribe recorded music. Not free, but worth every penny.

AmazingMIDI - Convert WAV files into MIDI files. Pretty good, though results may vary.

Audio recording and editing

Audacity - Great audio editor. Get the 1.3.4 beta version, it works well and has more features than the older version.

WavePad - The “Masters” version isn’t free, but the regular one is.

Multitrack audio

REAPER - Very powerful multitrack editor. Not free, but has an unlimited and unrestricted free trial period.

MIDI and VST

Red Dot Forever - Very simple MIDI recording tool, incredibly easy to use. I like it a lot but that’s because I created it.

Anvil Studio - MIDI recording and sequencing tool. It can be a little confusing to use, but it’s the only free one I know.

vanBasco’s Karaoke Player - MIDI player with on-screen keyboard, options to change speed and pitch, and karaoke!

Notation Player - MIDI player that shows the score in sheet music notation.

SynthFont - Play MIDI files using SoundFonts. This sounds better than your computer’s built-in synthesizer, but you’ll have to find and download SoundFonts separately.

Cantabile Lite - Easy to use VST host, MIDI recorder/sequencer and audio recorder. The “Lite” version is free.

VSTHost - Another VST host program. Render your MIDI files to audio using VST plugins.

MP3 software

WinLame - Very user-friendly MP3 encoder. Make MP3 files from your WAV files.

FreeRip - Rip your CD tracks to MP3 files.

MP3Gain - Analyzes and adjusts MP3 files so that they have the same volume. Very handy!

Other tools

ASIO4ALL - Some audio software requires an ASIO-compatible soundcard. If your soundcard does not support ASIO, you can install ASIO4ALL to trick your software into believing it does!

The advantage of MIDI files is that they are very small — easily 1000 times as small as an MP3 of the same music — but the disadvantage is that they usually don’t sound very good. And you can’t put them on your iPod either.

So if you want to learn how to convert your MIDI files to MP3’s and how to make them sound good doing so, then read on.

NOTE: The article was written with Windows in mind. If you use another operating system such as Mac OS X, the directions are similar but the software will be different.

(For live playing with software instruments in real time, read how to use virtual instruments.)

A few things about MIDI

Unlike MP3 or WAV files, MIDI files don’t store audio waveform data but simply a list of notes that need to be played. In that sense, MIDI is very much like sheet music but in electronic form. (In fact, you can import MIDI files into music notation software and it will show you the sheet music.)

This means that MIDI data is not sound (yet) and you need to employ some device to turn those note values into actual sounds. Those devices are commonly called synthesizers.

Your computer comes with a built-in synthesizer and the reason MIDI files usually don’t sound very good is that this built-in synthesizer isn’t very good. It does the job but it’s not pro sound.

The trick to converting MIDI files to MP3 then, is to pick a different synthesizer that sounds better. You can either use a hardware synth or a software synth. There are a lot of expensive packages on the market, but fortunately for us, there are also free options. We’ll examine those in this article.

If you have a digital piano or electronic keyboard, you can use that instrument to play your MIDI files. You then capture the sound from your keyboard’s audio outputs on your computer. We won’t go into that option in this article, but you can read all about recording from your piano and keyboard here.

MIDI files can be very simple and use only one instrument, or they can use a variety of instruments. A MIDI file can have up to 16 “channels”, each of which is usually assigned its own instrument. The instrument of a channel can also be changed while the MIDI is playing (this is called a “Program Change event”, a term that you may run into later).

The more instruments a MIDI uses, the more cumbersome it becomes to get good sounds. Making a MIDI file that just uses piano sound great is a lot simpler than one with a full band or orchestration. Generally speaking, you will need to find a “SoundFont” or “VST plugin” for each instrument. But we’ll get into that later. First, we’ll use the computer’s built-in synth to make our MP3’s.

Using the built-in software synth

Like I said before, the software synthesizer that is built into Windows is not pretty but it does the job. I don’t recommend this method, but it’s a good fallback if you don’t have any other choice. It won’t sound super, but at least you’ll end up with an MP3.

The easiest method is to download a free “MIDI to MP3 converter” program. There are thousands of them and I don’t really recommend a particular one. Here are some suggestions

If you don’t want to install any software, you can use an online converter. First, you choose the MIDI file from your hard disk. This file is then uploaded to a computer on the internet (this happens really quickly because MIDI files are so small). After a few minutes processing, you can download your brand new MP3 file.

Here are two sites that seem to work well:

• media-convert.com
• HamieNET.com

Keep in mind that all these tools use less than great synthesizers. In the next sections you’ll learn how to get better sounds.

Using SoundFonts

A SoundFont is a file that contains a set of sampled sound waveforms. A SoundFont for piano, for example, could contain a digital sample of each of the piano’s keys. As a result, SoundFonts sound much better than your computer’s built-in synthesizer. In this section, we’ll use one or more SoundFont files to render your MIDI files to MP3.

TIP: Some soundcards can actually use SoundFonts directly. You can change this in the Configuration Panel for your soundcard. If you do, you’ll find that MIDI files suddenly sound much better.

The steps:

1. There are several free programs that can use SoundFonts, but I like SynthFont. Download and install it. Also download SYNTHGMS.SF2. You can copy it to your SynthFont installation folder (most likely C:\Program Files\SynthFont) although this isn’t necessary.

2. Start SynthFont. Go to the File menu and choose Set default SoundFont file. Navigate to the folder where you stored SYNTHGMS.SF2 and select it. This tells SynthFont that we will now use the instruments from this file to play our MIDI songs.

3. Open your MIDI file in SynthFont. In the bottom of the Tracks tab you will now see the separate instrument channels from your MIDI file and the SoundFont that has been assigned to each of them.

A SoundFont file may contain the definitions for just a single instrument (or “preset”) or for multiple instruments. The latter is true for SYNTHGMS.SF2, which contains all 128 “General MIDI” instruments. You can click the Preset column to see which instruments are available in the SoundFont file for that track, and change the instrument of each track if you wish.

4. Click the big Play button to hear how the MIDI file sounds… It will probably sound pretty bad!!! Why? Well, the SYNTHGMS.SF2 is only a very simple SoundFont. Now is the time to go on the internet and find better SoundFonts to download.

5. If your MIDI file contains a piano track, then I recommend that you download this piano SoundFont. It’s pretty good. To tell SynthFont we want to use it, click once on the MIDI instrument track that you want to change, then click the File… column header. Now select the piano SoundFont file.

When you press Play again, that track is now being played with the new piano sound! If the MIDI file has other instruments as well, you may want to google for additional SoundFont files.

TIP: You can find another good piano SoundFont here. The HammerSound website has a big collection of SoundFont files, including lots of pianos. You may need to use the program sfArk to unpack some of these SoundFonts before you can use them in SynthFont.

6. To capture the audio as an MP3 file, click the big To File button. Enter a filename and choose MP3 Files as the output format. I suggest you choose at least 128 kbs for the quality. Then press Save. You will now return to the main screen. If you press Play now, the output will be saved to the file you just selected.

TIP: I recommend you click To Spkrs so that it becomes unselected before you press Play. Now you won’t hear the audio but it is still being saved to disk. The reason for disabling To Spkrs is that without it SynthFont doesn’t have to do its calculations in real-time, which prevents clicks and pops from appearing in the MP3 file if you have a slow computer.

This procedure is quite involved, but that’s the way it is. If you just want to render MIDI files that only have a single piano track, then you can simply find a good piano SoundFont and set that as the default (with File, Set default SoundFont file). But if you want to play a complete MIDI file with many instruments, then you will have to find suitable SoundFonts for all of them and set up their channels accordingly.

TIP: For more control over the quality and settings that are used to encode the MP3 file, you can also save as WAV (which is audio without loss of quality) and then do the MP3 conversion with a separate tool. I prefer to use WinLame for this job.

Using VST plugins

VST plugins are similar to SoundFonts, but they’re much more powerful. There are two types of VST plugins: instruments, which turn MIDI data into sounds, and effects (such as reverb and filters) which transform those sounds. Effects can be very useful but we won’t go into them here.

There are innumerable options for using VST plugins. Below, I’ll use the free program Cantabile. This program is limited in the number of plugins it allows you to use, and therefore is only suitable for MIDI files with one or two different instruments. So consider this merely an illustration of what is possible. I’ll also give some options for dealing with more complex MIDI files.

The steps:

1. Download and install Cantabile Lite. This is what is called a VST host program, because it acts as a host for the plugins.

2. Start Cantabile and click Midi Sequencer near the bottom. A panel folds open where you can choose your MIDI file. Press Play and you will hear… nothing. That’s because we need to install one or more VST plugins first.

3. Download and install 4Front Piano Module (VSTi). This is a decent free piano VST.

4. In Cantabile, go to Tools, Settings, VST Plugins tab. If the folder where you installed the plugin (most likely C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugins) isn’t in the list yet, add it now. Then click OK to go back to the main screen.

5. Click Tools, Quick Scan Plugin Folder. Now Cantabile will look for new plugins in the VSTPlugins folder.

6. Finally, on the main screen there are two labels that say Choose Plugin. Pick the top one and select your new piano plugin from the Instruments list.

7. To record your MIDI file playing with the selected plugin, first unselect Input. This will turn off the microphone from your computer, because you don’t want to record from that as well. (For some reason, Cantabile always turns this on automatically.)

8. Go to the Audio Recorder section and press Record (or Auto Record). Next, press the Play button in the MIDI section below. Whatever is being played now is also recorded to a WAV file (make sure the Record Audio Output button is enabled). After MIDI playing is done, stop the recording and press the File Name link to go to your WAV file.

9. Convert the WAV file to an MP3 file with WinLame (or any other MP3 encoder program you may have lying around).

Phew! Of course, you’ll need to find VST instrument plugins that work for all of the instruments in your MIDI file. There are many excellent VST plugins that can reproduce the sound of any instrument you can imagine, but the really good ones are also really expensive. Good luck!

As I mentioned, Cantabile Lite is limited in how many plugins you can use. If you want more, you can either buy the full version or use a different program such as VSTHost. This one is slightly more confusing than Cantabile, but you’ll find the process similar.

Many other audio programs have the ability to use VST instruments and MIDI. If you want to process MIDI files with many separate instrument channels, then I recommend you use REAPER instead. This is a powerful multitrack audio application. REAPER can import each MIDI channel as a separate track, so you can easily assign each track its own VST plugins.

When you play accompaniment, you just play the bass and the chords but not the melody of the song.

Of course, different styles have different requirements — in Jazz, you wouldn’t even play the bass, for example. The patterns I present here are suitable for pop and rock music.

The prerequisite is that you know how to do voice-leading. We’ll use voice-leading to go as smoothly as possible from one chord to the next (no big jumps).

Here are the chords for the first phrase of Let It Be by the Beatles, in the key of G:

       G              D
When I find myself in times of trouble
Em          C
Mother Mary comes to me

The most rudimentary accompaniment would look something like this:

The right hand plays each chord twice and the left hand plays a single bass note at the start of each measure.

You quickly release the damper pedal at the start of each new measure (i.e. when the chord changes) and then press it down again.

In case you don’t know how to read sheet music, download the MIDI file for this example and follow along with vanBasco’s Karaoke player.

Here is a pattern that I play a lot that suits this song very well:

MIDI example

It sounds more impressive if you play an octave bass in the left hand. This might take some getting used to but it’s worth learning.

MIDI example

You play the octave bass with your left hand pinky and thumb. Under your index finger is the 5th of the