Reading piano sheet music can be like learning another language: it brings composers’ musical visions to life and opens a vast world of opportunities.
This week, you will build upon your music theory skills by expanding your knowledge of dotted rhythm patterns and secondary chords; harmonize a “Turk-ish Tune”, and play an example from classical period fortepiano style music.
Symbols
Sheet music contains many symbols to convey different aspects of how a piece should be played, such as notes with different shapes, extra symbols around notes, chords and notation for other musical elements. These symbols help indicate how long and loud notes should be played for optimal playing experience; understanding these symbols is essential for piano players in order to master their songs well.
Notes with dots indicate they should be played for half their usual length, used by composers who want to shorten notes without changing pitch. You might see this symbol used often in bass clef, which features double staffs that may initially seem confusing but eventually become easier when getting acquainted with reading sheet music and making mental shortcuts.
Sharp and flat symbols are among the most frequently encountered music symbols, representing changes in key. A sharp symbol (that looks like an F) signifies G Major; similarly, flat symbols (such as Bs or Ds) indicate F Major keys. Together with scales, these symbols allow musicians to find the proper key for any piece of music they compose.
Other musical symbols include crescendo and decrescendo, which instruct musicians to increase and decrease the dynamic of a piece of music respectively. A hemiola in music represents a three-to-two rhythmic ratio and usually appears as an upside-down C symbol with a line through it. Tremolo marks instruct musicians to rapidly repeat notes while glissandos allow for pitch changes from note to note.
Additional notation for piano includes the octave symbol which denotes that notes should be played one octave higher and double flat symbol which instructs players to play two tones lower. Other specific instruments use up-bows and left-hand pizzicato which means notes should be plucked rather than bowing them.
Scales
Scales, the foundational elements of music, should be learned by any pianist. Knowing them will enable you to build melodies and musical ideas as well as understand key signatures; furthermore they are crucial tools for improvisation and improving piano technique. Scales consist of ordered notes which when combined in different ways create musical ideas we recognize today.
Major scales are the cornerstone of music theory and understanding keys. To ease your transition, chromatic scales derive directly from them for easy learning; minor scales present greater challenges but will nonetheless add depth to your piano playing experience.
When practicing scales, it’s essential to focus more on evenness and accuracy than speed. Becoming adept at playing each note evenly will enable your speed to gradually increase with practice – trying to force through too quickly will only hamper progress and set back progress.
Another key point when practicing scales is to play them musically. This means varying your touch and articulation, using crescendo and decrescendo effects and even changing tempo for sections of a scale to add variety – something which will make them sound more natural as well as allow you to express emotion through music.
Once you have mastered major scales, begin practicing improvising by playing chords with your left hand while using notes from the scale with your right. This exercise can help your jazz playing and allow for more unique sounds on the piano. Also consider exploring various modes within major scales as each mode will give different sounds to your improvisations.
Scales are an integral component of piano technique and should be practiced regularly to improve keyboard geography, rhythmic grasp and finger strength. Scales will also develop endurance while training your ear; furthermore they help develop legato and staccato playing as well as traditional fingering styles – as well as creating balance among fingers as well as an ideal wrist and arm position.
Chords
Chords are one of the cornerstones of music. They form the harmonic basis for many styles of music and can be created by simultaneously playing two or more notes simultaneously, which may consist of any number of notes or inversions to change its shape and create different tones. Learning piano chords can open up an incredible wealth of musical possibilities while making making music even more fun!
As you begin learning piano chord symbols, it is crucial that you gain an understanding of their meaning. Generally speaking, capital letters above the musical staff indicate the root of a chord; for instance, an E major chord would display as E above its staff. Following each capital letter will be an indicator as to whether or not that particular chord is major or minor: If it contains one 1, that means it is major while two indicate minor.
If you want to learn piano chords, the first step should be gaining an understanding of basic major and minor piano chord shapes. Once this knowledge has been attained, adding more complex chords should become less challenging as your skills improve; eventually you may even play songs with chords encompassing multiple keys!
Skoove provides another great way to practice piano chords: this free app enables users to practice with real-time feedback that helps enhance their practice session, especially helpful if trying to learn fast paced piano playing.
As part of your learning experience, it’s also essential that you familiarize yourself with chord naming systems. There are a few basic rules to help keep track of which chords you are studying: for instance, chords with open fifths such as A, C, E and G are called Asus4; when playing one with a slash symbol such as C/G use your left hand for its chord part while using your right hand for its single chord part (indicated by C/G in its symbol).
As part of your piano chord studies, keep in mind that each chord offers different variations or inversions, allowing you to alter its sound and feel. For more on this subject check out my video on inversions of piano chords.
Ear training
Have you been amazed by a musician’s uncanny ability to pick out notes, chords and even entire songs seemingly out of thin air? This mysterious skill is known as ear training – an essential musical ability which needs to be practiced alongside note reading, music theory and other abilities. If you want to learn piano by ear there are numerous resources online – School of Rock offers free ear training courses while Skoove offers interactive apps dedicated to this form of ear training among many others.
Ear training refers to the practice of learning how to recognize musical intervals, chord progressions, and absolute pitches intuitively. A key part of any pianist’s education, it can be accomplished by listening to music and repeating melodies by ear. While this may sound easy enough at first glance, students should bear in mind that attempting to recreate songs by ear without prior knowledge of either instrumentation or melody can be difficult and time-consuming; spending hours fiddling around at keyboard trying to guess what key was played will only delay progress and hinder their education!
To develop your ears, start with selecting a familiar song. Listen to it a few times and identify its chords, bass line and melody notes. Once you have mastered these basics of ear training exercises, more advanced ones such as singing bass line or melody notes back can help. In addition, identify which notes are being played at which parts of the song and identify any chord progressions before proceeding further with more difficult exercises such as singing along.
Last but not least, practice improvisation using the chord progressions you have studied. This will enable you to master creating different melodies and chords as well as improvising with other musicians. Furthermore, this practice can also help you play music from your favorite artists more easily as you will recognize their chords and melodies just by hearing them!