piano help

how this blog will work... another thing

2009-08-24T04:29:00.000-07:00

Hi, I posted a post before saying how this blog will work. i forgot to mention one thing. If you come to my blog looking for a specific thing, then what you can do is go to the search bar at the top and search what you are looking for.

reading music

2009-08-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

Music is usually printed out on sheets hence giving the name "sheet music". As you can play low and high notes on the piano, piano sheet music is a bit different from normal sheet music. For example, take a violin. A violin can only play medium to high notes. Therefore it only need one staff (a staff is a group of five horizontal lines and four spaces where key signatures, notes, tempos and other various markings can be written). A piano however, can play low, medium and high notes. It therefore needs two staffs: a bass staff and a treble staff. The signs at the front of staffs are called clefs. For the bass staff, there is a treble clef and for the treble staff there is a treble clef. Below is a picture of both clefs and the relevant note name written on the relevant notes.

sharps, flats and naturals

2009-08-23T06:57:00.000-07:00

We can raise or lower the pitches of notes by one semitone by putting sharps or flats next them. A sharp would look like this (#), and a flat would look like this (b). A sharp raises a note one semitone up/to the right of the original/natural note. A flat lowers the pitch of a note one semitone. also, in the title, you may have noticed the word natural. A natural returns a sharped or flatted noted back to it's original note. For example, if we have a G# and we want to make it a G, you have to but a natural sign next to it. Here is what a natural sign looks like.

Sharps and flats can go beside notes but if the whole piece requires a lot of sharps or flats, then the signs are usually put at the front of the staff.

whole tones

2009-08-23T02:41:00.000-07:00

A whole tone, also called a whole step or a major second is a musical interval of two semitones. For example, a whole tone up from F would be G and a whole tone down would be Eb or D#.

semitones

2009-08-23T02:26:00.000-07:00

A semitone also called a half tone and a half step is the smallest musical interval in Western music. We must remember that semitones aren't just a term for piano, they are for all common instruments . But we are focusing on piano now, so let's look at how a semitone would on a piano keyboard. take a look at the image above. You can see all of the white and black notes in the picture. A semitone would be one note up, no matter what coulour it is. So lets take F as an example. One semitone up from F would lead us to F# or Gb (we will learn about sharps and flats later). One semitone down from F would take us to E. that's the basics of semitones or whatever you want to call them.

the white notes

2009-08-23T01:03:00.000-07:00

Learning to play the piano is a very hard thing to do - there are very many factors and different things you need to know so here's a post helping you where to start. The first thing you need to learn is probably note names. If you have an idea of where notes are on the piano, then you can advance from that and start doing more complicated things like chords. the picture is two octaves of a piano keyboard. Each of the keys have note names on them. C, D, E, F, G, A, B. It is important to remeber that they go up in that order, not like normal alphabet order. You have also probably noticed the black keys. Don't worry about their names for now, they are just going to help you remember where the white notes are. As you've noticed there are groups of two black keys and three black keys. One octave has a group of two black keys and one group of three black keys making five black keys in total in one octave.

Let's start remembering note names. the note on the left of the two black keys is called "C". the middle note in the black keys is called "D" and the one on the right is called "E". The one on the left of three black keys is "F". Now here's where it gets a little more tricky: there are three black keys therefore making two "middle notes". So we will just say that "G" is on the right of "F". then, "A" is on the right of "G". "B" is on the right of the group of three black keys and now where back to "C" again. And there you have it, you've learnt all the white note names!

how the piano works

2009-08-23T00:32:00.000-07:00

So welcome to my first proper post (hopefully) helping you guys to play piano. As you've noticed from the title, this posts about the piano itself - how it works and all that kind of stuff. I think it's important to know about the instrument you play before you actually learn to play it. then you will have an idea of what's actually happening inside when you're playing.

When you press a key on a piano, a felt covered hammer strikes a steel string. Assuming that you are still pressing on the key, the vibrations travel down the steel string to the soundboard of the piano which then turns the acoustic energy (vibration) into sound. When the key is released a damper comes down onto the string and stops the vibrations which therefore stopping the sound.

And that is how the piano mechanism basically works. I will add things like the pedals and other details like that later into the blog.

how it will work...

2009-08-23T00:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is how I hope this new blog will work: I choose a topic about piano and write about it in a post. Since blogger only has monthly sections, I will not be able to group my posts into topics eg. basics, note names, chords. If there is a way to do this though, can someone please post a comment telling me how to make named sections instead of monthly and yearly sections. Anyway, hopefully this blog will be a success in helping you guys play piano.

piano help

2009-08-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

Hi. Welcome to a new blog called piano help. As the name states, this channel will help you with playing the piano. I will try to include the basics, some videos from my YouTube channel; onetakepianolessons and some other random stuff. Anyway, in the meantime enjoy this blog!