any piano/keyboard players here?

[Fragle]

i'd love to learn how to play the piano. we have quite a nice one in our living room, only for optical reasons [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] , because nobody is able to play it.
i wonder if there are any piano or keyboard players here on the jcf? basically what i'd like to know is the basics, how to properly move your fingers etc. i know quite a lot of theory, so "building" chords and scales isn't a big deal. as far as playing real songs goes, i'm sure i could pick up a lot just by listening to it. i just need to get the basics down so that i don't get used to a wrong hand placement etc.
furthermore, i'd really appreciate any advice regarding practicing - what, how, etc.
any ideas?
thanks in advance

[jgcable]

Re: any piano/keyboard players here?

Get a good teacher. That is the best way to learn to play the piano. The most important thing about playing piano is learning the correct way the first time. Its really hard to break a bad habit or an incorrect playing style on piano.
BTW... I was a child prodigy at 10 playing all 21 pages of Moonlight Sonata by Bethoven by ear at Lincoln Center in NYC. I started playing at 3 and by the age of 5 I was playing fairly advanced classical pieces arranged for small hands. By 10 I was pretty much tearing it up. I put my keyboarding away at around 13 and took up guitar because it was so much cooler.

[Fragle]

Re: any piano/keyboard players here?

wow, thats quite an impressive story! i wonder if you ever regretted this decision?

well...a friend of mine has been playing keys for like 7 years i think. maybe i should ask him to show me the basics. i know exactly what you're talking about, regarding the bad habit thing. this is precisely what i want to be taught, other than that....i've always been self taught. when i started playing the guitar i had lessons for about 1 year. in retrospect i think it didn't help me a lot. the thing is that there's a LOT more info going around in the net when it comes to guitar playing rather than piano. when i took lessons i already knew how to properly hold/use a pick, the essential aspects of the left hand fingering etc. and basically, in the end you can only improve by practicing your ass off, and imho one doesn't need a teacher for this.
what i'm trying to say is that this was possible for me when i took up the guitar, but now when it comes to keys the amount of information on the internet is so limited.....

[shadowcat]

Re: any piano/keyboard players here?

I started playing the piano when I was 7 years old and got lessons for 11 years. Had a very good teacher too.
Well, the hardest thing I could play was some stuff from Rachmaninoff.
I have always been writing my own stuff and stopped taking lessons when I lost interest in learning the classical stuff. I spent most of my time composing my own then, and felt I had reached a technical level where I could play all the stuff that I had in my head.

I greatly reduced my piano-playing-time when I started to play the guitar (completely self-taught), but came back to it after two years or so. I noticed my playing had actually improved... I believe that's because learning to play the guitar made me think about notes differently.
Nowadays I play both instruments alot.
Over the last two years I have written quite a few pieces on the piano, and I have recorded a whole album with my Yamaha Clavinova straight into the PC. The recording is pretty good quality actually, I'm very happy with it. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

My advice for you is to get a teacher for learning good posture and getting better until you've reached a level where you feel comfortable about your abilities.

[metallicarocks]

Re: any piano/keyboard players here?

It sounds like you already know how to read notes at least to some degree (perhaps on guitar?), as in you can look at a staff and know the note names. If you want to just start plunking around, why not figure out how to read notes on the Piano? If you know the note values on the staff, piano will be a breeze to plunk on. As for seriously playing, listen to those above me. It sounds as if though they have seriously played, I have not. I could play a few church hymns here and there back in those darker days of my life, but that's about it.

[Fragle]

Re: any piano/keyboard players here?

wow, quite an old thread [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

metallicarocks, actually i know a fair share of theory, and therefore i'm able to build chords on the piano rather easily, plus i know the notes - better than i can read them [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
actually i'm more concerned about the proper technique...it's damn difficult to get rid of a wrong technique once you got used to it.
so, a buddy of mine is taking piano lessons, maybe i'll ask if his teacher could also give me a few lessons just for the basics.

[micha]

Re: any piano/keyboard players here?

what I mentioned taking piano lessons is that it's not impossible to learn songs on piano, but so far I never managed to learn it right.
I do have an awesome teacher, and I'm really glad to have her, but every week I spend hours on these songs, beeing really carefully to do everything right, but there's always something wrong.
there's many things you can't tell from the notes, and there's many tricks to learn this stuff easier, I highly suggest to get a teacher.
I thought, hey, I played clarinet in orchestra, I've been playing guitar for years, so piano. what's the deal with it?
but it is really different to anything else I've played.
beautiful instrument, but there's so much brain in playing piano, I hate it!! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
there's too many things happening at the same time in piano, it's impossible for a beginner to hear a wrong articulation or doing the dynamics right when you're concentrating on hitting the right notes. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

it's worth it, but getting a good teacher is a must IMO.


@jgcable; with the moonlight sonata you're talking about the first part right?