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This picture is funny and helpful
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Sep 10, 2022 20:53
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Keep in mind that it's all a balancing act. You can't play staccato octaves free of any tension in your hand as you need to stabilize and strengthen your fingers with your wrist. However, many beginners will tense their entire arm and shoulders and even chest to play octaves. My biggest thing is just strong rounded fingers. No flat fingers unless you're playing tenths.
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Sep 10, 2022 20:56
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Alizee posted:This picture is funny and helpful this is good, except you don’t want your knees under the keyboard
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Sep 10, 2022 22:01
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Question regarding playing something that has huge jumps, like the left hand in Gymnopedie no 1 or I guess pretty much any stride piano/ragtime piece. At the moment my MO is to just memorise the piece so I can look at my hands to make sure they jump to the right places, but this means if I gently caress up I can't then refer back to the music to pick up where I left off because I've lost where I am. Is the goal ultimately to learn to make the jumps without looking at the keys so I can concentrate predominately on the music, or is it fine to look at your hands when making jumps like this, just making sure to take regular glances at the music so as not to lose your place? My teacher has suggested occasionally practising trying to make these jumps with my eyes shut, but I only get it right perhaps one in every 5 or 6 attempts so I don't really know what it's achieving.
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Sep 12, 2022 17:03
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oh no computer posted:Question regarding playing something that has huge jumps, like the left hand in Gymnopedie no 1 or I guess pretty much any stride piano/ragtime piece. At the moment my MO is to just memorise the piece so I can look at my hands to make sure they jump to the right places, but this means if I gently caress up I can't then refer back to the music to pick up where I left off because I've lost where I am. Is the goal ultimately to learn to make the jumps without looking at the keys so I can concentrate predominately on the music, or is it fine to look at your hands when making jumps like this, just making sure to take regular glances at the music so as not to lose your place? My teacher has suggested occasionally practising trying to make these jumps with my eyes shut, but I only get it right perhaps one in every 5 or 6 attempts so I don't really know what it's achieving. Being able to make the jumps without looking is ideal but nothing wrong with looking at your hands either. But I don't really understand why loving up the jump would make you lose your place in the music. It must not the act of looking away from the sheet music that makes you lose your place because you don't lose your place if you successfully hit the right notes right?
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Sep 12, 2022 17:38
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My poor wording - it's more trying to start again having stopped and returning to the start of the bar or phrase, rather than having hosed up. If I just carry on as if nothing has happened it's fine.
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Sep 12, 2022 17:44
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I could use some advice on how to play a section from Kiki's Delivery Service. Below in the B section, the left hand does a slurred arpeggio thing. Would you play that LH section with or without the pedal? For example, for the first group of four notes E,B,E+G,B: would you slur the notes by stretching your hand like crazy and doing 5-3-12-3 5-3-12-3? Or would you use the pedal so you can "jump" your LH between the B and the E+G so it looks more like 5-1 (pedal, move hand) 1+2,5? I find both ways pretty difficult. I feel like the notes definitely need to be connected without gaps; I also played with the idea of just holding the pedal down the whole time, but it doesn't fit the light dainty mood of the song that was previously established.
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Sep 22, 2022 16:18
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I (personally) would do it without the pedal (but I'm admittedly allergic to pedal unless it's explicitly in the sheet music), and I'd go 5-3-21 for the fingering. It'll require rotating your elbow/wrist quite a bit to do it.
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Sep 22, 2022 17:05
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giogadi posted:I could use some advice on how to play a section from Kiki's Delivery Service. just looking at it i think it needs a lot of pedal feathering. get a teacher would be my main advice.
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Sep 22, 2022 17:14
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giogadi posted:For example, for the first group of four notes E,B,E+G,B: would you slur the notes by stretching your hand like crazy and doing 5-3-12-3 5-3-12-3? this, but don’t stretch; pivot on the D (lmao) and rotate your arm
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Sep 23, 2022 05:03
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I sort of impulse-ordered a piano (Privia PX-S1100) last night! I've been taking lessons for a few months and using a synth to practice, but it didn't feel nearly as satisfying as playing on my teacher's digital piano. After dealing with too many flakes on Facebook Marketplace, I ended up using a bunch of Best Buy store credit and rewards to get the Privia.
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Sep 24, 2022 15:06
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giogadi posted:I could use some advice on how to play a section from Kiki's Delivery Service. trying it just now I prefer 5-3-12-3 and pedalling on the 3 but i'm the opposite of son of thunderbeast, i pedal as much as i can get away with because it sounds too dry otherwise
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Sep 25, 2022 03:36
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Thanks for the advice y’all! Yeah, I think I like the sound and feel best of using the pedal just a bit, while also connecting the notes some with the fingers
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Sep 25, 2022 04:02
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Is there a good, "getting started with jazz piano" method that starts easier than Berklee/Hal Leonard? I'm about midway through Faber Adult Lv2 and am having a lot of fun. I got those two books expecting something more procedural, but both start over my head. Like, I'm sure a good pianist would be able to see the first page saying, "be able to play closed 2-5-1s in every key before you advance" and breeze through it, but that's going to lose me. Maybe the answer is "find a lead sheet in a key you CAN 2-5-1 in, use your ears and get to work." And that's fine but I thought I'd ask in case more-experienced people have a better answer.
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Oct 3, 2022 14:57
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The jazz piano book by mark levine The first two chapters are a review of intervals, triads, the major modes and II-V-I chord progressions. Chapter 3 is three note voicings, and it gradually introduces increasingly jazzier stuff as you progress.
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Oct 6, 2022 17:49
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I’m gonna anti-recommend the Levine book. It’s an amazing reference but terrible pedagogically. It’s something I return to over and over for understanding, but not a great way to learn to play jazz from scratch. To be honest I haven’t found a great book for this. One book I’m looking forward to trying is “Introduction to Jazz Piano: A deep dive” by Jeb Patton, which seems a lot more of a guided step-by-step approach for jazz beginners. I will note that I know of no jazz books that are aimed at piano/music beginners in general: they almost all assume you can read music and play the notes on a page. As usual, the best thing is to have a teacher that can give you a jazz-focused curriculum. But I understand the frustration of this, as someone who is trying to teach myself jazz because I don’t have a schedule that’s conducive to regular lessons.
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Oct 6, 2022 17:55
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giogadi posted:I’m gonna anti-recommend the Levine book. It’s an amazing reference but terrible pedagogically. It’s something I return to over and over for understanding, but not a great way to learn to play jazz from scratch. what would you change to make it pedagogically better? legit curious, cuz it really does feel like you need a teacher to help with it
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Oct 6, 2022 17:59
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Appreciate the replies! I think where I've landed is continuing with the Faber Adult 2 book and grabbing the Faber level 4 Jazz/Blues songbook. Flipping through it looks the most "on-level" challenge and has some nice tunes in it to get me working on something other than like, Gavotte in F or whatever skills song is next up in my method.
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Oct 6, 2022 18:10
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Jazz Marimba posted:what would you change to make it pedagogically better? legit curious, cuz it really does feel like you need a teacher to help with it I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer, because I still consider myself a jazz beginner so I haven’t found a successful learning method yet, haha. But I can try to describe my frustrations from reading this book: Most of all, it does not contextualize concepts enough in real piano play. I often found myself wondering “ok but how do I use this new concept?”, or “why would I use new concept B instead of concept A you just taught me last chapter? How do they relate?”. This was especially challenging with voicings. He explains a million different ways to voice chords without much insight as to why I’d choose one over another. I also wanted more guidance on rhythm. As far as I could tell, every early chapter had the chords played as whole notes - as a beginner, I’d want guidance on how to make the harmony more interesting than whole notes. Also, the descriptions of some theory felt super imprecise to my math brain. Like, he’d explain one simple approach to construct a sus chord, and then go on to construct them pretty much willy-nilly throughout the chapter, without bothering to explain how he did it. I get that jazz is often imprecise at times, but I wish he was explicit about WHEN it was supposed to be imprecise. Another thing: I wish he were more specific about how concepts fit to different types of performance. Solo performance is not the same as comping, but it’s all pretty muddled together in the book. I could go a lot more but I’m phone posting atm.
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Oct 6, 2022 19:04
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Jazz Marimba posted:what would you change to make it pedagogically better? legit curious, cuz it really does feel like you need a teacher to help with it I’d love to one day get a proper jazz teacher, because I wanna know how teachers choose to structure their lessons to create a pedagogical flow that a student can actually follow- because Levine absolutely doesn’t do that imo!
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Oct 6, 2022 19:05
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I haven't made it through the entire book yet, but I disagree. I think you're looking for a book that is much more prescriptive than jazz is supposed to be. You seem to want the book to tell you what concepts to use and when to use them, but I don't know if that's really the right approach. For example, I don't think any additional insight is needed as to why you would choose once voicing over another because it, like many other decisions, comes down to personal taste. But ultimately people have different backgrounds and learning styles. The Jazz Piano Book's approach is basically "Here's a new sound. Here's some theory behind it, here's some examples of how it is used, and here's how to construct the sound. Have fun with it" bltzn fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Oct 6, 2022 |
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Oct 6, 2022 20:21
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You’re totally right, I’m absolutely looking for something prescriptive. I can maybe imagine if someone is purely wondering “what kinds of harmony are used in jazz?”, this book is great for that. But for a lot of folks, that isn’t enough guidance to figure out how to play piano like their jazz recordings. I’m looking for a path, but the book is offering a toolbox
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Oct 6, 2022 20:48
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giogadi posted:You’re totally right, I’m absolutely looking for something prescriptive. I can maybe imagine if someone is purely wondering “what kinds of harmony are used in jazz?”, this book is great for that. But for a lot of folks, that isn’t enough guidance to figure out how to play piano like their jazz recordings. I’m looking for a path, but the book is offering a toolbox "A toolbox" is a perfect way to describe that book, yes! Please update us if you do find the kind of book you're looking for though, I'd be very interested in checking it out!
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Oct 6, 2022 21:17
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i'm not working on jazz piano, but if i was this would probably be where i'd start: https://www.amazon.com/Oscar-Peterson-Exercises-Minuets-Etudes/dp/0634099795/ref=sr_1_1
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Oct 7, 2022 04:08
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Jazz Marimba posted:what would you change to make it pedagogically better? legit curious, cuz it really does feel like you need a teacher to help with it I bought the Levine Jazz Piano book and I quit after half a chapter LOL.
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Oct 7, 2022 20:42
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Jazz is more about playing something basic/simple/short in a way that's fun. But it's kinda hard to write down what's fun, since that's different for everyone. You can write down some tools though that might be fun to use. Anyway, my recommendation would be to find either a teacher or preferably a drummer and a bass player (or some other constellation) and just begin playing through a real book or your favourite standards.
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Oct 7, 2022 20:57
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Piano beginner and jazz beginner cannot be the same thing in my opinion. A lot of essential aspects of jazz require basic competencies. Unless you want a real holistic approach in which the book that teaches you chord voicings one by one sounds like a great resource.
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Oct 8, 2022 04:38
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Alizee posted:Piano beginner and jazz beginner cannot be the same thing in my opinion. A lot of essential aspects of jazz require basic competencies. This is basically where I ended up. The jazz book is a bit out of reach because I'm just not ready for it yet. That's fine, and I'll get there. I grabbed the on-level jazz/blues song book as a change of pace and to hear some nice music come out of me. My method book right now is Swing Low, Sweet Chariot but with a million right-hand inversions. Which is very supportive of the lesson but also ... ehhhhhhh.
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Oct 8, 2022 12:51
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Huxley posted:This is basically where I ended up. The jazz book is a bit out of reach because I'm just not ready for it yet. That's fine, and I'll get there. Using that as a basis, try playing it in a way that you can handle it pretty easily and do some substitutions or alterations instead of the inversions. I'm no expert, but try leaving out the root in the left hand chords and playing the melody in the right. Then add a 7th while leaving out the root. Now you've changed the chord from, for example Amin to C, but it still fits. You can also try changing the rhythm, melody or whatever to change the feel, while still preserving the same basic structure/chord progression. Do that a bunch until it sounds good, then go back to the plain version and you're pretty well into jazz. I don't remember who it was, and it's probably apocryphal anyway, but some old jazz great was at Berkeley or whatever and the nerds were analyzing something the guy was playing. There was one note in particular that the nerds couldn't find any theory to explain, so they asked why he played it. The answer was "because it sounds cool". That to me is the goal of jazz. (Even though having a bunch of theory gives you a good toolbox for finding cool stuff too)
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Oct 8, 2022 14:06
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Hey, was wondering if anyone could give me some pointers on fingering ( )This is a passage from a piece I'm practicing right now. This bit repeats twice, identically each time. I've included the finger that I've kinda fallen into using because it's the best thing I've found that works for me so far:  At my current practice speed it's okay. I'm still drilling it because I'm still building back my accuracy and finger dexterity & strength. But when sped up to the intended bpm (190) it gets a bit tricky, and I feel like my fingers keep getting in each other's way. Part of that is just how the piece is written, but I feel like part of it may be how I'm playing it. Please let me know if you have any ideas to try! Of course I also think that if I was just dextrous and accurate enough, it probably wouldn't matter and I could use whatever fingering, so maybe I just need to git gud--and if that's the answer please let me know that too! Here's a short clip I just took of me playing it at practice speed and performance speed to give an idea of where I'm at and what it looks like when I use that fingering (sorry for the shaking): https://i.imgur.com/SQyb3Pt.mp4
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Oct 8, 2022 23:58
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If you can play it slow, you can play it fast. Might just require practice. To be frank, you need to rework your finger technique entirely. Are your fingers double jointed? Your fingers are collapsing every note at the lowest joint. You want to keep a curved shape most of the time unless you're really stretching for large intervals. I think that this is probably part of why you can't play fast. In regards to fingering, there's too much 1-4. Try 1-5 on bigger jumps. Also the 1-2 at the end makes no sense for a 5th.
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Oct 9, 2022 01:34
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My collapsing fingers are part of what i need to work on with finger strength. I'm just getting back into it after not playing for like 18 years (i played for 12 years before that). I don't think I'm double jointed, at least nobody's told me i was The 1-3 at the end lets me transition easily to play it a second time, and then to the next section. I could give something else a try though E: I'll also try more 1-5 like you suggested, i think i land on 1-4 a lot because 4 is stronger than my 5, which again just loops back to getting my finger strength back up Thanks! E2: k yeah i just need to build back my finger strength and discipline. Focusing on this has already improved my playing noticably, and I'm sure my old teacher's ghost has been shaking her fist at me this whole time. Also this made me realize my keyboard is slightly too high/chair slightly too low so once i get that taken care of i should be good to go. Thanks again 
Son of Thunderbeast fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Oct 11, 2022 |
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Oct 9, 2022 01:41
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What is your go-to list of songs for the "there's a piano at the party" scenario? I'm looking for fun and simple songs to learn that I can play for friends and family, stuff people can sing to etc... I recently found this arrangement of "I Say a Little Prayer" that seems like it could be within reach for me. *Holy moly, I'm realizing I first posted in this thread 15 years ago. It hurts to imagine where I'd be if I had practiced regularly during that interval...
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Oct 11, 2022 16:38
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Unless the host asked you to play something, just leave his piano alone.
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Oct 12, 2022 03:49
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? i mean, obviously you should ask first, but pianos exist to be played.
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Oct 12, 2022 04:10
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You have to be good at reading the vibe, you don't want to be a wonderwall guy
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Oct 12, 2022 04:59
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i like nice words
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Hughmoris posted:What is your go-to list of songs for the "there's a piano at the party" scenario? Imagine Great Balls of Fire Hey Jude Couple of Christmas Songs always have at the ready like Jingle Bell Rock or White Christmas Your favorite Eagles song Good piano bar requests and find a few of your favorites there. I also have a few jazz standards I use because you can play them as slowly as you want and it still feels good. Autumn Leaves, Somewhere Over the Rainbow
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Oct 13, 2022 20:43
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Captain Apollo posted:Imagine This is like saying Stairway to Heaven, Wonderwall, Seven Nation Army and Hotel California. Different strokes for different folks though. Personally, I don't play unless people want me to. But I'm not a fan of hokey sing alongs, and I know a lot of people are, so I get it. I'll present a different list of repertoire - Awesome classical pieces that fit the mood any time people go "Oh, you play piano! Can you play us something?". Personally, I like really moody minor key chopin and scriabin and all that, but I find these are better appreciated by the masses. Sometimes it feels awkward playing a dramatic sad piece when the mood is light and fun in the middle of the day... ya know? Bach - Prelude in C Major (beginner) Beethoven - Pathetique 2nd movement and 3rd if you feel Chopin - Nocturne in Eb+ Debussy - Clair de Lune Debussy - Arabesque Liszt - Liebestraum No. 3 Tiersen - Comptine d'un autre ete (beginner)
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Oct 15, 2022 19:42
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Captain Apollo posted:Imagine Alizee posted:Bach - Prelude in C Major (beginner) Thanks!
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Oct 16, 2022 02:53
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| # ? Jun 5, 2024 14:09 |
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Alizee posted:This is like saying Stairway to Heaven, Wonderwall, Seven Nation Army and Hotel California. Different strokes for different folks though. Personally, I don't play unless people want me to. But I'm not a fan of hokey sing alongs, and I know a lot of people are, so I get it. Oh yeah of course different strokes for different folks but none of those songs are getting me laid.
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Oct 16, 2022 03:39
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