Welcome to Ataris Borns School of music! It is so easy to learn the piano – you would NOT believe it. The hard thing is PRACTISING! And that is what you have to do EVERY DAY in order to get things done! Let’s get started right away!
THE KEYBOARD
… has WHTE and BLACK keys. The are all a half tone apart. And the black ones come in groups of 2 and 3 all the way through the keyboard of 88 keys on a piano and 76 on a normal electronic keyboard. On a grand piano, the keyboard starts at the left (base) side with an A. A is called the chamber tone. The middle one is exactly 440Hz high and all the other keys (and theirs strings in the piano, which are played by hammers knocking on them) depend on this keys and are tuned after that. The other WHITE key tones are going up to G alphabet-like.
First of all, we need the WHITE keys only. With the BLACK ones it’s a bit more difficult. They all have TWO names, because you can use them in two ways: Being HIGHER than a WHITE key, then they are called e.g. C#, or LOWER than a white key, then they are called Gb. Depends on the scale you use, but that MUCH later in the programme.
The main tone is the C. That is the most import one and its always located left to the 2-group black keys.
PRACTISE: Put your 5 fingers of your right hand on middle C and the following white keys of the keyboard (Thumb is always FINGER 1 and the small one FINGER 5). No press 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 and then 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1.
Then change to the left hand. Practise for 10 Minutes each hand
THE IMPORTANT TONES
In our music – in order to get nice harmonies – we are used to only a few good sounding combinations, which are always used AGAIN and AGAIN. The most important one is
1 – 4 – 5 (C – F – G) which is the main harmony in MAJOR tone scales, which sound bright and positive. The parallel is
1 – 4 – 5 (A – D – E) starting not on the C but on the A. Used for MINOR scales, the sad and slightly depressiv harmonies
PRACTISE: Play 1 – 4 – 5 (C – F – G) starting from C, then 1 – 4 – 5 from F (F – B – C), then 1 – 4 – 5 from G (G – C – D)
Practise for 10 Minutes each hand
CHORDS
… are harmonies made by playing more than one tone at a time. The normal chord is built from 3 tones and they are very easy to play. We start with
C Major (Cmaj): C – E – G (1st Step of the C score) then
F Major (Fmaj): F – A – C (4th step)
G Major (Gmaj): G B D (5th step) and back to
C Major C – E – G
PRACTISE 1: Put your fingers 1 to 5 starting at the middle C on the white keys. Then Press 1- 3 – 5 only for 5 times.
Move up to the F and press 1 – 3 – 5 again, which is now F – A – C, last Chord is (starting from G) G B D
Go back to C and practise for 10 minutes each hand +++
PRACTISE 2: Do the same, but do not play all the three keys at the same time but one after the other in the way: 1 – 3 – 5 – 3 – 1
VERY IMPORTANT in PRACTISING: DON’T RUSH what you are already able to do and slow down where you don’t. Do everything at the same slow speed and then speed up step by step.