How to Learn Music Easily to Play Piano

Good Musicians "See What They Hear and Hear What They See!"

All People Capable of Linguistic Literacy Are Also Capable of Musical Literacy

Musical literacy should not be the property of a chosen few, but a general knowledge of all.

Not too many centuries ago, the ability to read words was the privilege of the elite.  The common man was thought to be incapable of so erudite an exercise as reading.

Today, in a time of universal linguistic literacy, this view point seems absurd.  There is no reason to support that human beings are less capable of learning to read music than words.

Music reading, like word reading, is a skill that not only can, but should be taught.  If the language of music becomes a known language, enjoyment of music will certainly increase, and the quality of life itself improve.

Singing is the Best Foundation for Musicianship

The youngest infants produce musical sounds.  Singing is as natural an activity to the child as speaking.  To use this native ability to foster and cultivate the voice - the instrument everyone has - is both practical and effective when studying the piano.

Throughout history, great musicians have known the important of singing in music education.  Musical knowledge acquired through singing is internalized in a way that musical knowledge acquired through an instrument - an external appendage - can never be.

If You Can't Sing It... You Can't Play It!

Sometimes I receive emails or phone calls from students asking how they can "pick-out" a melody they've hear and play it on the piano.

When I ask if they can sing the melody, they usually can't!  Always remember, that you MUST be able to at least sing the melodic line you're trying to play.

One of the easiest ways to start singing is to sing the diatonic scale, using the syllables: d0-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.

In music education, this is called Tonic solfa.  Tonic solfa is a system of syllables. Do is considered to be the keynote or tonal center in all major keys and is considered to be the keynote or tonal center in all minor keys.

The Goal of All My Online Programs

My approach to the study of music is through experience in:

1. performance
2. perceptive listening, analysis, and evaluation
3. compositional and improvisational processes and techniques

You will acquire musical knowledge and gain understanding through:

1. active involvement in musical learning
2. a study of the music of all styles
3. an in-depth study of major concepts or a series of concepts in music
4. personal discovery and the immediate use of and application of music concepts, skills, and information

Just remember, you assume increased responsibility for your own learning and you will develop the capacity to formulate and express your own musical judgments and values.

To summarize, I'll quote the great Hungarian music educator, Zoltan Kodaly:

"It is the richness of both the musical experiences themselves and the memory of them that makes a good musician.  Individual singing plus listening to music (by means of active and passive well-arranged experiences) develops the ear to such an extent that one understands music one has heard with as much clarity as though one were looking at a score: if necessary - and if time permits - one should be able to reproduce such a score.

This, and certainly no less, is what we expect from a student of a language; and music is a manifestation of the human spirit to a language.  It's great men have conveyed to mankind things unutterable in any other language.  If we do not want such things to remain dead treasures we must do our utmost to make the greatest number of people understand their secrets."

How to Play the Piano - Eurhythmics, Solfege and Improvisation

"Dalcroze Eurhythmics" is an approach to music education based on the premise that rhythm is the primary element in music, and the source for all musical rhythm may be found in the natural rhythms of the human body.

The total method consists of three parts:

1. Eurhythmics
2. Solfege
3. Improvisation

Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, while a professor of Harmony and Solfege at the Conservatory of Music in Geneva, discovered that many of his pupils, although technically advanced on their instruments, were unable to feel and express music.

• The couldn't deal with even the simplest problems of rhythm.
• Their sense of pitch, tonality, and intonation was defective.
• They possessed a mechanical rather than a musical grasp of the art of music.
• They couldn't hear the harmonies they were writing in their theory assignments.
• They were not able to invent simple melodies of chord sequences.
• Their lack of sensitivity created problems in their individual performances.

Dalcroze spent his life inventing ways to help his students develop their abilities to feel, hear, invent; sense and imagine, connect, remember, read, and write; perform and interpret music.

Dakcroze's thoughts went beyond the subject of music teaching.

1. What is the source of music?  Human emotions are translated into musical motion. 
2. Where do we sense emotions? In various parts of the body.
3. How does the body express these internal feelings to the external world?  In posture, gestures, and movements of various kinds: automatic, some are spontaneous and others are the results of thought or will.
4. By what instrument does a human being translate inner emotions into music?  By human emotion.
5. What is the first instrument that must be trained in music?  The human body!

I personally subscribe to this philosophy!  

To this end,the daily practice of scales and arpeggios is indispensable.

The Reasons for Training in Rhythm

The aspects of music that make the most definite appeal to the senses are RHYTHM and MOVEMENT.

Rhythm and dynamic energy are entirely dependent on movement and I find their best model in muscular systems.  ALL degrees of tempo can be experienced, understood, and expressed with the body.

KINESTHESIA:  The Missing Link

Dalcroze postulated that whenever the body moves, the sensation of movement is converted into feelings that are sent through the nervous system to the brain which, in turn, converts that sensory information into knowledge.

The BRAIN judges the information and ISSUES ORDERS to the body again through the nervous system.

The brain converts feelings into sensory information about direction, weight, force, accent quality, speed, duration, points of arrival and departure, straight and curved flow paths, placements of limbs, angles or joints, and changes in the center of gravity.

These orders are given to protect YOU from injury and to find the most effective ways to move through the mental phenomena of attention, concentration, memory, will power, and imagination.

Today this process is called the "kinesthetic" sense.  We all have it... which is why you don't walk into walls?

To hone your kinesthetic sense, YOU MUST practice scales and arpeggios SLOWLY!

My students, young and old, have achieved success in playing the piano through my carefully crafted piano teaching methods that are connected in a constant spiral of learning:

1. hearing to moving;
2. moving to feeling;
3. feeling to sensing;
4. sensing to analyzing;
5. analyzing to reading;
6. reading to writing;
7. writing to improvising; and
8. improvising to performance.

I know it works, because it worked for me!