Good Practice Routines

[iamthetrees666]

Hi everyone, it seems like theres a lot of keyboard beginners on these forums like myself and i thought that we could all benefit from sharing thoughts on how to practice properly. Things like good and bad habits, excercises others may not know about, good songs to learn etc. When I practice i usually do a lot of scales and arpeggios to a metronome. I've also been doing the first 3 hanon excercises which seem pretty useful in building evenness in my fingers. I'd love to hear some thoughts on how others practice cuz im pretty new to this and i want to do it right.

 

[Skot]

Definitely scales and arpeggios are rad.
I also play bach inventions a lot because they use both hands and work all your fingers. They are seriously one of the best things to use to warm up.
A also kind of just start playing and improvising. If you are good enough, it is a good way to get into it really fast. After my improvisation doesn't sound all crappy and choppy, I know i'm warmed up. Thats just me though. I dont know how other people do stuff.

 

[iamthetrees666]

Definitely scales and arpeggios are rad.
I also play bach inventions a lot because they use both hands and work all your fingers. They are seriously one of the best things to use to warm up.
A also kind of just start playing and improvising. If you are good enough, it is a good way to get into it really fast. After my improvisation doesn't sound all crappy and choppy, I know i'm warmed up. Thats just me though. I dont know how other people do stuff.

When you say Bach inventions, are they from Bach the famous composer? Or are they some kind of warm up routine i havent heard of? Can you please fill me in?

 

[Skot]

Yea, Bach as in the composer. His inventios are difficult to play for how simple they are. Which is why they are awesome for warming up/practicing.

Anyone else have anything to share about how they practice? I want some new stuff to play.

 

[letsel]

Well, don't know how stupid/obvious this is, but I felt rather proud when I figured this out

Anyway, when doing scales, I noticed that when I move my thumb underneath my fingers to play new notes that I did it slightly after I press down with my middle or ring finger on a physical and mental level, so I figured it would be best to train myself to anticipate the movement and do the press of the middle or ring finger with the thumb movement as one movement mentally and physically. Same applies for when the middle or ring finger goes over the thumb, although, it is a bit more lagged since you can only move your fingers when you lift the index.

I found a nice site with the Bach Inventions sheet music in pdf format. You have to sign up, but the signup is free. They also have the major and minor arpeggios and some other pieces. http://www.pianostreet.com/search/freesheetmusic.php

Eitherway, I'm going to sign up for keyboard lessons tomorrow, just hope I can find a good tutor for technique.

 

[iamthetrees666]

Hmmm interesting

Cool thanks for that site, im signing up as we speak. Ive been learning how to do scales starting from the third interval, so that one hand can do the harmony of the scale. Its pretty fun and it sounds good too, can be alittle trickyt getting the fingering right for f major and b major though.

 

[Laura]

Reading Music

Hi, I can't read music. Well, I can read it like a first grader reads words. In other words, it is kind of useless as a learning tool. I can't learn a new piece from sheet music because I can't get any sense of what it's supposed to sound like.

On the other hand, I can learn by ear pretty well. I have learned banjo & guitar without reading sheet music & that's fine. Well, now I own a Roland keyboard/synth so it's time to learn to play!

I believe I can listen to songs and copy them and teach myself keyboard without reading sheet music. Or is this really ridiculous? Does everyone else here read sheet music and did they all start out as piano players?

I don't aspire to play classical or Bach...what I want to play is Ambient/Trance. Mostly original stuff that I hope to record in Cubase. I don't even think there is any sheet music for this genre. But I do need to train my fingers to some basic proficiency and I will probably buy one of those 'teach yourself keyboard/hand exercises' at the music store. I spose that will have sheet music in it.

 

[letsel]

Laura, if you don't intend to play any classical or even contemporary piano peices, then not being able to read sheet music won't be much of a hindrance.

But, my friend just called and I told him about your predicament, and he simply replied: "She should learn sheet music because the world needs less uneducated trance/ambient musicians and more educated trance/ambient musicians."

Atleast one thing I can say is understanding theory helps alot in general in all aspects of music, and sheet music makes theory more accessible and gives you a better view.

But, at the end of the day, there are many people who can play music/compose well without knowing a lick of theory or sheet music. I suggest you try it out a bit and see if it helps. If it helps, great, if it doesn't then atleast you can play other peices with less difficulty should you ever choose to.

I'm not saying you should learn to sight-read, that takes alot of time and hard practice and is mostly part of the classical school of thought. But being able to learn songs from a peice of paper can be invaluable.

On a last note, rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it

 

[Laura]

"She should learn sheet music because the world needs less uneducated trance/ambient musicians and more educated trance/ambient musicians." But being able to learn songs from a peice of paper can be invaluable.

Haha... does the world need more trance/ambient musicians at all?

I wonder if that genre is the one people choose when they really can't Write Music. No offense to anyone else but myself. In some ways Trance seems to be a very easy genre because all you do is import a bunch of loops into Cubase.

On the other hand, like any genre, there's good & bad. A genre like Ambient, the music can just be boring. But I have been listening to some ambient music very closely and identifying the common structures & themes which make some of it sound beautiful. Like abstract art, some of it is great & some is awful and it takes a lot of study to know how to differentiate the two.

As to 'theory', I don't talk a lot about 'flatted 5ths" and suchlike, but I know what sounds good!

"being able to learn songs from a peice of paper can be invaluable."

That's kind of funny because that was the only way you could learn it in Beethoven's day, but nowadays we have CDs and all sorts of digital stuff, and a piece of paper seems positively quaint!

 

[letsel]

Anyone knows what sounds good, but not everyone knows why and how to do it again and expand on it .

Like I said, it's not essential, you can fully understand music without knowing a single thing about sheet music, it's just the most popularly understood language of music, and despite it's many pitfalls and archaic baggage, it still is useful.

The actually theory is more to do with cadences, forms, passages or phrases, scales and modes, harmony, melody etc... and sheet music is generally used to explain these things.

There are more ways to learn songs these days, but sheet music is still the most widely available, understood and doesn't require anything but, well, paper.

The way I see it is you are trying to make excuses for not learning something that isn't that hard to come to grips with that only limits you if you don't know it instead of giving you more freedom.

The fact of the matter is sheet music and the keyboard layout have very close ties, I don't know if the keyboard was designed according to the way notation is or notation was made according to the way the keyboard was laid out, but it's one of the two.

But, at the end of the day, it's up to you.

But, with regards to learning things specifically related to the keyboard instrument and not just all instruments, I had my first lesson today, and I'll make a summary of all the cool things I learned and exercises that can help.

Ironically, this is a prime example of why you should be able to read sheet music, because I could have just sent you the piece I got to practice(basically combines a bunch of the technique exercises into a simple song) straight away but now you will have to wait for me to learn it first and record it before I can give it to you

 

[Laura]

The actually theory is more to do with cadences, forms, passages or phrases, scales and modes, harmony, melody etc... and sheet music is generally used to explain these things.

Actually I recall I had some piano lessons back when I was Very very young. So I do understand those basics and I use them in guitar playing too.

It's just that I can't 'hear' the notes in my head when I try to figure out what they are on the musical staff ('egbdf? face?") especially when they throw all those sharps & flats in at the very beginning.

 

[letsel]

I can't 'hear' them in my head either. It's like you make notes in class and study later or read a book. It's just a language designed to describe music better than words. I can maybe deduce that a given chord is harmonic or dischordant, or that some notes are out of key and what the rhythm is, but I'll have to play it to know what it sounds like.

But like I said, it's up to you. At the end of the day, for me it's important to be able to sit down with just a piece of paper and be able to play something. CD's and video will be limited to what people decide to put on, whereas 99% of music out there today will be available on sheet music. But that is just me. The point I'm trying to make is that I still think it won't be a bad investment to be able to read. I'm not talking about sight reading or playing the music in your head, simply understanding enough to look at it and know what to press when, even if it takes you 5 minutes to read one bar. And trust me, you get better with just a bit of practice.

Sure, you could play digital files like midi or proprietary formats through a midi synth, but that has it's limitations as well.

Knowing which notes are where can be practiced just like everything else. When I looked at notation again after about 2 years, I had to count from middle C or treble G, but I quickly started remembering. The sharps and flats arn't that complicated either.

But, despite my evangelism, I'm antagonistic towards the current system of notation used in music, and have been designing my own notation system for quite some time now(still not done), but I still feel it's important to know it simply because it's just a common element in music.

If you find it difficult to learn, simply go to a music store and look for grade 1 and 2 theory books, they mostly deal with reading sheet music and not theory(not that 99% of what is taught by music teachers today counts as actual theory in my books ).

On a last note, I'm not trying to tell you do this or else(I have been accused of having an 'aggressive' tone before, so just setting the record straight). Just trying to illuminate some areas that, atleast from what I can deduce from your posts, you might not understand or might have a wrong impression of.

 

[letsel]

Well, I got around to getting the exercise my teacher gave me into nice and neat sheet music. For the interested you can find it here.

It's very basic, you don't even move your hands to different positions. Just thought I'd share.

On a side note, the program I used to create that piece of sheet music is called Lilypond. It is nice in that it creates high quality digital sheet music in pdf form for printing and sharing. And it's free(open source). The downside is it can be a bit hard to use at first(you basically script it in a text file instead of using a GUI), it takes time in the beginning because it's counter intuitive. I'd still recommend it over other software, the quality of the printout is really good. There are plugins and other ways to create the files it generates the pdf from, but I havn't tried using any of them yet.

 

[Laura]

Well, I got around to getting the exercise my teacher gave me into nice and neat sheet music. For the interested you can find it here.

It's very basic, you don't even move your hands to different positions. Just thought I'd share.

Thanks very much. You win this round...I've decided to bite the bullet & teach myself to read music. Well actually I know how, I just need to use that skill. I bought a book called "Progressive Rock Keyboard" which analyzes some of the prog styles and reviews 5 songs 'in the style of' Dream Theater, Ozric tentacles and other prominent prog bands.

I figure by next year I'll be able to read & study this music. I just bought it now to have something to work towards.

 

[letsel]

I think it won't even take that long. If you already know how, then picking up again won't take long and after a few songs you will be suprised at how fast you pick things up. Although, that is just the reading side(not sight reading), theory analysis is probably alot more of a mission, but I wouldn't know since I havn't done any of that yet from sheet music.

 

[RotorOnTop]

I don't read sheet music , but I do want to learn more. Are there DVD's for learning basic riffs (passages) for basic key progessions?

My practice sessions are playing alond with CD's of songs our band plays. Warm up is usually just blues oriented scales to loosen up fingers.