Introduction:
Hello Future Musician,
I always like to stress to
all of my students that playing music is not nearly as difficult as
it seems. It does not take a genius to be a good musician.
You can learn to
do amazing things with your hands. It just takes the
desire/motivation to do so….and don’t forget practice! “Practice
makes perfect.” Think about it, to excel at any
profession/activity/hobby/sport/etc. it takes a lot of practice.
For example, NFL Football stars practice like CRAZY every day of
the week for hours to maintain their ability…
Good News!
This course does not require an insane
amount of practice. By the end of this lesson you will have a good
idea of how to:
1. Play notes on the Piano/Keyboard
2. Play a simple song or two
3. Play your ‘major’ scale in the Key of
C
4. Determine which notes are which on a
Piano/Keyboard!
Let’s Get
Started!
This is a Piano/Keyboard with the NOTES
written on each key.
Let me break it down for you. There are ONLY
12 notes in existence
and they repeat themselves over and over
again in what we call ‘Octaves.’
Pronounced (Octives). An Octave obviously
refers to the number 8 (Oct.)
Musical Notes are identified by letters of
the alphabet. The letters in music are A, B, C, D, E, F, G. There
is NO ‘H’. After ‘G’ it simply starts over at ‘A’ again (see
above). How can you have more than one ‘A’? The TONE of the note
sounds the same, but the ‘pitch’ is higher or lower.
There are many ‘A’s’ on the piano and many
of the other letters as well. The lowest ‘A’ will sound extremely
low like a Bass and will not be very distinguishable. The highest
‘A’ will sound very high pitched like a flute or piccolo.
The best example of an Octave I can think of
is in the song ‘Happy Birthday.’ The part in the middle where you
sing “Happy BIRTH-day to so and so…” The word ‘Happy’ let’s say is
a ‘C’ note, the next word ‘BIRTH’ would also be a ‘C’ note but one
octave above the ‘C’ that you sang for the word ‘Happy’. It’s a big
stretch, a whole 8 notes! So, it’s 8 notes from ‘A’ to ‘A’ and ‘C’
to ‘C’ and so on. Thus, it’s called an ‘Octave’.
OK, back to my original point. Did you realize what I said? There
are ONLY 12 notes in existence! This makes music a lot easier than
you though eh? EVERY SONG YOU’VE EVER HEARD WAS MADE UP OF A
COMBINATION OF THESE 12 NOTES. No matter how complicated of a
Mozart song it is, there are only 12 notes to choose
from:
A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G# and
then back to ‘A’.
The Black Keys are in sets of 2 and 3. I
call them ‘twins’ and ‘triplets.
At the beginning (the left) of the ‘Twins’
is the note ‘C’. At the beginning of the ‘triplets’ is the note
‘F’. The twins and triplets repeat themselves over and over again
and the note at the beginning of them will always be the same. In
front of every pair of twins will be ‘C’ ALWAYS. This will
help
you memorize which notes are which, without
writing the notes on each key!
What do the ‘#’ signs mean?! The # sign
stands for “Sharp”.
So, if you see ‘A#’ that means “‘A’ Sharp.”
C# = C sharp and so on.
The Sharps (#’s) are the
black keys. The very next key to the RIGHT
of any given key is the ‘Sharp’ of that note.
On the piano, the distance
between any note to the very next note (whether the next note is a
black key OR white) is called a ‘half-step’. So, from ‘A’ to ‘A#’
is a half-step. From ‘A#’ to ‘B’ is also a half step.
NOW NOTICE ‘B’ and ‘C’. There are no sharps in between them but they are still
considered a ‘Half-Step’. This is very important to understand
because a lot of people think that if you go a ‘half-step’ from one
letter the next note will be that letter ‘Sharp’. This is true for
MOST notes except for ‘B to C’ and ‘E to F’. If you look at the
piano above, you’ll see that E goes right to F and they are both
white keys and the same for B to C. These are STILL HALF-STEPS.
There is no ‘B#’ because ‘B#’ would just be called ‘C’. An ‘E#’
would just be called ‘F’. These are the TWO exceptions.
If you skip a half-step and go directly
from let’s say, ‘A’ to ‘B’, it is called a
Whole
Step. Remember those exceptions now! The
difference from ‘B’ to ‘C’ is NOT
a whole step. Remember, from ‘B’ to ‘C’ is a
HALF-STEP because they are right next to each other. So, from ‘B’
to ‘C#’ would be a
WHOLE-STEP. Same goes for ‘E’ to ‘F’ (half step). From ‘E’ to
‘F#’ would be the
WHOLE STEP. The reason why people make this mistake is because from
every other white key to the next white key is a WHOLE STEP.
(Because there is a black key in between which is the half
step).
LET’S LEARN THE ‘C’ MAJOR SCALE!
This is a very important fundamental of music. This ‘Scale’
makes up the sounds ‘Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La-Ti-Do.’ It’s called the
‘Major Scale’ and it is one of the MAIN modes of music. There are
‘major’ and ‘minor’. The ‘major’ scale sounds happier while the
‘minor’ scales sound sad.
Every song you’ve ever heard was either in
a ‘major’ or ‘minor’ key.
OK so your RIGHT hand is numbered as
follows…Your thumb is finger number 1; index finger is number 2,
middle finger is number 3, ring finger number 4, and pinky finger
number 5.
Your LEFT hand is the same. Thumb is finger
number one, and so on.
They go opposite ways but the thumb is
still number 1 and so on.
We are going to learn the scale with our
RIGHT hand first. The right hand is the lead hand in the piano and
plays the important lead melodies of a song.
The left hand is an accompaniment and plays
chords and bass lines.
So, the ‘C Major Scale’ is as Follows:
C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C
Moving from LEFT to RIGHT. Finger number
One will play the first ‘C’.
Then finger number 2 plays ‘D’ followed by
Finger #3 which plays ‘E’.
NOW PAY ATTENTION:
On the FOURTH Note which is ‘F’, you will cross
your thumb underneath your middle finger (finger #3) and play the
‘F’ with your THUMB! This allows you to finish the rest of the
scale with the rest of your hand. Fingers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So, in
case this was confusing, the fingering for C. D. E, F, G, A, B, C
would be fingers: 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
After the third note; ‘E’ you CROSS your
thumb UNDERNEATH your middle finger (which is still on ‘E’) and
play the next note to the right of ‘E’ which is ‘F’ with your
Thumb.
Now, when you come back down the scale… (to
the left) you play every note that you played on the way up the
scale AND with the SAME fingers.
So, the scale would
be C, D, E, F, G, A, B,
C, B, A, G, F, E, D, C.
Fingers are:
1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,
4, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1.
The Bold letters and numbers are going
‘up’ the scale which is left to right. Then on the way back ‘down’
the scale, (not bold) it is right to left.
‘Up’ refers to UP IN PITCH. and ‘Down’
refers to DOWN IN PITCH.
When you play notes from left to right you
will always be going UP in pitch from a LOW sound all the way on
the left, it gets higher and higher as you move to the right and
all the way on the right is the HIGHEST pitched note. So thus, when
you play to the right you are going ‘up’.
You can check the representation of a piano
at the top to know exactly where C starts from and ends.
That’s just the ‘C’ Major scale. There is a
Major scale for EVERY key.
There is an ‘A Major Scale’ a ‘B Major
Scale, even for the #’s. ‘A# Major Scale, starts on a black key
‘A#’).
They ALL sound like ‘Do-Re-Mi…’ but they
just start on a different pitch.
But don’t worry, I HAVE A
SECRET WEAPON!
Everyone loves the ‘C
Major Scale’ because it is ALL white keys.
Every other scale has a black key in it,
whether it’s one, two, three or more!
Instead of memorizing EACH
of the 12 Major Scales which would take a lot of time, you can use
my secret formula
that will allow you to play any major scale based on a pattern.
Anything you can do in one spot on the piano, you can do Remember I
talked about Whole Steps and Half Steps?
Well, if you look at the ‘C’
major scale you can see that the pattern is as
such:
After the starting ‘C’, the next note is
‘D’. The distance between these notes is a Whole Step. (because you
skip over C# and go to D) Lets call a Whole Step ‘W’ and a Half
Step ‘H’. The pattern of the C Major scale is
W, W, H, W, W, W, H. Pretty
easy to remember if you see the pattern: two whole steps and then a
half step followed by three whole steps and a half step.
This holds true EVERY MAJOR SCALE!!! Whoa. That
makes it A LOT EASIER.
Let’s test this out…The next Major Scale,
the ‘D Major Scale’ would be
D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D.
This obeys the rule! After the first note
‘D’ it follows the pattern:
W, W, H, W, W, W, H.
D, E, F#, G, A, B, C#, D
1st W, W, H, W, W, W, H.
The first note cannot be a whole step or a
half step because you need to be referring to the distance between
TWO notes to have a whole step or a half step.
This scale is so important because EVERY
song that is in a ‘Major’ key will be made up of ONLY THE NOTES OF
THE MAJOR SCALE. So, if the song is in ‘C Major’ such as THOUSANDS
of songs are…the song would consist of ONLY THE NOTES OF THE C
MAJOR SCALE!
Example:
The song ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ is in the
key of ‘C Major’. This means that every note in this song will be a
note in the ‘C Major Scale’.
Here are the notes for ‘Mary Had a Little
Lamb.’
3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5
E, D, C, D, E, E, E, D, D, D, E, G, G
3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 1
E, D, C, D, E, E, E, D, D, E, D, C.
The numbers are the fingers you should
use.
The letters are the notes on the piano. The
numbers
are right above the corresponding
letter.
LET’S LEARN THE MINOR SCALE!
Using the same method, we used on the C
Major scale of whole step and half-step its pattern will be:
W, H, W, W, H, W, W
For example, the D Minor scale will be
D, E, F, G, A, A#, C, D
1st W, H, W, W, H, W,
W
Later on, I’ll teach you how to make chords
with these scales but now let’s continue
LET’S LEARN THE BLUE SCALE!
The blue scale is the most famous scale
used in improvising I am sure you learning it shall be quite
beneficial. Before I explain the blue scale let me introduce a new
concept called the minor third. Don’t worry it isn’t anything
difficult you just have to count 3 notes from the starting note.
Easy right so the blue scale will be;
M3, W, H, H, M3, W
So, the M3 the minor third you can find the
example of a video in this package.
Another example for the D blue scale shall
be
D, G, G#, A, C, D
1st M3, W, H, H, M3,
W
Nice now we shall learn how to make chord
this where the magic comes in. You just need practice.
HOW TO MAKE CHORDS AND PLAY MUSIC!
Chords or otherwise called triad
are a combination of usually 3 notes that sound
good together. They are usually for a certain scale for example a
Major scale or Minor scale. For clarity to explain how to construct
a chord I’ll use the C major scale
C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1
Considering the representation of the C
Major scale above to make a chord you need 3 notes for us to know
which note to play I have numbers on each note. The reason I
repeated 1 after 7 is because this is a repeated note or the
pattern begins again.
So to build a chord in this scale we shall
take the 1,3,5 this shall be called the C chord notice how the
first note is the name of the Chord, taking another example if we
want to make an E chord starting from E we shall take the 3,5,7 .
Simple right.
This can be done in any scale but the note
you use should be in successive scale for example you can’t take a
C# not in a C major scale because it is not in the key. When
starting you should always use this kind of representation to make
a chord before doing it on the piano it makes it easier that way.
Since on a piano the scale change really fast according the one you
are in.
If you think this is difficult don’t worry
with practice it gets easier