Where Piano Playing Retirees Get Information and Encouragement
Jen Crabb Don’t me wrong, I do enjoy teaching kids to learn to play the piano, but in some ways, adults are better piano students. Over the years I have started to teach kids the piano who are so enthusiastic to begin with and after a few months they are wanting to quit. This is because some … Read more
Years ago I joined a choir, just for a bit of fun and the choir that I joined was focused on quite a lot of jazz or jazz influenced music. One evening I was talking to the woman who helped run the choir and we were discussing a very specific point in one piece we … Read more
Over many years, I have had people confide in me that they have always wanted to play the piano, as soon as they have found out that I teach the piano. Often what follows though is a quiet admission that they don’t think that they would be good enough. I always find it a little … Read more
As I have mentioned in other articles, I get quite a bit of advertising for online piano courses and most of them are similar, not just in their methodology but also in their advertising blurbs. One claim that is common is that you don’t need to learn music theory in order to play the piano … Read more
can be somewhat confusing to remember what the abbreviations of chords are and what specifically goes into making each type of chord, so hopefully this chart will make things a bit clearer: NAME OF CHORD ABBREVIATIONS NUMBER OF NOTES INTERVALS Major maj or M 3 maj 3rd + min 3rd Minor Min or m 3 … Read more
For all the learn to play the piano courses online, they frequently claim that a lot of popular songs only contain four chords and that’s it. This claim is often made with other claims that range from the seemingly unlikely, such as “this is a totally unique program”, to the utter absurd one I read … Read more
The diagram that is often depicted for the Cycle of Fifths is: (This chart is courtesy of Grosse Pointe Music Academy) The above diagram is typically how we see the Cycle (or Circle) of Fifths (sometimes it is labeled as Fourths as well). To be honest, I don’t really like this common diagram as it … Read more