Where Piano Playing Retirees Get Information and Encouragement
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
Once you have a sound understanding of tones (whole tones) and semitones (half tones), then you can work out what the various scales are. Major Scale – this scale has seven notes in it but when you play it on the piano you finish on the note you start just an octave higher. The pattern is … Read more
In order to understand chords and scales and how they are structured, you need to understand what an interval is. Quite simply an interval is the distance between any two notes. Semitones are also known as Half Tones in the US, which is really the same thing as the word semi literally means half. Semitones are … Read more
It doesn’t matter what type of music you are into, whether it’s popular, jazz or classical music, you are going to need some knowledge of chords and chord symbols. Even if you were to do one of these online piano courses that can supposedly teach you to play the piano in a few short weeks … Read more
So in my previous article, I discussed what simple time signatures are and attempted to help you find ways not to just understand the theoretical definitions, but truly understand how each time signature sounds and feels. (If you would like to review the previous article, then click here.) In Part Two here, I will be … Read more
The two numbers that are stacked on top of each other at the beginning of every piece of music is known as a time signature, is not to be called or confused with a fraction. The time signature is there for a reason – it determines the overall feel and flow of a piece of … Read more
From time time, there has been the argument that to play the piano, you don’t really need to learn to read the music and you certainly don’t need to understand music theory. To a certain extent this argument is actually valid but my question would be “Why would you not want to understand what is … Read more