I wasn’t sure were to post this . . . it’s not whistle and it’s not Trad. I’m sure there are enough OT posters to help me with this question.
I was thinking of purchasing a piano/keyboard tutorial but I didn’t know which one was best. I know Homespun tapes carries one called, “Put Your Hands on the Piano and Play”, but didn’t want to order it unless someone had already seen or tried it. I never got around to playing my keyboard. I know a bit on reading music but never learned left handed playing or coordinating my hands. I’m not looking to play classical, just hoping to become more comfortable and pass that on to other people. Any ideas?
I had really good luck with Jump Music’s Piano Discovery. If you take an electronic keyboard with MIDI interface (which you can get for about $100), it would judge your playing (at least, judge if you hit the right notes on the beat) before letting you move on to the next lesson. I used it for a couple of years…was quite nice.
Unfortunately, I think they’re out of business. If i run across my CD’s, I’ll be happy to send them to ya. Alternately, they’re still sold on ebay.
My son’s been noodling around on the piano for a few days, and I’ve thought about getting him the [u]Play Piano in a Flash[/u] book and CD. I’ve seen the author on some of those PBS fundraisers.
Amazon has [u]Full Video Set DVD[/u]. If it’s similar to what I saw on PBS, this is probably what I’ll go for.
Ken is 48, and got the piano for his daughter, but she didn’t take to it, and now she’s 18 and not going to be home much. From what I’ve seen on TV, this looks like good material for an adult.
I once had a friend–a banjo player–who taught himself to play Bach fugues on the piano. Nothing else, just Bach fugues. It sounded good to me. I was very impressed.
Yes! How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons is one of my favorite music
books. It actually teaches you, kind of at the same time, how music works and how to play
the piano. Of course, if you already understand your scales and chords, your firsts and thirds
and fifths, arpeggios and progressions, all that stuff, it may not hold as much for you.
If, OTOH, you don’t know this stuff, or maybe were forced to memorize the circle of fifths
but don’t see how it has anything to do with actually -playing- music, it’s really good.
Basically, it teaches just the part of music theory that you actually need to understand to
make music (play, accompany, vary, arrange, compose, whatever extent you want to
mess with it at…). It’s also a really enjoyable writing style which helps keep it more
interesting.
(Not that I’ve actually sat down at the piano much in a long time with, y’know, whistles
and flutes and all, but still. What I learned from that book carries over to other instruments
as well.)