# I'm learning how to play the keyboard



## Vivaldi (Aug 26, 2012)

Hey,

After having played the violin and cello for 7 years (since I was 10), I recently picked up the keyboard. I'm completely self taught and no one in my family are musical so I'd like to post some little performances I've been working on here so you can comment on them. The goal is to elicit constructive criticism from you so I can of course, improve. Please bare in mind that I'm a novice on the keyboard having played it for only 6 months now. The piano in the recording is also out of tune but I hope you can hear past that (It's the only keyboard I have). My goal is to pick up any piece of music and be able to play it instantaneously - though isn't that the goal for any musician? The pieces here aren't played perfectly, which is why I'm here for help (I have no keyboard teacher at all).

Thanks.

*J. S. Bach Invention No. 8 in F Major*


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https://soundcloud.com/user305636706%2F20130524-144907

*Prelude in A flat Major WTC Part I*


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https://soundcloud.com/user305636706%2Fprelude-in-a-flat-major-wtci

*Prelude in C minor WTC Part I*


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https://soundcloud.com/user305636706%2Fprelude-in-c-minor-wtci

Thanks


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Pity you didn't do that before you composed all that stuff.


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## Vivaldi (Aug 26, 2012)

moody said:


> Pity you didn't do that before you composed all that stuff.


Can you offer any advice?


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Vivaldi said:


> Can you offer any advice?


That was supposed to be a joke--also you suddenly look more like yourself. (I suppose I should have known better).


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## Vivaldi (Aug 26, 2012)

moody said:


> That was supposed to be a joke--also you suddenly look more like yourself. (I suppose I should have known better).


You irritating ignoramus. I wish to elicit advice in terms of my keyboard playing. If you can't fulfill my wish, then begone, infidel.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Well, not bad at all, for only six months of keyboard playing. Years ago, I taught myself to play piano, and many years of quite dedicated practice later, I still could not play any of the stuff you are playing in these recordings. I seem to have a reasonably decent ear, but my fingers just won't cooperate. Perhaps I should have tried singing instead. I had a quite angelic voice as a child, but when my voice broke, it broke to pieces. 

It is difficult to give advice based on such relatively low quality recordings, but your playing sounds slightly frantic and a bit harsh to my ear. Practice will probably resolve that. It may also have much to do with the recording equipment and the piano you are using rather than your playing. If you can afford it and are not too much of a purist, you may want to invest in an electronic keyboard, which is always perfectly in tune, and can turn into a harpsichord at the press of a button.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Vivaldi said:


> You irritating ignoramus. I wish to elicit advice in terms of my keyboard playing. If you can't fulfill my wish, then begone, infidel.


I was going to give you the secret to the whole thing but now !!


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

You're doing great for 6 months! (would be great for a couple of years, too.)

Like many adult learners, your ability to learn notes is way ahead of your ability to play musically. This is not a bad thing, it's just a thing, and I notice it a lot in people who learn as adults. Your note-learning is fantastic for the length of time you've been doing this, buttthemusiccomesoutabitlikethiswithnospacesorpunctuationoranythingtoindicatewherethetuneisortherelativeimportanceofeachidea

Here's what you can do to work on this. Listen to a lot of piano recordings, preferably recordings by a number of different first-rate pianists. You will notice more details as your playing and listening ability improves. Try to listen for what is different between different pianists' recordings of the same piece; that will give you a clue as to what musical decision-making is going on. At the piano, keep working a lot on right hand alone practice (or melody alone, or one melodic voice at a time when you've got multiple melodic voices in a piece). When doing this, try to bring out the singing quality of the melody/ies. Where are the most intense places in the melody, the most relaxed, the natural high points/climaxes, the places where a singer would breathe? Where are the beginnings and ends of the phrases (musical sentences)? With Bach you don't want much flexibility in the tempo, so you need to rely on other things to bring out the expressive potential of the music -- especially dynamics and articulation (articulation=whether a note is staccato, legato, struck sharply, leaned into gently, etc.) Figuring out where the phrases begin and end will help you know when to do what with your dynamics and articulation, for example, you might decide to play a phrase legato and then lift the hand slightly at the end of the phrase. Try to use everything you remember from violin and cello study, it will help tons. If you are totally confused by this paragraph, you really do need a teacher. I'm sure lots of teachers would be thrilled to work with you as you obviously learn quickly and are dedicated.



Vivaldi said:


> My goal is to pick up any piece of music and be able to play it instantaneously - though isn't that the goal for any musician?


Most musicians I know aspire to play pieces as well and beautifully as possible, which requires much practice on every piece. What you're talking about is sight-reading. That's a useful and important skill and it speeds up the note-learning stage of work on any piece. But most people don't really sight-read musically, because playing musically takes time and familiarity with the details of the score. If you're playing piano as an accompanist or in an ensemble, being a good sight-reader makes you much more useful at the first rehearsal of a piece. But then it still takes a bunch of rehearsal time to figure out what the music is going to say.

Now on to specific comments.

Invention in F - the best performance of the group. Good evenness and good energy. And once again hats off for getting all those notes together as a rather inexperienced pianist. Now go back and figure out what's happening with each voice independently. They have natural high points at different times, which means that at some times your right hand should be louder and at some times your left hand should be louder. Find the phrase breaks and the shape you'd like to give each phrase, one hand at a time. Then put the hands together again and try to keep the same phrasing and shape in each melody as you did when the hands were separate.

Prelude in A flat - Same comments as Invention in F, except the hands are not always together -- in particular the left hand lags behind the right, or is uneven. Both hands need to be learned independently, the left practiced more than the right until it is equally even.

Prelude in C minor - Here the voicing issues aren't left hand versus right hand. Instead you have four voices: an upper voice and a lower voice which play at the beginning of each beat, and inner voices which play accompanying figures on the other 16th notes. So practice each of those voices separately: RH first 16th note of each beat for the whole piece, RH the other 16th notes for the whole piece skipping the first 16th note of each beat, and same with LH. Goal #1 is bringing out the outer voices so they are louder than the inner voices. Do that one hand at a time first, making the outer voices ff and the inner voices pp to start with, then you can moderate the dynamics to make it less silly but still different dynamic levels. Goal #2 is giving the outer voices some line and shape. Phrasing isn't as much of an issue here since the writing is more mechanical, but the voices still need to be differentiated.

EDIT: Been a while since I looked at that score. The outer voices aren't purely the first 16th of each beat. Instead, outer notes and inner notes alternate playing on the beat. So that's an additional decision to make: whether you treat the outer notes only as an independent voice (the first note of the first and third beats) or whether you include the notes that play at the beginning of the second and fourth beats as part of that voice.

Good work -- and looking forward to hearing more from you in future!


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