Nathan Cheng
How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons, Norman Monath
The next step in learning an instrument after memorizing the notes is beginning to experiment with reading music in order to play melodies and songs. The book goes over the treble clef notes and mentions the use of middle C as a reference for other notes. It also mentions ways to remember the treble notes; the notes in between the lines can be remembered as "FACE" and the notes on the lines can be remembered with the acronym "Every Good Boy Does Fine" (Monath 31).
However, some things to note are that at this point the melodies/songs that are provided in How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons do not have any sharp or flat keys; more commonly referred to as the black keys (Monath 34). Also, I chose to ignore the chord marks, as the next lesson (Lesson 3) is about chords and I didn't want to give myself any bad habits before learning about them. Another article to remember is that the book also states to not worry about using certain fingers to press a key, it says, "...don't concern yourself at this point with which fingers to use" (Monath, 35). With all that being said, here are images of my attempts to play the book's version of Silent Night.
 |
| Sheet music provided |
What were your first thoughts when taking the first steps in learning a new instrument?
Monath, Norman. How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons. Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Monath, Norman. How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons. Simon & Schuster, 1994.
Hi Nathan, I have been doing piano for almost 3 years now, the first year being almost the hardest. Personally, the toughest part about learning a new instrument, or in this case, piano, was knowing where the notes were. Once I was able to learn the notes by memory, the melodies came naturally to me, and all I needed was practice. Would you also say that the initial steps were the hardest?
ReplyDeleteHey William. I'm thankful you shared your insight with me, and I agree with you. Memorizing the notes of a new instrument is definitely a bottleneck when learning it. To answer you question, I think that the challenges of playing an instrument persist throughout your journey with it. Even now, I struggle with sight-reading music on my clarinet despite having four years of experience on it.
ReplyDeleteGreat post Nathan! When I first learned how to play the violin in sixth grade, I thought that it was a very hard instrument to play. At first, the most difficult part about it was learning where all the notes were. I hadn't even learned how to play on the G and E strings until the seventh grade. Now though, I feel like the hardest part about playing violin is the tuning since the note may be either too sharp or flat if your finger is slightly out of position. Also, I know you play clarinet, so what were your first thoughts when first learning how to play it?
ReplyDelete