Learn & Master Piano
Yousician
Shawn Cheek
Recent Posts…
Best free piano lessons online.
There is a huge amount of tuition material these days whether paid or free. You only need to do a search on google or Youtube to come accross many examples. But as I’ve said before on this blog, a structured course is benficial in many ways, especially for beginners. So what are the best free piano lessons online?
This is up for debate, but I’ve found some free beginner lessons from a guy who is a great teacher and is worth a look. He has several free videos aswell on Youtube, so there are plenty of examples highlighting his talent.
The guy in question in Nikolas Nuñez who has been playing the piano for 18 years…. read more
Piano Books for Beginners.
Most of my reviews thus far have been online courses or large course packs you can buy. The market these days is flooded with piano books for beginners, so I looked and discovered a series I found interesting. The books are quite unique, good quality, very informative and great value
The are known as Piano Time by Pauline Hall… read more
How to learn to play the piano.
Are you and adult with a desire to play the piano? Or do you have a child and would like to know the steps to get them learning? What follows are some suggestions to send you on your way.
If you just starting out, you will need acess to a keyboard or piano. Ideally one at home where you have easy access to play and practice every day…. read more
If I could choose one course?
Now that I have finally finished my lengthy review of piano sessions and i have completed 5 reviews in total, I can pause to reflect which course I prefer.
What follows is a preference and a feel. While I try to remain subjective and impartial, learning a musical instrument is personal and I will try to back up my preference with my own experience.
As I put forward my justifications I thought it would be easier to narrow the five course reviewed (so far) to my top three….read more.
Bill Hilton
I’ve mentioned Bill Hilton before on the site.
His Huge repertoire of YouTube videos are worth a look. He has something for all levels and teaches in a relaxed and efficient manner. A very good pianist.
The videos are well produced and he gets a great sound from his Nord keyboard. It’s given me an ambition to own one at some point. I see them used a lot… read more.
How are your New Year Resolutions going?
It’s the end of January. What a long month?
Did you make any New Year Resolutions? If so, how are they going?
I don’t take New Year resolutions too seriously, but I do have one or two goals in relation to the piano… read more.
What Piano exercises?
What piano exercises should you do? Why do Piano exercises? What benefit will they have?
Whatever your thoughts on exercises for strengthening your fingers or warming up, they are important.
I generally enjoy playing them if there’s a musical element to them. As you further your playing you will come across Hanon exercises and the various opinions on them. I play one or two of the exercises myself as a warmup, but I don’t think I would study them in detail. read more.
The Music Tutor app – a review.
Music tutor is a clever sight reading app that tests your knowledge of traditional written music notes on the staff. It’s available on the IOS App Store and google play so will work on both apple and android products. It asks you to identify notes in timed sessions.
It’s produced from Jsplash studios who offer other music apps such as a metronome and a tuner (amongst others). The app is free although contains ads, which are a little annoying…. read more.
“Every Master was once a disaster” T Harv Eker
From an adult’s point of view, we sometimes give up easily and view talented people as gifted freaks who are naturals and don’t require any effort.
This is far from the truth. Every person starts at the same place. Any talented or famous pianist had to sit at the piano and learn the white and blacks notes, learn where middle C was, learn their first scale or tune and so on. They would struggle through and move on improving their skill…. read more.
A holiday and Spotify
Having just returned from a lovely two weeks in Crete, it’s back to normality.
One good thing to always come home to is the piano. I miss it a lot when I’m away and it’s great to get back into it. At my age, it’s a little odd to play again as I get rusty quickly. However, I played some easy pieces to warm up and soon got back into it. The hardest thing is to get back to the regular habitual practice routine, with the added challenges of getting back to work and getting up early.
Although being away from the piano is hard, ene of the good things about being on holiday is the time to listen to music…read more
What one piano piece would you like to learn?
What piece of music or song would you like to learn? What was the song that inspired you to learn to play or did you just have a burning desire to play the instrument?
The piano is a wonderful, expressive instrument that can be played in many different styles to suit different moods. Also no one person plays a song the same adding more variation. It’s part of the attraction… read more
Musicnotes website and app review.
A store containing 300,000 digital sheetmusic pieces and a free app that will play your purchased music or display your own imported PDFs.
The App can be displayed on your phone or tablet which will display the music with an option to play a midi audio file. There is also a viewer that can be downloaded from the store to view your PDFs on your computer, which will also enable the Midi playback. I’m not sure whether the pieces could be viewed on other PDF viewers such as Adobe… read more
Do you need to learn to read music?
The short answer for an adult learner is probably no in my opinion, although you do have the choice.
Music is a form of communication from the person/people who wrote the music to the listener or person learning to perform the piece.
Music in written form is simply another tool to communicate. Traditional written music is the accepted norm among musicians to communicate in a universal, accepted way…. read more
Peaceful Piano. A journey to complete relaxation.
Peaceful Piano is put together by DECCA and includes music from “The Music Lab Collective”.
The CD includes various instrumentals of film music – “A thousand Years” from Twilight, “Beauty & the Beast”, “Truman Sleeps”, “Any other name” from American Beauty
Other instrumentals include Lukas Graham’s “7 Years” and Adele’s “Hello” and Mike Posner’s “I took a pill in Ibiza”. These are all very good… read more
Do you find it difficult to listen to a new piece of music or a new artist?
As I get older I find myself with less patience when listening to a new piece of music. That could be older, established music or someone in the current climate.
I can hear my father now telling me to turn the volume down when I was blasting “Money for Nothing” as a teen! Am I turning into my father? Is my tolerance for the current music scene non existent? Or am I part of the new generation who like to flip from one song to another without any careful listening. I am guilty of both to a degree…. read more
Motivating yourself to practice the piano.
It’s an obvious fact that to improve your skill, you must put in the time to practice. That is easier said than done when you are a father to a young child, you work in an office 10 hours a day with an hour commute each side, spend time with your loved ones and also cook, eat and sleep. Finding the time, energy and motivation is tough when you are in an adult in this situation. I have also added this website to my commitments.
I love to play the piano, but I do find it a challenge to find the time and motivation, even though I know how critical it is to put the practice in. What you put into something is what you get out.
How can you tackle this? Here are 10 tips… read more
Having a system when learning the piano.
It’s advisable to follow a system or curriculum when learning a new skill and the piano is no exception. While resources like you-tube are excellent, jumping around from one video to another may not necessarily improve your playing.
It would be better to follow a progressive system that starts with the basics and builds on them once you have mastered each…. read more