Tips for learning to play piano
Becoming a fluent performer of a musical instrument requires constant learning and lots of practice. But to encourage you to get started, we’re going to give you some tips for learning to play piano.
Questions about piano techniques
- Study the topics in parts
One of the best techniques to memorize a theme is to go phrase by phrase of the melody and then go assembling these parts. If you try to handle too much information, it will be difficult for you to process it and keep it in your mind and then you won’t even know how it started.
- Start slowly
Practice at a pace where you can perform the song with few mistakes. When you manage to play it without making any mistakes, raise the tempo until you achieve it again and so on until you reach the speed of the original song. For this process, a metronome can be of great help.
- Be constant
It’s better to practice fifteen or twenty minutes every day than to binge for three hours every week. As in other disciplines, it is recommended that study sessions on a topic be separated by some time, and one day is a good measure to apply to your routine.
- Do specific exercises
To gain independence and greater strength in the fingers, particularly in the fingers four and five (ring and little finger), which are attached to the same tendon.
An example of these exercises would be when touching the C scale, to stop touching the key that would correspond to the finger five and to move on to the next one. That is to say, when we do it with the left hand, we will play C with the little finger and with the ring finger we will skip D and press E directly, completing the rest of the scale normally. Downwards we would do the same thing and all this first with one hand and then with the other.
- Don’t forget to warm up and stretch
Before you start, try doing some warm-up exercises such as spinning your wrists or shoulders. Also try to stretch, before and after if possible, particularly the fingers and forearm musculature, pulling them back with the other hand.
This is one of the least applied recommendations for learning to play the piano, but together with the following point, it will help you avoid injuries such as annoying tendinitis.
- Include breaks when you’re practicing
For five minutes every twenty or thirty minutes of rehearsal. This will not only bring health to your hands, but will also make it easier for your memory to remember what you are studying.
Correct posture for playing the piano
The first thing to keep in mind when sitting at the piano is to play relaxed, without tension in your arms and shoulders. In this sense, we will take advantage of gravity in the fall of the arm to press the notes, next to the movement of the fingers, thus avoiding unnecessary overexertion.
How to place the body
- The back should remain straight, but avoiding stiffness.
- Shoulders and arms should be relaxed.
- The elbows should be at an angle of about ninety degrees and somewhat separated from the body.
Position of the hands and feet
With the hands a hole or cavity is left, adopting a posture as if we were going to subtly grasp a round object, like a ball, but without applying tension to the fingers, as Almudena, our piano teacher, explains here.
We will place both feet firmly on the ground, with a certain distance between them.
Learning to play the piano from scratch
Search for easy piano songs
It is advisable to start with a theme that fits your level, preferably a short work and especially that you like: motivation is a great ally to study music with the piano or with any instrument in general.
Learning to play the piano with two hands
This is another of the key issues in this instrument. It is best to start learning with one hand and then with the other, and gradually coordinate them. This can be extended to a student who can already play with both of them and will begin to practice a new work.
Learn piano for children
Our recommendation is that they start at four or five years of age, always interspersing keyboard exercises with fun and entertaining piano and musical language games. The attention span at these ages is not very high, so we will vary the activities from time to time. Also make sure that when you buy the instruments from Amazon to check for discount codes as the prices can be much cheaper and that can save a ton of money.
All these tips for learning to play the piano are equally valid for learning to play the keyboard or the organ, bearing in mind that these usually do not have counterbalanced keys and the touch will be something different.
Do you know any other interesting suggestions? Tell us about them below