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... even if you're a complete beginner
Conservatory-quality online piano lessons from the City of Music, Vienna, Austria
Creating a Healthy Environment for Your Piano
If you have an acoustic piano you'll want to take the best possible care of it, and the most important factor is the room environment. Once you have your acoustic piano placed properly in your room, away from a heater and direct sunlight, the...
In this article, I’d like to introduce you to a sheet music app by a leading classical sheet music publisher. Henle editions need no introduction for classical musicians. Recognizable everywhere by their dark blue covers, these “Urtext” editions are respected worldwide for the...
Is there such a thing as a “piano hand”? Do your hands need to be a certain size or shape for them to be suitable for playing piano?
Do you need big hands?
Let’s start with the question of whether you need big hands to play the piano. It’s true that there are certain...
The Useful Tips You Need to Know
Learning how to clean a piano is a very important to enhance the durability and the functionality of your instrument. Regular cleaning will not only keep your piano clean and presentable, it will also save you time and money spent to call on a professional for...
For generations – centuries even – pianists have sought the secret to playing with a beautiful tone. Teachers have attributed a beautiful sound to a certain type of hand and shape of the fingers, to touching the key with the “fleshy” part of the finger, to playing with...
Digital sheet music has come a very long way since the awkward initial attempts to turn laptops into contortionists a few daring musicians hoped would miraculously stay on a music stand. For several years, I’ve kept a digital score library on an iPad to supplement the traditional paper...
This Key Signature Chart is designed to help you learn all the key signatures easily. It’s written with increasing sharps and flats.
It’s essential for all musicians to memorize the key signatures. As you study it you’ll quickly learn its patterns and discover that it’s...
Piano technique is the ability to get the right sound at the right time out of the piano. It is the ability to realize music, how we interact with our instrument. It is the ability to say what we want to say, to speak through music. Like our instruments themselves, technique is but a means to an...
The D minor triad, more commonly called the D minor chord, is a minor triad consisting of the notes D, F and A. Here it is on the treble clef staff:
… and on the piano:
Here is the D minor chord on the bass clef staff:
As a minor triad, the D minor chord consists of a minor third...
I’m humbled and overwhelmed to get to share some wonderful news with you. Toastmaster Magazine’s editorial staff unanimously chose me for a major cover story for its monthly print edition in over 140 countries!
For nearly a century, Toastmasters International has been the...
Key signatures are designed to simplify music notation by indicating the key. Without them, composers would be forced to write accidentals (sharps and flats) every time they’re used, which would greatly complicate reading music.
Because each key signature indicates two keys (one major and...
Chord inversions are “spellings” of a chord with a note other than the fundamental in the bass. Let’s take a simple example:
The C major triad consists of the notes C, E and G, in that order:
As long as the C is on the bottom, the chord is in root position. Both the above...
