To unearth keyboard treasure and access musical potential, imagine a globe of the earth, or download the Googleearth program on your computer. Find the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere, and the equator. Now locate your city or town by typing your address in the find box and clicking on search. Watch as the view of the earth narrows as the locator flies across the globe to your home town, one location on the earth.

Now visualize the grand staff of the piano. There is a top staff for the high notes, a bottom staff for the low notes, and in between the two staves is some white space where you will find a note with a short line through it - Middle C. This is the equator of Piano Land. Can you find the North Pole of Piano Land? Sure you can. It’s the highest note on the piano keyboard. The South Pole is the lowest note on the piano. There are 8 C’s on a full size, 88-key piano, but only one of these is Middle C. Just as your home town is one location on the globe, each line or space on the Grand Staff is one specific key on the piano. So you see, the Grand Staff is actually a map of the piano keyboard.

To unearth a great source of keyboard treasure, begin visualizing the keyboard while reading notes. Without this connection many students who can read notes fairly well still can’t find them on the piano. That’s why note reading books or notespellers can be ineffective. To overcome this learning gap students need to visualize the keyboard by keeping their eyes on the music, not always looking down at their hands, once they have the hand position. This simple, down-to-earth habit of keeping eyes on the music makes learning scales, chords, memorizing music, music theory, and note reading much easier. A keyboard in the imagination is a powerful tool. Piano students have a world of musical treasure waiting to be discovered - Google it, by keeping your eyes on the music!

To learn the best way to share the gift of music with children visit Amazon.com with this link Piano Adventure Stories for Children My exciting Piano Adventure stores for children ages 5 to 11 feature the loveable characters, Mrs. Treble Beary and her passionate, new piano student, Albeart Littlebud. In these beautifully illustrted, inspirational stories children follow along with Albeart to Mrs. Treble Beary’s piano studio in Musical Acres Forest. Here they learn what piano lessons are all about in a fun way that kids readily understand and appreciate! Piano students laugh and giggle while reading “Little Bear’s Musical Garden” and “Little Bear’s Piano Goals.”

For a wealth of f’ree information and piano music online visit Piano Adventure Bears Music Education Resources Don’t Wait to Share the Gift of Music!

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Have you always wanted to learn to play the piano by ear? Well, now you can! Playing the piano by ear is easy and fun! My students have been learning to play the piano by ear for over 17 years. In fact, one student is 65 years old and is having the time of her life learning songs from her youth! Other students are children as young as 9 years old (although some children begin as early as five years old).

To learn piano by ear, one must first learn about the piano as an instrument. Different from reading notes, the student is required to have some knowledge of the instrument so he/she can learn piano. In my lessons, I follow some easy basic steps to learn piano by ear.

1. First, I teach students the names of the white and black notes on the piano. This involves learning what a 1/2 step and a whole step is so that the student can name the black notes as either a sharp or flat. Sharping (#) a note requires the student to raise a note 1/2 step and flatting (b) a note requires the student to lower the note 1/2 step.

2. After learning the names of the white and black notes, my students then learn the C scale. The C scale begins on middle C and continues “up” playing each white note until you reach the next “C” note. That consists of eight white notes in consecutive order. (CDEFGABC). The scale can also be numbered as 12345671. That means that the letters and numbers should coorelate as:

C D E F G A B C 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1

3. Students then learn how to make the C chord by learning the rule for making a chord. To make the C chord, the students learns to play the numbers 1-3-5 together in order to play the C chord.

4. Steps 2 and 3 are repeated for the scale and chords for F and G.

5. Finally, the student is ready to begin learning how to pick out the melody to a simple song. This is a very important step and is the most exciting step, because the student is learning how to predict the next note when learning a melody.

For more information and to learn MORE about piano by ear, feel free to visit my website at www.thepianobyear.com!

To view a complete biography for Matthew Stephens please visit http://www.thepianobyear.com

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Have you ever wanted to create your own unique piano songs? Just simple pieces that express how you feel? You can if you learn how to improvise first and then learn how to compose. Here’s why.

Improvising allows you to express what you feel without constraint. In essence, it’s like freewriting because the goal here is to free your own unique voice without having to worry about right or wrong, good or bad. It is a skill that students should learn before any other and is foundational for further success at composing. Once you are able to sit down at the piano and can trust your intuition to guide you, you’re ready to compose.

Composition is really just slowed down improvisation. We take the initial inspirational gem we’ve discovered through improv and flush it out using the tools of repetition and contrast. For example, in the lesson “Waiting for Spring,” we learn how to create a simple ABA form in the Key of C.

The key here is that we already know the piece will be an ABA form so how do we proceed? Easily! The way I do it is I write out the first 8-bars and then improvise to see what will come up. Once I’m onto something, I write out the first 2-bars of the melody so I can remember it. Then I use chords from the Key of C Major to finish the first 8-bars; my (A) section. Another 8-bars or so for my (B) section and I’m done! The arrangement of this easy piano song usually works itself out to be play the (A) section twice, (B) section once, back to the (A) section and I’m done. Most of the time, this comes out to about 2-3 minutes of music.

The important thing for creating your own piano songs is that you must be able to move forward and complete sections of music. This is best accomplished when you can improvise freely first!

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/piano_lessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

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