Piano, how to play a succession of notes using all the fingers

How to play a melody

Imagine sitting at your piano and wanting to play a melody using all of your five fingers.

Can you do that?

Do you know the correct technique that allows you to play, for example, a succession of notes with multiple fingers?

Today we will be approaching this issue, but we will take it through some steps; in fact, before reaching the succession of multiple notes, you’ll learn how to correctly lower a key of the piano with a single finger, which will have to be able to sustain the weight of your arm.

And before that, we will discuss how the various fingers are shown in the musical sheets.

At the end of this lesson you will have learned three very important things;

what is the “fingering” for piano
How to play a single note using the weight of your limbs
how to play a succession of notes using the whole array of five fingers

If you haven’t seen them yet, for a better comprehension of the current lesson I suggest watching the following lessons before undertaking this one:

Piano, give me half an hour and I’ll explain the correct position of the hands
Piano, paying attention at how you sit down to play

Learning material of this lesson

3 videos	18 mins
1. The fingering	3m 30s
2. Playing single notes	5m 53s
3. Playing a succession of notes	8m 04s

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Musical intervals, how to properly name them (first part)

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The musical intervals

Have you ever heard or read terms such as “diminished fifth”, “minor seventh”, “augmented fourth”, and so on?

All these names, apparently obscure and cryptical, each define differenty types of musical intervals.
Today we deal with the way that the various intervals are called to be distinguished one from the other. And we will do this using a logical and clear ‘path‘ that will soon let you learn how to name each interval correctly.

Being able to define an interval with its’ proper name is essential, because it allows you to determine the relation that there is between two or more notes (in this case, relative to pitch).
After all, music is the art that allows us to put different sounds in relation with each other.
You will see that once these concpets are clear to you, you’ll be able to put them to use in various fields.

Among other things you will be able to:

start delving into the extremely vast world of harmony

understand how chords are built, of any type and of every degree of complexity

make the melodies that you are composing better, thanks to a precise use of musical intervals

Let’s start to discuss the musical interval more deeply.

Learning material of this lesson

3 videos	18 mins
1. Melodic intervals and harmonic intervals	3m 14s
2. How to determine the ‘generale name’ of an interval	6m 56s
3. How to find the ‘generale name’ in case of sharps or flats	8m 33s

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Piano, paying attention to how you sit down to play

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How do we sit to play the piano?

This is an often overlooked question, of which we sometimes don’t understand the importance.
Coupled with the correct hand technique, the posture you use when sitting is extremely important to develop a correct technique. In fact, only if you’re sitting down correctly can you use the weight of the arms to your advantage, along with the weight of the wrists and hands so that you can lower the piano keys, without having to perform useless and frankly dangerous muscular movements.
And more than anything, by learning to sit in the correct way, you will avoid developping tensions in your joints and muscles, that could later bother you.

But which are the aspects we have to look into to understand how to sit properly at the piano?

Let’s see them together:

On which part of the stool you should sit
The height of the stool
Distance from the piano
The position of the legs

In the next videos we will accurately examine these aspects and we will study an exercise that will allow you to put into practice what we have learned up to this point, regarding the hand position, while also sitting in the correct way at the piano.

Learning material of this lesson

3 videos	10 mins
1. Where to sit, the height of the stool and the distance from the piano	5m 46s
2. The position of the legs	1m 19s
3. A simple exercise to put in practice what we’ve learnt today	2m 45s

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The major scales: how to remember every note at any time

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The major scales

It’s not an easy task to remember every musical scale of the tonal system by heart.
Sometimes, especially for the scale in tonalities far apart from the C, it’s difficult to remember if a note is either sharp or flat or if it’s natural.
There is a very simple system that lets you remember at any time every note of every scale.
Today we will be discussing major scales.

Interval, whole tone, half tone

This system is based on the concepts of musical interval, whole tone and half tone.
In the next videos I will try to explain these concepts in a simple fashion at the piano, which will empower you to do the following:

Find at any given time every note of every major scale (we will take into consideration minor scales later on in the course) without having to pull out manuals or charts.
Start to move the first steps in the world of harmony and chords, which are both based on the concept of musical interval.
Understand in depth the most important aspects of theory and musical practice.

So let’s start talking of major scales… of course in the next videos.

Learning material of this lesson

6 videos	23 mins
1. 1.What is a musical interval	3m 01s
2. The half tone and how to find it on a piano or guitar	3m 23s
3. The whole tone	3m 05s
4. How to find every note of every major scale	6m 05s
5. Practice 1: the G major scale	4m 21s
6. Practice 2: the E flat major scale	3m 26s

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Piano, I will explain the correct hand position: only in half an hour

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The correct piano technique

Do you want to learn the correct position and setting of the hands to play the piano?
Today we are beginning a series of videolessons during which I will try to help you learn the correct piano technique which will allow you to play songs of various degrees of difficulty.

Let’s develop the correct position of the hands from the beginning

Thanks to the routines and exercises I will show you during the course, you’ll be able to learn to keep your hands on the keyboard but most importantly you will not risk learning and developing an incorrect position which would be difficult to correct later on in your studies.
First off you will see and realize that playing the piano does not mean “pushing” the keys, by exerting a muscular force.
That’s because to lower the keys you will only be using the weight of your arms.
You will see how in the correct piano technique the muscles at work are a very small number.

For the time being, I don’t want to give too many spoilers … you’ll find everything in the videos on this page!

Learning material of this lesson

5 videos	26 mins
Intro	4m 31s
1. Why learn the correct technique on a table	1m 54s
2. The correct hand position	6m 48s
3. The position of the hands from different video shots	3m 56s
4. Two preparatory exercises	8m 08s

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Scale and tonality, the two keys to really understand the chords

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Scale and tonality

To better learn music theory, harmony and chords it’s important to introduce two essential concepts:

scale
tonality

So in the today videolesson I will try to explain the two concepts of scales and tonality that will be the concepts that wil enlighten us and allow us to understand the relationship between the different chords.

Via these two concepts you will see how chords will shine under a new light for you and most importantly you will be able to build all the chords you want easily.

These two concepts will also be the main tools to learn music theory in depth.

Then we will explain other important concepts as tonic, dominant and leading note. These all are some very important degrees of a scale and their knowledge will be fundamental to uderstand the world of Harmony and chords.

In the following videos we approach these concepts.

Learning material of this lesson

4 videos	18 mins
1. The musical scale	2m 39s
2. The tonality	3m 48s
3. The role of notes in different tonalities	4m 58s
4. Chords and tonality	6m 12s

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Reading music, why it’s important to be able to

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Reading music

Many folks I know often ask me, ‘Is it really that important to know how to read music?’
In this piece we will be approaching the problem and we will look for an answer to this question, that will open up new possibilities of how we can define the study of musical reading.
For starters, we have to admit that it’s not that easy to answer the question ‘Is it really important to be able to read music?’ because everyone has different musical requirements: some people are happy with playing everything exclusively by ear without studying, while others, who have started by self-teaching themselves music, have never studied the issue deeply and now feel they have a lack of knowledge in this sense.

... to continue this video lesson

With a Free account you gain immediate access to 15 lessons of piano, theory, harmony, music reading and composition for a total of 36 videos.

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