You can play and can memorize a few songs but sometimes you get this feeling that you may
not have the foundations or the techniques right. And you're afraid of progressing too
far and having all this knowledge gaps later to deal with. Thank you to Grigoriskokoris1968
for asking this question but it's basically on what are some of the general expectations
for piano skills in the first few years. And we're not talking about pieces or songs but
more like general skills such as trills. Or arpeggios or scales, and play hands together,
and how fast that kind of thing. Today we're going to answer this question. But it's not my
intention today to teach you step-by-step how to do these things, but rather to give you a bit of
a checklist to tick things off from. If you want more in-depth tutorials on how to do these things,
you can let us know in the comments. Or maybe do your own research first year in your first
year of piano playing. It's all about getting your hands dirty and playing some simple songs.
[Music]
You're learning how to coordinate your hands. It's fun. It's engaging. It's also
really good for your brain health. Here are some of my expectations by the first year of
piano playing. One of the biggest mistakes I see of elementary beginners is the lack
of inability to play Legato, the lack of ability to play smoothly. For example,
in the little piece I played before. They might play something like this...
Rather than...
So as a goal in your first year, I want you to really focus on this Legato and smooth playing.
And that's the idea of striking a note, and when you're striking the next note. You're
striking the next one before the first one comes up. So it looks something like this...
Rather than...
The correct sound is [Music]. And the incorrect sound is... The first one
is a lot harder to do. it requires more coordination. But this is going to be a
very key and fundamental skill to playing more complex pieces in the future. [Music]
Or...
These are all beautiful pieces that require a Legato technique. So please try to focus
on this. Focus on joining everything. Now I know not all pieces require the Legato
technique. Some pieces might be more of a short and staccato kind of piece.
But still, whenever there is a piece that requires that kind of smooth playing, really try to focus
on it and try to join everything. The Legato sound is the mark of a, of a pro sound rather
than an amateur sound. So give extra time to work on this. Next, you should be working on SCALES. A
good guide is to, let's say, learn one per week. If you just look at the Circle of Fifths and you
go around the circle, learn one per week. So let's say, you can start with C major. [Music]
Learning scales, in my opinion, tackles a couple of things. Firstly,
it's a pretty good technical warm-up. So before you go and play your songs,
it's really good to practice the left hand and the right hand, and also together. Get that
coordination going before you play your songs. It works on finger independence.
Work on some finger strength, dexterity, all that kind of thing. So it's a really
good technical exercise. And another bonus that I'm not a lot of people think about is
that it also exposes you to learning music theory. When you're working on your scales,
so let's say we learn C major first. And then you move on to G major,
and then D major. And you add the sharps in. So C major has no sharps, no flats.
G major, the next one has one sharp so...
And the next one D major in the circle, has now two sharps.
By learning scales you're exposing yourself to music theory. You're learning the science behind
why music sound the way they do. In your first year of playing, having some exposure to music
theory is going to be really, really helpful. It's pretty common for me to work with online
students. And for these students to come in in their kind of, fourth or fifth year of practicing,
they can play their pieces pretty well. But when I ask them to start at certain random points or when
I ask them to to say "Oh can you please play that D minor part"? They go "What do you mean"? It's
like they're able to physically churn up the piece, but they don't really understand what
what they're doing. They give me a feeling of, it's like someone let's say reciting a speech
in another language that they don't know. And they can recite that speech really well but they
don't really know what they're saying. To not have this problem in the future, it's really important
to learn a little bit of music theory. So, start with scales. Learn some key signatures and build
a little bit at a time every day. Next thing I think you should work on in the first year are
PIANO CHORDS. So just for easy sake, let's start with C major. What we're gonna do is C - E - G.
So these are individual NOTES but when you put them together they're called either a CHORD or
a TRIAD. It's very nice sound C - E - G. This is called the root position of the chord. It's
the most basic form of it. So the preferred fingerings I would say are 1-3-5 for right
hand. And there are now multiple ways to play that. So if you just put the C on top here...
See this also is kind of like the same sound but we're just kind of rearranging the notes
now. So now instead of CAG it's EGC. And the preferred fingering I have for this is 1-2-5.
And let's now yet go to another one. This is now called the Second Inversion. Okay this is now G,
C and E, still the same notes but rearranged differently.
Second inversion - the fingerings for this are 1-3-5 for right hand.
So you can try to play all these different types together. Be really good to know in
your first year what these are. So the chords, the inversions,
this is the root chord. This is the first inversion. This is the second inversion.
And the
next one up is going back to the root position C-E-G, the left hand fingerings are one three
five Roots one three five for the first inversion and one two five for second inversion here are
some quick exercises to work on the chords and the hand shapes I call this the block exercise foreign
[Music] another exercise you can do is to break up
the chord so this is called the broken exercise [Music]
and now going down [Music] I'm playing them a little bit faster today but please go at a
speed that you can control slow and controlled is always better than fast and messy let's talk
about some techniques in your second year of playing in the second year of playing piano I
like to think about this year as expanding your range so instead of playing the notes that are
directly in front of you maybe you might start to expand a little bit out into the outer region
density right and left one technique to work on in your second year are arpeggios so for example
let's say in C major c e g now instead of doing one three five for the right hand let's do one
two three but we're going to do more than one octaves for example like this foreign
[Music]
looks like this
start to do arpeggios for C major for different different keys and even play them together the
next technique to work on in New Year number two is I think to start using the sustain pedal
so the sustain pedal helps us to sustain The Sounds let's play this
piece without the stain pedal it sounds something like this
and now with the pedal oh
much better much more Grand it's smoother it's morality it's more romantic so learning how to
use the pedal is going to be a really good skill to do in your second year lots of students tell me
that learning how to use a pedal is a huge brain effort it's like a third limb not only do you have
to use already two Limbs and doing different things with the two limbs you now need a third
one but the good news about learning how to pedal is once you learn it once the technique of using
a pedal is completely the same for all pieces so learn it once apply it to the songs and knee pedal
it's going to be really really beautiful and that exact skill is transferable to all pieces [Music]
thank you next technique to learn are octaves
I was just playing there the c major octaves
you can do it on other scales too you can do it let's say on G major
but I think it's a good idea in your second year
to start to spread your fingers and learn how to do this action
it looks something like this you want to rotate your wrist very slightly up and down kind of like
knocking on something knocking on a door rather than sort of moving your whole arm
like that you can create your own exercises you can do scales you can do many arpeggios
you might even do maybe let's say chromatic scales [Music] this is where you move up and
down the piano and you play all notes white and black if you can I suggest trying to use
your finger number four for the black notes if you can't using five is fine as well let's
bring our attention back to scales for a moment in your second year of playing obviously you're
a little bit more comfortable with going up and down the piano [Music]
so what you can try to do is aim for a higher speed but of course you want to do
it within control if you feel like you're ever playing your scale and you feel like you can't
really mindfully think about each note as you're striking it it's probably currently a little bit
too fast remember that in piano playing every single Strike should be a mindful experience
this is the only way to have fast but clean technique
you should also start to expand outside the single octave so instead of playing it [Music] instead of
playing one you should try to do two or perhaps four if we just go back to C major the fingerings
are one two three one two three four and instead of ending with your pinky you're basically just
kind of thumb tuck again down like this and do one two three one two three four again four however
many octaves you want three one two three four one two three one two three four one two three one two
three four and whenever you want to end you just go with Pinky and then come down the same way that
you went up next concept I want to bring us to is regarding finger independence so in this year you
really want to start to make sure that your each of your finger Has the strength to strike notes
without relying too much on the other fingers I posted recently a simple finger of Independence
exercise I want to share with you today it's where you basically go to any 5K group you press all of
them down at the same time so let's say g a b c d press them all done at the same time and you're
gonna whilst pressing the other four fingers play one of the notes like this and go next one
keeping everything else down
it's not easy especially number four
so practice that with your right and your left hand and you're going to really build
some good Mobility good flexibility and good strength for each finger moving now into our
third year of piano playing the first technique I want to introduce us to are trills [Music]
foreign
in your third year of playing now that you have some finger independence you
have some control it's time to do some harder things such as trills
so for example if we just drill on the F sharp and the G sharp
the proper technique to doing this is to keep all the finger relaxed so let's say we're trilling on
two and three one four and five should be very relaxed and just doing a very light flowing
Movement Like This [Music] if you want an exercise to help control it a little better hold down one
four and five on other notes for example hold down these ones and then try to Trill like this [Music]
it's very very difficult but it'll help to build that independence of these two fingers
if your fingers are kind of flying up I see a lot of beginners tend to
have their kind of Pinky and their fourth finger fly up they do something like this
this is not very good control at the moment so I suggest you to do the exercise which is to hold
down one four and five and to then Trill with irrelevant fingers like that another technique
I want you to work on in your third year are arpeggios with sevenths okay so instead of our
instead of that let's add a seventh note to it so we're going to do some
let's say a dominant seventh okay so instead of c e g we want to do
c e g and a B flat as well so it looks something like this [Music]
left hand looks something like this
so again coming back to this idea of not too fast slow and controlled only when it's controlled do
you go faster in your third year you'll probably want to experiment more with complex rhythms
in your failure now that you've built some finger independence you've built
some control but it's time to really push your sense of Rhythm so work on
pieces that have more complex rhythms such as syncopation or polyrhythms
syncopation basically means to have your hands play on
Beats that are offbeat so this is not syncopation
but this next one is syncopation
let's now go back to scales for a second and in Scales instead of doing just our
usual way let's also now try to do some thirds or some six so let's say with B major [Music]
it's together like this
you can try to play the right hand let's say starting on B but the
left hand instead of starting on B you can start on the D sharp this is sixth
nice huh
[Applause] or if you flip it around so left hand starting on the root
note but the right hand is starting on the third note so let's say left hand on
B and the right hand on the D sharp which is the third above [Applause]
and do this for all the scales you know [Applause] [Music]
as a third year piano player you want to challenge yourself with harder and
harder pieces as a general rule of thumb play pieces with more notes in them that
sounds a bit simplistic but at least on face value just look at a piece if it has a lot of
notes in it it probably means it takes a bit of work to wrap your head around challenge
yourself with pieces that contain more notes in them we've come to the end of some of these
starting guidelines for piano foundations and technical skills you need to work on which
of these techniques do you struggle with the most let us know in the comments below let's
share what's difficult and what's easy for us please share and let's help each other improve
if you have other piano questions please also comment them down below because ninety percent
of our content comes from your questions catch you in the next tutorial [Music]
thank you