One of the great mistakes of piano beginners is they play lots and lots of pieces but they
don't give enough attention to piano techniques. Hence, it limits their improvement and they're
not able to progress further in piano. In this video, I want to share with you 7 different
piano techniques. You can use it as a checklist to see which ones you've mastered pretty well
and which ones you think you can improve on. Not only am I going to explain them,
I'm actually going to play some musical examples from pieces to show you how they're practically
useful. Technique Number 1 is "PEDALLING". There are many pieces in piano that will benefit
hugely from pedaling. One example of such a piece without the pedal sounds like this...
With a pedal it sounds like this...
The right pedal on the piano allows you to elongate and sustain
the sounds of the chord which makes it sound louder and more grand. The technique to
using the pedal is basically to press down and change whenever the chord changes in the music.
Just to show you very briefly how the timing of all this works it looks something like this.
So play and as you change the chord, your feet comes up. Change... Change...
Change … Change... Change. Change. Every time your fingers play a new chord. your feet should
come up at the same time and immediately press back down. So, it looks like this...
Technique number 2 is "PIANO CHORDS'. Some may argue that all music is founded on chords. So I
think it's really important for beginners to go and learn and understand what chords do.
Without getting too deep into this, I think beginners need to know what a major chord is,
what a minor chord is.
And then, from there you can move on to learning chord progressions which basically
means a series of repeating chords. For example, this is C major.
This is A minor. This is F major and this is G major.
You start to create some pretty decent music. So take time to really study chords and what
their purpose in music is. Technique number 3 is "ARPEGGIOS" or broken chords. This third
piano technique is pretty much the same thing as technique number 2 but this time it's broken up.
So instead of playing. you would play something like this. That's called an 'arpeggio'. If I were
to string several rounds of that together it would sound like this for example C - E - G - C - E - G.
I just did there 3 octaves of the C major arpeggios. You should,
of course, practice it with also your left hand.
Or even hands together. I'll do 4 octaves for you.
And, of course, you also want to learn other arpeggios as well.
Not just C major but eventually every possible combination of every major and every minor.
So on and so forth. Composers usually use arpeggios for
a virtuosic effect. You may be familiar with this piece.
It's a piece that sounds pretty impressive. After some practice,
which is what I need to do, but if you look at the right hand part. Instead of thinking 'Wow! That's
a bunch of so many random notes!" What I want to help you to do is to see that it's actually
just a bunch of very simple arpeggios. So, we have basically 3 shapes in there. That was the first
shape: G sharp, C sharp, E and G sharp. Okay, number 1 shape, number 2 was this one. Shape
number 3 was this one and it just repeats again and again. Okay number one, number two, number...
When you take time to learn and understand arpeggios, you can do some very virtuosic
patterns that actually are just repeating notes. When you can play arpeggios really fluently,
it shows that you have very good technique. Technique number 4 is
an interesting one. It's not something you're really doing on the piano per se. Tech number
4is "PRACTISING WITH A METRONOME". One of the common mistakes I see all the time
beginners make is not following in time. For example, doing something like this...
As you can hear from that playing there, it wasn't really following a steady sense of pulse.
There are a couple ways you can mitigate this. Number 1 is simply just to record yourself
with your smartphone. Click record and then listen to that recording. And compare it to
the actual recording and see if there are any unintended long or short breaks in your
music. Another way to mitigate this is, as in our checklist technique number 4
is to practice with a metronome. For the past few months, I've been practicing not with my
traditional metronome anymore but I've been using this little toy on my wrist.
I click a beat and it basically gives me a very strong vibration on my wrist.
Just always helps me to check if I'm staying in beat. Check out the link in the description
for a discount code of 20%. Technique Number 5 is "OCTAVES". Octaves are potentially a pretty
tension-inducing technique especially for smaller hands. So make sure you're practicing them with a
relaxed wrist and a relaxed arm. To start, you can just play the very basic C major scale.
Octaves are found in all kinds of music. One example is...
That was Turkish March by Mozart. Technique Number 6
are your "MAJOR and your MINOR SCALES". Let's do some easy ones. A major scale sounds like this...
And a minor scale sounds like this. There are a few types but let's do
the most famous one which is a Harmonic Minor.
Let's just go back to Major Scales for a second.
As piano players, eventually we actually want to learn the scales for all the possible keys.
So in piano, there are 12 keys. Right, 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 -12.
And it just repeats after that. 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5... because it goes back to C.
So eventually over time, this might take a few months or maybe even a few years. You
want to be able to play at least all the majors, hopefully all the minors as well. of starting on
every different key so for I've already showed you the C major, a D major sounds like this...
As you could see there, D major actually had 2 black notes in it. If I played the
D major scale but I didn't play the black keys it wouldn't sound correct.
See? That sounds wrong but if instead of the white,
I play the black next to it. It sounds correct.
Let's do another one on E major.
That one has even more sharps.
It has a total of 4 black notes. As a beginner, you want to get familiar with how to play major
scales. starting at least from all the white notes. Knowing and playing major, minor scales
are good not just for technique but also your theoretical knowledge as well. For example,
if I had to learn a piece in E major I wouldn't have too much problem learning the piece. I would
learn it pretty quickly simply because I practice E major scales a lot. And I understand the system
of E major which is to have four sharps in it - F sharp, C sharp, G sharp and D sharp. This is a
pretty deep topic to cover you know in just this little short video but make sure you're taking
time to study and knowing what the notes are in the different major and the minor scales. Last,
but not least, Technique Number 7 are "CHROMATIC SCALES". A chromatic scale sounds like this...
It basically means in whichever direction you're going to play all the possible notes on the piano.
That was one octave of the C chromatic. I suggest you to
learn how to play with your right hand, how to play with your left hand.
And also eventually to learn how to play them together.
A really good exercise and technique for you to have. So there you go that was a
checklist of 7 different piano techniques. Let me know in the comments which ones
you do pretty well with and which ones you have a little bit more time with. Happy practicing!
I'm gonna go teach Milo some piano now. I'll see you in the next video. bye! bye! bye!