by Tania Gleaves on August 30, 2010
Adult Pianists Have Special Capabilities And Needs
Piano lessons for adults teach at a pace that is more suitable for the grown student. When learning how to play the piano however, you might be tempted to start with piano lessons for children. After all, they should seem simple enough for anyone to understand, right? Before you give in to this temptation, please understand that learning material for children is not an appropriate choice for the adult beginner for several reasons.
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Adult Pianists Learn More And They Learn It Faster
Having matured minds, adults are more than capable of grasping multiple concepts and just don’t need to learn individual skills the way that children do. Research suggests that children commit concepts to memory after having practiced them approximately 32 times. Adults don’t require 32 lessons to understand something, and this is what makes adult piano lessons more pleasing.
Within a very short amount of time, an adult can learn the piano keys and basic notation like the names of notes, the different kinds of rhythm, and simple scales. A child however, could not, and would require months or even years just to learn these simple basics.
Adult Pianists Prefer To Play Adult Music
Another reason why adults should steer clear of children piano lessons is because of the music. The songs that piano lessons for adults teach are much more age appropriate and they really motivate the adult student to learn more. If you can imagine, it would be pretty hard to stay motivated and committed to learning the piano if you were stuck on playing songs like “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” or “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”
Piano music that appeals to adults incorporates multiple concepts with age-appropriate songs. And it’s this combination that can get any serious adult to master the piano sooner than expected.
Walk On By The Children’s Section Of Your Local Music Store
As a beginning, but adult, pianist, you should look for materials that appeal to your age, your taste in music, and your ability to quickly grasp simple concepts. So walk on by the children’s section of your local music store. Although there are a vast number of children piano lessons on the market, you’ll find an equal number available for your age as well.
Adult Tools For Adult Pianists
One advantage of being an adult piano student is that you have the time and the means to access piano lessons on the Internet. Internet piano lessons would be extremely difficult for a child student, but quite easy and maybe even preferable for an adult. In fact, unless an online resource states that it’s for children, you can be sure that its really for you – the adult piano student.
Online, you can learn piano lessons for adults at any time on any day. And very few of us could pull that off as a child!
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by Tania Gleaves on August 20, 2010
Learning to play music with the piano tab is an alternative approach to learning via traditional sheet music. Whereas sheet music indicates pitch, chords, and time with musical symbols, piano tabs indicate the same with chord symbols and note names. The general idea behind this approach is to visually show which finger should hit a piano key. Also known as ” tablature,” the simplicity within this type of notation often leaves much to interpretation — but what makes tablature so appealing is how easy it is to comprehend.
What You See Is What You Get
One of the things that makes tablature so attractive is its design. What you see in tablature literally looks like the instrument that you’re playing — making interpretation a simple matter of matching fingers to the fingers in the notation. There are no notes to decipher nor sharps, flats, or keys to decode. What you see in tablature is what you get!
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No Fancy Word Processor Or Font Needed
Another appealing aspect of tablature is its portability. Anyone can write tablature without the need for a fancy word processor or font. This type of notation is easily expressed with plain ol’ ASCII text and that’s why you’ll find so much of it freely available on the Internet. Just remember that each piece of tablature you find is unique to the instrument it was written for.
A Few Warnings
Piano tablature for example, is for piano music only — just as guitar tablature is for guitar music only. This reason alone is enough to turn some people away from it and prefer sheet music – a platform that can be shared across many instruments instead of just one. But there’s another problem. Tablature in general, doesn’t provide enough information to indicate advanced techniques such as harmony or note duration. It doesn’t accurately portray the true rhythm or timing of a song either.
These limitations don’t render piano tabs useless however since they’re a wonderful introduction into the world of sheet music.
What It Looks Like
If you’re wondering what piano tablature looks like, picture a graphical representation of the keyboard where each key is represented by a dash, “-”. The keys of a chord are represented by their corresponding letters. So the letters F-D-F represent the F, D, and F keys of the D chord while the letters G-D-G represent the letters of the G-Major chord.
The letters RH together represent notes that are played with the right hand, while the letters LH together represent notes played with the left hand. And the “>” symbol represents a note that’s sustained. Natural (white) piano keys are represented by lower case letters, and sharps are represented by uppercase letters. Flats however, aren’t represented by any special character. They’re instead represented by their equivalent sharps. A D flat for example, is the C sharp in piano tabs. Pretty simple, huh?
Different Notes For Different Folks
As you peruse through the large collection of available piano tabs, you’ll come across different styles. Some people for instance prefer to indicate a sharp note with the pound sign (#) instead of with a capital letter. For the most part, you’ll find that they all tend to conform to an identifiable standard readily understood by almost anyone.
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