New York Piano Center

Archive for the ‘piano sheet music’ Category

Playing piano can be a wonderful experience. If you want to start playing piano sheet music you need to know a few of the conventions used in western sheet music notation. Let’s make a little journey through the music notation djungle!

First we might notice that the piano as we are used to play have been around for some time. Around 500 years or more. Playing keyboards is in other words a rather old art. This means that the conventions as to how to play keyboard instruments and how to notate the music have had some time to develop.

As you might know a piano has 88 keys. This means a full sized piano but you will find keyboards with a considerably less amount of keys. however, the order of the white and black keys are the same.

How can you learn to play piano?

Well, as you might know little children don’t have too much problem with this question. The just hammer on!

At least one thing you can learn from children. To learn to play you have to play. That is an important beginning!

Do you need sheet music in order to start playing the piano? Well, the before mentioned children have already answered the question with a definite no!

Some accomplished pianists have never used sheet music at all and play entirely by ear or by reading chords in songs. This type of pianists usually learn songs by listening to recordings or just by playing from memory. It works fine and many very fine musicians and pianist have used this approach.

Other pianist have always played sheet music and would feel very uneasy confronted with a keyboard without their music sheets. Maybe they have learned pieces by heart and have a large repertoire of piano solos but they have never improvised or played by ear. Even these pianists can create great music.

I would suggest that you use the best parts of both these approaches as you learn to play piano. Take time to develop your ear and improvise but also to make a conscious effort to learn to play piano sheet music.

One way to learn to read sheet music with a concentrated effort is to read a piano solo and trying to understand all signs and symbols in the music.

Try to tap the rhythm and as you become more skilled you can try to sing or hear the music in your head. This is a very effective way to really get into learning sheet music.

Here are some symbols you will find as you read a piece of piano sheet music:

You will find vertical lines in the music that divides the notes in groups. These lines are called barlines and the distance between two of these barlines are called a measure.

Sometimes you will find two dots at the end of a section and also a double bar. The two dots are called a repeat sign indicating that you should play the section twice.

The elaborated G is called the G clef and indicates the position of the note G in the treble note staff. It is also called the treble clef.

The left hand notes are mainly situated in the bass clef or the F clef because the two dots indicates the note F.

It will be a great help for you to study the sheet music before you play a piece of music, rehearsing the names of the notes and preparing yourself for a pleasant encounter with the music behind the dots.

Printable sheet music has come a long way from being written on parchments to Internet software that is easily accessible to perform many functions. The aim of this article is to give a brief introduction and history of its evolution.

Most people who are not in the music industry might not know what printable sheet music is. To explain it in layman terms, it is like a piece of literary writing whereby the writer gives distinct, nitty-gritty details of how the work was done – Like a literary masterpiece,written in common accepted language.But the writer weaves the so called common language in a way that it becomes a gem, a uniqueness. Let us say now the writer gives the blueprint of his composition for anyone willing to do the exact same or variation to proceed with or without condition.In this case, anybody that can read and is lettered in the genre will be able to reproduce the masterpiece.

The only difference is that the former(literary) is mostly written, while the latter (music) is either audio,visual, or the two combined (audio-visual). That is why in music,because of the uniqueness of each composition or masterpiece,anybody that wants to reproduce this same piece live must look at the printable sheet music or notation.

In other words,it  is musical notation written with hand or printed.Nowadays,however,musicians can reproduce any piece of music by simply hearing it (audio), and maybe watching it simultaneously and repeatedly. Hence to distinguish between the two ”printable sheet”  music” is used, printable to show that it could be printed just like a book,pamphlet,booklet,hand-out.

Just as an illiterate can’t read a piece of writing, so also cannot a person who is unlettered in reading music notation be able to make sense of it.

It is however interesting to know that composing music does not necessarily require sheet music literacy. Musicians like John Stanley in the 18Th century and composer and lyricist Lionel Bart are good examples. Most Nigerian,especially Yoruba musicians also fall into this category. This latter musicians don´t even study music, save some local instruments before breaking into limelight.

What is the use of printable sheet music then if composers and musicians can do without it? Instrumentalists and lyricists of classical tradition need the scores or sheet music to reproduce the exact music or its variations. Also the notes have made it possible the preservation of  a tradition copied and inherited by this present generation.If not for this, most of the earlier music would have been lost.

Brief Historical Background

We owe the the beginning of printable sheet music to the scribes of the Medieval European monasteries. They wrote music on parchments. These have become valuable collectibles that run into thousands of dollars.With the invention of printing press, Johann Gutenberg lead in the development of printing sheet music.

By 1800,it has become a booming industry in Europe and America as firms started printing both popular and serious music. We should remember that this was also the period of Industrial Revolution and the coming of the Middle Class.This class in particular also had time for leisure and income to purchase musical instruments for their homes(mainly pianos). They could also hire teachers to teach them and their children.

Printing the sheet music was done with the writer,(in this case the musician or the person having the rights to the music) entering into legal binding with the firm. This legality involves, what rights an individual has on the printed sheet music and the royalty to be paid.The American music of today- be it jazz, blues, country, spiritual owes its growth and preservation to both the virtuoso composers and the publishers of sheet music.

Influx of people from Germany during world War 1 because of Hitler´s torture and annihilation crusade forced many notable composers out of Germany.Some of them were Bela Bartok, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky among others. This brought a boom to music in Europe.

The popularity became more widely spread with the invention of phonograph and the radio,further accelerated by Television after World War II. This not only made easy accessibility possible, but as well cascaded printable sheet music price.

The information age has made printable sheet music available everywhere. Even though most don´t care since they can download any music free from the net. Yet in the same Internet there are affiliate programs specifically for printable sheet music. No need knowing the composer of a music before the sheet is made available.There are computer tools that reproduce the sheet music for you just by playing the tunes.

Especially notable are sites for music students, helping them learn music through the readily available sheet music of any kinds and sorts. Playing instruments are also included in the nutty-gritty of the computerized sheet music- How the instruments are held,tuned,pressed, etc. For anybody willing the world of music indeed is an oyster of opportunity.

Without face to face tutorials, people are now learning music through ingenious inventions of some tools. Why not take a look?

In this piano lesson you will learn to play Mary Had A Little Lamb without the use of sheet music. We will be a little bit professional and use both hands!

As you probably know Mary Had A Little Lamb is a popular nursery rhyme. Here is the first verse:

Mary had a little lamb little lamb, little lamb Mary had a little lamb its fleece was white as snow

In When testing his invention of the phonograph in 1877 Thomas Edison used this poem and it became the first audio recording to be successfully made and played back.

We will not use sheet music in this piano lesson. Instead we will use a form of piano tablature or shorter piano tab.

Tablature is a form of musical notation, often with numbers and letters, which tells the player where to place his fingers on a particular instrument rather than which pitches to play.

First you’ll have to locate the note C on the piano. On a piano C is the first white key that is to the left of two black keys.

The C we are interested in most is the C on the middle of the piano. This C is called middle C because on the piano keyboard it is right in the middle, near the keyhole.

In our piano tab we will give this C note a number: 1

The white key to the right of C we call 2 and so on. Let’s play some notes:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

When you have played these seven notes you will come to the next C on the piano.

Let’s try to play a bit of Mary Had A Little Lamb:

Mary had a little lamb

3 2 1 2 3 3 3

You can use the index finger on your right hand to play this melody or be a little bit more professional and use your thumb for all number 1, your index finger for number 2 and your middle finger for number 3.

Let’s continue this piano lesson with the next line:

little lamb, little lamb

2 2 2 3 5 5

Use the little finger for number 5 if you want. The next part is the same as the first piano tab:

Mary had a little lamb

3 2 1 2 3 3 3

Now we are about to finish this song:

its fleece was white as snow

3 2 2 3 2 1

How can you use your left hand? Well, you can make this piece a little bit more difficult and also more rewarding to play by using your left hand for bass notes.

The notes from C to the next C is called an octave. You also have these notes to the left of the middle C. We can call these notes the left octave.

If you use the notes 1-7 in the left octave to play bass notes with your left hand we can notate this in the following way:

3/1 2 1 2 3/1 3 3

3/1 means that as you play the first 3 you also play number 1 in the left octave with your left hand at the same time.

The rest of Mary Had A Little Lamb with bass notes included looks like this:

2/5 2 2 3/1 5 5

3/1 2 1 2 3/1 3 3

3 2/5 2 3 2 1/1

I suggest that you play you left hand 1 with your little finger and number 5 with your thumb. This is the whole song and your piano lesson is over!

The best way to practice is probably to take one line at a time and learn it by heart. When you know the song by heart you can play it anytime and anywhere!