Why would a singer learn piano?

Why would a singer spend hours learning piano?

I’m not a singer but I had singers come to me to improve their piano skills. One of them, Lise, started practicing her jazz chords and improvisation skills with the intent of accompanying herself on the piano and eventually getting music gigs. Well one day, she announces to me that she got a contract on a cruise ship to sing and play! I think it was a 3-month contract. Not bad!

I would give her special assignments for her to practice but the basics stay the same.

There’s a few exercises a singer can do while practicing piano:

• Sing the improvisation patterns as you practice them on the piano. This point could be hard at first, but if started really, really step-by-step, the skill improves quickly.
• Sing the scales while you do them. I wouldn’t recommend a singer to always practice her/his scales only with the piano. A think a singer should mostly practice scales ‘a capella’ since her voice is her instrument but could spend some time doing it with the piano.
• Sing the chord progression while practicing II-V-I, for example. (note: II-V-I is just a sequence of 3 different chords)

The goal of music is communication and the combination of both singing and piano solo is a beautiful way of communicating. But of course each singer’s goals are different. For a singer who wants to improve her/his chance to get different kinds of gigs, I would totally recommend spending one intense year practicing piano.

Patrick
lapianolessons.com

piano lessons · singer

How do you choose your music keyboard?

That is a question that is consistently asked by students wanting to upgrade from they current keyboard or by people inquiring for piano lessons.

Two main things to consider:

• piano and musical goals
• budget

Piano Goals

Big question. And if you don’t have an answer to that one yet, fine. You can work on your piano goals as you progress. But for now, let’s say, you need a keyboard and you know that you want to play just for fun and you don’t care if you have loads of sounds and you don’t care if you can do all these fancy electronic tricks. Well that means you probably don’t need a synthesizer (a musical instrument that can make all sorts of sounds and can do other tricks to0). You probably just need a simple keyboard with only a few sounds. If you buy a synthesizer, you might never even touch all of these buttons… it might be cool to show your friends though or just to play around for fun. So if a synthesizer is not for you, concentrate your shopping time on finding the keyboard that has a nice feel, a good touch and most probably one having weighted keys.

So my point is to really look at what you think you’ll be doing with you keyboard in the next 2 years (or something like that).

Budget

Keyboard are quite cheap today. You can buy a Yamaha with weighted keys for under a $1000. A big cheaper quality but pretty good is Casio with weighted keys. Casio really improved their 88-key weighted keyboards and they are selling cheap. You can find some for about $650.

Hopefully this can help you choose the right music keyboard for your piano goals. If you have any questions, you can always contact me at info@lapianolessons.com

music keyboard · piano practice