So, you’ve just decided that you wanted to play piano and you live in Los Angeles. You have no idea “how many hours should I practice” or “what does a piano practice consists of?”

The first thing I usually say is this: remember when you made the decision to play piano. Ok. Now, what didn’t you envision at that time.

If you decided that you want to play pop songs on the piano for fun without becoming a virtuoso, then that demonstrates quite a big gap in terms of hours of practice.

Is there a minimum commitment for taking piano lessons? Not really. It’s better if you show up to the piano lesson rehersed that way the piano teacher can show the next steps.

There’s a lot of doingness in piano. And there’s a lot of mental activity.

So depending on your purpose and the amount of time you’re willing to invest, you’ll have a good idea of how much energy you’ll be investing.

So let’s say you want to play piano for fun no stress and you are will to practice piano about 3-4 times a week for about 25 minutes each time.

I would say that’s a pretty good investment and will get you somewhere.

There’s a lot of distractions in Los Angeles… movies, beach, etc… so you have to have some kind of discipline to do that.

Now you might say “yes, but I have zero discipline” so piano is not for me.

Negative. Just like building your piano abilities, you can build your discipline “muscle.”

So, I live in Los Angeles and give piano lessons. And if you have any questions, please email me at info@lapianolessons.com. (Los Angeles Piano Lessons)

Piano practice can be real fun with a good goal and playing piano is totally achievable…. probably faster than you would have thought you could!

Happy New Year and hope to see you playing piano in 2010.

A usual, typical answer sounds something like this… “all kids are different… it really depends, you know,” or “did she/he decide to take the lessons or you (the parents) decided?”…..

Well, though these “typical” answers are kind of borderline boring they are nevertheless somewhat genuine.

How do you know if kid will like piano if he doesn’t try it (that would be one way of looking at it).

But really, it only takes a few lessons most of the times to know if the person (here the child or kid) is into it. And again, the liking may grow.

I treat the kids as adults during my lessons. I don’t use the same vocabulary of course, I don’t do the same kind of jokes, etc. But don’t deep, I speak with them as adults.

These little people are real people in small bodies still…. If you start faking something, they usually know. If you treat them like a puppet, no way. The are real people.

There’s an issue that comes up in the piano lesson and I will seriously answer that child’s question, I will not ignore it.

But coming to “is my kid too young for piano lessons” question, it’s almost the same question as an adult calling me and asking “am I too old for piano lessons?” Really.

There’s a lot of factors. We know the story of Mozart and other musicians. Some other artists started later. I guess my point is that if the piano lessons didn’t work out for the first time, there’s always another chance later.

I would say the key, key factor is no forcing. You start putting some force into this and you may cut the child’s liking of music. Some pressure is fine, even us adults need pressure sometimes to get things done. But a hard, constant force is really not the best. I usually talk to the parents themselves  if I see they are applying the force and the kid is totally disinterested. And then, tell them that I may not honestly be able to continue teaching their kid in those conditions.

Keep it simple, even for this.

Don’t make it complex.

So I teach in Los Angeles at this time and if you have any questions you may email me. Thanks.

info@lapianolessons.com

I regularly go back to the basic of probably any art and it comes down to communication. I personally choose the piano as my main instrument but this datum is for sure applicable to any musical instrument.

Improvisation can be achieved by anyone learning piano.

Some basic concepts about piano improvisation

So here’s a few concepts I have about improvisation:

• Improvisation is building vocabulary. Just like when we start talking at a young age. We have a few words and we can communicate and play with them.
• At the beginning you may have to practice over and over improvisation patterns. In jazz, there’s a tone of books you can buy with all sorts of patterns.
• One key thing is take it step-by-step. For example, you may have to practice the first 5 patterns for a month or more or less (it actually doesn’t matter how long it takes) before you start feeling comfortable with these patterns.
• Then you may start tackling the next 5 patterns.
• While still practicing the first 5. The first 5 patterns need to stay part of your vocabulary.
• And you move on that way, step-by-step.
• Now what do you do with these patterns. At this point they may not mean much.
• I usually have my students start the improvisation process with blues. Blues is simple and flexible (gives much space to play in).
• We start introducing the patterns into a simple blues.
• And we do this for a while.
• And then, one day, the student starts to move away from these patterns and adds her/his own notes…. and that’s where improvisation starts to bloom.

This sequence of actions my not be applicable for everyone. Also, the whole improvisation process depends on may factors: general knowledge of music, purpose, practice time, etc…

So, the above points are just a few ideas I have about improvisation. I will be talking about it more in the future.

Los Angeles piano lessons

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

“Should I be learning using online piano lessons or going with a real teacher” is a question that’s probably asked by some students.

Study is practice, observation, comparing, seeing what works, etc… So, someone could learn anywhere.

Learning piano online could have the desired effect for a particular student. Today, there are so many tutorial videos and different tips in different formats (pictures, audio, etc.) that someone can certainly get something out of all this.

As a piano teacher, I can see the downside of traditional piano lessons is that it cost money… That’s probably the first major obstacle, isn’t? Well, look at your goals.

My recommendation is that a student could take lessons using online tips and seeing a real piano teacher once a month or something like that, if money was really an issue. For a dedicated student who intends to make money playing music (professional or semi-professional), I would definitely recommend traditional piano lessons.

And totally new student who has never touched a piano before should have piano lessons the traditional way for a few months while keeping his/her eyes open for online tips. But for sure, a good teacher can be a positive vibe, show you “live” what you are doing that is wrong, etc…

So we all have our own ways and a piano student has a relatively good idea of his goals. Music is the art of sounds and if a student can produce good, cool sounds that he or others like, then it worked.

That’s a big subject so we’ll leave it like this for today.
lapianolessons.com

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

What is walking bass on the piano?

It’s doing a musical line (series of notes) with the left hand and doing a little like a double bass would do in a jazz group. You’re doing the bass line with the left hand. A bass line is a musical series of notes play with lower sounds.

In a piano lesson, I start very simple with this kind of stuff.

First I have the students do only the left hand and play nothing with the right hand. At this point, we go through a series of exercises that gradually brings the student to the next comfortable level. I have the student do it with me in the piano lesson for about 10 minutes! Yes, 10 minutes at least.

Then, once the student has achieved a good level of just playing with the left hand doing the walking bass, we then had the basic chords on the right hand. Again we go through a whole series of exercises to get the student to really see clearly what she/he is doing with both hands.

The step continue until the student can improvise with both hands! Now that is some major fun. Truly most enjoyable!

So deciding to master walking bass (again, a series of notes played with the left that usually accompanies the right hand) can really bring your playing to a whole new level.

By the way, I don’t teach this to the classical students. This is for those who are taking the jazz piano lesson program. And yes, someone can definitely do both, classic and jazz.

Patrick
Los Angeles
lapianolessons.com

How to organize your piano practice?

How do you organize your piano practice? And how do you fit it in your schedule?

For a steady progress, a piano student should practice about 3-4 times a week. Each practice should be at least 15 minutes. This is somewhat of a minimum as it all depends on what are the purposes and intentions of the person practicing. Someone who wants to play Chopin’s etudes, might have a longer runway practicing only 15 minutes 4 times a week.

Set your goals. “I want to play this song,” may be a goal. Your goals may expand into something like “I really want to play all the Beatles songs!” Well, that’s another level and practice time should probably be changed accordingly.

Now the organize part of the piano practice is something I will be covering in many post. The main thing I want to cover here is that some students sit down and actually loose most of their time playing around with no precise goal in mind.

1. Prepare your practice plan for that particular day
2. Start you practice!
3. Do each step of the practice plan
4. End your practice!
5. Then, if you still have time you can play around, and try this and that and other things not part of the practice plan

The reason I go this route is that some students have a hard time doing some of the things that might help them like……. SCALES!

Well, I want don’t to paint the picture that your practice is like the army boot camp. Practicing and improving your skills is very rewarding and that alone is much fun. (My opinion: this is much better than watching 2 hours of TV every day)

Ok enough for today. Let me know if you have any questions.

Patrick
lapianolessons.com

There is a whole scale of music difficulty. Some music is extremely complex and some, easy enough to start understanding what you learned in ear training.

A good example of this is listening to blues. I recommend to my student to listen to a selection of easy blues song. As the student listen to them, he/she can start to hear what the theory sounds in real life. There are some very simple blues. And as you listen to these blues concurrently to doing the ear training exercises, you start to simply hear (understand) what these are all about.

This is good for any style of music, not just the improvisation piano students.

I’ll talk more about this later but wanted to give a quick mention of this.

Patrick
lapianolessons.com

That is the dominant. It is the strongest note of the scale… after of course the first note of the scale.

Example:

In the scale of C, C is the first note of the scale. The dominant is the 5th note in the scale of  C.

The second note in the scale of C is D.

The third note in the scale of C is E.

The fourth note in the scale of C is F.

The fifth note in the scale of C is G.

And this fifth note of the scale is also called dominant.

That’s basically how I explain the dominant at the beginning in a piano lesson. Not getting too complex.

Later we can give more explanation about it but at the beginning, don’t bother.

So the fifth note of a scale is the dominant.

Assignment: know very well the fifth note of all the scales you already know.

Musically,
Patrick
lapianolessons.com