Q. I am a high school student and am wondering if learning the piano first would help me learn the violin later.
A. Yeah, I learned piano first and then violin. Learning any musical instrument will teach you principles that carry over.
Piano is a good one because with piano you generally play lots and lots of notes at the same time and learn about chords and the 'big picture', and that helps somewhat when you're playing the violin because usually you only play one or two notes at a time then, but you understand the music more if you know about chords and can sense where it's going.
I was in the public school orchestra program in my town, and so everybody started at the same grade (4th) and continued through high school. I didn't really practice more than anybody else (I didn't practice at all outside of class), but I did learn faster than them because I played the piano too, or at least that's my theory.
But all things considered, somebody who spends 200 hours learning the piano and then 300 hours learning the violin probably isn't going to be much better a violinist than somebody who spends 500 hours just practicing the violin. (those are just random numbers, but you get the principle)
What chords are played the most in gospel music?
Q. The chords on a keyboard or piano. Which ones should I know by heart?
A. To be perfectly honest if you are playing in a church setting and want to play the keyboard or piano, you should be proficient in playing mostly all the chords. In gospel music, chord voicing is a very important part of the genre. Being able to play in all the Major keys would be very beneficial to your development. My hope is that you have a teacher or someone who is willing to show you the essentials of piano playing in gospel music. It really is a great genre to learn, but without knowing chords and chord structures you would have a really hard time playing along with somebody.
I hope this helps!
should I take piano lessons before learning guitar?
Q. I want to be musically inclined and learn how to play guitar. However, I've been told that it's best to take piano lessons first, because if you can play the piano you can play anything. I would be taking the lessons at my college. What is everyone's input on that?
A. You should play the instrument you like the most or you will become bored and quit like 90% of the people who try to learn an instrument. It's not easy and you're going to have to enjoy your progress and have a real desire to go on. You should also get the best quality instrument you can possibly afford. If it doesn't sound good or is a pain to play... you'll quit. This is the truest and most important thing to consider IMHO.
Learning to sight-read music can help you with any instrument and give you a good background. But guitar requires a completely different strength, dexterity and technique to be built up over time. Finding notes and chords on a guitar is completely different than finding them on a piano. Learning to convert written music to keys on a piano by habit can actually get in the way if you try to change instruments.
Also... If you end up with a teacher who will only teach at the speed you can learn to sight-read... find somebody else. Some famous guitar players can't even do it. It takes a long time and there are other things you could be learning and playing at the same time. Chords, scales, etc... This will keep you more interested and you'll be able to start playing actual songs much more quickly. You'll start to develop different playing techniques and hand dexterity sooner...
I would take what you heard with a grain of salt. Many people who really master an instrument start playing that instrument at an early age.
Picking parts out of music with your ears has nothing to do with playing piano. That's in your head. You learn how to do it as try to learn an instrument and try to pick out the parts for your instrument in songs... figure out how they're playing them... The more you listen to music that way... the better you get at it. When you learn more about how to play your instrument... what you hear in music makes even more sense to you and you can copy songs by ear rather easily. Some people practice and develop this skill and some people don't. But, it has nothing to do with what particular instrument you learn how to play. Any manual dexterity you build on the piano would do you little good on the guitar. That's like saying if you learn to juggle you can type. It's two totally different things... Quickly finding notes and chords on a guitar and playing them cleanly is something you're only going to develop by practicing and practicing GUITAR. I've seen very good piano players struggle through 3 chord folk songs with several second pauses between chord changes on my guitar... lol.
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Title : Does learning to play the piano help with learning to play the violin?
Description : Q. I am a high school student and am wondering if learning the piano first would help me learn the violin later. A. Yeah, I learned piano ...