Q. I've played for 8 years, but I only know how to read sheet music, and I don't have time to learn to read chords before i play next. Please help??
A. You mean to say that you can't read chord symbols? Like G7 F#m Bb7(#9) etc?
You've been playing 8 years and you can't do that??!?! No offense, but what have you been learning? Getting by for 8 years without a basic understanding of how music is constructed... I just can't understand that. Do you even know how to play your major scales? If not, learn that... NOW! You're way behind.
If you can play your major scales, it's not that hard to understand how chords are made.
http://a.1asphost.com/LukeSniper/ccc.html
This is a chart of chord formulas I made. My first guitar teacher gave me something like this my second lesson, and it gave me a HUGE leg up on my peers. Actually understanding music is crucial to giving a moving performance. Otherwise what you're doing is no different than someone reading a poem in a language they don't speak.
If you play two octaves of any major scale, number each note on the way up (you really only need to go up to 13 though). Then, to play any type of chord, you just play the notes the formula says. SO a major chord is 1 3 5. In C, this would end up being the notes C E and G. Any combination of C E and G is a C major chord. Some of the chords have alterations to a specific note, for example, a dominant 7th chord is 1 3 5 b7. So you would take the normal 7th, and flat it. In C, this would result in C E G and Bb.
Get it? Good.
That chord chart should give you plenty to work with. Seriously though, playing for 8 years and you couldn't play an F7 if somebody asked? There's something wrong with that... I'm not saying that you've failed, but your teachers have definitely failed you.
Is Harpsichord more difficult to play and learn compared to Piano?
Q. Can a pianist play the harpsichord well just like a violinist playing the cello ?
Just wondering if perhaps harpsichord is harder than piano, in terms of dynamics, control of articulation.I was just looking through the Piano exam syllabus and the Bach Italian Concerto was in the Grade 8 exam syllabus for Piano, whereas the same Bach Italian Concerto is in the Syllabus for Harpsichord Diploma Exams. The same goes with the French Suites.
Anyone knows why is this?
A. Organists (I am one of these) are slightly more able to play a harpsichord than are Pianists.
Learning muscular restraint, achieving an audible 'accent', building to a climax, responding appropriately to an increase in 'passion', and many other things need to be constantly in mind when an organist is playing this now-redundant instrument.
Even an Organist finds good results at this instrument are impeded by lack of familiarity, but this is to be expected, surely?
Because constant attention needs to be given to these parameters, and that these aspects of performance are not what perhaps should best be exclusively occupying the attentions of a player, it is rare for an experienced organist to be happy with a performance on a harpsichord.
Only somebody exclusively devoted to the harpsichord is comfortable with performance on the instrument. This is incontrovertible. Your analogy, violin to 'cello, would perhaps be better if expressed as :- 'cellists adapting to playing the gamba'.
Even after several years of 'trifling' with the harpsichord, I have never been really comfortable whilst playing it.
Organists, I would guess, are slightly more familiar with keyboard music of the long-extinct Baroque style than are Pianists, whose instrument didn't even exist during the Baroque Era. Like the organ, the harpsichord is
[i]slightly bass dominated (the bass is 'brighter' than the treble, a situation that actually coincides with what physics describes as 'appropriate', incidentally)
[ii] there is no damping whatsoever
[iii] accenting is achieved through attention to legato verses staccato
[iv] manipulation of 'stops', playing on another keyboard, 'coupling' one keyboard to another, etc., on both Organ and H'chord can be used to alter sound texture, volume, etc.
[v] genuine improvisation is found to be easier than at a Piano
[vi] etcetera
As I don't like pretending to confine my music making to the past (literature of about 300 years ago!), I doubt that I could ever confine myself to the harpsichord. [Should I wear a powdered wig, travel by horse carriage, seek to contract syphillis, etc?]
Almost no new music is being written for this instrument, and that, to me, is its fatal flaw.
"Who would enjoy being a 'museum musician'?" This attitude applies to most really musical people that I know, and possibly explains the fact that most who play the instrument in public are playing their 'second' instrument, or even their 'third' instrument!
The rather precious lovers of the old don't even seem willing to countenance any 'improvement' to the harpsichord, a rather silly attitude, and this probably confines this instrument to the 'consciously fossilised past'.
People of this type willingly spent other people's money on building museum organs for churches and public buildings a few decades ago, and their 'power' to make these retrograde decisions is worrying - if one is interested in art music having a future.
( I am ashamed to admit to once have been one of these meddling fossils!)
Thank you for such a stimulating question...
How do you learn to play piano by ear?
Q. I have been playing for a long time. I used to take lessons, but I stopped taking them. I know how to read sheet music, but I think playing by ear would be more meaningful. The problem is, I don't know where to start! Can somebody please help?
A. Book yourself a private lesson with a teacher, I think that a lesson or two, will teach you the basics you need to go on by yourself.
It's not that complicated but it's hard to explain by text, near a piano it's a matter of a hour or two (listening to chords roots and so)
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Title : How do you convert piano chords into sheet music? Is there some sort of program you can use?
Description : Q. I've played for 8 years, but I only know how to read sheet music, and I don't have time to learn to read chords before i play ne...