Learning piano for beginners is not easy. Not just pianists, but for any musician learning a new instrument the beginning is the hardest time. Piano lessons can help big-time, but still the fingers just won�t do what the mind tells them. It takes a while for real dexterity to come along. I should know, I have been playing guitar for over thirty years, but have just recently started working on playing piano. I haven�t taken piano lessons (who has the time?), but I hope I can work it out myself. I do have a really solid music theory background, which I think makes a big difference. I look at the piano keys and I know what they are and what to do to build chords and scales, and create beautiful music. But�the hands! They just won�t listen. So I play simple piano scales and exercises that sound boring but are useful to get my skill started. I would like to have something to show for my efforts besides these simple patterns, and I found something today that is just thing: a showy trick that even a beginner can do to give a glimpse of what the future might be like if I keep practicing the piano. I am a webmaster by profession and recently created a website with a friend who is a piano teacher. His name is Christopher Schlegel, and he has put some great lessons together on the site, which is called PianoTricks.com. One lesson in particular is called �Chord Arpeggiation Trick� and it is available at this url: http://www.pianotricks.com/lesson.php?input=28. The lesson includes a video example, and some explanation. The lesson is totally free and available without website registration or anything like that. The great thing about this lesson, and the reason I am writing about it, is this: it takes the simple skills that I as a piano beginner have, and lets me show off a little bit but doing something the pros do: arpeggiate a chord. Before you get scared, arpeggios are the same as chords, except in an arpeggio, the chord is played one note at a time, instead of all notes at the same time. This makes a very fluid sound, but also very consonant, because the notes flow together (they are part of the same chord �family�). This also makes it a little easier to play, since you don�t have to time all the fingers hitting at the same time (like in a normal chord). The trick you will see in the video is that Christopher plays a simple major chord with both hands repeating the same chord up the piano octave by octave. The end result sounds like a flourishing move that expert pianists make; only it is so easy to do. Try it yourself and see. It has really made my day as a beginning piano student to try this lesson. I hope you get a lot out of it too.
