Week 9

In this week I decided that I wanted to do a cover of "Toy Soldiers" by Eminem for task 3 of this Unit. So, my objective is to learn the chords and practice this song untill I am able to play it perfectly and ready to be put into Cubase using a MIDI Keyboard.

Week 8

In Week 8, I set out to learn how to play Bob Marley's "One Love" the chords are in the C major scale. The chords are C, G, F, C, G, C. In this tutorial video it shows you to play a normal C chord then change to an inverted G and an inverted F chord making the change between chords more fluidly. This will help me practice inversion chords as I begin to learn the song.

Week 7

In week 7 I start to look at more chord progression and start to practice making songs. the chords are G, D, E minor and C. I made it my objective to learn how to change from chord to chord smoothly and confident.

Week 6

Inverting a chord simply means changing the order of the notes so that a note other than the root of the chord is in the bass.
It's important not to confuse root and bass. The root is the note on which the chord is built, while the bass is the bottom note of the chord—even if it is not the root.
For example, in a C major chord, C is the root, whether or not it is the bass note. As you probably know by this point in your piano studies, the notes of a C major triad are C, E and G, in that order.
Here is a C major triad with the root, C, in the bass:
This chord is in root position.
If we move the C up so that the next note of the chord, E, is on the bottom:
... we get a C major triad in first inversion. Note that the notes of the chord are still C, E and G, so this chord must be a C major chord even if C isn't the bass note.
If we now invert the chord a second time, we'll have a C major chord in second inversion:
Here, G is the bass note.

A chord has as many possible positions as it has notes. Since our triad above has three notes, there are three possible positions: root position, first inversion and second inversion.
Since root position is not itself an inversion, a triad has two possible inversions. We can extrapolate this rule thus: The number of possible inversions of a chord equals the number of notes minus one.

Inverting seventh chords

Let's now turn to four-note chords and take a look at a very common chord, the dominant seventh. Here is the dominant seventh chord in C major, in root position:
Note that the dominant seventh is built on the fifth scale degree of any key. The fifth note of the C major scale (i.e., the fifth scale degree) is G.
The notes of this chord, from bottom to top, are G, B, D, F.
Now let's take a look at the chord inversions. If B (the second note of the chord) is on the bottom, this chord is in first inversion:
If the third note, D, is the bass note, our seventh chord is in second inversion:
Finally, if the fourth note, F, is in the bass, the dominant seventh chord is in third inversion:
Note that when determining the inversion, we're only concerned with the bottom note—the remaining notes can be in any order. It's therefore the bass note that determines the inversion.
This concludes our second lesson on chord inversions. Practice hard and you'll soon be an expert!

Week 5

One of the reasons it's so essential to know all of your piano scales is so you can play the piano with the most natural and effective fingering. When reading piano music our fingers need to know where to go.

Since so much of music is based on scales, knowing all of our scales without ever having to think about their proper fingering is an enormous head start.

In general, play any scalar passages with the same fingering that you use when playing those scales alone.

As for scales, it's essential to learn the standard fingerings for arpeggios, also referred to as broken chords. Chords in root position aren't enough—we also need to know all chord inversions.

Chord inversions are "spellings" of a chord with a note other than the fundamental in the bass. Let's take a simple example:
The C major triad consists of the notes C, E and G, in that order:

As long as the C is on the bottom, the chord is in root position. Both the above spelling (C E G) and this one (C G E):

... are in root position. If we put the E on the bottom, the chord is in first inversion:

E-G-C and E-C-G are both the first inversion of the C major triad, because the E is on the bottom:

If the third note of the chord, in this case G, is on the bottom, the chord is in second inversion:

The chords can be in closed position:

 or open position:    

Week 4

Practice Major and Minor chords, each chord has three dominant notes... For major chords start of with the root note of the chord you want to play the counting the black and white keys the next note for the chord will be 4 keys up then after that note count 3 keys up for the last note for the chord.

For Minor chords it is backwards, start with the root note then go up 3 keys (including the black keys) for the next note and then after that note go up 4 keys.. so for a minor chord the middle note of the chord goes down a key

My goal is to practice switching from Minor and Major chords and learn most chords and practice creating chord sequences and making songs.

Week 3

In week 3 of my practice diary I will be doing chord progression, I will begin practicing the C major scale as there are no sharp or flat notes being played in each chord and only white keys are played, since I am only a beginner this would be the easiest option for me to pick up chords and be able to learn to switch between each chord. The C major chords are = C, Dm, Em, F, G, Am, Bdim.

Each musical scale has 3 primary chords, meaning 3 notes are played to make a chord, these notes can be found on the first, fourth and fifth note intervals of the scale, for example the notes that make chord C are C, F and G. The first note is known as the root note and that tells you what key its in. to add extra chord to this progression we can use the relative minor chord, this makes the chord sound sad, the relative minor chord can be found 3 semitones lower than the root note on each scale.

My plan for this week is to practice the chords in C major and get use to switching chords and once I get the hang of it, I will start learning more scales.

Week 2

For week 2 I will practice my hand to hand co-ordination and learn how to better myself playing with both hands on the keyboard following the instructions of this tutorial video.

My goal is to get a grasp of being able to play with both hands so that I can move on with playing different piano scales and start to learn some songs.

Week 1

Week 1: I will practice legato and staccato exercises with both my right and left hand till I am confident and capable to play at fast speeds with both hands. I'll start with using my right then left and then try both together.

Introduction

MY Practice Diary for learning to play the keyboard

In this diary I will update it weekly setting my self new goals, practicing an hour or more a day developing my playing skills and learnign how to play.