Piano lessons for adults

In this lesson you will learn to play the melody to a popular Christmas song without the use of sheet music. You will also learn to play three easy chords together with the melody. Let us start!
O Christmas Tree is a Christmas carol of German origin. O Tannenbaum is its original name in German.
A Tannenbaum is German for a fir tree or Christmas tree. The melody to this Christmas song is an old folk tune and the best known lyrics comes from a Leipzig organist and teacher named Ernst Anschutz in 1824.
Here is the first verse in the English version:
O Christmas Tree O, Christmas Tree
Your branches green delight us!
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree
Your branches green delight us!
They’re green when summer days are bright
They’re green when winter snow is white
O, Christmas Tree, O, Christmas Tree
Your branches green delight us!
The first thing we will do is to locate the middle C on your keyboard. On an ordinary piano keyboard it is located in the middle of the keyboard sometimes near the keyhole if there is one.
On a common piano keyboard you will find that the notes C-B are repeated along the keys. One such row of notes are called an octave and since the middle C is located in the fourth octave on an piano it is sometimes called C4.
Even if your keyboard is smaller with less octaves middle C is still called C4.
We will now take a look at the melody to O Christmas Tree and the chords you can play with your left hand. We will begin with the melody together with the lyrics:
O (F)Christmas Tree O, Christmas Tree
C4 (F)F4 F4 F4 G4 G4 G4 G4
The (F) in the lyrics and melody indicate that you shall play an F-major chord with your left hand together with the note after the chord. How then do you play an F-major chord?
There are many ways to play an F chord but here is an easy example for your left hand:
F: C3 F3 A3
C3 means that you play a C in the octave to the left of the C4. Play the three notes in the chord together as you play the following right hand note.
Time for the next line:
Your (C7)branches green de(F)light us
A4 (C7)G4 A4 Bb4 E4 (C)G4 F4
The note Bb is the black key immediately to the left of B.
As you can see it is time for a new chord, C7. Here is a suggestion for that piano chord:
C7: C3 E3 Bb3
Now you have to repeat the previous lines before we proceed with the next part:
They’re (F)green when summer (C7)days are bright
C5 (F)C5 A4 D5 C5 (C7)C5 Bb4 Bb4
C5 is the C in the octave to the right of C4.
Time for the next line:
They’re (C7)green when winter (F)snow is white
Bb4 (C7)Bb4 G4 C5 Bb4 (F)Bb4 A4 A4
Now we only have to repeat the first two lines and we are done!
O (F)Christmas Tree O, Christmas Tree
C4 (F)F4 F4 F4 G4 G4 G4 G4
Your (C7)branches green de(F)light us
A4 (C7)G4 A4 Bb4 E4 (C)G4 F4
I suggest that you learn this little song by heart one line at a time. Practice every line first with your right hand melody until you master it. Then it is time to add your left hand chords. When you know a line by heart with melody and chords it is time to proceed with the next line.
Before you know it you have completed the song and can contribute to the Christmas spirit in a new setting!

A fake book can be a source of many inspiring piano exercises. It contains a lot of melodies written in a concise format that includes only the melody and chord names. Let us take a look at how you can use these melodies to become a better pianist!
First of all we will take a look at how melodies are notated in a fake book. Usually you will find the melody of a song in sheet music notation together with chord suggestions above the notes. This economical way of notating makes it possible to fill a fake book with a lot of melodies.
The advantage of this way of notating melodies is that you can have a fake book as a reference book with a lot of melodies at your disposal.
The drawback is that you do not have a written out arrangement of the song for piano. You have to figure out how to play the song by yourself. Actually this can be an advantage that will help you develop as a pianist letting you interpret the song’s performance as you feel is appropriate.
One little melody in a fake book can give you many exercises in different areas of your piano playing and help you in your development as a musician. Here are a few examples:
1. Learn to play chords together with a melody. For example, play chords with your left hand and melody with your right hand, play bass notes with your left hand and combine melody and chord notes with your right hand, play various combinations of bass notes, chord notes and melody notes with both hands.
2. Learn to find the right chords to use when playing a melody. In a fake book you will find chord suggestions that can easily be supplemented with more chords making the voicings and chord progressions more exciting.
3. Learn to improvise by using the melody as a starting point. This is often called melodic improvisation. You can also use the chords or the fitting scales as a foundation for your improvisation. This is called chordal improvisation and scale improvisation.
4. Learn to play the songs in the piano fake book in different keys thus developing your ability to play by ear and understand the piano keyboard by transposing songs you have learned.
Actually you can use a song in a fake book as the basis for your development as a pianist if your goal is to be a good piano player in the area of improvised piano music.
Let us take an example from a fake book. You have a song of your choice in front of you with melody, chord suggestions and nothing more. What can you do to use this song as a starting point for a piano practice session?
We suppose that the song starts with the chord C-major and then in the next bar you will find the chord F-major. Here are some suggestions on what to practice drawn from these two bars of music.
1. Work on chord voicings. Practice playing C-major triads with your left hand in the three inversions. That means that you play the chord C-major with the three notes involved, C, E and G, in three combinations, that is, CEG, EGC or GCE. Do the same with the chord F-major. Practice also to move from C to F in various combinations.
2. Work on playing the melody in different ways. Single right hand notes, playing right hand octaves, playing the melody with your left hand and chords with your right hand and more.
3. Work on adding more chords. For example, taking the C-chord to F could go via Gm7 and C7 thus creating the following chord sequence, C, Gm7, C7, F. Much can be done to spice the song by adding more chords to the ones in the fake book.
4. Add notes to the chords you use in your song. A C-major chord can easily be substituted with a Cmaj7 chord or a Cmaj9 and you can find more interesting chords if you focus on one chord at a time. Of course you can work on playing these new chords in different combinations and inversions too.
5. Use the song as a foundation for improvisation. Learn a melody passage by heart. Play this passage over and over again with small changes in the melody thus practicing melodic improvisation. Or use the chords. The chord C-major suggests two major scales to use when improvising. You can use a C-major scale or a C-major pentatonic scale for example.
To sum up you can use one single song in a fake book as the basis for piano exercises in many areas of your development as a pianist and at the same time you build up a repertoire with popular melodies for your own benefit and the enjoyment of other people.

Have you ever thought about practicing in order to prepare to play in front of other people. What would you practice if you knew that you would play piano to an audience? Let us take a look at the people oriented way of practicing on your piano!
What will constitute a pleasant and musical experience when you hear a pianist play? The outcome probably depends on the person you ask but personally I think that these things at least influence my feelings:
1. The musical content of the performance. The way the pianist conveys the composer’s and his own feelings in the piece of music.
2. The agility of the performer. Is the pianist playing with ease showing that he or she has mastered the piece of music and can convey self confidence that makes me feel at ease.
3. The facial expression of the performer. Is he happy, tense, enjoying his playing?
4. Is the performer relaxed? If he is tense I will probably not be able to relax and will not be enjoying the performance the way I could have.
If you want to become a pianist that performs piano music in a musical way, that plays with agility and self confidence, that can smile or express feelings with facial expressions and relax while performing at peak level you also know how to practice.
Here are some tips to help you become a better piano performer:
Build a small or big repertoire with piano pieces that you are prepared to play in front of other people. The amount of pieces in your repertoire depends on the practice time at your disposal. The important thing is to really commit the pieces you choose to your long term memory.
As you practice the musical passages of a piece of music remember to practice the way you would like to play the piece in front of an audience. This means:
1. Create music as you practice. To convey the composers musical ideas in your playing is not something that should be spared until you perform the piece in front of an audience. As you practice the various musical passages that will eventually become a piece of music that you have mastered it is a good thing to practice both to play the notes accurately but also to practice the musical interpretation. Everything you practice or not practice will have an impact on your actual public performance.
2. Relax as you play. It is not easy to relax in front of other people as you are trying to play a piece of music if you have not practiced the piano composition in this manner. The art of relaxing your body is something you also can practice away from the piano. When you practice your piece of piano music at the initial stages it is important to play slowly enough to have control of the tension level in your hands, arms and the rest of your body.
3. Enjoy you playing and let your face enforce the music. Hopefully you have positive feelings towards the music you play, otherwise it might be a good idea to choose other music to play, if you have the option, that will give you a fair chance to play with a positive attitude. In a performing situation your facial expressions will influence the listening experience for the audience. This makes for involving you facial expressions in your piano practicing sessions as well.
The conclusion is that things connected with your piano practicing probably will be evoked as you play in front of an audience. You can use your piano practice sessions to practice joy, self confidence, relaxation and a happy face at the same time as you practice becoming a great pianist!

How can you decide what to practice among all available choices? Is it possible to find a balance between playing by ear, learning sheet music, finger dexterity and other aspects of piano playing? Let us take a closer look at the art of piano practicing!
I have piano playing friends with diverse musical backgrounds. Some of my friends do not know how to play one note of sheet music and have relied entirely on their well developed ability to play by ear.
To have a good ear is a great asset but not being able to read sheet music or at least be able to read lead sheets with chords can make things unnecessary complicated when confronted with the task of playing other peoples music.
Let us take a look at a music composing scenario!
Suppose you have an assignment to write the music to a musical. The musicians involved do not know how to read sheet music and consequently they have to learn the songs by listening to recordings or by listening to your instructions.
It will surely take some time to get things right!
Let us also suppose that you get some ideas for a new song and how to create some additional music backgrounds in the musical. How much time do you want to use instructing your musicians? Maybe the outcome will be that you feel restrained not to complicate the music too much as you will have the delicate job to instruct your musicians how to play.
Let us take another scenario!
You have musicians at your disposal that can sight read sheet music without any hesitation and you can write whatever sheet music you want and be confident that they will understand the intentions you write down in your sheet music. If you want to add or change music in your musical score you know that your musicians will be able to play your intentions without you having to talk to them all the time.
Instead you will be able to use your valuable time to compose music and arrange the music the way you want it performed. You can with confidence leave the production to others and start writing music to your next musical!
If you had the choice between having to rely on musicians that only play by ear and musicians that can both play by ear and can sight read you might prefer the latter players supposing that they are nice, gentle, humble and are able to collaborate.
If you as a musician want to be the choice of a composer or somebody else that needs musicians you will have a great advantage if you know both how to sight read sheet music and also how to play chords from a lead sheet.
What has this to do with your practicing time? Well, I think that you will benefit from having a balance between exercises that has to do with improvisation, chord playing and sheet music.
I think that you will benefit from sight reading exercises, memorizing classical piano pieces, improvising in different keys, learning scales and chord voicings and how to play jazz standards! There is no contradiction between playing by ear and mastering sheet music notation!

Piano playing is an art with unlimited possibilites. Pippi Longstocking made a remark in a film that can be used when you try to learn to play piano.

Pippi Longstocking is a nine-year-old Swedish girl in a series of children’s books. Pippi has red braids and is very unconventional, assertive, extraordinarily strong, and rich. She lives alone with a monkey and a horse in an old funny house. Her friends Tommy and Annika accompany her on her wild adventures.

One Christmas when she was alone in the house looking out through the window feeling lonesome her lyoung friends and the children from town came in a procession to her house surprising her with a Christmas present.

She was very happy when she saw them and when she opened the present she found a trumpet and immediately started to play on it.

One of the children commented: “I did’nt know that you played trumpet!”. Pippi answered smilingly: “Well, it is easier when you have a trumpet!”

Much wisdom there. It is easier to learn to play an instrument if you have an instrument. It is easier to learn to play piano if you have a piano. Do you have a piano?

What does it mean to have a piano. Let me explain………..

One of my cousins lived with her family in a small town in a small house. In the house was a tall black piano bought from a nearby amusement park. This piano was fascinating in one aspect.

It was fantastically out of tune!

When you played a melody on the piano it was like playing in different keys at the same time. My cousin living there never became a pianist. I don’t know if the out of tune piano put her off but it sure didn’t help her.

She learned one funny piano song at least and I can still remember the sound of it on that piano.

I think that you can say that a piano has to be tuned or it isn’t really a piano. All those beautiful and fantastic piano compositions are intended to be played on a tuned instrument.

I would suggest the following….

1. Have a piano. Meaning a tuned instrument. Make it a priority to have your piano tuned by a piano tuner or if you are adventurous, try to tune it yourself! Read about piano tuning on the net.

2. Buy a digital piano. It is always in tune but has other small disadvantages. It should have weighted key action to imitate the action of an acoustic piano.

When I was a child we always had our piano in tune but I guess it is quite common to find pianos that is out of tune around the globe.

I guess you can get used to playing on out of tune pianos but this will limit your progress and the joy you deserve to experience when you play piano.

How can you use a fake book to become a better pianist? A fake book includes a lot of melodies due to the concise format. Let us use a fake book to make you a better chord player!
There are many things you can do with just one song in a fake book. In this piano lesson we will focus on the chords of a song and how we can use them in a piano practice session.
You can learn to play piano chords in many different ways. Here are just a few examples:
1. You can focus on just one chord memorizing it in twelve keys and then learning another chord the same way. This way of learning chords can be effective if you concentrate long enough on the chords committing them to your long term memory. Some people find this way of learning to mechanical and boring.
2. You can work on learning chord progressions by heart an then applying them in all twelve keys. You can find such chord voicings in piano method books or you can “invent” you own progressions and voicings. Maybe this approach is a little bit more interesting than the before mentioned method.
3. You can learn chords in a more creative way by just deciding to work on finding out variations of a chord as you sit down playing. For example, figure out as many nice sounding variations of the chord Cmaj7 as you can.
4. You can learn progressions and voicings in a more creative way too. For example, play the chord sequence C, A7, Dm7, G7 over and over again trying to create smooth chord changes in an improvised manner.
5. Compose your own chord progressions and write them down with sheet music notation. In the process of writing them down you will probably trigger your creative mind to come up with interesting piano chord voicings that you never have thought of before and that you also can share with others that can read sheet music.
6. Focus on a melody you like and use is as a basis for your piano chord practicing sessions. One melody can be the source of many chord exercises and at the same time you will have a melody at your disposal to play to others.
In this piano lesson we will focus on the sixth suggestion on piano chord practicing. Now we will delve a bit into the art of playing from a fake book.
Actually, what is a fake book?
It is a book with songs and melodies written with sheet music notation. It is produced in a concise format with only melody, lyrics and chord names. The songs have the lyrics beneath the notes and above the notes you will find the names of the appropriate chords to play. In other words, the notes of the chords are not written out. This way of notating gives you the choice to interpret the performance your own way.
Let us take a look at the previous suggestions on how to practice piano chord playing by using a fake book. Here are some ways you can play the chord suggestions above the melody:
1. The first step is to play the melody with your right hand and the chord voicings with your left hand. Practice to play the chords in different ways and practice to move smoothly between chords as you practice playing the chord changes.
2. The next step is to play the bass notes with your left hand and the melody and chords in your right hand. This means that some of the melody notes will be embellished with notes from the chord suggestions. You do not have to include the left hand bass note.
3. The third level is to use both your left and right hand to play chord notes. This can give the song a professional touch if handled with elegance. There are so many ways to play a song this way that it has to be covered in a separate article. You can listen to solo piano recordings to find inspiration. You can also play written out arrangements in sheet music notation of melodies to build up your ability and taste in this area.

Practice is essential to become a good piano player. As you play the piano and try to progress towards becoming a piano giant it is important to be aware of some traps that will prevent you from reaching your goal.
It is a joyful experience to grow as a pianist and musician if you practice in a sensible way using the experience from a teacher or other sources like books and piano instructional DVD’s and more.
The feeling that you are approaching your goals gives satisfaction and a belief in yourself.
What traps am I talking about then?
Learning processes can take you towards your goals but as you practice you might unconciously learn things that are limiting your progress.
I don’t think that you want to learn things that will limit your progress and if you will be aware of these thing I know that you will avoid them. Here are some traps:
1. Uncomfortable feelings. There can be reasons for you not being at ease as you practice on your piano like stress or negative feelings regarding your ability to progress.
Maybe you are preparing for a performance, a piano lesson or something else and you feel less prepared than you want or other negative thoughts are disturbing you.
Having these feelings as you play on your piano is not so very good. Why?
These negative feelings tend to be evoked as you play the same piece of music at other occasions. I guess this is not what you want.
It can lead to an aversion towards a certain piece of music for the rest of your life or that you quit playing altogether because of uncomfortable feelings as you play.
2. Muscle tensions. Well, you might play in a very relaxed way but many pianists tend to tense too much as a result of maybe playing faster and on a level above their technical skills.
This is very common among young kids trying to play like their musical heroes while actually being on another level of proficiency.
The important aspect of this is that the actual tension level in your hands and in your body when you practice a specific piano piece tends to be at the same level when you play the same piece of music at a performance.
If you have practiced a piano piece with a high tension level you will most probably find it hard to perform the same composition in a relaxed manner.
3. Making mistakes. Can your practicing lead you away from learning a piece of music? You probably want to become a better piano player by practicing but if you play too fast when learning new passages it is likely that you will make a lot of mistakes.
When learning a passage of music these mistakes will be part of the learning process. The more mistakes you make the harder it will be to play the passage right.
To put it another way, all mistakes accumulate and becomes a disturbance when you try to play the passage right. Instead it will become easier and easier to play the music wrong.
But, don’t let this information depress you. This information can be good news if you use it to your advantage!
Here are some tips:
1. Comfortable feelings. Try to practice in an atmosphere of peace and joy. How? By not procrastinating working on you piano lesson homework and by having a positive attitude.
2. Relax. A piano session with practicing and memorizing piano pieces can also be an occasion when you practice relaxation. As you play, try to pay attention to your hands, fingers and the rest of your body using as little force in your playing as possible. This will benefit both your mental and physical health!
3. Make no mistake. At least, not too many. If you practice new piano pieces slowly, with concentration and with correct posture you will be rewarded with learning your homework faster and also feel much better.