© 2018 Matti Carter
Book and cover design: Books on Demand GmbH
Level of difficulty illustration: Books on Demand GmbH
Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Helsinki, Finland
Print: BoD – Books on Demand GmbH, Norderstedt, Germany
ISBN: 9789528054917
This book will provide you with some of the necessary elements for developing your skills on the piano and learning the basics of music theory. The book is targeted across a range of abilities: beginners, intermediates and advanced musicians. It is primarily designed for pianists, but also for anyone else who is generally interested in music theory.
The main goal of the book is to develop the reader’s musical understanding, knowledge and piano playing skills. The book is designed to help the reader understand the most important areas of music theory, and teaches how to apply them in practice. If improving as a piano player is your primary goal, knowledge of music theory can help you significantly speed up your improvement as a player. This is why you should make use of the wide theory base and the vocabulary of the book, so that you can enhance your experience as you learn new pieces on the piano.
The book is divided into three main categories: theory, pieces and materials. The theory section comprises 10 different chapters, each of which covers a specific topic. At the end of each chapter there are exercises related to the topic. The chapters contain a lot of general information, but the examples and exercises are more detailed, and completing them is important for learning and understanding the concepts, as well as developing your skills as a player.
The exercises of the theory section are divided into three skill levels: easy, medium and challenging. About half of the exercises are music theory related, and the other half focus on piano playing skills. Most of the easy exercises can be found in the first chapters at the beginning of the book, while the harder exercises are in the later chapters.
The book is designed to offer new concepts and challenges for all skill levels. One of the goals while creating the book was to arrange the chapters into an order that will guarantee you the fastest possible development of your piano playing skills. That is why, if you are a beginner, it is recommended to go through the book one chapter at a time, starting from the very beginning. If you are an intermediate or advanced player, you may want to skip the basic information at the beginning and jump straight to the chapters and exercises that are more challenging for you.
After the theory section there are 45 playable pieces composed especially for this book. Just like the exercises, the pieces are divided into three different skill levels: easy, medium and challenging. The pieces are related to the previously presented music theory, and you can use the theory as a tool to help you learn by playing the pieces.
The final section of the book “Supporting materials” consists of useful information, theory and examples that may come in useful for any pianist or musician in improving their art. The beginning of the section presents 40 different accompaniment modules for those who are interested in learning accompaniment by the piano. The accompaniment modules are categorised into different musical styles. This section also catalogues the most typically used chords in tonal music, all the different interval types, all the major and minor scales, explanations of common markings in music notation and the definitions of different music-related terms.
For beginners:
For intermediate and advanced musicians:
The point is not to understand everything at once, so move slowly, one item at the time!
Difficulty level of exercises:
= Easy
= Medium
= Challenging
The first habit a pianist should develop is the correct posture for playing. The most important aspect of posture is that the movement of the fingers on the keys is as natural as possible while the other body parts are relaxed. Your playing is most natural when your hands and shoulders are in a resting position.
The piano bench should be set to the right height so that your hands can be placed comfortably on the piano keys, making playing as easy as possible. The piano bench is placed in front of the piano in the middle, so that playing middle C is easy, and both hands are able to reach the highest and lowest octaves. The lowest notes are located on the left side of the piano and the high notes are located on the right.
While playing the piano, one should remember to keep a good posture at all times to avoid getting stiff. The hands should be placed on the piano keys so that relaxing them will make the keys press down automatically. Your feet should reach the ground firmly, so that they can support your posture and seating position. Your feet should also comfortably reach the pedals.