Everyone who wishes to participate performs and records a solo piano piece and then uploads it to a special website.

On the day of the recital, all entries are made public on the Piano World Forums.

Last month we had our 10th recital, and it was awesome (as always )!

With 63 participants, this was our biggest recital ever. People from all over the world, old and young, ranging in experience from complete beginners to seasoned players, created over 3 and a half hours of piano music.

Any style of music goes, as long as it’s played on a piano. Last time we had classical, jazz, new age, pop, you name it.

Visit the recital here

You can also listen directly to all the tunes using the online streaming player.

Go check it out!

And if you play the piano, be sure to send in a recording for recital 11 on August 15!

However, here is a list of topics that I intend to cover in the future, if time permits:

• How to recognize chords from sheet music
• What are modes?
• How to put a Flash-based music-player on your own site
• How to make a leadsheet in Lilypond
• How to make a full piano score in Lilypond
• How to read leadsheets
• Playing keyboard with auto-accompaniment
• Beginning jazz
• Learning songs from MIDI files
• Chord voicings
• Quartal voicings
• Composing and improvising
• Using Transcribe!
• Chord substitutions
• Tritone substitutions
• Beginning blues
• Modulation
• Rhythm changes
• Polychords
• Walking (jazz) bass
• Ostinato patterns

Stay tuned!

My best advice: join Piano Magic

(Really, I mean it!)

In the mean time, here’s a quick summary of how to harmonize melodies:

1. Find out what key the melody is in
2. Learn the I, IV and V7 chords of that key. In the key of C these would be C, F and G7.
3. Press the I chord and play the first notes of the melody.
4. When the melody and the chord no longer seem to fit together, switch to one of the other two chords. This usually happens at the beginning of a new measure.
5. Repeat until you reach the end of the song. Usually the song will end on the I chord.

If the I, IV or V7 chords match but aren’t completely satisfactory, then try the minor chords from the key (vi, ii, or iii). In the key of C these would be Am, Dm or Em.

If the I, IV or V7 chords don’t match at all, then try an accidental chord such as II7 or III7. In the key of C these would be D7 or E7.

In case you didn’t notice yet, there is a close relationship between the melody and the current chord: melody tones are chord tones.

That means the tones that make up the melody are the same tones that make up the chord. Consequently, if the melody switches to the tones from another chord, it is time to change chords.

For example, if you’re currently playing C chord, then the melody will focus on the tones C, E and G. The melody may still include other tones, but they will be quick passing tones.

If the melody lingers on a tone that is not in any of the chords from the key, you should find another chord that does have this tone.

For example, if you encounter an long F# tone in the key of C, then a likely candidate for the chord is D7 (which is: D-F#-A-C) but it could also be B7 (which is B-D#-F#-A).

That’s about it.

There are too many brands and models to go into details, but here are some things to keep in mind:

Stage piano vs. cabinet piano

Some digital pianos are meant for performing. These are called “stage pianos”. They are extra sturdy yet light enough to carry around (if you have a strong roadie ).

Stage pianos often don’t have built-in speakers and are limited in features. If you want to get one, you’ll probably also need to buy external speakers and a stand to put it on.

My advice: if you are going to perform in a band (or carry around your piano a lot) then get a stage piano. Otherwise, don’t.

Most amateur-at-home-players will want to get a digital piano in a nice cabinet. It will look good in your living room, doesn’t need any additional equipment, and has excellent speakers built into it.

The price

Very simple: get the best you can afford. There will always be better pianos with more features, but if you don’t have the money for it, then it’s no use fretting about it.

That being said: do max out your budget. More expensive pianos really are worth the money. You might not use all the additional features, but higher-end digital pianos simply sound better.

If you quickly tire of the sound of your new piano, then you’re less likely to play it and that would be a shame.

Touch vs. sound

The “touch” of the piano — how the keys feel when you press them — is more important than the sounds the piano produces.

If you find a piano that sounds wonderful but feels horrible to play, don’t buy it!

You can easily add new sounds to a digital piano by connecting an external sound module (such as the Yamaha Motif rack, which has over a 1,000 additional voices) or even your computer.

However, you can’t change the touch of the piano.

Digital piano manufacturers are always trying to figure out better ways to simulate the sound and feel of a “real” acoustic piano. Just as different types of acoustic pianos sound and feel different, so do digitals. Pick one that satisfies you on both counts.

Casio

The Casio Privia series is a good budget option. Casio has a reputation of producing “toys” instead of real instruments, but their digital pianos are actually quite good — and very affordable.

If your budget is under $1,000 then give Casio a try. I know several people who are quite happy with their Casios.

MIDI controller + computer

If you have a good computer, then an alternative to buying a digital piano is the combination of a “MIDI controller” and virtual piano software.

A MIDI controller is like a digital piano except that it has no sound generation hardware. Instead, you use your computer to produce the sound.

The disadvantage of this method is that you always have to turn on your computer to play piano, but for some people this may not be an issue.

Checklist

These are the features your digital piano should have at the very least:

Weighted keys. Electronic keyboards have organ-type keys that don’t offer any resistance when you press them down. Pianos, on the other hand, have weighted keys that are quite heavy.

If you want to (learn how to) play the piano, you want weighted keys.

88 keys. That’s the size of a full piano. You can get away with 76 keys, but 61 keys is the absolute minimum.

If you’re a beginner you can get by with 61 or 76 keys, but when you move into more advanced repertoire, 88 keys is what you want.

A sustain pedal, also called the damper pedal. The pedal is an essential part of piano playing.

Electronic keyboards usually don’t have a pedal (although you might be able to hook one up), but a digital piano should.

Higher-end models have more than one pedal but they are only for advanced playing. So is “half-pedaling” — you probably won’t use it if you’re not a concert pianist.

MIDI. This allows you to connect the piano to the computer or to external sound modules to give it more sounds.

Some digital pianos only have a USB connector so you can hook it up to the computer, but not to other MIDI devices.

Cheaper pianos only have MIDI OUT for sending MIDI data but not a MIDI IN for receiving data.

I recommend a piano that has both the round 5-pin MIDI OUT and MIDI IN connectors, and a separate USB connection.

Polyphony. As high “polyphony” as you can get. The polyphony of an instrument tells you how many notes can sound at once.

If your piano has 16-note polyphony then playing more than 16 notes at the same time will cause some notes to drop out, which isn’t very nice to hear.

If you think 16 notes is a lot, then consider this: Stereo sound cuts polyphony in half. If you “layer” two voices (for example piano and strings) you’ll use twice the notes. Big arpeggios with the sustain pedal pressed down will sound a lot of notes at the same time.

I recommend at least 64-note polyphony and preferably 128 or more.

A music rest, so you have a place to put your sheet music. Usually this comes with the piano, but on some stage pianos this is an optional accessory.

Any other features, such as a “sequencer” that allows you to record your playing, auto-accompaniment, sound effects, and so on… are great to have, but pay special attention to the above list.

More info

Places to get more information:

• The Piano World Forums have many discussions on digital pianos
• Harmony Central for user reviews of all kinds of musical gear
• The book “How to Buy, Play, and Enjoy a Digital Piano” by Dan Starr. I haven’t read it but I hear good things about it.

The main tip: go to a handful of different music stores in your area and play on a wide variety of digital pianos and acoustic pianos, even the ones outside your budget.

Get a feel for the differences between them, what you like and what you don’t like.

Don’t rush! You don’t want to be stuck with an instrument that you don’t feel like playing.

Good luck!

Each piece had to be at least 2:30 minutes in length. I aimed to produce only original pieces but once in a while I also did my own variation on an existing piece.

I posted these pieces on a blog and a podcast, not because I expected to find a big audience, but to keep the pressure on.

However, I managed just fine and actually did more than one piece per week on average, so I’m happy about the results.

Last November I decided it was enough. By then I had recorded almost 40 pieces, so it had been a worthwhile challenge and I learned a lot from it.

Even though the blog is gone, I kept the pieces online. You can listen to them here:

www.originalsolopiano.com

All the pieces are free to download (right-click in the player). Some also come with sheet music (see bottom of the page).

You can still listen to the podcast, although there will be no future updates to the feed:

Listen as podcast

And you can also listen on iTunes:

Listen on iTunes

Enjoy!

It’s a complicated rhythm that takes a while to get the hang of. In the bass clef are straight quarter notes but in the treble cleff are tuplets, which means three quarter notes played in the time of two regular ones.

So for every two quarter notes in the left hand, the right hand is supposed to play three quarter notes.

You might also encounter 3-over-2 with eighth notes:

The principle is the same: two hands playing in different rhythms.

To get a feel for this rhythm, I suggest you take a walk:

1. Count 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on on each step. Left foot is 1, right foot is 2, left foot is 3, right foot is 4, and so on. You’re counting a regular 4/4 beat.
2. Hold your arms by your side. Now slap both your hands on your legs as triplets: 123-123-123-123… So for each footstep, your hands hit your sides three times.
3. Now alternate your hands: RLR-LRL-RLR-LRL, …
4. Stopping hitting your leg with your left hand. Now your right hand is hitting the tuplets, i.e. the “3″ from “3-over-2″.
5. Hit your left hand twice for each foot step to play the duple notes, i.e the “2″ from “3-over-2″.

It can be rather tricky at first to coordinate this, but with some practice — a long walk — you should get the hang of it.

Another approach is to count out the rhythm:

1. First, count the triplets as one-and-two-and-three-and-, one-and-two-and-three-and-, …
2. Then count it as one-two-and-three, one-two-and-three, …
3. Play the left hand on one and the and between two and three.
4. Play the right hand on one, two and three.

I hope this picture will make it a little clearer:

Once you get a feel for this rhythm, it isn’t so hard to play anymore.

The hardest part of improvising is allowing yourself to mess up. You must give yourself the freedom to play anything, no matter how awful.

Let’s face it: your first improvisations won’t be any good. But they’ll never become any better if you don’t allow yourself to be bad at it.

If you already know how to play by ear, you have a headstart because playing by ear and improvising are in essense the same thing. Improvisation is just a little scarier because you don’t have the safety net of an existing tune.

The chords

There are several approaches to improvising:

You can play a new melody on top of an existing chord progression. That is what jazz players do: the rest of the band lays down a fixed harmonic structure and the soloist plays something on top of that.

If you’re doing this on solo piano, your left hand can bang out the same chords over and over while your right hand makes up a melody.

You can also drop the idea of a fixed chord structure and make up the harmony as you go along. Of course that is a little harder, because now you have to think of two things: the melody and the chords.

In reality the amount of possible variation in harmony is a lot smaller than in melody, so it’s not as difficult as it sounds.

It’s possible to harmonize a lot of music with just three chords (the I, IV and V chords) so if you restrict your left hand to these three chords, the number of possible chord changes is very limited.

Keeping it simple as a very good idea for the beginning improviser.

The melody

Suppose you know the chord progression beforehand, then how do you come up with a melody that fits with those chords?

There are three methods:

1. Play chord tones. Melodies consist of chord tones. That means if the current chord is C chord, then a melody consisting of the tones C, E or G will always sound good because C, E and G are the tones that make up C chord.

When you change chords, you choose the chord tones from the new chord, and so on.

If you are looking for a more advanced sound, you can also use extended chord tones such as the 7th and the 9th, or color tones such as the 6th.

Of course you can still play other tones that are not in the chord, but you should limit them to quick passing tones.

For example, if you play a long F melody tone on op of a C chord, you’ll probably annoy your listeners. Playing a quick F is fine as long as you immediately resolve it to a true chord tone.

2. Play scale tones. If you’re playing in the key of C, then you can pick your melody tone from the C major scale. If you want to be fancy, you can also choose a different scale such as the blues scale or one of the “modes”. But I won’t go into that here.

3. Play intuitively. This is my favorite method. I don’t like to think too much while I’m improvising. Instead, I try to hear the melody in my head just fractions of a second before I’m going to hit the key on the piano.

Playing intuitively

This is easier than it sounds: if you’re in the right state of mind, melodies will automatically (or should that be “magically”?) come to you. They do to me, anyway.

Does that make me weird? I don’t think so. I believe anyone can do this, but you have to silence the other “chatter” in your head first.

To practice this, play a fixed chord progression (for example C-Am-Dm-G7) over and over and try to sing, hum or whistle a melody along with it. Don’t think too hard about it, just sing anything.

If you can do that, you can improvise!

If you have a melody that you like, try and pick it out on the piano. If you keep practicing this — singing first, then picking it out on the piano — then after a short while you’ll be able to pick out the melody on the piano while you’re singing it.

Scatting along while you’re improvising is a great way to train your ears!

Remember: don’t think about it too much. Thinking is a rational process that happens in one part of the brain, while creativity is a completely different process that happens in another part of the brain.

If you’re thinking too hard, there is no room left to be creative. The best creations happen in a mind that is completely still, and with a heart that is overflowing.

Tips

If you have trouble making up a melody of your own, then pick an existing melody. As it happens, the chord progression C-Am-Dm-G7 is used for a whole lot of songs, for example “Blue Moon” or “Heart and Soul” and many others.

Sing or hum one of those melodies while you’re playing the chords, and then add in your own variations. Before you know it, you’ll be singing — and playing — a whole new melody.

Another tip for making up melodies: download lyrics to a song that you don’t know. Just google for “song lyrics” and you’ll find many websites with tons of lyrics. Then try to make up your own melody to these lyrics.

The easiest way is to simply recite the text. You’ll find that automatically you’ll put some kind of rhythm into it, even if you don’t know how the original song goes.

You could also do this with poetry, of course — or really with any kind of text as this Elton John video shows.

Take it slow. The faster you play, the less time you have to think about what you’re going to do next. You’ll learn quicker if you play slower.

An example

Above all, keep it simple! I already mentioned the chord progression C-Am-Dm-G7, which is only four chords. But you can simplify it even more. How about just playing C-G-C-G over and over?

Here is a little improvisation that I did using just these two chords. I kept it very simple: just three-note chords in the left hand and one-finger melody in the right.

Short improvisation example using only C and G chords (MIDI)

Like I said in the beginning, it doesn’t really matter if this improvisation is good or not. But it is mine and I made it up on the spot.

If you learn to play from the heart, then your improvisations will be the ultimate way to creatively express yourself musically. Few things are more fulfilling!

This past weekend, Michael Anderson — who is the Piano Magic teacher — opened up the “Piano Magic Concert Hall” to the public.

In the Concert Hall, there are 20 performances of solo piano music by Piano Magic members. Everyone is playing their own arrangements — by ear.

Some of the performers have only been with the course for several months, while others have been around for one or more years (like myself).

So for some excellent free piano music, and for proof of what this course delivers, visit the Piano Magic Concert Hall!

If you look up free sheet music or chord sheets on the internet, you often run into something called “guitar tabulature” or “tabs”.

This is a simplified type of sheet music that is easier to read for guitar players than traditional notation. It basically displays the fretboard of the guitar.

What if you want to play that song on the piano and you can’t find the sheet music? Then you might get lucky with the guitar tabs.

Translating tabs to notes on the piano is not very hard but you’ll have to learn a bit about how the guitar works.

Let’s search for “Comfortable” by John Mayer. I typed the following into google:

john mayer comfortable chords tabs

After some digging around, I found a nice tab here. Below I have copied a small portion of this tab.

e--2--0--2--0--2--------------------------
b--3--3--3--1--1-------0------2------3----
g--2--0--0--0--2-------0------2------4----
d--0--2--0--2--0---0---0---0--2---2--4--0-
a-----1--2--0-----------------------------
e----------------3---3---3------3------0--

So how do you read this? There are 6 lines, one for each string on the guitar. The bottom line is the lowest string and the uppermost line represents the highest string (makes sense).

Typically guitar strings are tuned like this, from bottom to top: E, A, D, G, B, E. (Notice that this looks a lot like the Circle of Fifths!)

Other tunings are possible too, but they are less common. Usually the tab indicates the tuning of the strings. In the snippet above, each string is preceded by its note name and we can see that this tab is notated with standard tuning.

The numbers represent the guitar frets. The number 0 means you’re supposed to play an “open string”; that is, you don’t press the string down on a fret.

To translate the tab to notes, we have to do some counting. In the above snippet, the top-most line (e) begins with the number 2. That is the note F#.

How did I calculate this? Simple: the E is 0, the next tone in the chromatic scale is F (1), and the tone after that is F# (2).

So you start at the tone the string is tuned to and then count upwards through the musical alphabet. Or you simply use the table below:

(I only used sharps here, but you can substitute them with flats if necessary.)

This table is basically a representation of the guitar fretboard (up to the eighth fret).

You read tabs from left to right. If there is a number on more than one line — as is the case here — you’re supposed to play these notes at the same time.

Let’s look at the first part of the tab again:

e--2--0--
b--3--3--
g--2--0-- ...
d--0--2--
a-----1--
e--------

The first thing we should play is 0-2-3-2 on the D-G-B-E strings. Because I play guitar, I immediately recognize this shape as a D major chord.

If we count it out, we should find the D major too. Look in the table above and write down the notes. You should find, from bottom to top: D - A - D - F#. Those are indeed the notes of the D major chord.

Notice that the D tone is doubled: that is common for guitar chords. You can play this on the piano as a regular D major chord, or you can voice it some other way: that is completely up to you!

After the D major chord we’re supposed to play 1-2-0-3-0. These are the notes: A# (or Gb) - E - G - D - E. And so on…

Sometimes you’ll see special symbols in the tab, for example in:

e--0h2-----2p0----0-2-3-2-
b--3-----------3--3-------
g--2-----2--------0-------
d--0---0----------x-------
a-----------------1-------
e-------------------------

The h indicates a “hammer-on”, which is a quick finger tap on the string. The p is a “pull-off”, the opposite of a hammer-on.

You don’t really need to worry about these techniques if you’re transcribing the music for the piano because those things are impossible to do on a piano. (You could try playing them as a grace note.)

The x indicates that particular string isn’t supposed to be played.

That’s about it.

Note that often guitar tabs contain no rhythmic information, so you already need to know more-or-less how the song goes.

Happy counting!

Minor keys

There is also a circle for minor keys:

I put the names of the minor keys on the inside of the circle. This is because each major key has a relative minor key.

If you don’t have this handy picture around, you can still find the relative minor key. Draw a 90 degree angle from the major key through the center of the circle. The leg will point to the relative minor.

Or: Rotate the circle so the major key is at 12 o’clock. Its relative minor is now at 3 o’clock.

Or: Skip two keys in the clockwise direction. Start at Bb, skip F, skip C, then the relative minor is Gm.

You can also remember that the relative minor is the 6th tone from the major scale, or simply go 3 half-steps down. Or go three steps clockwise.

It also works the other way around: each minor key has a relative major key.

Ways to find the relative major scale:

• Draw a 90 degree angle the other way around.
• Rotate the circle so the minor key is at 12 o’clock. Its relative minor is now at 9 o’clock.
• Skip two keys in the counterclockwise direction.

You can also remember that the relative major is 3 half-steps up. Or three steps counterclockwise.

Chords and the circle

Chords that are close together in the circle sound good together in a song.

Every major key has three primary chords: the I (tonic), IV (subdominant) and V7 (dominant) chords. These are easy to find in the circle.

Go to your key, for example C. Go one step clockwise and we find the V7 chord, in this case G7. One step counterclockwise from C is the IV chord, in this case F.

The V7 chord is the dominant 7th chord. It uses the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th notes from its own major scale, but the 7th tone is flattened.

For example, the tones of the G7 chord are: G - B - D - F. Note that F is not part of the G major scale; it is “borrowed” from the key one step counterclockwise: the key of C.

If you know the V7 chord, then what key are you in? Look counterclockwise one position in the circle. For example, you can tell this way that the C7 chord belongs to the key of F. The tones of C7 are C - E - G - Bb, and that Bb comes from the scale of F.

The following picture shows the 7 “diatonic” chords that can be used in the key of C (without borrowing “accidental tones”). Note that the major chords are neatly grouped together, as are the minor chords.

Chord progressions

Chords like to move counterclockwise in the circle. The G7 chord provides the strongest pull towards the C chord. The D7 chord, in turn, provides the strongest pull towards G.

In songs in the key of C, it is common to see a chord progression such as A7 - D7 - G7 - C.

The chords are not always dominant 7ths, they could also be Am - Dm - G7 - C or Am - D7 - G7 - C. However, they do tend to follow the circle counterclockwise back to the home chord.

You may have heard of the famous ii-V-I chord progression, or 2-5-1. That’s simply a trip counterclockwise around the circle.

In key of C, ii-V-I is Dm - G7 - C. Extended versions of this chord progression exist too, like the vi-ii-V-I or 6-2-5-1 (also called a 1-6-2-5). We already saw that above: Am - Dm - G7 - C.

You can go even further and add Em in the mix to get a 3-6-2-5-1. All these chords come straight out of the circle, and the principle works just the same in any of the other major keys.

Tritone substitution

A “tritone” is an interval of three whole tones. There is a concept in jazz music called the “tritone substitution”, or the “flat 5″ substitution. You can use this technique for substituting dominant-7 chords.

For example, you could replace a G7 chord with a Db7 chord. You can do this because G7 and Db7 have 2 tones in common: the B and the F. These two tones just happen to be a tritone (i.e. three whole tones) apart. It may sound a little weird at first, but jazz cats like it.

There are several ways to figure out what the tritone substitution chord is, but you can also look into the circle. The substitution chord is the one directly across. Draw a line from G through the center of the circle and you’ll end up at Db. And that’s your tritone chord.

That’s about it for now. I’m sure there are many more interesting uses of the Circle of Fifths. If you know of any, tell me.

In the previous post we saw that the key of C major has no sharps or flats. The key of G major has one sharp, the key of D major has two, and so on.

You can find the tones that are made sharp by starting on F and then going clockwise through the circle.

Which means the order of sharps in the key signature is: F - C - G - D - A - E - B

See how it works in practice:

• C major scale has no sharps, so that’s easy.
• G major scale has the same tones as C major scale, except for F, which now becomes F#.
• D major scale has the same tones as G major scale, except for C, which now becomes C#. Its two sharps are F# and C#.
• A major scale has the same tones as D major scale, except for G, and so on…

In other words, F is the first tone that is made sharp, C is the second tone that is made sharp, G the third, and so on clockwise around the circle.

You can also find the flats using the same picture but now we start on B and work backwards.

The order of flats in the key signature is: B - E - A - D - G - C - F

Let’s apply it:

• C major scale has no flats.
• F major scale has the same tones as C major scale, except for B, which now becomes Bb.
• Bb major scale has the same tones as F major scale, except for E, which now becomes Eb. Its two flats are Bb and Eb.
• Eb major scale has the same tones as Bb major scale, except for A, and so on…

Did you notice that each time you take the next step, which tone changes?

• If we go clockwise, for example from the key of C to the key of G, the tone that changes is F, which becomes F#. F is directly to the left of C. So you can look to the left (or rather, counterclockwise) of your starting key to see which tone has to be raised.
• If we go counterclockwise, it works slight differently: the tone to the left is now the one that has changed. Say we go from the key of C to the key of F. One step left from F is Bb, which means the B tone was flattened to become Bb.

So you can look in the circle to see which tone you have to change.

You can also remember which scale step to raise or lower:

• Clockwise, raise the 4th note from the scale. From C to G, we first find the 4th note from the C major scale, which is F. We raise F to get F#. The note that has changed will also be the 7th note of the new scale.
• Counterclockwise, lower the 7th note from the scale. From C to G, the 7th note from the C major scale is B. We lower B to get Bb. The note that has changed will also be the 4th note of the new scale.

What if you quickly want to know which tones need to be sharpened for a particular key signature? Look up the key in the circle, let’s say the key of A. Go counterclockwise one step (we skip this one). Then all the tones counterclockwise back to F must be sharpened. So in this case we skip D (this one doesn’t change) and sharpen G, C and F.

Getting the flats is a little harder. You move counterclockwise one step from your key signature and then go back clockwise again until you reach Bb. So in the key of Ab, we first go to Db and then back to Bb: Ab, Eb, Bb. So the key of Ab has four flats: Db, Ab, Eb, Bb. A little tricky, this one.

There is another method. Go directly across the circle from your key signature, then count clockwise to B and flat all these notes. From Ab across the circle gets us at D, then clockwise we meet A, E and finally B. We flatten these notes to find the four flats: Db, Ab, Eb, Bb. Still a little convoluted, but hey, it’s possible!

If you know which notes are flattened, how do you determine the key? The name of the key is the second-to-last flat in the list. For example, in the picture below the flats are: Bb - Eb - Ab - Db - Gb. The second-to-last is Db, so the key must be the key of Db major.

Or you could just count the number of flats and go counterclockwise that many steps in the circle, starting from the top.

For sharps it is even easier: Take the last sharp in the list and go up a half-step to find the name of the key. In the picture below the sharps are: F# - C# - G#. To find the key, raise G# by a half-step, which results in: the key of A major.

Of course, here you can also count the number of sharps starting from the top, but this time we go clockwise.

It is easy to see that the circle goes F - C - G - D - A - E - B clockwise. These are all names without sharps or flats. But because B is enharmonically equivalent with Cb, it continues Cb - Gb - Db - Ab - Eb - Bb clockwise. Do you notice, with the exception of F, that this is the same as the first list but simply with added flats?

To find the notes in the current key, read the five notes clockwise and the one note counterclockwise. You can also simply go one position counterclockwise and then read seven notes going clockwise.

So from G we go left once to find C, then we go six times clockwise to find G, D, A, E, B and F#. Put these in alphabetical order and you have the notes from the key of G.

This works for all keys, although sometimes you’ll have to turn flats into sharps for it to make sense. Applying this formula to the key of D would give you G, D, E, A, B, F#, Db but you should obviously turn that Db into a C#.

Phew! That’s a lot of crazy things you can do with the circle and key signatures.

Some people think it should look like this:

And there are people who call it the Circle of Fourths.

None of those differences really matter because it all comes down to the same thing. We will use the circle from the first picture.

You can find a large portion of music theory in this mysterious circle, and I’ll show you some of these fun facts in this article.

Just like a clock, the circle has 12 “dials” because there are twelve unique tones in the musical alphabet. The C is on top, or in the 12 o’clock position.

Going clockwise

It is called the Circle of Fifths because if you go in the clockwise direction, the tones are a perfect fifth interval apart.

An interval is simply a fancy name for the distance between two notes. There are many possible intervals and a “perfect fifth” is one of them.

It’s called a perfect fifth (or just “fifth”) because the distance between one tone and the next is five steps along the major scale.

Let’s start on the C, which is on top of the circle. The next note clockwise is G. Guess what? If you play the C major scale and start at C, then you’ll play five notes, C-D-E-F-G, until you hit G.

Another way to look at intervals is at the number of “half-steps” they encompass. A half-step (or “semitone”) means: go one key on the keyboard to the left or right. A whole step (or whole tone) means: skip a key.

Suppose we start at middle C. A half-step up from C is C# but a whole-step up from C is D. A half-step down from C is B but a whole-step down from C is Bb. And so on…

A perfect fifth is a distance of 7 half-steps. If you start at the middle C on your piano and then count 7 half-steps up, again you end up at G.

Try it for the other notes in the Circle of Fifths. Go clockwise from G to D. Again that is 5 steps along the major scale — of course, this time you’ll have to use the major scale of G, not C — or 7 half-steps up.

From D to A is again 5 steps, this time in the major scale of D. And so on… After stepping through all twelve possible notes, we’re back at C.

Clockwise is also called the “dominant” direction. In chord terminology, G is the dominant of C.

Going counterclockwise

In the counterclockwise direction, tones are a perfect fourth apart. That is why people sometimes call it the Circle of Fourths.

You can probably already guess by now that a “fourth” means: go to the fourth note in the major scale. Going counterclockwise from C means going to the fourth note in the C major scale, which is… F.

You can also count 5 half-steps. If you go all the way counterclockwise you end up at C again.

Going counterclockwise is also called the “subdominant” direction because F chord is the subdominant of C chord.

Upside-down

So far we have counted four or five steps upwards when we played a scale, but we can also play the scale backwards. If you go backwards from C to G on the C major scale, you’ll play C-B-A-G.

That’s only four steps, so from C to G is now a perfect fourth interval while not too long ago I told you it was a perfect fifth… What’s going on here?!

The same thing happens when you go counterclockwise but play the scale backwards: from C to F you now play C-B-A-G-F, which is a perfect fifth and not a fourth.

It is all a matter of perspective. In the end it doesn’t really matter if you call it a fourth or a fifth. That’s because these two intervals are “complementary“: going up a fourth is the same as going down a fifth, and going down a fourth is the same as going up a fifth.

Confused? No matter, they are just numbers. You don’t really need to know this in order to make practical use of the circle, but I wanted to tell you about it anyway.

Key signatures

The Circle of Fifths describes the 12 major scales and the relationships between them. The closer keys are together on the circle, the closer is their relationship.

In the clockwise direction, each step adds a sharp (#) to the key signature:

• C major scale has no sharps
• G major scale has one shars
• D major scale has two sharps
• . . . and so on until…
• C# major scale has seven sharps

Counterclockwise, each step adds a flat (b) to the key signature:

• C major scale has no flats
• F major scale has one flat
• Bb major scale has two flats
• . . . and so on until . . .
• Cb major scale has seven flats

If you remember our picture of the clock, you can see the relationship between the number of sharps and flats and the numbers of the “clock”, at least on the right side of the circle.

On the left, you would have to subtract the “time” from 12. The key of Eb, which is at 9 o’clock, has 12 - 9 = 3 flats.

Note that the left side of the circle mirrors the right, but with flats instead of sharps.

At the bottom of the circle we see three items with a double name: Db and C#, F# and Gb, and B and Cb. We call these key signatures “enharmonically equivalent”.

That means they have different names, and different numbers of sharps and flats — Db has 5 flats while C# has 7 sharps — and therefore their notes have different names BUT they sound exactly the same.

If you were to transpose a piece in Db major to C# major, it would sound exactly like before… though it may be harder to read. That’s why composers and arrangers prefer the key of B over the key of Cb: it’s easier to write and easier to read.

You could go even further and create the key of Fb, which is enharmonically equivalent to the key of E, but that would be madness!

More about the circle next time…

Here’s the trick: the only thing that really matters about a chord is whether it is major or minor. You can safely ignore anything else about the chord.

For example, you may encounter the chord symbols Am9 and D13.

The first one is an “A minor” chord with an added 7th and an added 9th.

The second one is a “D dominant-7″ chord with an added 13th but it could also have a 9th and 11th, depending on how you voice it.

If that didn’t make any sense to you and you have no clue how to form these chords, then keep what you know and throw away the rest.

In our example:

Am9 can be simplified to Am, which is A minor. That’s a very simple three-tone chord.

D13 can simply be played as D major. Again, a very simple chord.

When you play Am instead of Am9 and D major instead of D19, the tune probably won’t sound quite like it’s supposed to, but it won’t sound bad either. You can get away with it!

The only important thing to get right is the distinction between major and minor. If you mix those up, something will sound bad.

To recap:

• A chord symbol that has an “m” or “min” (or sometimes a minus sign) can be simplified to a minor chord.
• Any other chords can be simplified to a major chord.

And if you’re really not sure, you can simplify even further to a power chord.

(There are a few other chord types too, such as diminished and augmented, but we’ll ignore those for now. Just worry about major and minor.)

Playing from sheet music, you can find the key by looking at the key signature. But if you’re playing by ear, you’ll have to do some experimentation.

First, I play along with the song and try to find the scale that matches the melody.

There is a wonderful program called Transcribe! that can help you with this. It can loop endlessly through sections of the song and even slow the music down while keeping it at the same pitch. Very handy!

Most songs are in a major key and there are 12 possible major scales. If you know these scales by heart it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to find the right one.

For example, if I press the A on the piano and it sounds wrong with the music, then I can exclude all the scales that have the A tone. I know the song will be in one of the following keys: Eb, Ab, Db, F#, or B.

Now I can restrict my search to the tones of these five scales. Usually after trying a few tones you’ve found the right scale.

I already mentioned in a previous article that the same scale is used for a major key and its relative minor key. For most songs you can assume they are in a major key, but some songs are in a minor key. If you’re not sure, you’ll have to look at the chords for additional clues.

Usually the very last chord of the song — and often also the very first chord of the song — will be the home chord, or the I chord. That is, the chord that names the key. If a song ends with the E chord, then chances are it is in the key of E.

You can verify this by playing the E chord along with the song — most of the time it should sound good. In the spots where it doesn’t sound good, you’re supposed to use another chord from the key of E. (Typically the V7 chord, in this case B7. Or the IV chord, in this case A.)

If you found the E major scale works for (most of) the song but E chord sounds wrong somehow, then try C#m, which is the relative minor of E. If C#m works, then the song is in a minor key.

In a similar vein, you can listen for the final tone of the song. Just like the final chord tends to be the chord that names the key, so is the final tone. Of course, there are exceptions but 95% of the time this will be true.

Here is another tip that I found on the internet some time ago:

1. Sing along with the song for one or two lines while it’s playing, and then:
2. Sing DO-RE-MI-FA-SOL-FA-MI-RE-DO.
3. The final “DO” you land on is the key you are trying to find.

It’s not an exact science, but it works.

It works like this: the computer scans the recording to find the loudest part. Then it determines how much louder it can make this part. Finally, it amplifies the entire recording by that amount.

I explained in a previous article how to normalize your recordings with Audacity and other audio programs.

That method works fine. However, there is an alternative method and that is to use the free program MP3Gain.

MP3Gain works on MP3 files, not WAV files, and it doesn’t change the actual recording. Instead, it calculates how much the recording can still be amplified and then stores this number in a special place in the MP3 file.

Now your MP3 player program or your iPod will automatically amplify the sound by that amount during playback.

The advantage is that you can easily undo this operation later, something that isn’t possible if you normalize the WAV file.

Another benefit of MP3Gain is that it can work in “album mode”. In album mode, it analyzes a group of MP3 files instead of just one, and makes them as loud as possible relative to each other. That means all these MP3’s will have more-or-less the same loudness.

That is really convenient if you’re going to make a CD or playlist of your recordings. If you don’t do this, you may have to reach out for the volume dial on each new song because it may be a lot louder or softer than the previous one.

MP3Gain is free software and really easy to use. If you get stuck, take a look at the excellent manual.

You can download MP3Gain here.

Lead sheets are very popular with many musicians, especially those who play Jazz and popular music.

A lead sheet gives you a quick idea of how a piece is supposed to sound, but it also gives you the freedom to play it however you feel like.

Often lead sheets are sold in thick books called “fake books” that can be pretty expensive. I have a couple of them and they are well worth the money — together they contain more than 2,000 songs — but they are not exhaustive (and there is quite a bit of overlap between them).

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on buying a fake book, or you’re just looking for a song that isn’t in your collection, check out wikifonia.org.

Wikifonia collects lead sheets and publishes them online, for free. The quality of the work is sometimes debatable, but at least it will give you a starting point. You can also submit your own lead sheets for the benefit of others.

Apparently the service is perfectly legal so you won’t have to worry about that either.

For example, here is a chord progression map for the key of C.

In the key of C, the C chord is the home chord, the most important chord. This is where chord progressions begin and end.

Here is how to read the chord progression map: from the C chord you can go to any of the other chords, and then you have to follow the map back to the C chord.

So you could start at C and jump all the way up to the A chord (top-left). From A you go down to Dm, then to G to Em to Am to F to G and finally back to C.

But that is only one possibility. We could also have gone from A to the shorter route of Dm to Em to F to C.

The possibilities aren’t endless, though. If that were true, we wouldn’t need the map. The map exists because not all chord progressions sound good.

The site also has maps for all other keys and a generic map that works with Roman numerals.

Play around with it! It’s a wonderful tool for learning the rules of harmony.

A verse or chorus of a song often starts out on the home chord (the I chord in the key), then moves through a series of other chords and finally ends up on the home chord again.

Many songs (as well as classical pieces) use the same sequences of chords, and in this article we’ll look at some of the most common ones.

A very basic progression is I - IV - V. If we’re playing in the key of C that would be C - F - G. After the V chord you would typically play the I chord again.

Often the IV chord in this sequence is replaced by the ii chord. That is a minor chord. The progression then becomes I - ii - V, or C - Dm - G in the key of C.

Again, this progression leads us back to the home chord, so the next chord after ii - V is most likely to be the I chord. This progression is therefore known as ii - V - I (or 2-5-1).

Remember that the V chord is often played as V7. That is how you can recognize this progression. If you see a minor chord followed by a dominant-7 chord, followed by a major chord: it’s a ii-V-I.

An extension of this progression is the 1-6-2-5 pattern. (For some reason this progression is often written using normal numbers instead of Roman numerals.)

In the key of C, it goes like this: C - Am - Dm - G7

One of the names these chords go by is the “Blue Moon progression”, but there is a huge number of other songs that use it too.

Go play it on the piano and then hum the verse of “Blue Moon” or “Heart and Soul”. Don’t tell me it doesn’t sound familiar.

It is really easy to compose your own tunes on top of these four chords, because it will make almost any melody sound good, but we’ll get into that in a later article.

If you already know about the Circle of Fifths, notice that these chord progressions, 2-5-1 and 1-6-2-5 (or rather 6-2-5-1), are simply trips around the circle. Movement in fifths gives the strongest type of sound that our ears like, so it is no wonder that these patterns are used so much.

Because Dm can substitute for F (see above), you can also play 1-6-2-5 as 1-6-4-5, and vice versa. It’s only a small variation in the sound.

What I want you to do now is go through your stack of sheet music or leadsheets (if you have them) and see if you can find these chord progressions in those songs. Even classical pieces will have them.

You can also find the chord sheets of many tunes online. Just go to Google and type in:

name of the song chords tabs

For example:

blue moon chords tabs

The words “chords” and “tabs” will tell Google to look for websites that have chord sheets. You might have to dig around for a while but usually you can find a chord sheet for most music.

Remember that you can spot a ii-V-I by looking at the type of chords: a minor chord followed by a dominant-7 chord, followed by a major chord. This is important, because sometimes — especially in Jazz tunes — you may find a ii-V-I that uses chords that are not in the key of the song.

For example: C Am F G7 Gm C7 F …

The first four chords are in the key of C, but Gm isn’t and neither is C7. What you see here is a ii-V-I, namely Gm-C7-F, that is used to modulate to another key. The F is now the new I chord. At some point the chords will modulate back to the original key, likely using another ii-V-I. That’s a typical thing for Jazz tunes.

So much for the theory. It’s good to learn these chord patterns (1-6-2-5 and 2-5-1) in every key, so go to your piano and play around with them.

In this article we will look at this quick and relatively inexpensive method to make your digital piano sound even better. Some of this software will cost money, but we’ll also look at free options.

In another article, I explain how to convert a MIDI recording to MP3 using software instruments. Although the idea is similar, the article you’re reading now focuses on live playing: you press keys on your piano and sound comes out of your computer in real-time. Of course, you can also record your live playing and we’ll talk about that too.

NOTE: The article was written with Windows in mind. If you use another operating system such as Mac OS X, the directions are similar but the software will be different.

What you need

A fast computer

Virtual instruments (also called software instruments) have fairly heavy hardware requirements. A fast processor (CPU), lots of memory (RAM), and a fast and large hard disk are not a luxury. If you bought your computer in the past two years you’ll probably be fine.

ASIO

Most importantly, you will need a good soundcard, preferably one with an ASIO driver. ASIO is a technology that allows for very low latency.

Latency is the time between pressing a note on your piano and hearing a sound come from the computer. If this is more than a few milliseconds, you’ll notice the delay and that can be very annoying when you’re playing live. A latency of about 10ms is bearable but more than that isn’t much fun. ASIO can bring down the latency to about 3ms, which is short enough for you not to notice.

Check the documentation for your soundcard and the web site of the manufacturer if an ASIO driver is available. If not, then you can install ASIO4ALL, which pretends that you do have ASIO capability. It won’t make your soundcard perform any better, but it will enable certain virtual instruments that require ASIO to function.

MIDI

MIDI, which stands for “Musical Instrument Digital Interface”, is the protocol that electronic instruments use to talk to each other. We will use MIDI to hook up your digital piano or keyboard to the computer.

Note that MIDI does not send actual sounds to the computer, but messages that let the computer know which keys you pressed and how hard you pressed them. It’s then up to the software instrument to interpret this data and convert it into actual sounds.

No doubt your digital piano or keyboard has at least one MIDI port (MIDI OUT) but typically also a MIDI IN and maybe even a MIDI THRU. Usually these are located at the back of your instrument, and look like this:

In recent years, manufacturers have added USB capability to their instruments. If you’re lucky, your piano or keyboard has a connector like this:

In that case, you can hook up your instrument directly to a free USB port on your computer using a standard USB cable.

If your piano does not have USB but only the round 5-pin MIDI connectors, then you’ll need to invest in a USB-to-MIDI interface. You can get these at any computer store.

Another tutorial I wrote has more information on how to make your computer MIDI-ready, so check that out if you run into problems. Important: connect MIDI OUT to MIDI IN, and MIDI IN to MIDI OUT.

Using VST plugins

The most popular type of software instrument are VST plugins. VST, which stands for “Virtual Studio Technology”, is the protocol that software instruments use to talk to each other.

VST plugins can be considered software versions of fancy hardware sound modules and effects processors that you would find in a professional recording studio, and just like their hardware equivalents you can chain multiple effects together.

There are three types of VST plugins:

1. Audio effects, which take an audio signal and transform it. Typical effects are reverbs and filters.
2. MIDI effects, which process MIDI messages. An example would be a plugin that transposes all notes one octave higher.
3. Instruments, also called VSTi’s, which turn MIDI data into sounds. That’s what we will be using.

To use VST plugins you will need a “host” program. Most professional audio software can host VST’s but there are free options too. Below, I’ll use the free program Cantabile Lite. This program is limited in the number of plugins it allows you to use, but it’s sufficient for our purposes.

Using a piano plugin

1. Download and install Cantabile Lite.

Now we need to install one or more VST plugins. In order for host programs to find the plugins, they need to be installed in a common location. Typically this is C:\Program Files\VSTPlugins. It doesn’t really matter where you install the plugins, but you will need to tell the host program where it can find them.

2. Download and install 4Front Piano Module (VSTi). This is a decent free piano VST.

3. In Cantabile, go to Tools, Settings, VST Plugins tab. If the folder where you installed the plugin isn’t in the list yet, add it now. Then click OK to go back to the main screen.

4. Click Tools, Quick Scan Plugin Folder. Now Cantabile will look for new plugins in the VSTPlugins folder.

5. On the main screen there are two labels that say Choose Plugin. Pick the top one and select your new piano plugin from the Instruments list.

A new window for the “4Front Piano Module” will open. Most plugins have settings that you can edit in this window, but this one doesn’t have any.

6. Unselect Input. This will disable your computer’s microphone. For some reason, Cantabile always turns this on automatically, but that only adds background noise to your playing and we don’t want that.

Play something on your instrument. You should hear sound coming out of your computer speakers. Congratulations, you are now using a virtual instrument!

Cantabile can record your playing directly to a MIDI file or to a WAV file. Check out the MIDI Recorder and Audio Recorder sections. You can tweak the sound level with the Output volume slider. You should always record as loudly as possible, but not so loud that the sound becomes distorted.

Adding an effect

I find that digital piano usually sounds better with a little reverb, so now we’ll download a reverb plugin and put it behind the piano in the effects chain.

1. Download and install Classic Reverb. You don’t have to close Cantabile while you’re doing this. After the installation is complete, simply click Quick Scan Plugin Folder to update the list of plugins.

2. In the Choose Plugin box under the piano plugin, pick Classic Reverb from the Room Effects list. A new window with a whole bunch of knobs appears.

3. If you play something on your instrument now, you should hear reverberation added to the piano sound. Not convinced? Uncheck the box in front of Classic Reverb to disable the reverb plugin and hear the difference.

4. To the right of Classic Reverb (in the main Cantabile window) is a column called Preset that now says “Default”. Many plugins come with a list of presets (also called “programs”). Play around a little with the presets until you find one you like.

Typically, you’ll find a preset that sounds close to the sound you want and then tweak it using the knobs and sliders. The settings window of the plugin also lets you step through the presets, and even lets you save your changes as a new preset.

As I mentioned, Cantabile Lite is limited in how many plugins you can use. If you want more, you can either buy the full version or use a different program such as VSTHost. This one is slightly more confusing than Cantabile, but you’ll find the process similar.

Many other audio programs have the ability to use VST instruments and MIDI. REAPER is an inexpensive but powerful multitrack audio application that you may find useful.

Recommended VST plugins

Here are some VST plugins that I personally like and use, or that come highly recommended by other musicians.

As usual: the better quality you want, the more you’ll have to pay for it. Some of the commercial products have trial downloads available, so you can try them out before you buy.

VST instruments can be roughly classified into two categories: samplers and simulations (the latter are often referred to as “synths”).

Some virtual piano products were made by painstakingly recording a real acoustic piano. When you press a note on your keyboard, these samplers will play back those recordings. The advantage of this approach is that the sound is excellent, but the samples take up a lot of disk space, and the sound isn’t very flexible.

Simulations, on the other hand, use mathematical formulas to produce the sound. As of this writing, there are no simulations that can exactly reproduce the sound of an acoustic piano, but they are getting close. The advantage is flexibility and low storage requirements, although more CPU power is needed to perform all the calculations.

• TruePianos - This is the big brother of the free 4Front Piano we’ve used above. It uses a combination of sampling and simulation.
• Pianoteq - This is a true piano simulation that doesn’t use samples but mathematics. It sounds very promising.
• Ivory - Probably the king of sampled pianos. Other sampled piano products are Akoustik Piano, The Grand 2, and many others.
• mda Piano - A pretty good free piano plugin.
• The Classic Effects from Kjaerhus Audio - A set of pretty good effects plugins, all for free.

There are many more high quality virtual instruments available, often for free: electric pianos, synthesizers, drum modules, strings, you name it… Google is your friend!

NOTE: Some of these programs also have “standalone” players. That means you don’t need to use them as plugins in a VST host. Some of these standalone players already offer so much functionality that you may prefer to just use them like that.

Troubleshooting

This section goes into some common problems that arise when using software instruments.

CPU overload

If you are playing with a virtual instrument and you hear cracks and pops, then your processor may not be able to handle the load. Most audio software has a “CPU load” indicator that you should keep an eye on.

The sound that is produced by the virtual instruments is put in “buffers” (small chunks of memory) that are sent to the soundcard. If the CPU is taxed to its limits (i.e. 100% usage) then it does not have enough time to fill up the buffers. The soundcard will then send this incomplete data to your speakers, which isn’t a very pleasurable sound.

If this happens and you have more than one plugin enabled, you can shutdown one or more of them and try again.

Many instruments also have a setting for polyphony, which is the maximum number of tones that can be playing simultaneously. Higher polyphony means more accurate sound, especially when you’re playing lots of big arpeggios with the damper pedal down, but it also means more CPU power is needed to process everything. Lowering polyphony will increase performance.

You can also reduce the sample rate. On typical soundcards, audio consists of 44100 samples per second, which is equivalent to CD quality sound. If you reduce this to 22050 samples per second, then the software only has to work half as hard. The downside is that a lower sample rate will reduce the quality of the sound. It also increases the latency.

Of course, to get optimal performance you may want to shutdown all programs you are not currently using. That includes programs that run in the background, such as Skype, viruscheckers, a personal firewall, etc. Unplug the internet too.

Distortion

Loud cracks can also be caused by clipping distortion, which happens when the total volume exceeds the limits of the sound hardware. In that case, lower the output volume slider in your host software.

Latency

We already spoke about latency in the section on ASIO. Latency is a function of sound buffer size and sample rate. The smaller the buffers, the lower the latency (the formula is: latency = buffer size / sample rate).

Your host software might have an option for configuring the soundcard buffer size. Smaller is better. However, if the buffers are too small, the CPU may not have enough time to fill them, resulting in distorted output. You may want to experiment with different buffer sizes to see what works best.

There is no point in making the buffer size smaller than what your soundcard can handle, so if your soundcard won’t go lower than 512 bytes, your latency at a sample rate of 44100 Hz will never be lower than 11ms.

MIDI issues

MIDI can become pretty complex if you are chaining a lot of devices together. If you’re just playing digital piano with one VST plugin, you won’t really run into MIDI trouble. However, it’s good to be aware that MIDI transmits data on 16 different “channels” where each channel is assigned its own instrument.

If you want to layer multiple instruments, each one should get its own channel. To do so, you have to assign a channel number on your instrument (see your manual for details) and the same channel number in the software. So you might put piano on channel 1, strings on channel 2, drums on channel 10, and so on. Don’t put two different instruments on one channel!

Notation software

Finale Notepad - Free version of the professional Finale. Limited in features but still useful. Requires free registration before you can download.

LilyPond - Music engraving tool. It has no graphical user interface, so it is not as easy to use as other notation software (you have to type in everything) but its output looks awesome.

ScoreWriter 4 - Pretty good notation program. The best I could find for only $59. I use it a lot!

Transcribing

Transcribe! - Software to help transcribe recorded music. Not free, but worth every penny.

AmazingMIDI - Convert WAV files into MIDI files. Pretty good, though results may vary.

Audio recording and editing

Audacity - Great audio editor. Get the 1.3.4 beta version, it works well and has more features than the older version.

WavePad - The “Masters” version isn’t free, but the regular one is.

Multitrack audio

REAPER - Very powerful multitrack editor. Not free, but has an unlimited and unrestricted free trial period.

MIDI and VST

Red Dot Forever - Very simple MIDI recording tool, incredibly easy to use. I like it a lot but that’s because I created it.

Anvil Studio - MIDI recording and sequencing tool. It can be a little confusing to use, but it’s the only free one I know.

vanBasco’s Karaoke Player - MIDI player with on-screen keyboard, options to change speed and pitch, and karaoke!

Notation Player - MIDI player that shows the score in sheet music notation.

SynthFont - Play MIDI files using SoundFonts. This sounds better than your computer’s built-in synthesizer, but you’ll have to find and download SoundFonts separately.

Cantabile Lite - Easy to use VST host, MIDI recorder/sequencer and audio recorder. The “Lite” version is free.

VSTHost - Another VST host program. Render your MIDI files to audio using VST plugins.

MP3 software

WinLame - Very user-friendly MP3 encoder. Make MP3 files from your WAV files.

FreeRip - Rip your CD tracks to MP3 files.

MP3Gain - Analyzes and adjusts MP3 files so that they have the same volume. Very handy!

Other tools

ASIO4ALL - Some audio software requires an ASIO-compatible soundcard. If your soundcard does not support ASIO, you can install ASIO4ALL to trick your software into believing it does!

The advantage of MIDI files is that they are very small — easily 1000 times as small as an MP3 of the same music — but the disadvantage is that they usually don’t sound very good. And you can’t put them on your iPod either.

So if you want to learn how to convert your MIDI files to MP3’s and how to make them sound good doing so, then read on.

NOTE: The article was written with Windows in mind. If you use another operating system such as Mac OS X, the directions are similar but the software will be different.

(For live playing with software instruments in real time, read how to use virtual instruments.)

A few things about MIDI

Unlike MP3 or WAV files, MIDI files don’t store audio waveform data but simply a list of notes that need to be played. In that sense, MIDI is very much like sheet music but in electronic form. (In fact, you can import MIDI files into music notation software and it will show you the sheet music.)

This means that MIDI data is not sound (yet) and you need to employ some device to turn those note values into actual sounds. Those devices are commonly called synthesizers.

Your computer comes with a built-in synthesizer and the reason MIDI files usually don’t sound very good is that this built-in synthesizer isn’t very good. It does the job but it’s not pro sound.

The trick to converting MIDI files to MP3 then, is to pick a different synthesizer that sounds better. You can either use a hardware synth or a software synth. There are a lot of expensive packages on the market, but fortunately for us, there are also free options. We’ll examine those in this article.

If you have a digital piano or electronic keyboard, you can use that instrument to play your MIDI files. You then capture the sound from your keyboard’s audio outputs on your computer. We won’t go into that option in this article, but you can read all about recording from your piano and keyboard here.

MIDI files can be very simple and use only one instrument, or they can use a variety of instruments. A MIDI file can have up to 16 “channels”, each of which is usually assigned its own instrument. The instrument of a channel can also be changed while the MIDI is playing (this is called a “Program Change event”, a term that you may run into later).

The more instruments a MIDI uses, the more cumbersome it becomes to get good sounds. Making a MIDI file that just uses piano sound great is a lot simpler than one with a full band or orchestration. Generally speaking, you will need to find a “SoundFont” or “VST plugin” for each instrument. But we’ll get into that later. First, we’ll use the computer’s built-in synth to make our MP3’s.

Using the built-in software synth

Like I said before, the software synthesizer that is built into Windows is not pretty but it does the job. I don’t recommend this method, but it’s a good fallback if you don’t have any other choice. It won’t sound super, but at least you’ll end up with an MP3.

The easiest method is to download a free “MIDI to MP3 converter” program. There are thousands of them and I don’t really recommend a particular one. Here are some suggestions

If you don’t want to install any software, you can use an online converter. First, you choose the MIDI file from your hard disk. This file is then uploaded to a computer on the internet (this happens really quickly because MIDI files are so small). After a few minutes processing, you can download your brand new MP3 file.

Here are two sites that seem to work well:

• media-convert.com
• HamieNET.com

Keep in mind that all these tools use less than great synthesizers. In the next sections you’ll learn how to get better sounds.

Using SoundFonts

A SoundFont is a file that contains a set of sampled sound waveforms. A SoundFont for piano, for example, could contain a digital sample of each of the piano’s keys. As a result, SoundFonts sound much better than your computer’s built-in synthesizer. In this section, we’ll use one or more SoundFont files to render your MIDI files to MP3.

TIP: Some soundcards can actually use SoundFonts directly. You can change this in the Configuration Panel for your soundcard. If you do, you’ll find that MIDI files suddenly sound much better.

The steps:

1. There are several free programs that can use SoundFonts, but I like SynthFont. Download and install it. Also download SYNTHGMS.SF2. You can copy it to your SynthFont installation folder (most likely C:\Program Files\SynthFont) although this isn’t necessary.

2. Start SynthFont. Go to the File menu and choose Set default SoundFont file. Navigate to the folder where you stored SYNTHGMS.SF2 and select it. This tells SynthFont that we will now use the instruments from this file to play our MIDI songs.

3. Open your MIDI file in SynthFont. In the bottom of the Tracks tab you will now see the separate instrument channels from your MIDI file and the SoundFont that has been assigned to each of them.

A SoundFont file may contain the definitions for just a single instrument (or “preset”) or for multiple instruments. The latter is true for SYNTHGMS.SF2, which contains all 128 “General MIDI” instruments. You can click the Preset column to see which instruments are available in the SoundFont file for that track, and change the instrument of each track if you wish.

4. Click the big Play button to hear how the MIDI file sounds… It will probably sound pretty bad!!! Why? Well, the SYNTHGMS.SF2 is only a very simple SoundFont. Now is the time to go on the internet and find better SoundFonts to download.

5. If your MIDI file contains a piano track, then I recommend that you download this piano SoundFont. It’s pretty good. To tell SynthFont we want to use it, click once on the MIDI instrument track that you want to change, then click the File… column header. Now select the piano SoundFont file.

When you press Play again, that track is now being played with the new piano sound! If the MIDI file has other instruments as well, you may want to google for additional SoundFont files.

TIP: You can find another good piano SoundFont here. The HammerSound website has a big collection of SoundFont files, including lots of pianos. You may need to use the program sfArk to unpack some of these SoundFonts before you can use them in SynthFont.

6. To capture the audio as an MP3 file, click the big To File button. Enter a filename and choose MP3 Files as the output format. I suggest you choose at least 128 kbs for the quality. Then press Save. You will now return to the main screen. If you press Play now, the output will be saved to the file you just selected.

TIP: I recommend you click To Spkrs so that it becomes unselected before you press Play. Now you won’t hear the audio but it is still being saved to disk. The reason for disabling To Spkrs is that without it SynthFont doesn’t have to do its calculations in real-time, which prevents clicks and pops from appearing in the MP3 file if you have a slow computer.

This procedure is quite involved, but that’s the way it is. If you just want to render MIDI files that only have a single piano track, then you can simply find a good piano SoundFont and set that as the default (with File, Set default SoundFont file). But if you want to play a complete MIDI file with many instruments, then you will have to find suitable SoundFonts for all of them and set up their channels accordingly.

TIP: For more control over the quality and settings that are used to encode the MP3 file, you can also save as WAV (which is audio without loss of quality) and then do the MP3 conversion with a separate tool. I prefer to use WinLame for this job.

Using VST plugins

VST plugins are similar to SoundFonts, but they’re much more powerful. There are two types of VST plugins: instruments, which turn MIDI data into sounds, and effects (such as reverb and filters) which transform those sounds. Effects can be very useful but we won’t go into them here.

There are innumerable options for using VST plugins. Below, I’ll use the free program Cantabile. This program is limited in the number of plugins it allows you to use, and therefore is only suitable for MIDI files with one or two different instruments. So consider this merely an illustration of what is possible. I’ll also give some options for dealing with more complex MIDI files.

The steps:

1. Download and install Cantabile Lite. This is what is called a VST host program, because it acts as a host for the plugins.

2. Start Cantabile and click Midi Sequencer near the bottom. A panel folds open where you can choose your MIDI file. Press Play and you will hear… nothing. That’s because we need to install one or more VST plugins first.

3. Download and install 4Front Piano Module (VSTi). This is a decent free piano VST.

4. In Cantabile, go to Tools, Settings, VST Plugins tab. If the folder where you installed the plugin (most likely C:\Program Files\Steinberg\VSTPlugins) isn’t in the list yet, add it now. Then click OK to go back to the main screen.

5. Click Tools, Quick Scan Plugin Folder. Now Cantabile will look for new plugins in the VSTPlugins folder.

6. Finally, on the main screen there are two labels that say Choose Plugin. Pick the top one and select your new piano plugin from the Instruments list.

7. To record your MIDI file playing with the selected plugin, first unselect Input. This will turn off the microphone from your computer, because you don’t want to record from that as well. (For some reason, Cantabile always turns this on automatically.)

8. Go to the Audio Recorder section and press Record (or Auto Record). Next, press the Play button in the MIDI section below. Whatever is being played now is also recorded to a WAV file (make sure the Record Audio Output button is enabled). After MIDI playing is done, stop the recording and press the File Name link to go to your WAV file.

9. Convert the WAV file to an MP3 file with WinLame (or any other MP3 encoder program you may have lying around).

Phew! Of course, you’ll need to find VST instrument plugins that work for all of the instruments in your MIDI file. There are many excellent VST plugins that can reproduce the sound of any instrument you can imagine, but the really good ones are also really expensive. Good luck!

As I mentioned, Cantabile Lite is limited in how many plugins you can use. If you want more, you can either buy the full version or use a different program such as VSTHost. This one is slightly more confusing than Cantabile, but you’ll find the process similar.

Many other audio programs have the ability to use VST instruments and MIDI. If you want to process MIDI files with many separate instrument channels, then I recommend you use REAPER instead. This is a powerful multitrack audio application. REAPER can import each MIDI channel as a separate track, so you can easily assign each track its own VST plugins.

When you play accompaniment, you just play the bass and the chords but not the melody of the song.

Of course, different styles have different requirements — in Jazz, you wouldn’t even play the bass, for example. The patterns I present here are suitable for pop and rock music.

The prerequisite is that you know how to do voice-leading. We’ll use voice-leading to go as smoothly as possible from one chord to the next (no big jumps).

Here are the chords for the first phrase of Let It Be by the Beatles, in the key of G:

       G              D
When I find myself in times of trouble
Em          C
Mother Mary comes to me

The most rudimentary accompaniment would look something like this:

The right hand plays each chord twice and the left hand plays a single bass note at the start of each measure.

You quickly release the damper pedal at the start of each new measure (i.e. when the chord changes) and then press it down again.

In case you don’t know how to read sheet music, download the MIDI file for this example and follow along with vanBasco’s Karaoke player.

Here is a pattern that I play a lot that suits this song very well:

MIDI example

It sounds more impressive if you play an octave bass in the left hand. This might take some getting used to but it’s worth learning.

MIDI example

You play the octave bass with your left hand pinky and thumb. Under your index finger is the 5th of the chord. You can play this instead of the repeated octave:

MIDI example

You can play all kinds of patterns using the bass octaves and the fifth. For example:

MIDI example

If you can play bass octaves, then these kinds of patterns should be easy: you keep your hand steady and just alternate between your pinky, your thumb and your index finger. Experiment!

For more intensity, you can play triplets in the right hand. A triplet is 3 notes played in the time it usually takes to play 2 notes.

You can play it slowly:

MIDI example

Or fast like Jerry Lee Lewis:

MIDI example

If you play it fast like this, it’s often best not to use the damper pedal. Use your own judgment to hear what sounds best.

There you have some very basic patterns. In a future article we’ll talk about more advanced things that you can do in the right hand, but this should get you started.

I encourage you to experiment with different rhythmic patterns between the bass and the right hand chord. Don’t think about this too much: just feel it.

For example, something like this: MIDI example

I played the same chords from the above examples and the same bass notes (octave bass + fifth) but in a different rhythmic pattern. I didn’t plan this pattern in advance, it just came out that way. Experiment!

However, that’s quite a big jump. As a result, the music sounds disconnected. Another way to play this chord progression:

Now only two tones change — the C remains in the same place — and they jump only a very small distance (a half-step and a whole-step, respectively).

The result is a much smoother sound. This principle is called voice-leading.

The key to voicing-leading is playing inversions. We started with C chord in root position and then played the F chord in first inversion.

We also could have done it like this:

Now C is in first inversion and F is in second inversion. Again, one note remained in the same place and the other two only jumped a small distance.

We always try to keep the tone (or tones) that the two chords have in common in the same place. When C chord is followed by Am, only one tone moves:

However, in the progression F - G, all three tones must change because the F and G chords don’t have any tones in common:

Unless, of course, we make G a four-tone chord, G7:

Note that I played the chord root in the bass this time.

Another four-tone chord example, Dm7 to G7:

Here, two notes remain stationary while the other two move a small distance downward.

That’s really all there is to it. To do proper voice-leading, find the inversion of the next chord that requires the fewest changes.

Common uses for voice-leading: playing accompaniment, playing with string sounds (violins), and playing organ and electronic keyboard — these instruments have no sustain pedal, so voice-leading is needed for smooth changes.

Time to practice your inversions!

The idea is seductive: it’s easy to convert MIDI to sheet music, so if it were possible to extract a MIDI file from an MP3, then you would have easy access to the sheet music of your favorite songs.

The problem is this: An MP3 — or WAV or any other type of audio file — is like an apple pie. It’s easy to make apple pie from apples: you cut them up and put them into the pie. But it’s impossible to get back the original apples once you have the pie!

In a recording all the instruments are mashed together and it’s nearly impossible to get back the separate tracks.

Even if you have the separate instrument parts — for example in a solo piano recording — then it’s still incredibly hard to identify the notes being played.

Most instruments, like the piano, have a very complex sound. Each note is made up from the fundamental frequency (the pitch) and several harmonics. Each of these harmonics is also a frequency.

Now, it is pretty straighforward to compute the frequencies that are used at a particular point in the recording.

The tricky part is determining what each of these frequencies represents: a fundamental (i.e. a real note), a harmonic (not a unique note), or background noise.

That being said, there are programs that can take a recording and turn it into a MIDI file. However, because of the difficulties described above, you can expect to do a lot of cleanup on the generated file.

My favorite is AmazingMIDI, a free program that can come pretty close depending on the quality of the material that you feed it.

Another option is to transcribe the recording by hand, something I actually recommend because it helps to train your ear, and having a good ear is important for a musician. Transcribing is a very time-consuming process, though.

There is an awesome, and inexpensive, program called Transcribe! that can slow down recordings so they are easier to follow, can transpose them to different keys, and has a frequency analyzer that attempts to recognize the notes in the recording.

This game is similar to the popular game Guitar Hero. Notes come falling down from the screen and you have to press the right keys on the piano at the right time to score points.

The music comes from MIDI files, which means the number of songs you can play is virtually unlimited because for almost any song you can find one or more free MIDI files on the internet.

Download Synthesia for free at: www.synthesiagame.com

Even if you don’t like to play games, Synthesia still provides a good way to see what’s going on in the MIDI file.

It’s much nicer than the on-screen keyboard from VanBasco because you can see the notes ahead of time. This is quickly becoming my favorite tool to play back MIDI files.

Give it a try!

You can watch a nice video demo of Synthesia here.

A fine gentleman by the name of C. C. Chang has written a book called The Fundamentals of Piano Practice and he is kind enough to give it away for free on the web.

Chang claims that with the principles from his book you can learn piano up to 1000 times faster compared to other methods. The book not only teaches you how to play, but more importantly: how to practice!

You can download the book here as PDF or read it online here.

Worth checking out!

The sound was captured directly into the computer and added to the video later, so what you hear is exactly what you get.

You need at least one microphone — two is better because that gives you stereo sound — and a recording device. Of course, you can use your computer to record on, but that does mean you need to put it somewhere near the piano (or buy very long cables).

You will get the best recordings with a set of good condenser microphones, but they are expensive and you need other equipment as well to connect this all to your computer.

Not just the quality of the microphones matters: the acoustic quality of the room is at least as important.

For good results you really need to go to a professional recording studio.

Some budget options are:

A cassette tape recorder. This is the low-budget option. The sound quality will be pretty bad, but it’s better than nothing. To put the recordings on your computer, you can connect the tape recorder from its (Head)phones Out to the computer’s Line In or Mic In.

A mobile phone or digital camera. Why not? You’ll probably have to put the phone or camera a few feet away from the piano otherwise the sound will easily be too loud for the microphone to handle, resulting in nasty clipping distortion.

An MP3 player (or MiniDisc) with recording capability. The sound quality varies from one model to the next, and you can get very acceptable results with this.

Using the built-in microphone from your laptop computer. Most laptops have a built-in microphone, but this typically isn’t a very good one. It’s intended for speech, not high fidelity sound.

Using an external microphone with your computer. There are several different types of microphones. The most common is a “dynamic microphone”. That type will work, but it’s better to use a “condenser microphone”, which is much more sensitive and therefore more suitable for picking up the wide range in dynamics that a piano can produce.

Of course, if you use just one microphone your recording will be in mono. You will need to use two microphones (or a single stereo mic) and a mixing deck to record in stereo. In addition, condenser microphones require their own power source (called “phantom power”) so it’s best to get a mixer that provides this.

An external microphone I can recommend is the Samson C01U. This is an inexpensive condensor microphone that plugs directly into your computer’s USB port, which means you don’t need any other equipment to use it and the sound quality is great.

If you use two Samson C01U mics to capture stereo sound, then you won’t need a separate mixer, just two available USB ports.

For recording, you can use the free Audacity software. If you want to work with more than one audio track at a time, I recommend REAPER. Even though Audacity can work with multiple tracks too, Reaper is a true multitrack workhorse. This powerful program is very inexpensive and you can try it out for free for an unlimited time.

Using a portable digital stereo recorder. Two popular ones are the Zoom H4 and Zoom H2, and I hear the Edirol recorders are pretty good too. These handheld devices deliver good results and are very easy to use.

After you’re done recording, you can connect them to your computer with a cable (or a memory stick) and transfer your recordings (as WAV or MP3) to your hard drive.

Some of these, such as the Zoom H4, will work with external microphones too.

For more information on recording acoustic pianos, I defer to:

• A very detailed recording discussion on the Piano World forums
• An extensive discussion about the Zoom H4 recorder
• Paul Cantrell’s Piano Recording Method
• Recording Real Pianos article (Sound On Sound magazine)

• Windows Media Player (already on your computer)
• VanBasco’s Karaoke Player, a great program that also has an on-screen keyboard, can slow down or speed up the playback and transpose it. Click for detailed instructions
• MidiNotate Player, which shows the MIDI data as sheet music.

If you like to fiddle with sheet music notation, you’ll find that most notation programs can also import MIDI files and convert them to sheet music. However, unless you played perfectly in time, you’ll need to perform some manual cleanup to make your score look good.

Synthesizers

As I mentioned before, MIDI is just information about which notes to play. To turn MIDI data into sound, you need a “synthesizer”.

A synthesizer can either be a hardware device — such as your digital piano or keyboard, or other MIDI-capable equipment such as a special “sound module” — or a piece of software.

Your computer comes with a software synthesizer. It’s not a very good one, and it is the reason why many people don’t like the sound of MIDI files. On my computer it is called “Microsoft GS Wavetable Software”.

If you choose this as your MIDI Output device in Red Dot Forever (or in any other program), MIDI music will be played back through this built-in synthesizer.

NOTE: If you don’t hear anything, make sure the synthesizer is not muted in the Volume Control Panel. On my computer it is called “SW-Synthesizer”.

Windows has a control panel for “Sounds and Audio Devices”. The “Audio” tab contains an option for setting the device that will be used to play back MIDI music.

By default this is set to the software synthesizer, but you can also choose your instrument’s MIDI ports here. From then on, any music player will play MIDI on your instrument.

Usually that I what I do: first I record my playing as MIDI on the computer, then later I’ll use the VanBasco player to play these recordings back on my digital piano.

This is my favorite program because:

1. it is very simple to use
2. it is free
3. and I wrote it myself

Click here to download the latest version of Red Dot Forever (1.04)

This is what it looks like:

First, click the OPTIONS button to get the Options screen:

Here you choose which MIDI Input to use (for recording) and which MIDI Output (for playback). These fields show the MIDI hardware that is currently attached to your computer. If your instrument shows up here, everything is ready to go!

Choose your instrument’s MIDI devices for both Input and Output and click Close to return to the main screen.

Make sure your piano or keyboard is on and that the cables are connected, and press REC. Play some funky stuff. Press STOP to stop recording, and then PLAY to hear your piano (or the computer) play back what you just recorded. If you are not happy with your recording, press REC again.

If you are satisfied with your recording, press SAVE to write the recording as a MIDI file (also called “SMF file” or Standard MIDI File) to your computer.

NOTE: If your piano stops making sound when recording, you may have to enable “Local Control” on your instrument. On some instruments an active MIDI connection will turn off the sound, but Local Control will turn it back on again. There may be a switch at the back of your instrument or it may be an option somewhere. See your manual for details.

You can also enable Echo input while recording in the Options menu. This will send the notes you just played back to the device chosen for MIDI Output, but they may have a small delay, depending on your computer.

In its current form, Red Dot Forever cannot be used to edit your recordings. If you need to make changes to your MIDI files, I recommend the free Anvil Studio.

Most keyboards will let you configure MIDI output and input into the tiniest of details. If something doesn’t work like it should, check out the MIDI section of your manual.

Red Dot Forever is open source software. That means the source code is available for anyone to download and extend. Visit the SourceForge Project Page or download the source code.

If you enjoy using Red Dot Forever, you are welcome to make a donation to help us continue to develop and support this fine program. Thank you!

• MIDI OUT. You will at least have a MIDI OUT port, for sending MIDI data to other devices.
• MIDI IN. Usually you will also find a MIDI IN port, for receiving MIDI data from other devices.
• MIDI THRU. Some instruments also have a MIDI THRU port, for passing MIDI data from one device to another. This port mainly exists to reduce the cable spaghetti that results from tying many different devices together.

To connect your instrument to your computer you either need:

• A direct cable connection
• A MIDI-to-USB interface
• A MIDI input on your soundcard (game port connector)

Direct cable connection

Many modern digital pianos and keyboards can directly hook up to a port on your computer. Some older models may need the parallel or serial port, but chances are your instrument can connect directly to USB. This is also called the “TO HOST” connection on your instrument.

Here’s what it looks like on my piano:

If the instrument didn’t come with a cable, you can get one at any computer or electronics store. Refer to your manual to see which type of cable you need.

If you need a USB cable, then pay attention to the type of cable. USB cables come in two varieties: A/A (identical connectors at each end) or A/B cables (a fat and a thin connector). My digital piano uses an A/B cable:

You probably have such a cable lying around already because they are also used to connect other equipment such as printers and scanners. If not, you can pick one up at any electronics store. Be sure to get a cable that is long enough to reach your computer.

Most likely, you will also have to install a “driver” on your computer. This is a piece of software that tells the computer how to talk to the digital piano. You either received a CD-ROM with your instrument that contains this software, or you can download it from the instrument manufacturer’s website for free. Refer to your instrument’s manual for more information.

Unfortunately, on my digital piano (a Yamaha CP33) using the direct USB connection to the computer causes a lot of static on the audio output, which is really annoying. So I had to purchase a MIDI-to-USB interface to solve this.

MIDI-to-USB interface

If your instrument only has these connectors:

then you will need to get a MIDI-to-USB interface. This device has two or more MIDI cables on one end and a USB connector on the other. They cost $25 - $50 and you can get them at any music store.

This is what mine looks like:

You might have to install a “driver” on your computer to make this device work. On my computer with Windows XP no driver was necessary (in fact, installing the driver from the CD-ROM crashed my machine) but your experience may be different. In any case, the MIDI-to-USB interface comes with the required software and a manual, so be sure to read it carefully.

IMPORTANT: When you connect the MIDI cables to your instrument, make sure you put the MIDI IN cable into the MIDI OUT socket, and the MIDI OUT cable into the MIDI IN socket. If you connect IN to IN and OUT to OUT, it will not work!

Game port (joystick) connector

This last option is found on older computers. You need to get a special cable that has MIDI connectors on the source end and a game port connector on the other.

That’s it for the cables. Next time we’ll talk about how to record the MIDI messages and how to save them into a file.

MIDI stands for “Musical Instrument Digital Interface”. It is a standard communications protocol for electronic instruments.

The main difference between audio recording and MIDI recording is that MIDI does not store the sounds you make, only the names of the keys that you pressed. It is like sheet music or the old piano rolls — but in electronic form.

Most digital pianos and keyboards have MIDI capability: at the very least they can send MIDI messages to other equipment (”MIDI OUT”), but usually they also have the ability to receive MIDI messages (”MIDI IN”).

NOTE: You can also install MIDI into an acoustic piano, but we won’t consider that in this article. Google for “MIDI piano strip” if you are interested in this.

How does MIDI work?

MIDI is a hardware standard that describes how electronic instruments can communicate, as well as a software standard. I’ll skip the hardware bits and briefly go into the software part of MIDI.

This is what MIDI cables look like:

When you connect your digital piano to the computer through MIDI, the piano will send a message (or event) to the computer whenever something interesting happens. For example, when you press a key, when you release that key, when you press down the sustain pedal, when you choose another voice, when you roll the pitch wheel, and so on.

For a digital piano, MIDI sends/records the following:

• Note On event: the name of the note (A0 to C8) and the “velocity” (how fast you pressed the key)

• Note Off event: just the name of the note (although some high-end instruments also send a “release velocity” to indicate how fast you let go of the key )

• Pedal event: either on/off or a value between 0 and 127 that indicates the pedal position (0 = up, 127 = down)

This is enough to record all the details of your performance.

The MIDI protocol uses 16 channels, each of which can have its own “voice” (instrument sound). Most MIDI messages are specific to one single channel, although some affect all channels at once.

If you layer two sounds — piano on channel 1 and strings on channel 2, for example — then pressing a key will always send two messages: one “key down” event for channel 1 and one “key down” event for channel 2.

If you play the piano in split mode with a bass sound in the lower register and a piano sound in the higher register, then a “key down” event is only sent for channel 1 when you play a bass tone, and a “key down” for channel 2 is only sent when you play a piano tone.

Channel 10 is reserved for drum sounds.

MIDI is an industry standard, so you can expect it to work the same way across products of different vendors. You can hook up a Roland keyboard to a Yamaha sound module and it will work. Each vendor can also add its own type of MIDI messages — these are called “system exclusive” messages (or “sysex”).

“General MIDI” is a standard for assigning voices (sounds) to the same MIDI codes. If your instrument is GM-compatible, it guarantees that sound 1 is always an acoustic piano, sound 12 is a vibraphone, sound 74 is a flute, and so on. Not all MIDI equipment uses this standard, though.

The reason for using MIDI is expandability. If your digital piano can send MIDI messages, you can connect it to an external sound module and thereby give it access to a whole range of new sounds.

For example, the Yamaha Motif ES sound module can produce more than 1,000 different sounds! All you have to do to use these sounds is connect your piano’s MIDI OUT to the sound module’s MIDI IN with a cable, and you’re ready to go.

Why record as MIDI?

I prefer to record my piano playing as MIDI for the following reasons:

MIDI files can be edited later. Notes can be made louder or softer, moved up or down by a semitone, played a little earlier or a little later, and so on. You could build your entire MIDI file from scratch by hand if you wanted to, but I just use this to tweak small errors.

MIDI files are much smaller than sound files. An average MIDI recording is about 1,000 times smaller than a file of the same duration in MP3 format. Even though disk space is cheap these days, I still prefer the tiny size of MIDI files. It just makes them easier to transfer and backup.

You can record without worrying about the sound. In the articles on recording audio, we spent a lot of time on getting the volume right. When recording MIDI, this doesn’t matter. It also doesn’t matter what sound you use.

When the time comes to turn my MIDI recording into audio, I can set up my instrument using the sounds and effects I want and then send it the MIDI file to play back using these settings. If the volume is too loud and clipping occurs, I can turn some knobs and try again.

How to record MIDI

MIDI can be used for a wide variety of things, but in these articles we will limit our discussion to recording. There are three ways to record MIDI:

With the sequencer that is built into your instrument. Many keyboards and digital pianos have a record function. If your instrument has a floppy drive or a memory stick, you can simply record your performance on the instrument itself and then transfer the files to your computer using the floppy or the memory stick. Refer to your manual for more detailed instructions.

With a special “sequencer” unit. This is a separate device that you connect to your instrument with MIDI cables.

With the computer. This is what we’ll go into in more detail in the rest of this series.

Go to www.box.net and click Signup to create your account. The free (”Lite”) account will do fine: you get 1 gigabyte of storage space (which is plenty) and files are limited to 10 megabyte each (which is about 10 minutes of stereo music).

The advantage of box.net is that people don’t have to download your music first: they can simply listen online.

Apparently, the Lite account is not made available to everyone. I am told you can sign up for a free 14-day trial period. After the trial period is over, you can then convert your account into the free Lite account.

When your account is created, Login and click Upload. After the file has been uploaded, click the little blue arrow on the right and choose Link to this File to get the URL to your uploaded file. This is the link that you want to give to friends so they can listen to your music.

You can upload files in any format you want, but the best option is MP3 encoded at a bitrate of 192 kbs or higher.

If you want people to listen to your piece online directly from the box.net web site — without having to download anything first — be sure to encode your MP3 as “constant bitrate” (or CBR) at 44100 Hz.

The box.net streaming player is a little picky, so if the MP3 is encoded differently, you can only download it and not stream it.

Box.net is not the only free online storage host, although most of the others have lots of annoying advertisments. Decent alternatives are MediaFire, 4shared.com and esnips.com.

There are several options, but I’ll highlight two:

Export as WAV file. This is the best way to save your recording if you want to edit it later. WAV files are uncompressed audio and contain exactly what you recorded. They are also very big, about 10 megabytes for 1 minute of stereo sound. If you want to burn your recordings to a CD-R, WAV files are the way to go.

Export as MP3 file. This is the best way for saving recordings that are you want to share on the internet. MP3 files are compressed audio, which means they are a lot smaller than WAV files, but their quality is also slightly worse.

To export a recording as an MP3 file from Audacity, you need to install an MP3 encoder first.

You can also use a separate program to create MP3 files. I personally use WinLame (free).

Sound quality

The WAV and MP3 file formats have various possible quality settings. The trade-off is between sound fidelity and file size: the lower the quality, the smaller the file. Obviously, you want to record and save in the best quality possible.

Use these guidelines:

WAV files: 44100 Hz, 16-bit, stereo. You don’t have to worry about this when you use Audacity, but in other recording software you may need to configure this by hand. If you have a soundcard that can record at a higher resolution (e.g. 96 kHz 24-bits), then by all means use that. You can configure the sound quality in the Audacity Preferences screen.

MP3 files: Encode at 128 kbps or higher. Personally, I use 192 kbps with “constant bitrate” (CBR) at 44100 Hz. Some MP3 encoders use “variable bitrate” (VBR) by default, but still not all music players handle that well (especially not players that stream audio over the internet).

In the following article I explain how you can share your MP3 files on the internet.

Two common post-processing steps are normalizing and noise reduction.

Normalizing

This is a trick that will make the sound of your recording as loud as possible, without distorting it.

If you record multiple pieces to put them on a CD, for example, then it’s important that each track is not significantly louder or softer than the others, otherwise the person listening will have to dial the volume knob up and down with every new track.

To normalize your recording:

1. Press Ctrl+A to select the entire waveform.
2. Choose Normalize from the Effect menu.
3. Click OK in the dialog box and your waveform will be normalized.

The number in the Normalize screen under “Normalize maximum amplitude to” indicates the maximum volume your sound will have. I always put it on 0.0 dB, which is the maximum. Older versions of Audacity always normalize to -3.0dB, which is slightly less loud but still good.

Commercial pop music producers use “compressors” and “limiters” to make their records sound as loud as possible. I advise against doing that on your piano recordings. One of the unique characteristics of the piano is its wide dynamic range, from very soft to very loud, and compressing the sound will destroy this (but normalizing won’t).

Noise reduction

Ideally, your recording will not contain any “noise”. Noise is sound that is picked up from unshielded cables, outside influences, and unmatched impedances. This is why we try to record as loudly as possible: the better the signal (i.e. the “real” sound) is, the less noise we hear.

Audacity can help us to get rid of all the noise, but this only works if the noise is relatively small compared to the real signal. This procedure is not required, but it may help if your recording isn’t entirely clean.

Noise reduction works in two steps:

1. Typically there will some silence at the beginning and/or end of your recording. This isn’t real silence, because it contains noise. Select as much of this “silence” as possible and choose Noise Removal from the Effect menu. Click Get Noise Profile.
2. Press Ctrl+A to select your entire waveform. Again choose Noise Removal from the Effect menu. This time click OK and your waveform will be processed.

IMPORTANT: If you use noise reduction, do this before normalizing.

If there is a lot of noise in the recording compared to the real signal, then noise reduction will produce averse effects. Not only will it filter out the noise, it will also filter out some of the good stuff and make your recording worse. Use with caution.

Two other effects that you can apply to your recording are “equalization” and “reverb”. Audacity offers many options here, but I advise you to use them sparingly and with taste. Personally, I use the reverb function on my digital piano and leave it at that.

Setting up the volumes

Go into the Volume Control Panel and enable recording for your chosen input (either Line In or Mic In).

If you are connecting Line Out to Line In, move the volume slider all the way up. Set the volume knob on your instrument about halfway.

You’ll have to experiment a little with these volume settings to get the best results. Remember that a piano has a large dynamic range, so make sure that the volume is low enough that loud playing will not distort the sound. (You will hear nasty cracks in the recording if it does.)

If you are using Mic In, set the volume in the Volume Control Panel very low. Also turn the volume knob on your piano way down. You’ll probably hear almost no sound coming out of your piano, but if you listen through your computer speakers (or a headphone) the sound will be loud enough.

NOTE: You want to record as loudly as possible, without causing any distortion. If the sound is too loud, the computer cannot fit it into the available range and the sound will “clip”. That is not very pleasant to listen to. If the volume is too soft, however, the quality of the signal will suffer. Personally, I make sure the input level stays below -3 dB.

The Volume Control Panel is slightly confusing. It has two modes: playback and recording. In the playback mode (the default) you can mute or unmute your audio devices for playing music. In the recording mode, you can select which audio device will be used for recording. The panel shows either the volume sliders for playback or the sliders for recording, but not both at the same time.

How do you switch? Select Properties from the menu and then choose the mode you want. The Properties screen also lets you hide audio devices, so if your Mic In or Line In do not show up in the Volume Control Panel, you have to enable them here. Not very intuitive, but that’s how it works.

NOTE: Make sure Line In or Mic In is the only selected input in the recording volume panel. Most soundcards will let you select only one input, but there are also soundcards that can record from multiple sources at the same time. In that case, de-select all the inputs that you are not recording from, to prevent them from picking up background noise.

Listening to yourself

Not all digital pianos have built-in speakers, and you may be using your Line Out connectors for that already, so to record from Line Out you need to disconnect your speakers. On other digitals, plugging a cable into Line Out or Phones Out may mute the onboard speakers.

Obviously, you still need a way to listen to what you are playing.

If you’re not using Phones Out, you can listen through the headphones on your instrument.

You can also listen to the sound on the computer. For this, you need to enable Line In (or Mic In) for playback using the Volume Control Panel. Now any sound that comes in will be sent directly to the computer’s speakers. If your computer doesn’t have speakers, plug in some headphones.

Put the volume at a level you find comfortable. This volume level is different from the one that is used for recording, so it doesn’t matter how loud or soft you put it.

WARNING: If your instrument also has a Line In, you may be tempted to connect the computer’s audio back to the piano so you can hear yourself on the piano’s onboard speakers. This is potentially dangerous, because it can result in electrical feedback that may damage the speakers. See your manual for more info.

Recording

If you don’t have a good audio editing program already, I recommend that you use Audacity to make your recordings. It’s free and very powerful. Make sure you use the latest version available; at the time of writing this is “1.3 (beta)”. Even though it says “beta”, this version works just fine.

Start up Audacity and it will look something like this:

At the top of the screen you can verify that either Line In or Mic In is selected (you can also change it here). When you’re ready, press Record (the button with the red dot). This will create a new track. Play something on your piano and it should appear in the track. When you’re done, click Stop. Click the zoom buttons in the top-right corner to view your entire recording (shortcut key: Ctrl+F).

TIP: When you record audio, it is important that the incoming data stream is not interrupted by anything. If it is, you’ll get cracks and pops in the recording, and you don’t want that. Audacity isn’t the only program running on Windows; in fact, there are dozens of programs running in the background.

Before you begin recording, first close all other programs, especially email and messaging programs. Preferably disconnect your machine from the internet altogether. The fewer programs are running, the less Windows will interrupt the recording and the better the result will be.

After recording, the Audacity screen should look like this:

A new track has been added and it contains two waveforms, one on top (the left stereo channel) and one at the bottom (the right stereo channel).

If you see only one waveform, you have recorded in mono. That is probably not what you want, so you have to tell Audacity how many channels you’ll be using for the recording. Go to the Audio I/O section in the Preferences, and set the number of recording channels to “2 (Stereo)”.

Next time, we’ll talk about several post-processing steps that you can apply to your recording in order to make it sound better.

Even though these articles mainly talk about recording on your computer, the same principles apply to other digital recording devices. So if you have an MP3 player with recording capability, or a MiniDisc, or any other device with an audio input, you can use that instead and then transfer the files to your computer.

NOTE: These articles are written with Windows in mind. If you use another operating system such as Mac OS X, the hardware directions are similar, but the software will be different.

These are general instructions that should work with any instrument. Because details tend to differ between brands and models, I’ll often tell you to refer to your instrument’s manual.

Always check with your manual first which options apply to your instrument. You can often download the latest version of these manuals in PDF format for free from the manufacturer’s website. The same goes for any additional software you may need, such as device drivers.

Inputs and outputs

All digital instruments have at least one audio output. The more expensive the instrument, the more output options it has. Recording is simply a matter of connecting an audio output from your digital piano or keyboard to an audio input on the computer, and then using a software program to capture your performance.

Typically available outputs on your instrument are:

• Line Out
• Aux Out
• (Head)phones Out

On your computer, possible available inputs are:

• Line In
• Mic In
• External recording device

NOTE: Although many laptop computers also have a built-in microphone, we won’t discuss that here. If all else fails, recording with this built-in mic is an option… but don’t expect it to sound very good.

You will get the best recording quality with a connection from Line Out to Line In. Different types of outputs have different “impedance levels” and ideally you will connect an output to an input with matching impedance. Line Out and Line In are a perfect match.

It is possible to make connections where the impedance does not match, such as Line Out to Mic In, but they are not ideal. The sound will easily distort, and you will have to lower the output volume on the instrument and the input volume on the computer as much as possible in order to avoid “clipping” (loud cracks in the recording where the maximum volume is exceeded).

Unfortunately, you do not always have a choice. Most desktop computers will have a Line In option (the blue input on your soundcard) but most laptops have only a Mic In. If that is all you have, then that will have to do.

NOTE: Mic In will record in mono only, but Line In is full stereo sound and therefore preferable.

Some of the less expensive digital keyboards only have Phones Out to connect headphones, but not Line Out or Aux Out. Use whatever is available and try to make the best of it.

If your computer has no Line In and you can spare the money ($50 and up), it is worth buying a special recording device called an “external sound card”. This is a unit that plugs into your computer’s USB or Firewire port and gives you one or more Line In sockets.

TIP: If you only have a Mic In, it is still possible to make stereo recordings. First, you record your performance as MIDI. Then you let the piano play that MIDI and capture the left channel on the computer. If you’re using Audacity, set the track from “Mono” to “Left Channel”. Repeat, but now capture the right channel. Align it with the first track, and set it to “Right Channel”. Finally, export as WAV or MP3.

Cables and plugs

Now we have chosen the input and output, we will have to connect them with a cable. Which cable depends on the types of sockets your machines have.

At the computer end we will most likely have a small (3.5mm or 1/8″) stereo jack:

Remember that Mic In is always mono, so you could use a mono jack here. You can tell the difference by the number of rings they have:

At the digital piano, Line Out is typically split into two sockets labeled L/L+R (or in my case L/Mono) and R. They take two big (6.3mm or 1/4″) mono jacks:

If you plug just one jack into L, you’ll get mono sound. For stereo sound, one jack goes into L and the other goes into R.

To use Line Out, you’ll want to use a stereo cable with two big mono jacks on one end and a small stereo jack on the other. The cable that I use actually has two RCA plugs on the source end, and I used two converter plugs to make them big mono jacks:

To use Aux Out, you need a cable with two RCA plugs (red and white) on one end and a small stereo jack on the other. There shouldn’t be much difference between Line Out and Aux Out as far as sound quality is concerned.

Phones Out is typically a stereo jack (could be big or small). Use a stereo cable, and if necessary a small-to-big converter plug on the source end:

Get shielded cables if possible. You can get these cables at any electronics or audio store.

You should now be able to hook up your instrument to your computer. The next article will explain how to record the sounds that are transmitted across these cables.

These sites do not sell hardcopies, but sheet music in digital form. When you buy a digital copy, you pay for the right to print the sheet music (once). You will need to install a special plug-in for your browser to make this work.

The advantage of using these sites is that it’s relatively cheap to get a piece of music, and you can transpose it to another key before you print. So if the music is in the key of Ab, but you’d rather play it in C, you can transpose it up by 4 half-steps and then print it. Try doing that with a hardcopy!

If you’re a real cheapskate, then here’s a trick: You can usually view the first page of the piece for free in your web browser.

You can transpose this page to a more convenient key if necessary, print it out, and even listen to it online.

Often, the first page already contains the entire A-section (or the verse) of the song. This is a great way to get started on figuring out a piece, for free!

Remember that a major chord consists of the first, third and fifth degrees of the major scale. A minor chord is like a major chord but with the 3rd lowered a half-step.

A power chord, however, just has the 1 and 5 and omits the 3rd. Because we leave out the 3rd in a power chord, it is neither major nor minor.

You can play a power chord whenever a major or minor chord is required. In fact, because the 1 and 5 are present in every chord except for diminished and augmented chords, you can substitute power chords almost everywhere.

The reason rock guitar players love power chords is that you only have to learn a single handshape in order to play all possible power chords. Also, when you apply a lot of distortion to the sound, power chords sound better than full chords.

Power chords are not very common in piano music. But they are useful if you want to play chords way down low on the keyboard.

With those low tones, adding the 3rd makes the sound too muddy, so playing just 1-5 will sound better than 1-3-5.

The notation for a power chord, for example the C power chord, is C5. Less common is something like C(omit3).

For example, C major in root position is played as: C - E - G (from low to high)

Often it is useful to put the chord tones in a different order. We’ll go into the reasons why later, but for now I’ll show you how to play such inversions.

If there are three tones in the chord, as in the C major chord above, we can play it in three different positions:

1. Root position (or fundamental position)
2. First inversion
3. Second inversion

In first inversion, you take the lowest tone and put it on top. Now the chord becomes: E - G - C. In terms of major scale degrees, the chord is now: 3-5-1

In second inversion, you take the highest tone and put it at the bottom. Now the chord is: G - C - E. In scale degrees, the chord is now: 5-1-3

(You can also make the second inversion by taking the first inversion and putting its lowest tone on top again.)

The number of tones in a chord determines the number of ways the chord can be played. So four-tone chords can be played four different ways.

For example, the Cmaj7 chord:

1. Root position: C-E-G-B (1-3-5-7)
2. First inversion: E-G-B-C (3-5-7-1)
3. Second inversion: G-B-C-E (5-7-1-3)
4. Third inversion: B-C-E-G (7-1-3-5)

It’s as easy as that.

In popular music, inversions are usually notated as slash chords, which look like: “chord name/bass tone”.

An example is Cmaj7/E. This means you should play the Cmaj7 chord but so that the E tone is at the bottom. In other words: in first inversion.

The classical way is a little trickier; it uses intervals to notate the inversion. For triads (three-tone chords):

• Root position: just the chord name
• First inversion: chord⁶ — because the root is now a sixth interval above the bass tone
• Second inversion: chord⁶₄ — the root is now a fourth above the bass tone and the 3rd of the chord is now a sixth above the bass tone

Confused yet? Here are the notations for seventh chords (i.e. chords with four tones):

• Root position: chord⁷
• First inversion: chord⁶₅
• Second inversion: chord⁴₃
• Third inversion: chord²

Notice that from top to bottom, the inversion numbers go from 7 to 2. That’s a handy trick to remember this notation scheme.

Anyway, I prefer the slash chord method to notate inversions.

The main reasons for using inversions are: a) playing a smoother bass line, b) voiceleading. But that is for a future article.

For example, let’s look at a major chord, C major. It consists of the tones C - E - G.

The interval from C up to E is a major third (4 half-steps).
The interval from E up to G is a minor third (3 half-steps).

This interval formula, root + major third + minor third, applies to all major chords. The other chord types have their own formulas:

The table above only lists chords that are built using thirds. Of course, you can think of all other types of chords in terms of intervals too.

For example, the interval formula for a suspended chord like Csus4 (C-F-G) is: root + perfect fourth + major second. And a major 6 chord such as Cmaj6 (C-E-G-A) is: root + maj 3rd + min 3rd + major 2nd.

And so on… Figuring out the interval formulas for all the other possible chord types is left as an exercise for the reader.

Alternatively, you can look at intervals this way: A major chord consists of the root, the tone a major third up from the root, and the tone a perfect fifth up from the root. After all, C up to G is a perfect fifth interval.

Personally, I don’t often think about chords in terms of intervals, but I do believe that learning this skill will add to your understanding of the language of music.

Exercise 2

Now that you’ve seen how Hanon works, we can go through the rest of the exercises quicker. They all work in the same fashion — a repeating pattern going up and down the keyboard — except that the notes and fingering are slightly different each time.

This pattern is already slightly more complicated.

The right hand plays:

The left hand plays:

Notice that the right hand uses the middle finger twice, but the left hand uses it three times. And not even always on the same note! This may be a little tricky at first. Pay attention to it: using the correct fingering is essential!

You know what to do for the next measure: move all fingers up one white key on the keyboard and repeat the pattern.

The notes for the second measure are:

D-F-B-A-G-A-G-F

And so on. As in all Hanon exercises, we go up two octaves. Repeat for 14 measures until you hit:

B-D-G-F-E-F-E-D

Time to turn around and descend:

You play:

Again, the notes are the same but the fingers are different.

Move down the keyboard until you are back where you started.

Hanon recommends playing exercises 1 and 2 four times in a row without interruption.

Exercise 3

This pattern looks a lot like exercise 2, so don’t get confused.

Upward:

Downward:

As always, move up two octaves, and then move down back to where you started.

Exercise 4

Upward:

Downward:

Exercise 5

Upward:

Downward:

Hanon recommends playing exercises 3 to 5 four times in a row without interruption.

That’s it! Those are the first five exercises from The Virtuoso Pianist. These should keep you busy for a while…

Advanced

If you are becoming good at these exercises, transpose them to other keys.

Right now we’ve been playing in the key of C (white keys only). Try exercise 1 in the key of F, then in Bb, Eb, and so on, until you’ve covered the entire Circle of Fifths.

You can also move on to the rest of the Hanon exercises — there are 60 in total. No doubt you can find the complete set on the internet somewhere. (Here, for example)

The original exercises are no longer covered by copyright, so a lot of sites carry the sheet music. Google is your friend. ;-)Or buy the book; it’s fairly inexpensive.

Final words

Not everyone approves of the Hanon method. Critics claim that training the fingers in this fashion may not actually be helpful at all — and could even be harmful. Your mileage may vary.

Remember: Playing the piano should be fun. If it hurts, you’re not doing it right.

Enjoy!

The name comes from French composer Charles-Louis Hanon (1819-1900), who bundled these finger workouts in his book The Virtuoso Pianist in Sixty Exercises.

This is the first article in a two-part series that explains how to play the first 5 exercises.

Don’t worry if you don’t know how to read sheet music — I’ll explain in detail what notes to play and which fingers to use.

Let’s get started!

Exercise 1

The sheet music (just in case you know how to read it) looks like this:

Hanon exercises are played with both hands at the same time. If you are new to an exercise, first practice the right hand alone, then the left hand alone, and finally both hands together.

The right hand (the black notes) starts at the C below middle C.
The left hand (the blue notes) starts an octave below that.

(If your keyboard doesn’t have that many keys, you can start an octave higher. It doesn’t really matter where you start, as long as it’s on a C.)

The numbers in the picture above are finger numbers. They are the same for both hands:

This is how we begin the exercise, right hand only:

• Play the C below middle C with the right thumb.
• Skip a white key to play the E above the C with your pointer finger.
• Play the next three white keys with your remaining three fingers: F, G, A.
• Then go back down again with the same fingers: G, F, and stop at E.

You should have played these 8 notes: C-E-F-G-A-G-F-E

These are 8 eighth notes, so together they form exactly one measure.

Repeat this pattern until it feels comfortable.

Let the right hand rest for a little, and play the left hand part:

• Play the low C with the left pinky.
• Skip a white key to play the E with your ring finger.
• Play the next three white keys with your remaining three fingers: F, G, A.
• Then go back down again with the same fingers: G, F, and stop at E.

Again, you played these 8 notes: C-E-F-G-A-G-F-E.

This is true for all Hanon exercises: both hands play the same notes, but with different fingers.

Now try both hands together.

Did you manage that? Great! Let’s move on, because the exercise isn’t complete yet. We’ve only played the first measure so far.

Moving up

Move both hands one white key up the keyboard (i.e. to the right). The left pinky and the right thumb are now both at a D.

Repeat the pattern to play the notes: D-F-G-A-B-A-G-F

Notice that we skip the E this time!

When this measure is complete, we move one white key up the keyboard again. Repeat this for a total of 14 measures. That’s right; we’re going up two octaves.

Keep moving up until you’ve played: B-D-E-F-G-F-E-D

This was the last measure upwards.

Your left pinky should now be at the B below middle C. The right thumb is at the B above middle C.

(Or, if you prefer to look at it from the other side: The highest note — under your left thumb and right pinky — is a G.)

Moving down again

Not only does each Hanon exercise move two octaves up the keyboard (ascending), it also moves two octaves down again (descending).

We just completed the moving-up part. Now we turn around and go back:

The climb down of each Hanon exercise usually mirrors the climb up. Noticed that we kept skipping a key as we went up the keyboard? We’ll also skip a key going down.

However, not all is the same. The hand positions will be different, so pay attention!

The right hand plays:

So that’s: G-E-D-C-B-C-D-E

(Recall that our starting note, G, is the highest note on which we ended the ascent. So our left thumb and right pinky are already in the right place.)

The left hand plays the same notes, one octave lower:

That’s the first measure. As you might have guessed, for the next measure we move all fingers one white key down and play the same pattern:

F-D-C-B-G-B-C-D

Keep on doing this until you are back where you started. Again this is 14 measures, or 2 octaves.

Congratulations! You’ve just mastered Hanon exercise 1!

Playing tips

Play it like you mean it!

You don’t need to smash the keys through the keyboard, but do press them down firmly. This especially applies to your weakest fingers: the pinky and ring finger.

As Hanon puts it: “Lift the fingers high and with precision, playing each note very distinctly.”

Important: Use the proper fingering! The exercises were specifically designed to use these fingerings — to play them with other fingers defeats their purpose.

It is best if you play along with a metronome. Start each exercise at 60 and gradually increase up to 108 (or faster if you like to show off).

You could set the metronome to 8 ticks per measure, because the exercises are all in eighth notes, so that’s one tick per note.

A new exercise may not always be easy at first, but that’s the point: if your fingers were already strong enough, you wouldn’t have to train them!

The exercises will get easier in time. At some point playing them becomes automatic and you don’t even have to think about it anymore. Hanon is also a good brain exercise!

Until then: take it slow. It’s more important to be precise than to be fast.

Whisperings: Solo Piano Radio - Music to quiet your mind. Need I say more? (Also on Live365.com)

The Jazz - Great radio station from the UK that plays jazz all day long. Not just piano jazz, but all kinds.

NPR Piano Jazz - Jazz pianist Marian McPartland interviews famous jazz musicians. You can listen to old episodes online.

Solo Piano on SKY.fm - Top artists and undiscovered pianists in all kinds of genres.

Lucky Seven Radio - Several different channels, including Solo Piano, Piano Jazz and New Age.

Elena Kuschnerova Classic Radio - Classical piano and chamber music.

Finger numbers (left and right hand):

Note that the pinky (finger 5) isn’t used in the tables below. You can use it for the final note of the scale if you wish.

RIGHT HAND fingerings for MAJOR scales:

LEFT HAND fingerings for MAJOR scales:

RIGHT HAND fingerings for NATURAL MINOR scales:

LEFT HAND fingerings for NATURAL MINOR scales:

Often, these chords are not referred to by their name, but by a number. And not a regular number like 1 or 6, but with Roman numerals.

In case you forgot all about them, here are the Roman numerals 1 to 7:

If we were to write the diatonic chords from the C major scale using Roman numerals, it would look like this:

Notice the following:

• Major chords (C and F) are written using capitals.
• Minor chords (Dm, Em and Am) are in lower-case.
• The dominant-7 chord (G7) is written as V7.
• The diminished chord (Bdim) is written as vii°

Occasionally, you may also see the following notation:

Why use these Roman numerals instead of the chord names? Because using the numbers allows us to talk about chords and chord progressions independently of the key.

For example, the chord progressions C F G7 C and F Bb C7 F can both be written as I IV V7 I.

The first is in the key of C and the second in the key of F, but otherwise they are identical:

One advantage of using numbers instead of chords is that it becomes easy to transcribe a piece from one key to another.

Example. Here is the beginning of Misty in the key of C:

        C          Gm            C7          F
Look at me, I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree

Suppose you want to play it in another key, say G. First, you replace the chord names with Roman numerals:

        I          Vm            I7          IV
Look at me, I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree

Then you look up the chords for the new key and fill them in:

        G          Dm            G7          C
Look at me, I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree

The principle works the same for the chords from a minor scale, although the symbols are slightly different (because the chords have different qualities).

For example, the key of A minor:

It is also possible to use Roman numerals to describe chords that are not diatonic. In other words, chords that are borrowed from other keys.

For example, the chord bIII is the 3rd chord (III), in major (uppercase letters), lowered by a half-step (b). In the key of C, this would be the Eb major chord.

You may also see a sharp symbol combined with a Roman numeral: #IV in the key of C is the F# major chord.

It is not uncommon to add a qualifier to the Roman numeral. Examples: IVmaj7, II7, #IVdim7. To find the real chord, substitute the Roman numeral for the n-th chord from the scale.

You may have heard of the Nashville Number System. This is the same principle, although it works with plain-old numbers instead of Roman numerals. So instead of II-V-I you’d see 2-5-1, but they both mean the same thing.

Solfege is yet another system, except that it doesn’t use numbers, but syllables:

And finally, each of the diatonic chords can also be given a name that more-or-less describes its function. Different chords have different functions in their key. I’ll keep the details for a future article, so I’ll simply give you the list here:

So now you know that when people talk about the “I-chord” or “tonic”, they mean the first chord from the key.

• Pattern Piano and Keyboard, David Sprunger
• The Secrets to Playing Piano by Ear, Jermaine Griggs
• How to Dress up Naked Music on the Piano, Duane Shinn
• The Sudnow Method, David Sudnow
• Piano Magic, Michael Anderson
• Quiescence Music, Edward Weiss

Here is my opinion on each of these courses:

Pattern Piano and Keyboard, David Sprunger

Book and DVD. This is a very basic course that teaches you how to accompany a singer.

You learn how to form chords (something you can learn on this site for free) and a number of “patterns” that you can play with those chords. A pattern is a fancy way to play the chord so it becomes more interesting to listen to.

This course does not teach solo piano, where you play both the melody and the accompaniment. Instead, it teaches you to play accompaniment patterns with both hands. It’s really boring to play songs this way unless you or someone else sings the melody too (or plays it on another instrument).

However, it’s one of the few courses that teaches this, so if you want to learn to play accompaniment (for example if you write your own pop songs), then this is a good place to start.

The book contains chord sheets and patterns for a number of simple songs and the DVD illustrates how to apply these patterns. Unfortunately, the course doesn’t explain exactly how you can create your own patterns: you’ll have to experiment with that.

This course was the first I bought and it’s good for what it is. Despite the claims on the site and in the book, it won’t teach you to “play by ear”: you still need to find chord sheets for the songs you want to play.

I also bought additional lessons from their website and they were okay but nothing special. They do have a nice free series of lessons about the blues.

www.playpianotoday.com

The Secrets to Playing Piano by Ear, Jermaine Griggs

Book and CD-ROM. Also called the “300-page course”. They should have called this: “The 300-page Scales and Chords Workbook”, which would have been more accurate.

You will not learn how to play by ear from this course! It’s a workbook that has you doing a lot of exercises on scales and chords and then only spends a handful of pages on actually applying this to playing songs, in a way that is not helpful at all.

I was a little disappointed by it. The exercises are good, but that’s all you get. You’ll be able to construct scales and chords but you still won’t know what to do with them…

Then again, if you are interested in any of the other Hear-and-Play courses (and they have plenty of them), you should probably start out with this introductory course. Otherwise, avoid.

www.hearandplay.com

How to Dress up Naked Music on the Piano, Duane Shinn

Book, additional booklet with leadsheets, 1 DVD, 2 audio CD’s. This course presents 101 different techniques that you can use to spice up your sound.

Duane Shinn has a lot of different courses that all seem to overlap somewhat. They are also pretty expensive! I bought this particular one because I wanted to learn about riffs and other things that I could insert in my playing.

It’s a decent enough course, although I’m still not really sure it was really worth the money. To get the most out of this course, you should already know how to read sheet music — or at least leadsheets — and have some piano playing experience too.

On the DVD and on the CD’s Duane explains the techniques from the book, which really helps. The DVD is really a digitized videotape and the CD’s are digitized audio tapes so the quality isn’t super, but passable.

However, before you spend good money on this course, go to Duane Shinn’s site and sign up for his free email newsletter. Not only will you learn all about chords, he also gives away a lot of the techniques from this particular course, with audio and video examples.

By the time you’ve worked your way through his newsletters, you won’t need to buy this course anymore.

www.playpiano.com

Tip: if you’re a complete beginner, then you should get Duane Shinn’s “One Year Adult Piano Crash Course” first before you buy any of his other materials. This course lays the foundation you need in order to get the most from his other courses.

The Sudnow Method, David Sudnow

3 audio CD’s, one DVD, a tiny booklet, additional downloads, internet forum. David Sudnow developed a method to teach adults how to play the piano that produces instant results.

You don’t need to learn a lot of theory first, you don’t need to start at the beginning by playing boring songs from old-fashioned books… instead, you dive right into popular songs (jazz standards in this case) with lush chord voicings.

Originally, David taught his method in weekend-long seminars, and that’s what you get on the audio CD’s: a recording of such a seminar. Every student begins the same way: first you listen to the audio CD’s to get the general idea, and then you learn how to play “Misty”.

You don’t need to know how to read sheet music — or even anything at all about playing the piano. Misty is provided in something called “dot notation”, a simplified alternative to sheet music that simply shows you which keys to press on the piano.

Once you have memorized how to play Misty, you’re supposed to continue with several other songs for which the dot notation is also provided. The idea is that by the time you know 15 or so tunes by heart, your fingers will learn to automatically go to the proper places, even on new songs.

I don’t quite buy that theory — also, I seriously dislike having to memorize songs — but fortunately, David also gives you a number of rules for creating your own arrangements. You do need the ability to play from a leadsheet for that, though.

The Sudnow Method is so simple that you could summarize it on a single sheet of paper. Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder to get into your hands. I only recommend this course if you are very disciplined, want to learn to play cocktail-style “jazz” piano, and don’t mind spending a year or more memorizing the dot-songs.

www.sudnow.com

Piano Magic, Michael Anderson

This course is different from the others in that you don’t receive any course materials through the mail. Instead, it’s a subscription for access to online study materials (text, audio and video) and a discussion forum.

You will learn to play — by ear — any song you can already whistle, sing or hum. Right from the start, you’ll be playing the songs you already know instead of the traditional simple beginner’s tunes. (Obviously, if you don’t know how a song goes, you cannot play it by ear.)

There are no separate ear training exercises or boring practice routines: everything is learned by playing your favorite songs. You don’t need to know how to read sheet music, and you won’t learn it here either.

Not only does this course teach you how to quickly pick out the melodies of songs, but also how to harmonize these melodies in a variety of ways. In fact, you’ll be able to make your arrangement different every time you play. Piano Magic students never play a tune the same way twice.

Because you’re playing by ear, there is nothing to memorize: you’ll even be able to play songs you’ve never played before with full chords on-the-fly. You’ll find an enormous freedom at the keyboard. You can just sit down at any piano and play your heart out. Piano Magic is wonderful if your wish is to learn how to improvise or compose.

This is my favorite course and I used to recommend it to everyone but these days I’ve learned that it doesn’t work for all people. If you’re looking for a structured approach and someone to hold you by the hand, then Piano Magic isn’t for you. You’re left to your own devices here and you’ll have to discover most things for yourself.

Piano Magic also seems to work better for people with no experience than for people who have already been playing for a while. You’ll need to set aside your current knowledge and come into Piano Magic with the mind (and attitude) of a true beginner.

Piano Magic is not a “canned course”. You are encouraged to participate in the forums and to interact with the teacher and the other students. The course may seem fairly expensive but that is nothing compared to the time you need to put into it to get the most out of it.

www.pianomagic.com

Quiescence Music, Edward Weiss

This is also an online-only course that you subscribe to. The focus is on improvisation and nothing else.

Through a series of simple lessons you’ll learn to improvise in New Age style, but the course is interesting even for people who don’t particularly care about New Age music.

This course is important because too many piano students are afraid of improvisation and don’t know how to express themselves on the piano. Improvisation is the best way to creatively express yourself through music, so I think it’s great that Edward Weiss has taken to awakening people’s creativity.

After a while all the lessons seem a little the same, but you can subscribe per month so that’s a great way to find out if this course is something for you.

www.quiescencemusic.com

There are 12 major keys and 12 related minor keys.

The notes that can be used are given in the key signature. In written music, you can find the key signature on the left of each line.

The key signature consists of one or more sharps or flats, or none at all. For example, if you see the following bit of music:

This means the scale for this piece has two flat tones (black keys) and five regular tones (white keys). Specifically, B should be played as Bb and E should be played as Eb. This is either the key of Bb major or G minor.

Likewise for a key signature with sharps:

Now we have three sharpened tones — F#, C# and G# — making this either the key of A major or F# minor.

Note: The key signature is not only important for written music. If you play by ear, you’ll still have to work with keys and so you’ll still have to know which notes are sharps and which are flats.

Here is a handy table that lists all major and minor keys with their scales and key signatures:

Major key	Minor key	Signature	Scale tones
C	A min		C D E F G A B
F	D min		F G A Bb C D E
Bb	G min		Bb C D Eb F G A
Eb	C min		Eb F G Ab Bb C D
Ab	F min		Ab Bb C Db Eb F G
Db	Bb min		Db Eb F Gb Ab Bb C
Gb	Eb min		Gb Ab Bb Cb Db Eb F
Cb	Ab min		Cb Db Eb Fb Gb Ab Bb
C#	A# min		C# D# E# F# G# A# B#
F#	D# min		F# G# A# B C# D# E#
B	G# min		B C# D# E F# G# A#
E	C# min		E F# G# A B C# D#
A	F# min		A B C# D E F# G#
D	B min		D E F# G A B C#
G	E min		G A B C D E F#

Of course, melody and chords will from time to time use tones that are not in the key signature. Such tones are called “accidentals”. More about them later.

The diatonic chords are the ones most likely to make an appearance. These are the chords that can be built on the tones of the key’s scale. They do not “borrow” tones from other scales.

Let’s assume we’re playing in the “key of C”. That means we’re using the tones from the C major scale.

The C major scale is: C D E F G A B C

We can build a three-note chord — also called a “triad” — on each of these tones.

This is the formula: We pick a root tone to start from, then skip one to find the second chord tone, then skip another to find the last chord tone.

The first chord is C major: C E G

See what I did? I started on the first tone from the scale, C. Then I skipped a tone, D, to land on E. Then I skipped another tone, F, to get to G. And I know that the combination C-E-G is called the “C major” chord.

The second chord is D minor: D F A

This time I started on D, skipped E, found F, skipped G, found A. Very simple.

If we apply that formula to all tones in the scale, we find the following chords:

Or viewed slightly differently:

Here it is in sheet music notation:

For any piece in the key of C, these are the most common chords. (Actually, B diminished is much less common than the others.)

Not all of the chords have the same type: some are major, some are minor, and one is diminished.

For any major scale, the order is always as follows:

1. major
2. minor
3. minor
4. major
5. major
6. minor
7. diminished

Try it for yourself on the scale of F major: F G A Bb C D E F

You should find the following chords:

Minor keys

We can also build chords on the tones from a minor key. Let’s take the key of A minor. We will use the natural minor scale to build the chords, except for one.

The natural scale of A minor is: A B C D E F G A

These are the same tones as the scale of C major, although in a slightly different order. That is because A minor is the relative minor of C major.

Because the two scales have the same tones, we can simply use the diatonic chords from the key of C major, but we now begin at A instead of C:

Pay attention to the 5th chord, E major. This is the exception. If we used the natural minor scale as we did for the other chords, this chord would have been called E minor.

Instead, we use the harmonic minor scale, which has a G# note instead of G. The reason is this: the 5-chord should have a strong, powerful sound, even in minor keys.

In sheet music notation the chords are:

Again, notice the G# on the E major chord.

Seventh chords

The chords we looked at so far were triads, chords with only 3 tones. We can add another tone on top to make them “seventh” chords. Adding this “7th” will refine the character of the chords.

(We could add more tones too, to make 9th, 11th, or even 13th chords, but these additional tones don’t have as much impact on the character of the chord.)

Back to the key of C and the C major scale: C D E F G A B C

We made our chords by skipping tones. Skipping another tone and adding the next note to our C major chord makes it a C major-7th or Cmaj7 for short: C E G B

The second chord then becomes Dm7 (D minor-7th): D F A C

Get the drift? Here are all the diatonic 7th chords:

In sheet music:

Now what did I mean by “refining the character” of the chords? When we had just 3-tone chords, F and G were both major. Now, however, F has become a major-7 chord but G is a dominant-7 chord.

A major-7 chord and a dominant-7 chord have two very different functions in the language of music.

The 5th chord in the key, in this case G7, is therefore usually played as a four-tone chord, to make this distinction between major and dominant-7 clearer.

Like I said, the 5-chord is special.

Also, B diminished was refined to a B half-diminished-7 chord (and not a fully diminished-7 chord). Note that “Bm7b5″ is another way of writing “B half-dim7″.

The order of diatonic seventh chords in a major key is always:

1. maj7
2. m7
3. m7
4. maj7
5. dominant-7 (or just “7″)
6. m7
7. half-dim7 (or “m7b5″)

We can also add 7ths to the chords from a minor key:

Again, these are simply the chords from C major in a different order. With the exception of the the 5-chord, E7, which has also become a dominant-7 chord here.

• melody
• harmony
• rhythm

On the piano, melody is most often played in the right hand. It is the most recognizable part of a piece: this is the part that people remember and hum along with.

Melody is often played a little louder than the other parts of the arrangement to make it stand out more.

Melody is also flexible. It can be “distorted” in many ways and still be recognizable as a particular song. Jazz improvisers take advantage of this principle all the time.

Harmony is the chords. On the piano, we play harmony mostly in the left hand, but sometimes we put harmony tones in the right hand as well.

Melody is usually the highest tone and harmony tones are filled in below that. The most important harmony tone is the lowest tone: the bass.

Harmony is also fairly flexible: you can harmonize the same melody in many different ways, although certain chords are easier on the ear than others.

Rhythm keeps music from becoming boring. It’s the thing you can dance to. A drummer plays nothing but rhythm but on the piano we have to put the rhythm into the melody and the harmony.

For us, rhythm is the difference between short tones and long tones, and where you put the accents on those tones.

There you have it. Master those three areas of making music and nothing will be able to stop you!