In This Thread We Become Less Shitty Keyboard Players

[karmacazee]

Pay a piano teacher. Next time you fancy buying that plugin, save the money and get some lessons. Nothing replaces a real person with in depth knowledge.

Some exercises:

Right hand, play all the major chords chromatically from C over two octaves. Then all the minor chords. Then do them in their second inversions and third inversions. To a metronome, slowly at first.

Left hand : Practice Alberti basslines. Alberti is a broken, or arpeggiated chord, where the notes are played in a certain order - i.e. lowest, highest, middle, highest - finger numbers 5, 1, 3, 1. For example, to do C major in alberti it would be

C G E G
5 1 3 1

If you don't know your finger numbers then here:



And try that, going through the cycle of fifths. Or chromatically. Do both.

[titchbit]

I finally got piano lessons! Been enjoying them a lot. Learnt some new stuff. For instance never knew about inverted chords. I've got another one in a few hours!

[SunkLo]

Yeah I've been practicing chords and inversions by keeping them within the span of an octave. Play all the diatonic chords and invert them when needed to keep your hand in pretty much the same position.

Also been doing the Hanon exercises and scales in all keys. Instead of using conventional scale fingering I've been using an alternate strategy where your 4th finger is always on a black key as well as your 3rd if applicable. Outlined here. It makes the crossover points not line up which is tricky, but physically it's the most smooth set of fingering. So once it's engrained in muscle memory it should facilitate cleaner playing.

Still trying to learn the keys and memorize notes. Not as easy as on guitar where you can just slide scale patterns around the neck. But once I actually learn it all, it should give me a more holistic view of music.