I've been playing the piano on my own (learning to play, that is) for two years and I have just this month found a teacher. It seems that when I play a piece at home, if I play it at 90% I play it at 30% at the lesson. Too much tension, lack of concentration, etc. This is especially true when playing simple cords, such as in four-part Christmas carols. Scales and a simple Bach piece seem to go better. I need a technique for learning movement among simple cords without having to look at the keys. On the grand the distance is greater than I can manage and I loose my place on the page. I think once I master the keyboard my confidence will increase and I will also solve the tension problem. Thank you for your comments.

-- Richard Lyders (rlyders@pivot.net), September 30, 2003

Answers

With two adjacent chords, there are usuallysome common tone

-- anon (noname_poster@yahoo.com), November 05, 2003.

Well, I don't know what happened there!! Anyway, when there are two adjacent chords, there are usually some common tones, and always some tones that move. The trick is to be able to spot the common tones and keep them under your hands, and see which direction and interval the other tones move, and feel your way to them. This will take S-L- O-W practice, keeping your eyes glued to the music and feeling your way from one chord to the next. Then, you can figure out exactly which chords you absolutely need to look down to find, and plan ahead to do that, and know exactly where you are on the page when you look back up. You can do chord warmups too, for example I-IV-I-V-V7-I chord progessions, plus their inversions, plus in open position as you would find in hymns and other choral music.

-- anon (noname_poster@yahoo.com), November 05, 2003.

Buy yourself a hymnbook. Familiarity is essential for all keyboard skills. Try to sight-read 4-5 hymns a day to improve your chordal playing. You will also need to remove that mental block that chordal playing is different from 2-hand playing. The Bach and the choral music require the same psychological approach in reading and locating.

-- June Ryan (jrsm@ipasifika.net), December 29, 2003.