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Piano Lessons: Why you need to know Piano Chords
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If you are going to learn to play the you need the best piano lessons possible. Of course you can take piano lessons from music stores and piano teachers, but if you do, make sure that they teach chord piano -- the style of piano playing that uses piano chords. This is SO important! Make SURE that you learn piano chords when you take piano lessons! There are many online, from beginning to advanced. Start by taking the free piano lessons from www.playpiano.com. Sign up for their free 39-week e-mail newsletter on piano chords and progressions -- a great introduction to piano lessons -- and you're learning music theory too -- so you will be learning to play piano the right way. No matter where you take piano lessons, you will need to learn all the basics of music and chords, including music theory. Taking piano lessons without taking music theory is like riding a horse without a saddle -- you're likely to slip off somewhere along the way. Piano lessons for beginners are available at several locations on the web, including www.pianolessonsbyvideo.com, and www.chordpiano.com. More advanced piano lessons can be found at www.pianoplaying.com, www.chord-progressions.com, www.pianolesson.tv, and several other sites. Here are some of the things you will learn in chord-based piano lessons: rhythm piano lessons classical piano lessons gospel piano lessons praise & worship piano lessons pop piano lessons jazz piano lessons improvisation piano lessons piano chords arranging piano lessons advanced piano lessons piano lessons teaching chords to children piano lessons teaching chords to adults piano lessons for doctors piano lessons for home makers piano lessons for busy people piano lessons in improvisation piano lessons in fingering piano lessons in scales piano lessons in familiar songs Here are some more piano lessons sites: www.pianoplayingwithchords.com
How Summer Camp & Prayer Turned Me Into a Halfway Decent Piano Player
When I was 8 years old, I was one of the worst piano students known to mortal piano teachers. I stared out the window, dreamed about baseball, and drove poor Mrs. Graham, my 70-year-old piano teacher with whom I had a lesson every Saturday morning, to distraction. I even wore my fielder’s glove to a lesson one day. It wasn’t that I didn’t like music – I did – but all those old guys like Bach and Brahms and Beethoven just didn’t match up with stars such as Joltin’ Joe, Scooter Rizzuto, Stan the Man, Ted Williams, and guys like that. I lived and breathed baseball, and my daily piano practice was a rude interruption into the world of home runs, stolen bases, and off-the-wall leaping catches. My folks were patient with me – more patient by far than I deserved – and yet they insisted that I put in my required half-hour per day of piano practice. My older brother, Garland, even typed up an “I promise to practice” document and made me sign it. (It resides to this day on the wall of my music studio.) My seat put in its required half-hour on the piano stool, but my mind spent more like five minutes on scales, chords, and thrilling pieces such as “Left Thumb, Right Thumb”, “Swans On The Lake”, and the ever popular “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum”. The musical situation, in short, looked bleak, and at 8 years of age I seemed destined to spend my life in the pursuit of baseball dreams. But life is stranger than fiction, or so I once heard some wise-looking adults observe, and the summer between my 4th and 5th grade years brought a turn of events which was to change the direction of my life. My best friend, Willie McTavish, who had come to our school during our 4th grade year directly from Scotland, decided to join the Boy Scouts, and I thought that sounded like a great idea too. We heard that after the meetings were over, baseball games were held with all Scouts participating. I asked my folks if I could join – well, actually, I begged my folks – and they said I could join as long as I kept up my homework and my piano practice. I promised that I would. I basically lied. And so Willie & I joined Boy Scouts the summer of 1946. Our den mother, Mrs. Goldsberry, had a wonderfully big basement we met in after school once a week on Thursdays, with all kinds of nooks & surprising crannies to explore and hide in. Willie discovered a short, narrow door behind the furnace, which led from the basement to the alley behind the Goldsberry’s house. In those days some people used sawdust as fuel for their furnaces, and the door was where the sawdust would accumulate when the sawdust truck dumped a load into the slide bin right off the alley that ran behind their home on College Way. Willie thought it would be fun to try to climb up the shoot, since it was summer and no prospect of a sawdust delivery was in sight. He talked me into joining him in the climb, which proved to be a poor decision. We negotiated the turns in the shoot, and happily didn’t encounter any sawdust. What we did encounter, however, were wasps, or yellow jackets, which were spending a blissful summer vacationing in the sawdust shoot until two Boy Scouts rudely interrupted them. Willie had generously allowed me to go first up the shoot, ostensibly so he could ride shotgun for the den mother and other threats to our little adventure. In the darkness of the shoot I could not see the wasps, but I heard them as once or more passed my face, and I yelled “Willie – watch out! There’s something in here!” The warning came too late. Willie felt the message in his left hip before he heard mine. As he screamed, he also let go of the sides of the shoot, and slipped in full-voiced terror back down the shoot, rolling into and through the little door behind the furnace, landing in a heap at the feet of Den Mother Goldsberry. Meanwhile, I had motivation of my own, and I scampered up the rest of the shoot to the opening in the alley faster than a speeding bullet, setting a new record for short climbing, then sprinted around the corner, arms flailing, through the yard, and back around to the font door of the basement with a wasp’s patrol in hot pursuit. Once through the door and in the safety of the entryway, I stopped to regain both my breath and my composure before re-mingling with the rest of the Cub Scouts, most of whom were busily engaged in various craft projects, from Moccasin making to clay forming to knot tying. There was a commotion, however, in the corner of the basement, close to the furnace. Seems as though Mrs. Goldsberry had caught a Cub Scout trying to escape through the fuel shoot, and was instructing him earnestly in the morality of the Boy Scout code. Being a Boy Scout myself, I could not tell a lie. For the rest of this story, please go to Funny Stories about Music Lessons & Piano Lessons Click on the picture below:
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