Learning piano

I want to become a good piano player. I know some chords, but am not any good. I want to be able to jazz piano, as well as some pop songs, and write my own music. Is it really necessary for me to learn to read music? Also, I am in my 40s and wonder if it is too late. Any suggestions?

Yes yes yes yes yes. That's the way musicians communicate with each other, and how else will you play with a group or learn songs without transcribing them?

It's not too late, and a teacher is best.

Why would *that* be necessary???

If you are going to record your own music, you may or may not need to know how to read music. If you're going to WRITE your own music, then yes, you need to know how to read. Learning to read music and count it is actually fun, once you start getting the hang of it. I just started two months ago, and I'm enjoying it. Jazz presents its own problems with syncopated rhythms and the complexity of the chords and grace notes. A teacher would be the best way to go, but find out first if the teacher is open to jazz and contemporary stuff. Having said that, you may have to slog through a lot of the basics; Theory, hand position, scales, scales, and scales, and lots of 'Mary Had A Little Lamb' stuff for a little while. This is the foundation from which you can build something beautiful. The better the foundation, the better the end product.

It's not too late. It's never too late until you're in a box and they're throwing dirt and rocks on top of you.

Best Wishes,

Thanks for the feedback, everybody. What I really want to do is write my own contemporary music and record it on my Pro Tools studio software. I especially want to write educational children's music. Which brings up another problem. I can play a little guitar. Basically some folks, some jazz, and some blues. But I am not very good at that either. So I have to decide if I should learn the piano very well, or the guitar very well. I would have to decide upon the piano. I guess much more satisfaction out of playing the piano. It's a great stress releaser. I guess I can always keep getting better at playing the guitar, while learning to read the piano music. As far as writing the songs down goes, isn't there software that can do that for me?

While it is true that learning how to read and write music is VERY beneficial... it is not necessary if you want to play and write... I still cannot read or write, but I compose music. I read all the music theory books... and learned how to put notes on a staff (very very slowly)... and learned the terminology... and listened to 'good' music and performers all my life... but I think it is the actual 'playing' whether on a keyboard or strumming a guitar that taught me the most. Learn to trust your ear and you can't go wrong.

BUT... if you want to communicate your music to others you will need some music notation software... I plug my MIDI digital piano into my computer and play away... the software will print it out for you.

I have done it this way for years and have produced 3 CDs of my music... I just can't play in front of an audience... but I can give it to someone else to play.

Good Luck

Peace... www.Shemakhan.com

'Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.' Through the Looking-Glass Lewis Carroll

Chris, Cakewalk Pro Audio (quite pricey) can record a MIDI file that you play on a digital piano and turn it into printable sheet music. PowerTracks Pro Audio 8.0 can do the same thing. (For a whole lot less money!) With either of these programs, you can also import a downloaded MIDI file and generate sheet music for it. What I generally do, if I want just the piano part of a song, I'll download it into Cakewalk, then erase the tracks I don't need - (drums, etc.) and convert some of the other tracks into piano. - (Bass, rhythm guitar, etc.) When I've got everything the way that I want it, I'm left with only piano, and usually I have it as left and right hand. From there, I combine them so that I have only one channel with both left and right hands on it. Then I save the MIDI as some other name so that the original is preserved. From there, I open it in PowerTracks, then highlight the single channel, and then while it's playing, I can look at the sheet music. From there, I can print it out. I'm sure there's a faster and easier way to do all of this, but this is all self-taught, and it's what works best for me.

Best Wishes,

True. However, Cakewalk's 'transcription' is often less than perfect, especially if you don't play every note exactly in sync with the metronome. While the 'sheet music' can easily be edited to reflect what the composer had in mind, you can't do this if you can't read music.

Michael Walthius THE MUSIC OF CYBERSPACE

True enough. Cakewalk DOES turn out some 'interesting' items sometimes. If you can read and edit the music and you know where to split bass and treble clefs, it works out pretty good. There are other features too, such as 'align to measures,' and other ways of fixing some of the more obscure articles. To be honest, I much prefer PowerTracks Pro Audio for printing sheet music. It comes out at a higher resolution and at a nice size; neither wasting too much paper nor crowding everything so tight that you have no room for writing notes. It runs into the same problem that Cakewalk has, though. Still and all, it DOES work. I took a very jazzed-up version of 'Georgia On My Mind,' with me to a lesson a couple of weeks ago, and my teacher put it up on the rack and started playing it without too much difficulty. She doesn't know anything about computers at all, and she didn't make any comments like, 'What strange notation!' so I guess it is functional.

All The Best,

I can't quite imagine how one could write and not be able to read. Wouldn't that make it a bit hard to check your work?

Gerry

Chris you may have asked this in the wrong group. Classical players, which this group really tends to lean, are big on reading. If you go to a Jazz newsgroup, the emphasis is more on the spot improvisation, repetoir, mastering your instrument and listening to the music you love, to learn it.

To answer your question: No. It's not necessary, but very helpful if you do. Be at least able to play the melody of a tune in your right hand. No it's not too late to learn. Purchase a book on music theory, and read from cover to cover.

You may find it limiting to not be able to read notes. Computers can help, in either way. Reading, or sequencing your stuff. From what I can infer about you, you may want to check out the Guitair Jazz group, and the other Blues, and Jazz groups. Do a search.