What up future readers!
I have a pretty interesting story here. 2 Years ago I stumbled upon a “Piano Encyclopedia”, lots of interesting bits of information, and it has the secret to play the piano in the shortest amount of time (note I said play, not master). I did my own research (like always…) and since I already played wind instruments I had some concepts in my mind that helped me understand the book faster. 2 years ago, January 1st; I picked up an old piano that was lying around (I used it for the rhythm sounds), and in 4 days I was playing every song in the radio and reading chorded tabs and written music. A Week after that I was playing piano for my local church; something in that humble pdf book taught me how to see music in a more ‘science’ efficient way. How did that happen? Well, Defining music of course. In the following series of “Musical Laziness” I’ll be explaining to you future readers how to play piano the reverse programmer’s way (yup, we’ll be hacking real life); in the end you’ll know the fundamentals that form music and hopefully you’ll be able to at least play “Just the way you are” by Bruno Mars without hesitation ;) Oh and don’t consider this a proper Piano lesson, I’m no teacher; I’m just sharing what I learned (since what I know is self thought it shouldn’t replace a proper piano lesson).
Let’s start up with some novice music theory; since everything I know has been self taught, there were some points where I needed definitions and explanations that went deeper than just hitting keys. I’ll give you a brief section with theory and jump directly into playing right afterwards.
To start off, you are certain you want to play ‘Music’ right? You don’t want to create noise you want to play a song and feel good about playing it. Well, the fact that you can identify ‘good’ music from ‘bad’ music is the key to playing any instrument. But…
Do you know what music is?
A simple Google search with define:music brings up the following results;
- an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner
- any agreeable (pleasing and harmonious) sounds; "he fell asleep to the music of the wind chimes"
- musical activity (singing or whistling etc.); "his music was his central interest"
…And some more redundant search results. Now, let’s analyze these definitions.
The first one says a lot of mumbo jumbo that you probably won’t need right now; it’s a technical term. Like Richard P. Feynman once said, "If I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn't have been worth the Nobel Prize. " In physics that’s a valid point, research plays a major role in those camps; but in music, I don’t want you guys to get confused so let’s start easy; let’s see the third definition. Musical activity… hmm, pretty sucky definition if you ask me, we should also avoid explanations and information that just doesn’t explain anything. Too complicated won’t help if you are a complete newbie and too simple will just leave you in the same level. So…
Let’s take a look at the lazy definition #2 :]“any agreeable (pleasing and harmonious) sounds; “he fell asleep to the music of the wind chimes”
Aaah, doesn’t that sound more pleasant, more direct, more usable that the other two? But wait; don’t just look at the definition. Music is more than an art, and we can define it as a science term.
This definition relates music to a feeling: Pleasure. Now, can you define pleasure? HA, lets google that one.
- a fundamental feeling that is hard to define but that people desire to experience; "he was tingling with pleasure"
- joy: something or someone that provides a source of happiness; "a joy to behold"; "the pleasure of his company"; "the new car is a delight"
- a formal expression; "he serves at the pleasure of the President"
These definitions won’t work for us, they are giving you an idea of what pleasure is; but they aren’t explaining how pleasure works. Lets hack it. Back in the day when Socrates, Plato, and all those important old guys were around; they didn’t have Google to define words, they instead asked questions to their pupils and they would answer them and find logic.
Let’s do that here:
What is pleasure? Pleasure is a feeling, you can “feel” pleasure; When you pee (sorry), you feel pleasure; why? Because you felt relieved when you released the… “thing”, you let go something that was creating pressure/stress/tension. Oh, then wait… did we just found a more valid definition for pleasure? Yes, yes we did. Pleasure is the effect, of releasing any tension (we just checked mated the first definition; HA take that internets). If a rubber band would have nerves, when you stretch it you create tension and when you let it go and bring it back to its neutral state the rubber band would feel pleasure (if.. it had nerves). If you go a day wanting to eat a succulent Baconator and you know you can’t go to Wendy’s until you get out of work at 10PM; you can bet you’ll feel pleasure when you finally eat it.
Pleasure is the effect that comes from Tension and Release.
You can create pleasure if you pinch yourself for a few seconds and then release.
of course, you might be asking. What does this have to do piano playing loth? Well, read back at the second definition of Music.
Any agreeable (pleasing and harmonious) sounds; "he fell asleep to the music of the wind chimes"
If pleasure is tension and release, then we can do this the math way and add it up; we’ll get a more usable definition of music.
Music is any sound that creates tension and at some point releases said tension to cause a pleasing effect.
Note: You can read more about Tension and Release relations in music here.
When you understand tension and release, you start listening to sounds differently; you’ll also start hearing music from normal sounds.
Now, this “Tension and release” has many more explanations, and it plays a major role in music theory. I’m no teacher, so I won’t confuse you with this stuff but if you feel the need to learn about these concepts more in-depth I encourage you to read the Piano Encyclopedia, and to search around some forums.
For now, we’ll center in the fast way to play the piano; I’ll try to avoid technical terms that are common to musicians but confusing to any other person, to help those that have 0 music knowledge. This will give you a solid startup point to Piano playing.
On the next post we'll start solid, we'll learn the names of every note and we'll learn how to shrink the piano; we'll create Pleasure with sounds and in the end of the lessons we'll be playing complete songs (our first song will be "Just the way you are" by Bruno Mars), for now let's see where this takes us.
On the next post we'll start solid, we'll learn the names of every note and we'll learn how to shrink the piano; we'll create Pleasure with sounds and in the end of the lessons we'll be playing complete songs (our first song will be "Just the way you are" by Bruno Mars), for now let's see where this takes us.
I'll be posting more "Musical Laziness" posts about piano playing daily until we finish, so for now;
C yas
--How do you play the piano? follow these lessons and learn in a week.
--How do you play the piano? follow these lessons and learn in a week.
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