If you don't play piano, why not learn?

[Chilperich]

The title of this thread says it all, really, but I'll elaborate.

I was inspired to start this thread by a stray (gator?) remark of Alligator ATTACK (hope I've got that monicker right) who admitted to my good friend Herzeleide to being a "MIDI composer".

I use Sibelius myself, but luckily I learnt to compose and orchestrate long before such software was available. I wouldn't call myself a real pianist, but I do play piano, and if I can do it I don't see why others can't, as long as they have the use of their fingers and their right leg (as well as a piano, of course).

I'd say that you should get a beginner's piano course, such as the first two volumes of Michael Aaron, or Fanny Waterman, or Carol Barratt (Karl Jenkins's wife, as it happens). Work though one or other of these courses, and eventually get some easier piano/keyboard music, such as Schumann's Album For The Young, Bach's Anna Magdalena Notebook and the Clementi sonatinas. Also get a book of scales and arpeggios, and follow the given fingerings religiously.

The aim is eventually at least to be able to play the Two- and Three-Part Inventions, Well-Tempered Clavier and Riemenschneider chorales of Bach, the sonatas of Haydn and Mozart, and the less challenging sonatas of Beethoven.

If you can do this, you should be able to play through most of the examples in harmony and counterpoint textbooks, and be in a stronger position to begin to play from orchestral and chamber scores.

If you're even half serious about composing, this seems the bare minimum you can do (and yes, I know all about composers such as Berlioz, Wagner and Walton, who could hardly play the piano, if at all - believe me, they did it the hard way).

[Florestan]

I think I am too old to learn now and I have always been, in my grandmother's memorable words, "cack-handed". I am left handed and have very poor co-ordination.

We didn't have diagnoses of dyspraxia when I was a kid but if we had, I might very well have been diagnosed as such. I have, in the past, gone to cut the top off a boiled egg and missed. Even though I was holding the egg with one hand. And I wasn't drunk at the time!

I started playing the guitar at the age of 16 and despite spending years practising, I just couldn't get any good at it.

It's not that I don't feel it's worth playing because I could never be brilliant; I am sure I could never even be competent.

[Herzeleide]

Good topic of thread!

I have for a long time regretted my lack of pianistic skills. When I'm feeling self-pitying, defeatist and frustrated (which is almost always) I regret not having started learning the piano earlier (or in fact any instrument other than the guitar - as a guitarist and therefore part of the musical underclass, I was not even taught to read music, nor even chords, since my guitar teacher, when it came to chords, would direct me to the internet to which I didn't have access).

Still, I taught myself the names of notes and would regularly improvise at the piano at school. By some miracle I was offered a place at quite a good university (which I never got into) which required grade five piano. So I got lessons and progressed quite quickly, though I quit the lessons before taking the exam because it transpired that I wasn't going to the said university, and could ill afford to continue with the lessons.

I'm still persevering with the piano, to the expense of my guitar playing (so essentially I'm mediocre at both instruments ). My main concern is, as my good friend Chilperich hints at, to improve my overall musicianship, focussing on sight-reading. I can see little point in practising scales and passage work eight hours a day to play something spectacular, but not be able to read moderately difficult pieces convincingly at first sight. I desperately want to enhance the link between the notes on the page and the sound they actually make - to fulfil Schumann's maxim (from the Maxims for young musicians which appears in the appendix of my edition of the Album for the Young) that a musician ought to hear the music from the page, and be able, when hearing a piece of music, to imagine the score as though it were in front of oneself.

Anyway - thanks for the suggestions, Chilperich. I would only add all six volumes of Bartók's fantastic Mikrokosmos to your list of recommendations - I've recently been working through them. The first two volumes make for good sight-reading practice.

You raise an interesting point about Berlioz et al. I think Wagner was a slightly better pianist than most people think. As for Berlioz - he must just have had a most remarkable musical memory!

[Scott Good]

Interesting thread.

I didn't start piano till my late teens. But, I sit at that beast everyday now!

I never play composed music anymore (well, very rarely), but, I improvise, or play slow jazz, or harmonize singing. I like playing it as a textural instrument in bands or improv.

It is an indispensable tool for my composing.

When I read music and took lesson, it was all about Bartok. Those pieces are so fun. Bach was too hard. Occasionally some of the simple Scriabin pieces as well, or Prokofiev.

Flo: sounds like you need to get yourself a trombone!!!! No fingers required!! I have a friend here who started playing later in life and is quite a fine player now.

Just put your lips together and blow!

[Herzeleide]

Originally Posted by Chilperich

Riemenschneider chorales of Bach

I have to add - these are obviously a sine qua non for any self-respecting student of harmony, but they might scare some with the stretches often required! I suppose this is a good excuse for another inestimably valuable practice - sight-singing and -playing simultaneously.

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Scott Good

Interesting thread.

I didn't start piano till my late teens. But, I sit at that beast everyday now!

I never play composed music anymore (well, very rarely), but, I improvise, or play slow jazz, or harmonize singing. I like playing it as a textural instrument in bands or improv.

It is an indispensable tool for my composing.

When I read music and took lesson, it was all about Bartok. Those pieces are so fun. Bach was too hard. Occasionally some of the simple Scriabin pieces as well, or Prokofiev.

Flo: sounds like you need to get yourself a trombone!!!! No fingers required!! I have a friend here who started playing later in life and is quite a fine player now.

Just put your lips together and blow!

That is a fab idea. I can almost picture myself as a trombonist. We saw rather a good one in the park today in a quartet playing in a very laid back blues/jazz style. They had a guitarist, a guy playing 'drums' with brushes on a tin box, a singer/guitarist/harmonica player and a trombonist. They were all very good musicians but it was the trombone that really made the whole thing special.

[Scott Good]

Originally Posted by Florestan

That is a fab idea. I can almost picture myself as a trombonist.

For more inspiration, check out these British girls rip'n the stage in two - awesome! So young, and so talented.

Make sure to listen the bass!!! Trust me, that's not easy to play that low so fast.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHw8P8NnUvI&feature=PlayList&p=2A0E91897BD 51E61&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=30"]YouTube - Star & Stripes - Trombone[/ame]

and this...
(I picture you as the woman in the pink/purple coat - am I close)

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6WP2qtTPe0&feature=related"]YouTube - Jazz trombones - Jubilee Stomp[/ame]

(sorry for sabotaging the piano discussion...)

[Chilperich]

In ordinary life I'm pretty clumsy myself, but I manage to get by on the piano, even though my beloved piano teacher Dilys Elwyn Edwards told me that I could never become a really good pianist because my thumbs are "set too low".

I'd hold fire on the trombone, unless you decide you're really cut out for it. Holst, I believe, took it up in later life, when nephritis meant that the piano was too digitally demanding. Unless you too have nephritis, or something similarly disabling, I'd persevere with the piano. Of course you need to persist with it; two weeks or so is not enough to decide whether you're suited to it or not.

BTW, a (predictably) excellent suggestion from Herzeleide; I well remember going through the first two volumes of Mikrokosmos as an early teenager when I was having piano lessons from Michele Hanson (who is now a journalist with the Guardian, having earlier been a very good professional keyboard-player/flautist).

[haydnguy]

My mother was a music teacher. (She taught in public school). I was always amazed that she could still play a good chunk of the Beethoven piece that she had played at her recital in college, without the music sheet.

She taught me up through a couple of the grade books but I was more interested in playing out in the yard. Sadly, she never took a whole lot of time to play on her own at home as she was busy herself. She died in 1996 and I'm sorry that I didn't take more lessons and get into it more because I would be light years ahead of where I am in my knowledge and appreciation of music.

I have had piano on my "to-do" for almost a year and a half now. Marriage and other small matters (such as procrastanation) has prevented me from doing it. It would (WILL!) be fun to get back into it again.

[AlligatorATTACK]

Originally Posted by Chilperich

The title of this thread says it all, really, but I'll elaborate.

I was inspired to start this thread by a stray (gator?) remark of Alligator ATTACK (hope I've got that monicker right) who admitted to my good friend Herzeleide to being a "MIDI composer".

I use Sibelius myself, but luckily I learnt to compose and orchestrate long before such software was available. I wouldn't call myself a real pianist, but I do play piano, and if I can do it I don't see why others can't, as long as they have the use of their fingers and their right leg (as well as a piano, of course).

I'd say that you should get a beginner's piano course, such as the first two volumes of Michael Aaron, or Fanny Waterman, or Carol Barratt (Karl Jenkins's wife, as it happens). Work though one or other of these courses, and eventually get some easier piano/keyboard music, such as Schumann's Album For The Young, Bach's Anna Magdalena Notebook and the Clementi sonatinas. Also get a book of scales and arpeggios, and follow the given fingerings religiously.

The aim is eventually at least to be able to play the Two- and Three-Part Inventions, Well-Tempered Clavier and Riemenschneider chorales of Bach, the sonatas of Haydn and Mozart, and the less challenging sonatas of Beethoven.

If you can do this, you should be able to play through most of the examples in harmony and counterpoint textbooks, and be in a stronger position to begin to play from orchestral and chamber scores.

If you're even half serious about composing, this seems the bare minimum you can do (and yes, I know all about composers such as Berlioz, Wagner and Walton, who could hardly play the piano, if at all - believe me, they did it the hard way).

Wow, sounds a little hostile....

So when I wrote that post maybe I was being a little humble about my piano playing abilities. I can play the piano to a certain extent (I have to struggle to get through three part inventions) but I can play scales, arpeggio's, and play through the exercises in the theory books I own. When you go to any music school they make SURE you don't graduate until you can at least do the basics (and at my school I had to do extra classes in jazz piano). I DO play the piano and practice simple pieces on occasion, but I wouldn't call myself a piano player (I'm actually a horn player but that's unrelated to this topic).

My whole point was that the piano is a tool for composers and my tool happens to be a computer. I do write on the piano sometimes but the bulk of my work is worked out on the computer. Stravinsky himself said he wrote at the piano and tried out every note he wrote on the piano first, and I don't see this is any different to how I write.


And I wouldn't call myself a "MIDI" composer anymore than you would call anyone else a "piano" composer or "paper" composer, giving the road a name instead of the destination seems kind of silly. I just write music. What does the notation tool matter if the material derives from your brain?

I find it easier and more natural to write that way. My point in bringing up my lack of piano abilities was to say it's easier when writing to have the music stored on the computer instead of "struggling" on a piano and getting lost when trying to scribble down the notes and rhythms as quickly as possible. Like I've said, I can play the piano but I'm quicker with the computer.

I don't mean to come off as rude and I do appreciate the books and advice for things to practice, and believe me, I try to better myself everyday as an aspiring musician/composer so I will definitely check them out. Sometimes practicing piano takes away time from my writing/score study/horn/listening/etc. and it never seems to pay off.