When I tell people I play the piano, the most common reply I hear is ?Oh I?ve always wanted to play but?? Here?s are the top-ten reasons that adults give for not becoming a musician- even though its their secret ambition. Read on for how to overcome these barriers and achieve your dream.

I?m just too busy

Most people assume that you will need hours of free time every week set aside for lengthy practicing to get any good. This idea is a complete fiction- in fact I would say about 5 minutes each day is fine at first (and if you don?t have 5 minutes per day to spare, I don?t believe you!). If you book lessons with a teacher, you will be committing some time at least each week to concentrate on learning, which may even be enough at first.. Don?t kid yourself you?ll be less busy in three months time because if you don?t start learning now you probably never will.

I work shifts/ long hours so I can?t fit time for lessons in

Many teachers will offer lessons in the daytime, evenings and weekends- so you should be able to find something that suits you- just call up some local teachers and ask when they have spaces in their schedule. There are also a good number of online courses for most instruments. Or you could buy a ?Teach Yourself Book? and take it from there.

Lessons are too expensive

Again, you could start off teaching yourself from a book- but not all lessons are as expensive as you might think. I teach in groups, which keeps the cost down for the individual, and also turns lessons into a social activity. Find out if there are any teachers in your area who do this.

I?m too old

Your definitely never too old to learn a musical instrument! In fact I?ve found adults of all ages learn much faster than young children initially. Learning new cognitive skills has even been found to have great health benefits.

?I won?t be able to learn?

Well, I?ve never met anyone incapable of learning to play yet! Obviously people have different standards and ?natural? abilities, they?ll learn at different rates. But everyone will be able to play to some degree. The best thing is to ask yourself what you want to achieve? and then just go for it.

?I?ll never be any good, so what?s the point in starting now?

This depends what you mean by good. OK, I admit if your 57 and never played a note in your life theirs no chance of you becoming a virtuoso after ten lessons. But is that really why you secretly want to learn your chosen instrument? How about learning just for the sheer achievement of acquiring a new skill. Or being able to pick out a few carols at Christmas. Or finally write down and record that song that?s been going round in your head your whole life. These are all achievable goals you could reach after learning an instrument for just a short time. And does it even matter if your any ?good? if you really enjoy playing?

?I?ve been told I?m tone-deaf and so I can?t learn?

The short answer to this is, your almost certainly not. Tone deafness is a very rare and specific condition, and music lessons should help improve your listening skills.

?I don?t think any teachers will be interested in taking on an older learner?

Most teachers I know (including myself) really enjoy teaching adults because they have made the decision to have lessons themselves and appreciate lessons so much more than children who are learning all the time. Maybe your children are having lessons, why not ask their teacher if they could teach you as well? I?m sure they would be pleased to, or at least recommend another teacher with vacancies.

?I?d love to learn again- but I hated my lessons when I was younger?

A lot of adults have horror stories about severe piano teachers rapping their knuckles with rulers for making mistakes, and punishing them for not practicing 30 minutes a day. Luckily, there aren?t many (any?) people like that around anymore. Please don?t let a bad experience from the past stop you from achieving what you want today. Find a teacher, let them know what you want to achieve and I?m sure they will be pleased to help. If you don?t enjoy their lessons, let them know why- music lessons should be enjoyable, and as an adult you will be the one in control, with your teacher there to help you.

?I?ve heard learning to read music is really hard??

Learning to read music is really very straightforward. And some teachers might be happy for you to play by ear. There?s a lot of advice on reading music, on the web which can get you started.

I hope none of these excuses are holding you back from becoming a musician! Good luck in learning to play your chosen instrument.

Polly Powell runs a keyboard and piano teaching studio in North Somerset, UK. Visit the website for further information on music lessons http://www.kweststudios.co.uk

Have you ever marveled at how artists can quickly sketch out a beautiful landscape scene and convert it into a full-fledged painting? I have and I’ve always been jealous of their ability to do so.

I’ve often wondered why music couldn’t be more like this. Of course composers know how to go about creating a complete piece of music, but I didn’t want to spend years learning theory and harmonic analysis. I didn’t want to study form and compositional technique. Not because I was lazy or unmotivated but because there had to be a simpler way of taking what I felt inside and turning it into a piano improvisation or composition.

Fortunately for me, I discovered my own unique method for quickly creating what I love to create and that is New Age piano music.

A few chords and a Key to play in are all I needed to begin quickly creating my own unique piano journeys. You see the problem most aspiring composers have is that they think they need to learn everything that was ever written about how to compose music. This isn’t necessary and only serves to delay the experience of jumping in the water and trying it first hand.

My method is really simple – improvise first and let the music tell you where it wants to go. That is, let go and allow the music to flow through you. I ALWAYS START WITH IMPROVISASTION because this is where the raw creative energy is. If something strikes me as particularly nice, I’ll draw out 8-bars on a sheet of paper. It doesn’t have to be notation paper either. I just use a blank composition journal I bought at a Borders bookstore to do this.

After the 8-bars is drawn, I’ll write in the first 2-bars of the melody to remember the initial idea. I then use the chords from the Key I’m working in to complete this small 8-bar section. Working within 8-bar sections is, I think, the best way a beginner can actually complete a musical phrase. It’s a very attainable goal and works very well.

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/pianolessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

One of the things that makes New Age piano so enjoyable is that it’s easy to get started.

One of the tricks of the trade is to play an ostinato pattern in the left-hand while the right improvises a melody. Just listen to George Winston’s lovely piece Colors/Dance to hear an excellent example of this technique.

He uses just two chords in the beginning. But just look what he does with them! He maintains interest for a good couple of minutes before any contrast is introduced. Remarkable! And not as easy to do as many people think!

The artistry in this is how he maintains interest. The improvised right-hand melody carries the music through and propels listener attention forward. The left-hand however, is just playing the same ostinato pattern.

Complicated? Hardly. A beautiful piece of music? Absolutely. And all that’s required is the ability to trust your intuition. Trusting intuition is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING A TEACHER CAN HELP YOU LEARN! Why? Because when you trust yourself, you allow the music to come as it should – naturally and easily.

Technique can be taught by most anyone and can be learned readily. However, the ability to trust yourself is something that takes a bit of introspection. Most of us have an internal critic that tries to condemn any creative effort. We must learn to listen to what we say to ourselves and allow for the creative impulse.

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/pianolessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

When I first heard this technique applied over 15 years ago, I couldn’t believe my ears. How could so much music be coming out of one piano? Turns out, what I was hearing was something called an ostinato. Ostinato simply means repeating pattern and is used frequently in all kinds of music.

But it really shines for the New Age piano genre. Just listen to George Winston’s piece Rain to get an idea of what can be done with this technique. He uses a very large chunk of the keyboard to create a beautiful left-hand ostinato pattern while the right hand improvises. And what music! You’d swear it couldn’t be just one piano but it is!

Now, ostinatos can be used to create a staccato sound (as in the Winston piece Rain) or they can be used gently as in the lesson piece Winter Scene.

Here we use 2 chords to create a nice harmonic background. Once the left hand is set, so to speak, the right hand enters in with an improvised melody. And that’s all that is required to create a full piece of music!

An ostinato pattern can use as much or as little of the keyboard as the player desires. In fact, if you just play a repeating bass note you’ve created an ostinato pattern. The lesson Winter Scene uses suspended chords that are broken up. Winston’s piece Rain actually uses a left-hand arpeggio pattern – yes, an arpeggio can be turned into an ostinato too!

Once we have the ostinato pattern, we can create a harmonic loop. We can chart out the chord changes on a piece of paper and notate our pattern for future use. Ostinatos are great because they quickly give you the entire background and mood of the piece. We then paint our melodies on top of this background to create our aural canvas!

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/pianolessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

Different styles of music have different sounds. We can all pretty much agree on that point. For example, Jazz uses seventh chords almost exclusively. This, and the kind of chord progressions used in Jazz gives it its unique flavor. But what about new age music? Does it have it’s own special ingredients? Yes it does.

Now, there are no hard and fast rules here but for the most part, new age music is a consonant music. That is, there is little or noharshness going on in the music. No Saxes wailing and what not. Having said that we can eliminate most of the tense jazz chords and their voicing. So what are we left with? Mostly Major and minor chords based on the regular scales and the modes. The chord progressions are simpler and usually start on the l chord. No ll-V-l progressions here.

What about melody? In jazz, we have a soloist who usually plays a lot of chromatic notes. This is rare in new age music because it would create dissonance. New age melodies tend to be softer and more on the spiritual side. Solos, if there are any, are not so much concerned with the expression of the self than they are with letting the music express itself. A subtle but very important distinction. Jazz players may have some ego invested in their performance. New age musicians learn to let the music play them. They learn to become a channel for the music itself allowing it to speak through them. Of course, I’m not saying that this can’t happen in Jazz, but, just watch a Jazz performer and you’ll see what I mean.

Last but not least is rhythm. Let’s do a comparison/contrast between Jazz and New Age music. Jazz has a definite discernible rhythm. It is what makes Jazz Jazz. New age music can have a pattern or an underlying rhythm to the music. It can be used to create trance like states in the listener. Drums are usually a part of Jazz music. Percussion is mostly absent from the New Age sound simply because it would not add to the atmosphere most New Age musicians create. Timing is very important to the Jazz musician. The soloist has the freedom to play whatever he wants as long as he maintains the meter and stays in time. New Age music is more elastic in that timing is there, but is not a master of the player. The New Age player can disregard time altogether. Just listen to Zen flute music as a good example of this.

Now, what does all this mean for the aspiring New Age musician? A couple of good things. It means that there is a definite new age sound out there. That it is here to stay and that people like and need to hear it. And it means that there are some guidelines out there for what defines the meaning of New Age music.

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/pianolessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

Here’s one of my favorite methods for quickly blocking out entire sections of music and creating a complete piano composition.

First you need to draw out 8-bars on a piece of paper. I use 8-bars first because it’s a relatively small space to fill up quickly. You don’t have to use notation paper. Any paper will do. In fact, I use a spiral bound notebook with blank pages. I just write out 8-bars and voila, I’ve jotted down what will become a section of music.

Now, here’s the interesting part. Most composers start with the melody line first. Nothing wrong with this. But if you really want to zap out a section quickly, start with the chord changes. Why? Because you can block out bars of music faster. Here’s what I mean.

Say you want to create something in the Key of F Major. Great. Now we know that we have at least 6 chords to work with. By using just 3 chords, we can block out our 8-bars. How? Look? Say we have the F Major 7 chord for the first 4 bars, then comes B flat Major for 2-bars and C 7 for the last 2-bars. We have now created a chord progression and charted it out. You can do this in under a minute. I swear it! It’s that easy. Now all you have to do is decide upon the kind of arrangement you’ll create for these chords.

It might be arpeggios, block chords, open position chords? whatever. The point here is that by using chords, you can map out a harmonic territory. Now you can either create a melody using these chords, or keep it entirely textural. It’s up to you! Try it.

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/pianolessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

Now that Halloween is over, it’s safe to talk about traditional piano lessons – the tedium, the boredom, the overbearing teachers with their incessant metronome beats.

Do we really need this? Do we really need yet another polished perfomer who can play Czerny and Beethoven on cue? Don’t we have enough of these skilled typists already? I think so. And frankly, I just don’t get it. I don’t get why anyone would want to learn how to play other people’s music.

Of course this music is worthy of preserving, but I’m speaking about being creative at the piano. I’m talking about the ability to sit down at the keyboard and just play without forethought or planning.

Is there value in this kind of approach to playing? Yes! And while improvisation and composition are taught, it’s not emphasized. It’s relegated to inferior status while the poor student spends time first learning how to read notes and then recreating what has already been done. What a shame.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can lead with an emphasis on creativity first! To do this does not require more than a very rudimentary knowledge of chords, a way to play them, and a guided instruction on how to improvise. Imagine the joy students will feel when they realize how easy it is to create music!

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/pianolessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

Some of you may remember a book titled Drawing on the Right-Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards.

In this book, Betty Edwards tried to teach you how to see differently. She reasoned that once you could look at something with the eyes of an artist, you would be able to create like an artist. A simple idea, yet one that has helped many draw.

I wondered how this might also apply to music. Music is, at it’s best, a right-brain activity. That is, the thinking left hemisphere is dormant while the intuitive right side is engaged in creative processes.

So how then can we play piano on the right-side of the brain? The answer has to do with trusting ourselves. Once we sit down to play, we must allow ourselves the freedom to play ANYTHING that comes to the fore. If that anything is doodling and making nonsense noises, then that is what we must do.

Once we allow ourselves the freedom to play anything, we are sending a message to the creative right hemisphere. We are saying, OK, I’m giving in to whatever. I’ll just play what I want. Now, once you can do this, PLAYING AROUND WITH CHORDS BECOMES AN EASY MATTER because you have given yourself permission to mess up.

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/pianolessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!

Shell voicings are simple but functional.

They make use of the root and either the third of the seventh any chord. Sometimes referred to as shell voicings, these are commonly used as left-hand accompaniment in the piano stylings of Bud Powell, Horace Silver, Sonny Clark, and others who play primarily in the be-bop idiom.

With only two notes, they are harmonically incomplete; however, they do convey enough information to supplement many right hand melodies or improvised lines, especially those in the be-bop style where melodies are crafted to clearly outline the harmony.

Most Jazz pianists play these kind of voicings in a relatively sparse and percussive manner on medium or up-tempo tunes.

Shell voicings are most effective when the top note (played by the thumb) falls between D below middle C and the D next to middle C. These voicings are particularly useful in support an improvised line played in the middle range of the keyboard, which is stylistically typical of be-bop playing. If your melody or improvisation should dip lower and conflict with a voicing, here are some options:

1. Break the voice leading and pick the other inversion (e.g. Root- 3rd instead of Root-7th) which falls in a lower register;

2. For that moment play only the root, a Root-5th, or nothing at all in the left hand; or

3. Play the entire melody up an octave.

When you apply shell voicings to tunes, it is OK to break voice leading occasionally in order to select the inversion which best complements a given melody note (i.e. does not double it.) Since the voicings are likely to be somewhat rhythmically detached from each other, voice leading with shell voicings is not as critical as with other voicings. Nonetheless, it is still always best to avoid breaking voice leading within ii-V and ii-V-I progressions.

Always remember that any Root-3rd structure may be expanded into a Root-10th which sounds fuller.

Whether or not you are able to use a tenth in place of a 3rd depends upon the size of your left hand and spatial distance the 10th covers on the keyboard.

Physically, minor 10ths are easier to reach than major 10ths. In a ii-V progression, it is more natural to close in from a Root-10th voicing to a Root-7th, rather than expanding from a Root-7th to a Root-10th.

You just have to experiment to decide which tenth intervals fit your hands. But always STOP IMMEDIATELY if you experience any hint of pain in stretching a tenth or, for that matter, while playing anything on the piano.

Copyright 2005 RAW Productions

Ron Worthy is a Music Educator, Songwriter and Performer. To learn more about shell voicings, please visit: http://www.mrronsmusic.com and http://www.playpianotonight.com

I’ve had a few piano teachers over the years. And I can’t say that they really helped me. Why? Because I can learn technique pretty much on my own.

What I needed was for someone to help me TRUST MY OWN INTUITION and act as a mentor guiding me to my desired goal, which at that time, was to create my own music.

Think of a visual artist as an example. This artist may be able to understand and apply different techniques to create a pleasing work of art, but the art itself won’t have that special X factor that only comes when an artist fully trusts their own intuition.

Intuition is the most confusing thing for someone without it to develop. That’s because they’ve had a long time not trusting in themselves and their own unique talent and ability.

Nothing is more important for without the ability to trust yourself, you really won’t be able to hear the intuitive voice that is always present and is always willing to guide you – if you let it.

The first step to accomplish this trust in yourself is to switch from a product oriented attitude to a process oriented one. You must let go of the need to produce something that is good or bad. Instead, allow for mistakes and experimentation. Improvise and start out by using simple means. A few chords, a scale, some brief instruction are all that is required.

You must be able to play! Children trust themselves and their power of intuition without exception. They haven’t learned how not to. I like to use the analogy of finger-painting as an example of this.

Put finger-paints and paper in front of a child and watch what happens. They can’t wait to get started in exploring this world of color and form. They’re not concerned with good or bad. What they are concerned with is pure joy. And this comes from their ability to suspend judgement and just play!

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and works with students in private, in groups, and now over the internet. Stop by now at http://www.quiescencemusic.com/pianolessons.html for a FREE piano lesson!