Zoom recital in 3 months! I'll buy the Beer.
Just don't pull a Toobin...so to speak.
Just don't pull a Toobin...so to speak.
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Learn Piano At 70+ ?
- Thread starter Sal1950
- Start date
I think there are 2 reasons for lack of life and dynamics:
- your playing capability - it takes time to be able to hit the keys with different strength. Many years ago I was at a concert of the local high school for music where 2 pupils played the piano. The first one played lifeless and flat, the second one not, using the same piano.
- the play back chain is limited regarding max SPL and dynamics. Few people realize how loud a real piano plays when you hit the keys hard, and I'd say most typical hifi speakers are not able to reproduce the SPL of a real piano. You probably need something like a JBL EON-15 or similar, but trying your Peavy amp is a good start to find the cause.
Yeah, and you could play this one. Start with 1' 57'' - I'm Sure you can do this right now
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I've sort of been there, tried to do that. I'm a reasonably good violinist--I still need a day job, but I'm accomplished enough to make a little cash on night gigs. I've always wanted to play piano, mainly so I could accompany other instrumentalists or vocalists. I started piano lessons when I was 45 and stuck with it for about 10 years. Sadly, I was held back by one formidable road block. In order to make real progress on serious piano pieces, you need to be able to sight read. Not perfectly, but enough to be able to follow four lines of music without constantly looking down at the keys. That requires a degree of motor memory and mental dexterity that most people don't have at any age, and that for the more select few has to be learned at an early age while the brain is growing and laying down neural maps as a matter of course.
It's the same phenomenon as the ease with which young children pick up on different languages, and adults don't. I don't mean to discourage you, but set your goals realistically. You should be able to learn basic chord progressions and improvise a little with melodic content. But don't expect to get to the point where you can pick up a standard piece of piano music and play it at sight with only minor stress and strain. In this respect, the piano is much more difficult than the violin, even though, for a child, the opposite may be true. It doesn't do any good to look down at the fingerboard of a violin. There aren't any keys or markings, so you learn by looking at the music and building up a motor memory of where the fingers should position themselves. And, most importantly, there's only one line of music to follow. So a student naturally spends his or her time practicing technique and not floundering around trying to remember where a G# above high C is on the keyboard without looking. Once the basic technique is learned, a violinist can play most any basic melody at sight and learning new material is much quicker. Anyhow, good luck and I'll be sure to be at your first Carnegie Hall recital to hear you prove me wrong.
It's the same phenomenon as the ease with which young children pick up on different languages, and adults don't. I don't mean to discourage you, but set your goals realistically. You should be able to learn basic chord progressions and improvise a little with melodic content. But don't expect to get to the point where you can pick up a standard piece of piano music and play it at sight with only minor stress and strain. In this respect, the piano is much more difficult than the violin, even though, for a child, the opposite may be true. It doesn't do any good to look down at the fingerboard of a violin. There aren't any keys or markings, so you learn by looking at the music and building up a motor memory of where the fingers should position themselves. And, most importantly, there's only one line of music to follow. So a student naturally spends his or her time practicing technique and not floundering around trying to remember where a G# above high C is on the keyboard without looking. Once the basic technique is learned, a violinist can play most any basic melody at sight and learning new material is much quicker. Anyhow, good luck and I'll be sure to be at your first Carnegie Hall recital to hear you prove me wrong.
Yeah, and you could play this one. Start with 1' 57'' - I'm Sure you can do this right now
Wow...
Watched a few more of his videos. That was worth turning on the big rig for.
Impressive.
Maybe we should give @Sal1950 an extra couple weeks before his recital...
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FYI, I am a music teacher and am happy to offer suggestions if you have particular questions. I don't have the tech background to contribute to many discussions on here, so happy to help when/where I can!Bought myself a Yamaha NP-12 keyboard this week. Never played any instrument before, except for dabbling as a kid.
Always wanted to but never put together the time. It will be interesting to see if I can put much together at my age.
One over-all piece of advice: Imagine what you'd like to be doing on piano in a year and take a step-by-step approach to getting there. A good teacher can help you achieve your goals, but it has to be a good match for you-- if you want to play Beach Boys or Roger Miller or Miles Davis or James Taylor, a traditional classical approach is just likely to be frustrating and won't get you playing what you want to hear!
thefsb
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Maybe the problem isn't your amplification. It's just a 200$ keyboard after all.
How did you choose that make and model?
A good sound can help encourage you to practice.
I'm interested to hear how it goes.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
thefsb
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You can indeed learn a lot through the youtubes but instructional video isn't so good at telling you what your doing wrong or making suggestions that might work better with the individual. And instructional videos aren't good at asking you things and adapting the lessons accordingly.
After some practice you can just make it up as you go along.
The bonus is there are no wrong notes.
The bonus is there are no wrong notes.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #33
Sounds good to me Ray.
Yea, I'm all over youtube. Only problem so far is it's got so much available, it's hard to pick one to follow with zero experience
OP
- Thread Starter
- #34
Not quite my style.
No body does it like The Killer. Check this 2:30 minutes out, that's me.
Doodski, cause I have no idea WTF I'm doing. LOL
thefsb, as I said earlier, my homework told me, in this price range, this Yami was supposed to be voiced from their TOTL grand piano and most reviewers complimented it on it's lifelike sound. Who knows more what a piano sounds like than Yamaha? But beyond that you're still 100% right, it's just a $200 near toy. But if I can get to a level where I really enjoy playing without setting my expectations too high, I'll spend what it takes to get one that makes me happy. Time will tell.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #35
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Subjective review, what did you expect?
FWIW, we have a Roland RD-700NX and it sounds great, even when played on the big systems. If you catch the virus, I think a real stage piano is the way to go, both for sound and key action.
Yeah, I know the feeling.
Something with strings, trumpet and other voices will be much easier to wank away on and get results fast. It's more fun to go freestyle when one has lotsa voices as compared to a piano voiced keyboard.
Actually Jerry Lee was my first thought, and I looked...
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I thought someone would bring up the subject of double and triple stops. Fortunately only artists have to worry about those, and I'm no artist. (Though, actually, double stops are very simple if you can manage to play them with your first and second finger in the first position. Ysaye and Bach, not so much. For them you need real talent.)
OP
- Thread Starter
- #40
You lost me there, only seems like more complications? First I got to learn the keyboard, where my fingers go and how to find the notes, etc. Don't get how more voices make any of the any easier?
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