lol, try carry and broke a few back bones?

can you clarified by what is by ears? listen and find out the chords?

my friend's teacher is not that "ganas" gua, just want take ruler and knock his finger when he played something wrongly LOL~~

You can't even carry a pipe organ - it's built as part of the building itself hehe, because it's too big!

Well, playing by ear may mean different things, for me it is actually replicating the piece - playing every note exactly (This is for classical pieces). It's simpler to do with composers like haydn, mozart... although the late romantic stuff - forget trying to replicate them by ear.

Hmm. I don't think a single one of my teachers has ever knocked my fingers with a ruler hehe..

i cant even play with my fingers...
how can u play with ur ear?

lol, coz he learned since very young i guess..

i see, pipe organ, seems familiar, is there such organ which uses the stalactite in cave? it produce some real natural and smooth tune...

hmm, seems that piano's dream is too far for me for the moment.. make take guitar classical ..

by listening, not by using ear to tab...

i didn't read previous posts, so apologies (in advance) for repeating or being off-topic
playing by ear means basically that you are able to play what you hear. For instance, here are few extreme cases, when you're really good at it :
- you hear a song *for the first time* and are able to play it immediately, almost in-sync with the CD.
- you imagine a melody or a chord *gasp* or a chord's progression *double-gasp* in your head, and instantaneously you're able to play it.

There are methods to train your ears, i've seen some exercises in my guitar books. Most of it implies singing along when you play (i mean sing exactly what you play, not something else )

but that seriously need lotsa tallent right? i guess i dun have much talent.. will need lots of hardwork if i were into it

talent ? a bit... but it's mostly work and experience.
for instance, i can think a simple melody and play it right out of my head... but can't do it with chords (yet ?). It sounds amazingly difficult, but if you focus on it for a while, i'm pretty sure you can reach it.
It's just music, you can always give it a shot, even if you're a little scared Or try to base-jump from KLCC, that should relativize...

i have no idea what is base jump from KLCC..

To the threadstarter.

Under the guidance of my mother I started learning piano when I was 4 years old. It was fun at first, and slowly as I started my classical grades it became tedious and I hated it, for the teachers who scold me for not playing pieces well every week (I was very lazy to practice) and for my parents who gave me huge amounts of pressure for playing well.

It wasn't til around Grade 6 when I really liked to piano. So since you're around 20 that means you do have a mature mind I assume (lol dont take the offense) and therefore classical piano learning, while tedious, you wouldn't be so easily frustrated because YOU KNOW that you want to learn it.

As with the piano teachers I STRONGLY recommend that you learn from a qualified piano teacher. Unless you have amazing out-of-the-world talent, you will not play it correctly. You might think it's played correctly, maybe by google or ear or etc. But you won't know if you played it the wrong way anyway. And really, get an acoustic piano. 2nd hands won't cost too much beyond your 1k budget.

To the guys who are on instrument self-learning, piano is fairly easy in the early stages. Most pianists will agree with me. One of the main differences piano learning is different from other instruments is the syncronization of both hands. Non-keyboard instruments cannot produce both melody and the accompaniment on their own (correct me if there's any that could, I cannot think of any now). The hard part of learning piano playing comes in the later stages. With the piano and skill, you can literally produce the whole orchestra's sound (or almost the whole) of some pieces into a single piano. That's when the hard part comes in

Personally I'm able to play Liszt's piano transcription of the Beethoven's 9th Symphony, 4th movement. Learning solely this piece took me a long time. Piano is different from other instruments like guitars or harmonicas, both which I can play as well, so no "you don't know the guitar" stuff.


A page from Liszt's piano transcription of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, 4th movement. This isn't something you can play by self learning. Piano playing ISN'T anything like Marry Had A Little Lamb. That's like strumming all the strings on guitars, or blowing randomly into the harmonica, which a baby can do.

Oh by the way, so far as I know, good Chopin pieces doesn't come in the early stages of piano. They aren't easy at all. Bach is different though, you can find some easier pieces of Bach without effort.

This post has been edited by chiam_ace: Nov 6 2006, 08:43 PM

Hi thread starter...

I think no one start as old as me. I just start this year. 2 months ago. I bought Casio Privia PX-300 at RM1750. It is hammer weighted 88 key digital piano. The sound lose to P70 but has a lot of feature because PX-300 is stage piano while P70 is just basic piano (but sound really nice).

Since digital piano is cheap, I cannot recommend buying a keyboard unless you want a lot of synthesize sound.

And about self learning, I think its not advisable. I've gotten myself a teacher from Yamaha and it cost RM75 per month. So far so good. I can play some interesting pieces such as Got those blues, joy to the world, cockles and mussels etc...which is quite fun. But I think the learning is getting harder. Before this, I feel fun. But now, I feel stress... So, the important thing is, persevere. Talk is cheap. I hope I can do it. By the way, I think those pieces is not even grade 1...

EDITED : Wait wait, by the way, I'm 28

This post has been edited by gogo2: Nov 6 2006, 10:48 PM

Hi there, I just got my piano lesson. Today's my first lesson. I'm now looking for piano- digital ones, as my hse is small to put a larger piano. Just to ask you, whr do you get your casion piano at so cheap price?

2-hand tapping on bass/guitar is an example requires sync of both hands on a non keyboard instrument. Example jean baudin (11-string bass) and michael hedges (10-string harp guitar). Hedges is a better example of using a single instrument to acquire accompaniment, melody and percussion all in one. It's not easy, probably even harder than piano (but i wouldnt know cause i quit piano long time ago....and regret it now). That's why only a few people manage to reach that stage. But it can be done and has been proven.

I don't think you can compare instruments like that. They are all just too different from each other to compare them. I think that certain instruments may be easier to 'learn' than others, but at a certain level, mastering them is just as difficult, from one instrument to the other.

I'm a pianist.. and last year I took up the trombone - on which I have advanced really quickly - but the challenges I faced were totally different. On a piano, once you've hit the note, generally you don't think about it at all. The sound just decays and you can't do anything about it. Whereas on a trombone, even though I can (typically) only play a note at a time, there so much more you can do with the note - you can bring down the volume in the middle and make it louder again, you can add vibrato, you can do many things to the tone quality, etc etc.

Piano requires sync between the two hands, trombone requires sync between the hand and the lip. And trombone playing is very athletic. You have to think about your breathing, lip muscles, etc. Or perhaps it seems to me that way because perhaps I've been playing the piano much longer than I've been playing the trombone.

Hope everyone knows what a trombone is!

But my point is, I don't think you can say one is harder than another.

wrong choice of words. I meant to say that there are possibilities of playing accompaniment and melody on non-keyboard instruments.

I got it at lelong.com.my.... someone decided to sell it after 2 months usage. Still got 10 months warranty...

hey,
wat is da fee for a home tutor? i need a piano teacher dat can teach me at my hostel.. n how did u get a teacher from yamaha?

I dunno the fee. Should be more expensive than 75. I go to shop sell Yamaha piano. They have teacher Or maybe, try to get your friend who know piano to teach u and pay them rm20 per month

...

This post has been edited by coral_bay: Mar 4 2014, 12:41 PM

My grand father learned piano at 72 - so you can definitely get started with doing it now!

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