Learning piano/keyboard

[Nonamer]

I am in the process of learning how to play the keyboard and the various chords. While I don't expect to be a piano master anytime soon, I would like to learn the basics to make music using software as soon as possible. Does anyone have any recommendations or tutorials (preferably cheap or free) for learning keyboarding?

[BardicKnowledge]

Note: This is how to get yourself up to speed doing things like inputting notes quickly. If you want to learn to play real piano pieces, lessons help a TON -- consider them. With that in mind...

Question: Do you have some ability to read sheet music?

If so, get the Hanon book and practice the first few exercises as slowly as you need to until you can play with decent speed. If you look around you can _probably_ find some of this material for free online, but it's cheap anyway.

If not, go to your local music store and get whichever Bastion piano basics book matches the level of musical understanding you're at (get the technic and the main book). Ask the music store workers to help you out here, as usually they have a pretty good grasp on early piano students (a huge market for them).

[Dissidia]

I think it's worth the price, if you are serious about learning piano. Either through books or a teacher. I myself have been looking at this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adult-All-One-Course-Technique/dp/0882848186/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top it has great reviews and isn't too expensive.

There is a channel on Youtube that I found, it has some tips and tools when playing the piano: http://www.youtube.com/user/chordsgalore#p/u/6/8c_gtsMdB7w

It all depends on how you want to spend your time.

[kitty]

I'm looking into learning too and will eventually get lessons. Is there some sort of total beginner's guide to getting started before I start lessons?

[Ghetto Lee Lewis]

I second Hanon (the 60 exercises one) being an amazing book. Of course, you have to play them every day. Chopin's Etudes are good practice too, once you get through Hanon, though they require a lot of patience. The revolutionary etude in C minor is a favorite of mine (and will bring your left hand playing up to par). Expect Hanon to take at least a year or two to get through all 60 exercises.

Learning all the scale/chord theory in the world won't help you play piano if your hands are too weak to play the notes. Hanon will definitely remedy that. The exercises are fairly easy to read, too (during book one, both hands are mirrored, playing in different octaves, so picking up the notes is easy). Make sure you can read finger numbers before starting them (thumb is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). Also, later in the book you'll run into key changes and accidentals, so you'll have to be able to read music pretty well.

As far as chord theory, there are lots of good tutorials on the internet, or even on this site. You'll never have to learn to read music like a classical pianist to understand how chords and scales work. Learning major/minor/diminished/augmented chords, suspensions, substitutions, mode mixture, chord progression, major/minor/diminished/whole-tone and other scales are likely going to be very important. Googling some of those terms might be a good place to start.

Of course, there are people who can compose without even playing an instrument. Learning how to compose and learning how to play the piano are really two completely different things.

[Gario]

Hanon is worth the twenty bucks so get it. Don't even question it if you're serious - it'll help your technique immensely. To get the most out of it first learn the exercises on the white keys (as written), then learn it in BbM (all the black keys) - that way the technique will apply to all sorts of different music. In the ideal world you learn it in all 12 keys, but it works well in those two at least.

As for chords, tinker around for a bit, listen to music and imitate. You can learn them through books and such, but the piano represents things in such a visual manner in the first place that you can learn quite a bit just through imitation.

BTW, on most programs there is a piano roll that you can use to input notes, so anything/everything you learn on the piano chord-wise will translate easily, so keep up the good work.