One Missing Piece To Go

AUDIO POST



If you've played the piano for a long time without being able to play by ear, there's good news.  You are just one small missing puzzle piece away from putting it all together.

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Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist.  Click here to get the free companion book to this blog.  See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com. 

© 2012 Keyed Up Inc

Everything You Need To Know To Play By Ear

AUDIO POST



Everything?  That’s the plan.  I am in a unique position to teach you.  Maybe you're just like I was.  You feel like you don't really know anything, lost in learning and everywhere you look they want to teach you “Für Elise.”  Where to go?  Right here's a good place for you. 

Maybe you took lessons as far as you could and got discouraged.  You’ve got skills but now what?  Maybe you thought you just don’t have it -whatever that is!!!- to see the light.  But if you could play by ear that would be different.  But again, where to go?  Here.

Maybe you’ve taken lessons far and and are the fastest, most accurate gun in Dodge.  You’ve got twitchy fingers and your advanced knowledge of musicology is acknowledged.  When it comes to dedication and years of practice and pedagogy, scales and knuckle-rappin’, I respectfully bow to your degree.  You know your music, no doubt.  You're up there.  I am but a humble servant. 

I ask you.  “Do you really know your chords?”  The basic 12 major and minor chords and all their inversions?

I’m not asking if you can figure them out, the question is comfort.  Do you know them like the back of your hand?  Do you know them like you know your scales?  Are you in command of the piano this way?

If you say “Yes,” then I say “You know what I know (and probably more)."  We’re going to have a good time here.  Please check in from time to time.

But if you honestly answer “No,” then no matter how good you are (in the way you are good), you’re still lacking in this one area and you need to learn something new.  By following me you’re going to get there fast because it is oh so clear that . . . you’re the fastest gun. 

I never aspired to classical greatness.  I wanted to be a rock star, that’s all.  I didn’t study music in college.  I learned music theory on my own and that kind of ignorance-to-enlightenment experience brought about some unique insights that most people have never thought about before.

I never took a class but one.  My 6th grade teacher Miss Edwards (who was quite old) taught the concept of scales and notation and I paid attention.  Like a lot of good music teachers out there, rest her soul, she’d be pleased to know that she made such an impact.

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Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist.  Click here to get the free companion book to this blog.  See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com. 

© 2011 Keyed Up Inc

My True Story

My name is Joseph Pingel and like many of you, I quit taking lessons after two years.  I found myself at that familiar crossroads of either quitting entirely or teaching myself how to play piano.  I was motivated and made up my mind to do it.

Using my guitar-playing knowledge, I sat at the piano and transferred guitar chords to the keyboard.  After learning 3 chords in 5 minutes, I pounded out a basic rhythm and Voila!   Louie Louie.  That’s when the lights turned on!  My two years of piano lessons were left in the dust and I never looked back.

I was young and had no advanced musical education.  Yet there was something special about what I had learned on my own so quickly.  I knew very little about theory at the time but understood quite clearly that it all began by learning those basic chords.

It seemed so simple, I had to share this information. So at age 16, I wrote a book that focused on how to learn all the basic chords in a month.  It contained very defined exercises specific to fast progress and impressive results.  In my naive approach there was magic.  There was discovery.  Today, I call this level of basic ability "COMMAND." 

What is to follow on this blog is what I hope you will find your road to freedom on the piano.  This is a different kind of site and you will learn things here you have never seen or heard of before.

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Joseph Pingel is a pianist, teacher and musicologist.  Click here to get the free companion book to this blog.  See his other sites at www.KeyedUpPiano.com and www.PlayByEarCentral.com. 

© 2012 Keyed Up Inc