Musicarta
Distance Learning in Cape Town

A new type of piano teaching-material is required, to teach practical and expressive musical skills to young musicians and adult re-starters alike – material which nurtures and educates the creative musician within the pianist directly and respectfully.
they themselves get motivated again.
Many adults, knowing the investment in time and effort they made in their childhood piano lessons, turn back to the piano in adulthood, but ‘just for themselves this time’. They may have such a negative memory of piano lessons that they would simply prefer to self-motivate. Perhaps with children starting lessons,.
There are a number of reasons such people choose to study on their own. They may be looking after children, not have a lot of money, or be afraid they won’t get time to practice and therefore be unwilling to commit to regular piano lessons.

First come the 'main course' study courses: all-level courses which combine explorations of the various ways you can put music together at the keyboard with tuneful, modern-styles original repertoire. Whether it's chords or scales, you can start on any of these pages and be sure of accessing a wealth of creative home study material, absolutely free. A standalone eight-lesson mainly video course designed to get your own unique arrangement of this beautiful tune into your repertoire quickly and easily. The lessons explore how an arrangement can build in rhythmic and harmonic complexity. Take it as far as you can with an achievable performance every lesson and always something to reach for. With its simplicity of form and driving rhythm, the twelve-bar is an ideal pop-rock musical training ground and a great warm-up for any music-making. The music in the next audio clip is generated from the same notes, but re-arranged. The answer is that the thirds in the first example have been 'inverted' into the sixths in the second one. Part Two of the workbook goes on to teach the harmonic and rhythmic building blocks you'll need for your own ever-expanding twelve-bar keyboard 'chops'. So don't be misled into buying expensive, impossible-to-play boogie transcriptions! Listen to these three Pyramids Variations performances to hear how they develop the same basic music from simple to advanced. Pachelbel’s Canon in D is perhaps the most famous chord sequence of all time, and its regular chord sequence makes it the ideal place to start learning about harmony, how to play a chord sequence, melody writing and improvisation. First, the string of thirds from the first lesson, played over a backing track. Now here's a two-handed triad improvisation with some 'next-door' notes. In fact, if you can play and understand the Canon chord sequence, there isn’t much in popular music harmony you won’t be able to figure out! The third audio sample above shows a possible modern treatment of the Canon chord sequence. Drum backing tracks are included to help keep the notes coming. Here are the exercises for the first two pairs of chords and the first three chords combined. Only a methodical approach like this will give you true creative skill, way beyond copying this riff or that one! Playing a melody plus its own full, satisfying chord accompaniment is THE benchmark achievement for the modern-styles keyboard player. They can be played in many computer music applications. Modal chord changes have traditionally provided great support for improvisers across many musical genres. Here are samples from the three E minor pentatonic riffs in Module Two of the series. Well-developed beat-and-rhythm skills are an essential ingredient of modern keyboard technique, and syncopated hand patterning can generate great riffs from the simplest material. There are two good reasons for learning and practicing the musical scales. One is to develop finger dexterity; the other is to learn the keys. All musicians should practice playing up and down the notes of their instruments quickly and evenly.