- Hey students. Your
piano teacher Tim here
and in today's lesson of Tuesday Tip,
I'm going to share with you something
that is really often forgotten about,
often neglected cause
students think it's boring
but it's super, super helpful
so let me show you.
So when looking at a piece of music,
you can go through and read the notes
just blindly, one at a time.
You can even use the intervals technique
that I've showed you in previous lessons
but that's not what today is about.
But maybe, you don't even truly understand
what's going on in a piece
and one of the
recommendations I have for you
is that it is so important to have
as much information for your brain
to grab a hold of as
possible because it will help
you learn and play through a piece
much, much easier, even if
you've never seen it before,
even if you are sight reading.
So we are gonna look at
Canon in D really fast
and I'm going to analyze
it using Music Theory.
So that's the thing that a lot
of students neglect here.
So, looking at it real quick.
Some key things that you
want to start looking out for
is the key signature which
are the sharps or flats
right in the beginning of the piece.
Here we have two sharps, F# and C#.
There is a lesson I have about,
There is a lesson I have
about something called
The Circle of Fifths which will help
you learn and master all
these key signatures,
but the reason the key
signatures are so important
to get a hold of and to learn is that,
it will literally help you determine
what notes are sharped
or a flat in a piece,
but not only that, if you are learning
your key signatures
and learning the scales
along with them, you
will start to visualize
where these appear rather than being like
"Okay, I have two sharps.
Is it this one and this one?
Is it this one and this one?
Is it this one and this one?"
So you know exactly where they are even if
you're way up here or way down here,
you know that they hit in
those places right there.
There's a couple other
things that it will tell you
and that is, basically your tonic note
and your tonal center, they call it.
So, your tonic is just the name of
the key that you're on, D.
So you're going to find a lot of notes
that center around D and move around D
and a lot of chords that move around D
and are based on that.
So here like in the opening on Canon in D.
Let me get the whole thing up for ya.
Here in the opening of Canon in D,
immediately I'm playing D,
F#, A, and then to the next D
spanning an octave and
some important notes
in between and because I know the theory
behind this and where all
the chords take place,
I can really just
snapshot look at the music
and immediately know
where to move my hands,
where to go from there.
For instance, for, obviously
when you're playing a key,
a scale is when you put all the notes
in a key from the tonic to the next tonic,
with the sharps or flats
obviously added in there,
but it also shows you,
what chords you are going
to be dealing with as well.
So when I read this, this is
outlining a D major chord,
then to a A major chord,
which is the dominant,
or the fifth note of the scale.
I'm not here to kind of show you
all that today, I'm just kind of,
really relaying the importance
of knowing the music theory behind
what the piece is that you're playing
rather then just, like
I said, going blindly,
you're going to know
exactly what's going on
and it's gonna help you
learn pieces must faster.
This is just as important
as the sight reading.
This is just as important
as using intervals
which I've talked about
in Tuesday Tip before.
This is really important.
I'm not going to get into
all the theory today,
I just wanted to kind
of give you an example.
If you want to learn about the theory,
two places you can either
check out my courses
over at pianolessonsontheweb.com
but I also have a playlist here on YouTube
that I really want you to check out,
that I'll put in the description
and a link to you at the end.
So one thing I want to tell you
is that if you found
today's lesson helpful,
you need to obliterate
that subscribe button
meaning press it and then
turn on all notifications
so you get notified when
new lessons coming out
which is all the time, mainly Saturday,
Sunday morning, 9 am, and
then we have live streams,
and Tuesday, 9 am, and
then we have live streams
on Friday and Sunday, 8 pm,
so make sure you're subscribed,
got that notification turned on
and check out this
playlist to get you started
on actually learning music theory.
So being your piano teacher Tim here,
I'm going to see you
in the next Tuesday Tip
and the next lesson so
thanks for coming by
and I'll see you real soon.
