Complete Piano Course: From Fundamentals to Musical Proficiency

1. Welcome to the class: Welcome to the class, and here, I'm going to give you all the knowledge you need. In step by step, easy to understand chapters for you to follow along. In this class, we're going to learn from scratch, from zero music knowledge to proper hand positioning, reading and being able to correctly play a completely new piece all by yourself. I've been playing piano for so many years basically since I was born, and I've learned through one of the best music schools in Portugal. Again, in this class, I'm going to give you all the knowledge you need and we'll focus on one basic beautiful piece. This is not a piece that you learn and then forget about it. This is a timeless, beautiful piece that even more advanced pianists still play to this day. And everything we'll learn. I'll make sure that you don't need to buy anything extra. I'll put everything, every sheet, every exercise you need down below from famous books, famous fingering articulation exercises. So rest assured you don't need to buy anything online, any sheets, any books. Everything is done below. See you in the next chapter. 2. Class project: Okay, great. So apart from learning the main piece, we're going through some scales, basic exercises, basic music sheets for you to familiarize yourself first. And don't worry, all the sheets and exercises are down below for you to download. You don't need to buy anything extra. And for this class project, I would like you to record yourself, maybe playing the main piece or something more simple like a scale that I'm going to teach you or a fingering exercise. Or a picture of your keyboard or an exciting piece you would like to learn in the future. Some good? Great. With that said, let's learn. 3. Let's talk about gear and mistakes to avoid: So what's here down below was my first piano. And it is a pillow. Believe it or not, I started practicing with this pillow right at the beginning when I had nothing yet. And actually, a lot of this course you can do with the pillow. We'll go through a lot of the reading, the rhythms, the symbols, and also finger exercises you can practice here. So that's good to know. But of course, once you start any hobby, you'd like to invest in something better than a pillow. If you're looking to upgrade, I'm going to give you some really important pointers for you to know in your next purchase, for you to not make a mistake to maybe buy a keyboard that's not suitable for you. Don't worry, it doesn't need to be a grand piano. I'll give you some examples. This here is one of many examples here. This was my actual first keyboard, and there's a lot of advantages, but also a lot of drawbacks. I think this is a great starting piano for children. However, there are some major limitations that come with this keyboard that maybe for the normal person who doesn't understand keyboards, won't really see. The first limitation is when you press on the keys, there's almost no resistance. Compare this to the piano. It feels different. And with this comes the lack of sensitivity. If I play hard, It doesn't really play louder or if I touch a little softer, it doesn't really play quieter. Here in the piano makes a huge difference on your emotions, if you play quiet. Or if you play louder or more strong. So this keyboard does not have the sensitivity. And the second big flaw is there's no pedal included to this. So usually all pianos, they include three pedals, but you'll only need one for long term practice. That's really the most important one, which is the sustained pedal. I'll go into detail in this, but the only thing it does is it sustain the nodes. So if you click, It's still you can still hear it. But without the pedal. You don't hear it. And that's really important to play more emotional songs, and it makes everything sound much prettier. So let me give you a quick example. This is without pedal. And this is with the pedal now. And I hope you got to understand how important the sustained pedal is for long term piano playing. If you're looking to buy a new keyboard, make sure it has one. If you're a complete beginner, maybe you're looking to save a little more money. Go ahead. It's fine. You can learn pieces that don't use it. But if it's more of a long term thing, really make sure it has one. And the good alternative to these cheap keyboards is an electrical piano that looks more like this. These ones, of course, they have the pedals, they have the sensitivity on the keyboards. And frankly, I could use these ones to train any more professional music for higher levels, and they're completely fine. And honestly, they have one big advantage compared to this grand piano and is that you can plug in headphones and then play quietly. Only you can hear it, not everyone. And that's a problem. If you're trained with this one, you cannot train really early in the morning or really late in the night because it'll disturb other people. Then, of course, we have the real vertical pianos with real strings or the grand piano. These, of course, they're the best to play because they're the real deal, they're the real piano. However, they're really expensive. Eventually, you'll need to tune them. These, of course, have the real sensitivity of a piano. But these are more for show because not any speaker can reproduce the real sound of a piano. With that, I hope you got to learn all the crucial parts that you need to know if you're looking to buy maybe a new keyboard or a piano that might steer you off from buying something that you might regret in the future. With that, see you in the next chapter. Okay. 4. Finger numbering: So in my first piano class, my first music teacher taught me the finger numbering. Actually in the exact room you're looking at. And this is really important to know if you're learning a new piece and reading the new sheet and you don't know which finger to use. So first, let's put our fingers together like this. So the order goes a little like this. Number one is dumb. Number two is index. Number three is middle. Number four is ring finger, and number five is the pink one, two, three, four, five. Let's play a quick game. I'll say a number and they'll try and match it with the correct finger. Three. Five, two, four, and one. Okay, great. Now that you know the numbering, let me show you an example on how to use it. In inopd when we start playing, we see it starts with the third finger, which is the middle finger on the right hand, like so. Then the thumb here. And then third finger four Okay. Usually sheets don't say every single finger you need, but rather they use specific and important ones and the last ones are left because they're too obvious. So it starts with the third. They usually tell you the start. And then fifth, fourth. And then this one is tough, so they say the first one. And then from this jump to the other, it's a little weird. That's why they say it's the third and then fourth. Ending with the second. Important, right? Now to familiarize with essentials, I'll give you a finger game exercise for you to train along right now. One, three, five, four, two, four, five, two, three, one, two, four, three, one, five. 5. Get to know your keyboard: So when you first sit at the piano and see the keyboard, it might feel a little overwhelming. But worry not. We'll go by parts. So a keyboard consists of individual keys and each one is a single musical note. So it repeats itself upwards or downwards, and it's all the same just with a different pitch. Here it starts with a do and it ends with a do. And you can start again. Do. Okay. And also downwards. And that's how it goes. An octave is an interval of eight nodes. On a keyboard is like this. This is an octave. This is a different octave. These are all different octaves. Again, now that you know what an octave is, the keyboard repeats itself in octaves. D, D and D. The black keys are for sharps or flats. For example, we have the C. That's the C and C sharp would be the black key. C sharp C, C sharp, D, D sharp and so on and so forth. The way you can identify which note is which is by looking at the pattern of the black keys. They either go in groups of two or three. The, the central C or D always goes at the beginning of group of two. Here group of two, you know that or C is here. And then the rest is easy. Now that you know your way around the keyboard, let me give you some exercises or examples to practice your way around this. Try and find C. Here. Or here. Or here. The way I can know is by starting with the do and go one down. Now, try and find me. This is me. The way I would know is by finding first the door. M, different octaves. Last one, let's try and find soul. The soul would be here. So again, finding the central do Now, it's your turn. Try and find the correct keys for you to familiarize yourself around this keyboard. Now, try and find. All of these will be correct. Now let's try and find. These are the answers. Last one, what about fa? These are the answers. I think you got the hang of it. If not, then familiarize yourself a little more before going to the next chapter. 6. Correct body and finger posture: Over the years, I've seen a lot of piano players playing with the wrong hand positioning, the wrong sitting positioning. Not only does this look bad. It also creates really bad habits for the long run. So the best thing is to learn the proper way first at the beginning, and it's done. And I think this is a point that some piano teachers don't focus on enough. Let's first talk about proper sitting position. So first, let's talk about height. That's important. It usually comes to personal preference, but the general rule is your forearms have to be parallel to the ground. And your legs have to be slightly down. So your legs are slightly down like this. One common mistake I've seen people do is sitting like this. You see what's wrong? It's my butt is sitting in the middle of the seat, and it actually should be in the front part like this. So my butt should be in the front part of the seat. And this is due to one simple reason. The piano is so large, sometimes you need to reach here or to the left. And the proper technique is to always play with your torso parallel with your forearms parallel, always like this. So if you're going to play higher notes here to the right, you usually lean towards like so. And if you're leaning to the left, you also lean to the left, so that your body leans, but your forearms are always like this. Your forearms are always in the nice comfortable position throughout the whole keyboard. So like this. And that's important. Now, if I were to really sit on the middle of the seat, if I want to lean left or right, I'm restricted by my own hips, which becomes really hard to do this. I'm stuck here in the middle. That's right. It's best to sit like so in the front part of the seat so that you can lean easier. Last thing about the sitting position is to keep your back straight A's chair, to be honest, it's good for life. Let's now focus on the hands. Playing the piano and writing on the keyboard surprisingly has a lot in common. The first mistake I see a lot of people do is play like this. This is not good. The problem here is that they play with this part of the finger. Rather, you should play with the tips of the fingers. Instead of playing like this, you should play like this. You see the tip of the finger is always using for every finger Just like writing on the keyboard, you have to pretend you're kind of holding a tennis ball. Instead of being flat. Hold a tennis ball and play with the tip of the fingers, like so. This way, you can have more control and articulate much, much better. So playing with the tip of the fingers and also your thumb Oh. And one important thing that comes with this is that your fingernails must be trimmed. My piano teacher used to say that if you used to see the white part of the nail, that means it'd be too much. And this is because if you play with long fingernails, they do this tapping sound with the tip. Can you hear? And this is not good. That's why you trim your fingernails to play with no problem. Okay. Another thing is to never wear rings or watches since it gives a weird way to it. And also, this is the area that people focus on when they're watching you. Also, in case you've already learned, but you don't play with the correct position. I would suggest using a pencil, hold a like this, and then train. Because the most common error is for people to play like this. And the pencil is here to correct for this mistake. Make sure all the fingers are up. When the one finger is playing. To make sure it's articulated. Okay, great. Let's recap. So correct heights. Sand in the front part of the seat, B straight, hands curved, and play with the tip of your fingers. And what I want you to do is going step by step, just as I did, to make sure you got the correct form, like so. And play five notes. Good luck. 7. C major scale: The first technique I want to show you is how to play a scale. This is a fundamental technique that is used in many, many sheets, I'll go along, and also to familiarize yourself on how to play all the nodes in sequence. Okay. I'll first start with the right hand, then left, then both. So for the right hand, the first three are normal. Now, it is important your thumb goes underneath the other finger. So underneath. Your thumb goes underneath and to play the next key. And again, To go down is the same. Now instead of the thumb, it's the third finger that goes like this. Again. Now, the whole thing and make sure it's articulated, and when you're playing one note, all the other fingers are up in the air. So, let's say you want to continue further. Here with the fourth finger, now, you continue with the thumb. And immediately, you're in the right position to continue like this. Now, fourth finger. That's the only difference. Third finger. Fourth finger. Third finger. This will come with practice. Now, the left hand is similar to the right hand. So you start off normal. And then you go with the third finger on top to the next key. Like so. Again. And to go down. Now your thumb goes underneath for the next key. Now, if you want to continue further, you go normally. And then you go with the fourth finger now. And then third again. Like so. And to go down is the same thing, like normal. Now with the fourth finger, instead of finishing with the fifth, you go with the thumb. Now, here we finish with the pinky. Again, fourth, and then thumb. Mastering this movement of the thumb going underneath or the third or fourth finger going up is essential for so many pieces and just playing scales. It is really important. Practice with each hand. And once you're feeling comfortable, do with two hands. Now, it is really important for you to practice slow and clear and strong. So like this, This is really important because it trains your articulation. Make sure when you play one note, it is clear and all the other fingers are on the air. I cannot stress enough how important this is to play articulated, because when you play other pieces, it really comes down to this to really sound good, and just really nice like this. Of course, you start slow with one octave and then try two, and then four. Of course, don't go as fast as me. I've had a lot of training. My fingers are really articulated like this. But this comes with a lot of practice. Oh. And one last thing is don't forget about the body movement. If you're starting off to the left like here, make sure you lean to the left, so your body is here, and your hands are just normal, like so. If you're going here, you lean like this. But your hands feel natural. They're always in front of you. So like this. Good luck. 8. Essential finger articulation exercise: This exercise, I'm going to show you, it comes from this very famous book, Hannon. All it contains is articulation exercises for you to train the finger movement, and it also is a great warm up. Now, if you can't read sheets yet, it's completely fine, I'll explain this one. It's very easy to learn. So instead of playing in sequence. You've played the first one and then skip one key and then play in sequence. So. And then the thumb goes to this key and then skips one. Like so. Again. And so on and so forth. So when you reach the end, So when you go backwards, you play the first one, and then you skip one. And then play that one and then skip one. So on and so forth. Now, the same for the laugh time, it doesn't change anything. You play the first note, you skip the second one, and then you continue. And you play this note, and so on. And first, you train slow with one hand, slow with the other hand. And then you want to merge both hands together slow, like so. Make sure that every time you play a note, you play with the tip of the finger. And also, all the other fingers are up in the air if they're not playing. This trains articulation. Like so. Of course, you can start slower. But once you practice more, you like to warm up, and I would warm up like so. And then I will try faster and faster until my fingers really feel warm and ready to play. But don't worry if you cannot do this fast. It's completely normal. I had years of experience. I would like you to do slow and well. That's more important, slow and well. That's how you really train the fundamentals and have the right basics. Trust me. In the long run, that's more important. So what I want you to do is train with one hand. And then with the other one. And once you're comfortable with both, go with both of your hands. Slow and clear. Remember, always slow and clear and one finger is touching the key, the tip of the finger is touching the key. Make sure all the other fingers are up in the air. Okay. Like so. And once you get comfortable, you go progressively faster and faster, but not too fast that you're not comfortable. So train this. You will follow along for the rest of your life. It's really nice exercise. Good luck. 9. Chromatic scale: Another less essential technique, but a cool one to show to your friends is how to play every single note in sequence like this. So all you need is three fingers, the thumb index and middle. Mostly, you'll use the thumb in the middle, like so. When you encounter two white notes, you'll use the index. So. And here again, with the index. And you can train faster and faster. And also, with the left hand is the same. Use these three fingers. The index is only used when there's two white nodes. And so on and so forth. Need, right? So practice it first slow, and then you'll be able to reach higher speeds. Good luck. 10. Reading 1: Clefs and reading music notes: First looking at a piano sheet, it might look completely overwhelming, but that's fine at first. I'll go step by step in the following chapters, and by the end of this, you'll be super familiar and know exactly what to look at. So when looking at any sheet, we see two clefs, the travel clef and the bass clef. Let's start with the travel clef. The easiest way to start is with the central key. And it looks like this on the sheet. Okay. Go up we have. Ma and so on and so forth. Now, for the base cloth again, we start from the same do. D, and this time, we go backwards. Do me, and so on and so forth. Now, sometimes you might see this symbol. This raises a half a step. It's a sharp. Instead of being a C, it's a C sharp. It goes up by half a tone. And the flat is the opposite. It goes one key below. D flat. Not so complicated, right? I think when you first know where the C is, you'll know where everything else is. Can you identify on the piano where each of these go? I'll give you first the time to think about it, then I'll give you the solution. We'll start again by the central note. And then we'll go up from there. Do it's a la right there. The same logic applies to the second one. But it has a sharp, so it's a F sharp. Now for the base clef, your left hand, we'll also start with the me. It's this one, it's me. And if you continue, we'll see me, and then the D. That's the D again. Did you get it right? If not, that's okay. You can pause, think again, or rewatch the video to get a better feel for it. If you got them all right, that's great. We'll see you in the next chapter while we continue our theory. See you then. Okay. 11. Reading 2: Musical symbols and rhythm exercises: This chapter, I'm going to cover all the symbols you'll see in the sheet. This is a quarter note. This is worth one beat. Okay. This is a quarter rest. It is also worth the beat but nothing. Finally, this is a time signature. It tells you how many notes it can fit in a measure. This one is called four four. The top number tells you how many beats per minutes it fits. In a simplified way because the top number is four, that means there are four beats per measure. The bottom number tells you what kind of note is one beat. If the bottom number is four, this represents a quarter note. This means that a time signature that says four four means that there are four quarter notes per measure. Okay. Let's practice counting this one. One, two, three, four. Now, let's make some pauses in between. I'd like to say because it actively makes your brain understand what a pause is. So in this case, it would be one. Easy. Now it's your turn. I'll give you some time to think about it. De. I'll show you the solution. One, two, four. Okay, great. Let's continue learning a few more symbols. This is half a note. It's worth two beats. And this is a whole note. It's worth four beats. This is half a rest and it's worth two beats of nothing, and this is a whole rest, which is worth four beats of nothing. Let me give you an example on how you count these. Saying it like this with this bouncy feeling makes you actively think about how long these are. Now, let's practice on this one. First, I'll let you give it a go. Then I'll give the solution. One, two, one. Great. If you didn't get it, no worries. You can take your time and repeat these exercises until you get comfortable. For now, let's continue with the final symbols. This is a dotted note. This means it's worth two beats plus half of the value. So two plus one equals three beats. This is an eighth note. This is worth half. Two eighth notes look like this together. Let's practice. Okay. One and two, and three, and four and got the hang of it. Now, let's try with a different time signature. Three, four. This means now that we can fit three beats per measure like this. One, two, three. This will be important since the piece we're going to learn in the future uses this time signature. Let's practice on some final exercises we? Like always, I'll give you time. Then I'll show you the solution. One, two, three, one. Great. Try this one. One and two three. I'll give you a last one. Okay. T one. Okay, great. Again, if this fell too fast, feel free to take your time and repeat these exercises. If you already feel comfortable, then let's move on to the last chapter on reading the sheets with the final symbols. See you then. 12. Reading 3: Remaining musical symbols: Here, you already know most of it, so the rhythm, which note it is, which hand it is. And in this chapter, I'm just going to cover other special symbols that tells you the motions or more detail looks into the piece. After this, you'll be mostly good to go to read anything you want in the future. We see on the left there are some sharps over there. This tells you that any of those keys will be automatically a sharp. So the C and an F, any of those will be sharp. Unless if you see a symbol like this, which negates that. Then let's take a look at these. This tells you how quiet or loud you should play. The scale looks a little bit like this, a double p for pianissimo, which means very quiet. A P for piano, which means quiet, then P for meso piano, which is moderately quiet. M for meso forte moderately loud, for forte, which is loud, and F, which is fortissimo and it's very loud. These symbols give you an idea on how to express yourself and play the way it was intended to be played. To give even more detail, there are these two. This is a crescendo, meaning that you have to play from quiet to louder gradually, and the crescendo, which is the opposite. You'll play from loud to qui gradually as well. A curve line over different nodes is called a slur. It means you play smoothly connected. In the curve line that connects two nodes, it means that you only have to play that node for that duration only once. In this case, for the whole line here, you have to play it only once. Now, let's talk about the ending. You see this. This ending with the two dots means you'll have to go all the way back and continue playing. The one and two signify that you first have to play one, reach here, repeat all the way from the beginning and once you reach there, then you skip number one and continue immediately to part two, where you'll have to reach to your final ending. The order will look a little like this. These are most of the symbols you will encounter during your musical journey. There are others that appear, but more on rare occasions. Since we're focusing on inoped number one, I'm focusing on these ones, which are the main ones. In case you find anything that you don't understand, a quick Google search will solve that. With that said, we went through the whole theory in these three chapters. In the next one, we'll test it out with the basic song. See it then. 13. Read and learn your first piece: Amazing. Now that you learned the theory, let's put it into practice. I've lined down below the basic sheet for you to follow along. The steps learned this are going to be the same for any piece. We first focus with one hand. Usually, I'd like to start with the right one and slow by reading, it starts with the third finger and then it goes with the fourth and fifth. But important, it starts with the third. And that's me. So here. Okay. So I would like to first read Mass. Okay. And that's good. You'll repeat this and get comfortable with it until you can play this without any errors. Now let's move on to the left hand. Starts with the fifth finger, and it's a long one. Two, three, four, two, three, four, two there and that's how it goes. And once you're comfortable doing these without any mistakes and slow, we can slowly introduce both hands. Again, I'm going really fast at this because I have a lot of experience, but I know if you're a beginner, this might take a while. I'd like to point out that you can repeat as many times your right hand or left hand and then get comfortable. Once you know, both, it will sound like this. Okay. Of course, once you're first trying, I would suggest to go even slower, so your brain can really process. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one three, four, one, two, 341, three, four, stop. Once you practice this, you can go faster until you reach the normal speed. Now that you know how to properly train, it's now your turn. First start with one hand of your choice could be left or right. Be comfortable with it and then use your other hand. Be comfortable with that one, train slow and clear. Once you're comfortable with both hands separately, it's time to merge them both at the same time. Good luck. 14. Chords: Chords are one several keys are hit at the same time. And this will be especially important for the piece we're going to learn as it uses a lot of chords. So it's really important to be familiar with them. If we want to C chord, we first start with the C key. So this one with the thumb. And now we skip one white key and play the next one. And do the same. Skip one and play. That's great. To progress, now you can move the bottom key to the top like this. So to the next C available here. And then so on and so forth. This one will go up here, one octave, and these two will still be played. And again. So Now, we can do this for other keys, for example, soll. And then we skip one. And then we skip one. And like this. And we can progress upwards or downwards. So let's progress upwards. The so will go to the next octave like this. Ow. So this will go here to the downwards one. That's good. Now, let's focus on the left hand. Since the piece we're going to learn heavily relies on the left hand, playing chords is more important there. C major. Skip Skip. D. And then we progress. This one goes here to the next one. And so forth. Depending on the spacing, you use the second finger or the third finger. This really depends on your comfort. Usually it's first third and fifth finger. Here is also comfortable with the third finger. But here since the spacing is bigger, we use the second finger. Okay. Great. I hope you got to understand this fundamental technique. What I would like you to do now is to go with the left hand, pick one random note, and then go through the several variations of the chord. This is really important to train now with the left hand because the piece we're going to learn later uses a lot of chords on the left hand. Good luck. 15. D major scale: In some music sheets, you'll see a lot of sharps on the left, this means that the music here is in D major scale, which means that all the keys that are in E or C will automatically be E sharp or C sharp. Naturally, since it uses the D major scale, I usually practice to get a feeling for the scale throughout the piece. The D major scale has a sharp here. Instead of playing these two nodes, you'll play the sharp I'll go like this. The first will go normal always. After the third finger like exactly like the C major scale, your thumb will go underneath to play the next note. And the rest is easy. Sharp. Again. And to go down. And then the third finger goes on top of the thumb. To finish. Now, if you want to progress more. After the fourth finger, your thumb will continue to reset the position. Like this. And to go down. You go down with the fourth finger on top of your thumb to reset the position and continue downwards. If you want to continue downwards, I use the fourth finger again. And continue. Now, let's focus on the left hand. It's exactly like the C major just has some sharp on the way. From here, we use the third finger. And that's it again. Third finger. And to go down. After the third finger, your thumb goes underneath. And the rest is easy. Now, if you want to continue, you'll do like normal. Third finger. And then from here, you'll continue with the fourth finger. And it continues normal. So again, fourth finger. Fourth finger. This is just a matter of practice. And to go down. And the fourth finger, you'll reset the position with the thumb. So again, fourth finger, thumb, and now you're at the perfect position to continue. This might seem easy because I'm doing this so fast, but I want to emphasize again that you can pause this video, take your time really train slowly. And once you're comfortable, you can do together with two hands. Like so, that would be amazing. That's great. Once you even get more comfortable, you can do more octaves and faster. Practice this. This will be really important to get the feeling for the D scale and scale. Also, this is important for our sheet, since it uses also the D scale. Good luck. 16. How to prepare to practice longer songs: Practicing a longer piece, it might seem allotted first. But just like anything in life, we divide it into smaller sections, easier to digest for you to train. So let's pick a pencil and listen to the music. Once it's finished, it should look a little something like this. I divide it into parts that are trainable, they're repetitive and a new section so sound slightly different or you think it's a new part. This is very personal. I made some notes for you to understand this version is down below with my notes. Okay. Now, it's your turn. There is no right or wrong way to do this. I would like you to listen to the music again and divide it into pieces that you feel like are the best for you. Usually, I divide the sections to what I feel like it's best, but each person, it's different from the other, so I would like you to personally do it by yourself. Good luck. 17. Gymnopédie No.1 (Left hand): Now, to start off any piece, you always start by practicing one hand. In this case, the piece starts with the left hand. So it's the left hand that feels right to me at least to start practicing with. Notice that the music starts with piano, very, very quiet. But for now, none of these details matter. We are here in the learning phase, we'll play them strong and clear, so our brain really learns the notes. That's what important. Afterwards, we'll focus then on the forte piano. That doesn't matter right now. Okay. If we take a look, it starts with the sole here. Because if we go from the central dough, we'll see that here. Then we read these nodes and pa since it's the D scale, this pa is in sharp. These three. Altogether, it looks like this. Then this one is. And then here we can see it's a D and then pa. Both of these are sharp, so it's like this. And the best part about this music is once you get comfortable with this one, it's really easy because it just continues and repeats itself. Okay, so getting comfortable with this is maybe hard at first to get comfortable with the jumps. The jumps might be high. That might be the challenging part. But once you get comfortable. Playing. Basically, a lot of your left hand is done. That's it. That's why this piece is so basic, but also very beautiful, you'll see when we show together. Again, again, just to make sure go slowly at first. Make sure all the notes are correct. Make sure these jumps are comfortable to you. And then play Like so. Do take your time between this chapter and the other chapter to really familiarize with your left hand. Make sure it's clear and comfortable to you. Good luck. Okay. 18. Gymnopédie No.1 (Right hand): Okay, welcome to this chapter. We're going to cover the right hand, and again, very important. I want to make sure that all the nodes are clear, so we'll play slow and strong to make sure that all the nodes are integrated in our brain. At first, it might seem very hard to read. But as you practice over and over again, your brain will get used to it and memorize where they play. Starting off with the right hand, we see that it starts off with the pa here with the third finger, it's a pa and it's sharp. Okay. And if we read the rest, it goes like this. And then jump with the third finger because it's a number three, it says there. It's really helpful. And then again with the fourth finger. Whoops. It's sharp. I keep forgetting sometimes it's sharp. The fa is always sharp and the do is always sharp. And that be it. So getting comfortable with it. Again, I want to make sure that you're one finger is playing, the other ones are up in the air, so you'll train and be articulated. I don't want to see this. This is not articulated. We would like to see something like this. You hear each. That's really important. Otherwise, it does not sound pretty. I understand that once you encounter sharps, it might be a little more complicated, but take your time reading, take notes if something's wrong. But once you get comfortable, it should sound a little like this. Something like this, so on and so forth. This progress repeats itself. Once you get comfortable with the right hand, we'll see in the next chapter, how to play with both hands. Good luck. Again, take your time. This might take a while if you're a beginner, but trust me, it will be so worth it when you merge both hands, you'll see how beautiful it sounds. Take your time slow and comfortable. I don't want to rush you to the next chapter if you're not feeling comfortable with your right hand right now. Good luck, practicing. 19. How to correctly use the pedals: You'd be surprised how many piano players I see using the Pedal wrong. In this chapter, I'm going to address which pedal does which spoiler, you'll only need one, and at the end, how to properly press while playing. There are three pedals. Starting from the left, it's called a Cora. It means one string because when you press it in a grand piano, it shifts the keyboard a little bit to the left. What this means is when the hammer hits the strings, it doesn't hit all of them, making it sound quieter and damper and a more delicate sound. You use this for situations, you really want to play quiet. But in this case, you don't need to worry about it. So the middle pedal is the sostenuto pedal. This is usually emitted in vertical pianos, but it's a more complex pedal. You probably don't need to use it. But since we're here to learn, all it does is it sustain the nodes that already are pressed, so I press and then pedal and they sustain. When I play other nodes, It's not sustained. And the last pedal, the one on the right is the important pedal. It's the sustained pedal. And all it does is when you press on it, the keys you play will play longer even when you take your hand out. It sustained the notes. So let's listen to this difference. I'm going to play first without the pedal. And now I'm going to play with the pedal. Much better, right? Now, I'm going to cover why most when they press the pedal, they press all the way down, and this is not necessary because when you press halfway down, it already sustains the nodes. This is important to know because when you press all the way down, it makes a horrible noise. The problem with this is that when you push all the way down, you hear the pedal while the music is being played, which is not very pretty. Also a beginner mistake that I see too many players doing is when they release the pedal, they also release all the way up, making also a clock noise. Combining this while playing really distracts the listener and yourself. And it just doesn't sound pretty. So the proper way to do it is to press it a little. And then when you want to release, you just like this. Not all the way up to make that noise. Slightly so that you let the notes not being sustained anymore without having to make that horrible noise. Let me show you better. Also make sure when you press the pedal, you press with this part of the foot, not your toes since you don't really have much control. Here you have way more control. Now, a simple exercise is to play five nodes while sustaining with the pedal, then release carefully and press again. So I'll use my left hand actually, and my right hand will show what I'm doing with my foot. So I'm pressing it slightly. Notice that I'm not doing it too much or you don't hear the pedal at all. And that means you're doing it perfectly. 20. Gymnopédie No.1 (Both hands): Now that both of your hands, you've trained somewhat comfortable now. You can now try slowly again, slower than normal with both hands. Always start slow for any level, even professionals, they start slow to make sure it's correct. Start slow, clear, strong and articulated. Remember, that's how you always start. You can also count one, two, three, one, two, three, two, three, two, three, two, three, two, three, two, three, like so. If this is too complicated, you can go slower. So let's start off by number two. If part one is clear to you, let's start off by part two and slow really slow. Two three. One Two. Part three. Once part two is comfortable, you can merge Part one and Part two, and then you can on continue with part three. If part three is comfortable, you can merge one, two, and three and play them all together, make sure it's all cohesive. Once you get comfortable with both hands with the normal pace clear and comfortable, you can slowly start integrating now this leg. This is the pedal, and they will all connect it will sound like this. I'll go slow. Make sure you don't press all the way down. How you use the pedal is it's really up to you, depends on the room, depends on your piano. If you hear too many notes, it doesn't sound right. But general rule is it's repetitive. You'll get the feeling of it. I'll tell you for this one. The pedals down. Already this is pretty full now. When I play the next note, the pedal will go up and down like this. Again, slowly, to see what my right foot is doing, I'll show with my right hand. Again, if I go slower. I'm playing this note and holding it. And this goes up and down to reset, and now I can hold this note without losing it and playing the next one. Again, p and reset That's how we incorporate the pedal. Now, let's incorporate everything. And once this is all new, you first start slow. Of course, I'm right now focusing which part is Piano, which part is strong, when it does Crescendo, the crescendo. I'm really focusing on the notes, making sure they're all clear without mistakes. Once that's comfortable, we go to the next step and is to play at the tempo and also with the strength. Mm. And so on and so forth. Of course, I've introduced new parts because I already trained this before. But, I would start, for example, from number five, start with the left hand slowly. Number five might be a little tricky because it's new notes. But once you start with the left hand, get comfortable with the right hand as well, you'll see that step by step, you'll learn the music. So you've already learned that maybe number one, two, three, might look easy now and now introducing four. Introducing five, remember step by step, slow and clear with one hand and then the other. And then you combine both, and that's how you progress and learn throughout the music. To make it slightly easier, you can see on number six, I've changed a few of the chords to make it easier. Instead of playing a chord with four notes, which might be tricky for beginners, I'd change it to three and sometimes to repeat, it'll be easier for you to learn and continue learning. But I think this is how you progress. Now that you know how to read by yourself, you can take your time, and now you know also how to learn by yourself. This is really important. Now that you learned for this piece, I want you to know that these steps exactly are the same steps for any other piece that I learn or that you'll learn in the future. Again, with one hand, the other hand, get comfortable, merge both slowly, then slowly, you'll get comfortable and progressively go faster. Good luck playing with both hands. 21. One Book recommendation for life: The books you want to buy heavily depend on the style of music you'd like to play. Classpical books will have classical music. Jazz books will have jazz music. But there's one fundamentally important book that I would strongly recommend you buy. And you've already used it, and I've already introduced it and it's the Hannon book. This one contains only articulation exercises. Only articulation that are great for warm ups for any level, for beginners or for more advanced players, professional players, it doesn't matter. This book is for any level for everyone. Learning these will be fundamental for you to really articulate your fingers. This is the book I use before every exercise, before every practice session, just to get my fingers warmed up. This book was bought when I was a kid. Basically, you can see it's pretty wormed out, and I've been using it ever since. It was a book that you don't throw away, you'll use it for life. This is the single most important book recommendation I have for every piano player regardless of their level or style. This is the one. 22. [Bonus] Left and right hand advanced tip: I think a bonus tip, a more advanced tip to incorporate this one, you're completely comfortable with the music is to think about that the left hand has to play a little softer than the right hand. The right hand plays slightly stronger. And that's because the lower nodes here tend to overpower a little bit compared to the highws. See, When I play them together, the same strength, You really hear the lower notes much more. That's why you would like to make it sound nicer and more balanced is to play with the left hand a little lower than the right hand. The right hand was a little stronger. If I play them with the same strength, You can hear how the left hand really overpowers. But don't worry too much. This is just a bonus thing. I wanted to incorporate a bonus chapter because this is a little more advanced. This is not more for beginners, but keep in mind if once you're feeling comfortable with a piece and you and you want it to make it sound, this is the way to go. 23. Self evaluation techniques and outro: When you're practicing a piece, you'll play the parts so many times over and over again, and sometimes your brain is so used to it, it doesn't even know where to improve. This technique I'm going to show you is a good way to self evaluate. And all you need is this, your phone, more specifically the camera. It's very easy to set up, you just put it on the side of the keyboard or piano and film yourself. Now, when you listen to yourself or watch your recording of yourself, your brain is all of a sudden focused on different things. Instead of being focused on the notes that it's playing actively. Now, when you're watching a recording of yourself, it's focusing on, for example, your posture, your finger positioning, and also actively just listening. If there's any parts that are good or bad, sometimes your brain doesn't really catch when you're playing actively. But when you're watching the recording, it's just different. You'll catch different things and like, Oh, maybe I should do this differently or this part, I should play a little stronger. Watching a recording is a very good tool for self learning. And what I want you to do is just to set up the camera like this. It doesn't need to be your face, your hands is fine, and maybe play anything you've learned in this class. So C scale, articulation exercise, or the piece we learned. All of those are great to post on the class project. I'm really looking forward to seeing those. And what's next, you might ask what's for the future? That really depends on you, but I have some good suggestions. Now that you learned this foundational part of the basics, playing articulated with the right posture. You can look for a local piano teacher if you want to further progress more and with the help of someone more professional. The good part is she doesn't need to go through all these basics that take a while a few classes to learn and practice, saving you a lot of money. Okay. Then the other way you can go is the self learning way, which you're already doing with this course. You can also print new songs, new sheets from different styles if classical music is in your style, and learn independently, since you already know the basics, since you already know how to read music, just go one hand, the other and then both and you'll learn any song. With that said, thank you for taking this course. Feel free to write a review if you feel like it. I hope you got to learn a lot, the fundamental basics and good luck with your practice.