Piano

[XtremeEuph]

Ok here is why Im asking............Obviously a lot of musicians started or at least took up piano, I wasnt one of them. I am planning to go to University......School of music in a couple years and the only experience I have is knowing the names of the notes of the top of my head............scales, basic theory etc but i cant play bass and melody at same time yada yada long story short, I dont play piano..............and i am getting the vibe from people who went to the School of music and the info from the school itself that.......if you dont play piano, you might as well kill yourself before coming here or trying to get here even though its not required...............scarin me........o and btw I cant read treble clef either off real fast because I just basically play euph and am inclined in it.......................but do I really really really need to be a GOOD piano player or singer to get somewhere?

[anonymous4]

Don't fret too much about it. There will be a large percentage of your freshman classmates with no experience. You'll probably take a few class piano classes. If you never practice piano once you're there, you might want to "kill yourself"....but if you put forth a little effort, things will be ok.

[MartyNeilan]

Although I am not a true jazz musician by any stretch, I have taken a number of jazz improv and commercial theory electives. The piano often served as the backbone for those classes and was referred to as the "Jazz Musician's Workbench."
Just something to think about, how it can help you down the road, when you are bored to death learning all 12 major and all 36 minor scales.
Oh, and my choice for improv was a 26" bellfront 6/4 Martin

[Tom Holtz]

The degree requirements for my undergraduate degree required me to take four semesters of class piano. The only people who seemed overly concerned about it were the class piano teachers. The head of the class piano department (who authored the textbooks we used, of course) told us, in no uncertain terms, that we can't be musicians if we can't play piano. That, folks, is a direct quote.

"You can't be a musician if you can't play the piano."

I knew at that moment, a mere three minutes into my first piano class, that I was in a course sequence run by b.s. artists, and that I would have to play their little game for four semesters in order to get my degree. I spent many hours working on my scales and etudes, I sweated each semesters' jury and dreaded the possibility I wouldn't pass the proficiency levels to get to the next class, and I resented every minute of it.

I don't use or need piano in my career, nor in my freelancing. Piano chops would be handy for my arranging, but they aren't necessary. To this day, I still resent the assertions that I was somehow a lesser musician because I couldn't play piano. Xtreme's situation sounds way, way too familiar. I sincerely hope I'm reading all the wrong things into this.

No matter what you do or where you go, there will be hoops to jump through. This particular hoop was a real bear for me, as it was for many others. Tough it out.

This got long. Is this a rant? Did I just rant? Whoops...

[tubatooter1940]

Taking piano at my age 9 was my dad's idea. He was a reed man who always felt he needed piano. I have slow hands and felt like I let him down when I asked to quit playing piano. I had to hide my tuba playing from him for almost a year until I invited him to our year end concert and found him deeply impressed by it. He believed that reed player's children took up brass to rebel and brass players children played reeds for the same reason. Later when I took up guitar, my slow hands limited me to rhythm but if one can pound it out with vigor, rhythm adds a lot.
Playing any chord instrument trains the ear to the harmonic interval series and makes it possible to hear and predict tones that relate. Singing harmony at any interval becomes possible after years of chord training enabling us to sort chords out by ear and sing and play spot on harmony.

[Lew]

I believe that piano playing can be very beneficial for any musician in many ways. It can help with reading, understanding scales and chords, and overal music sense. Whether not being able to play piano is an impediment to your ability to get the degree you want depends on the school. Make sure that you understand what the school you are considering expects before you go.

That said, I have never been able to play piano. I have tried a number of times and I just can't seem to get my hands working independently enough to be proficient at all (lysdexia anyone). OK, I am not now, nor have I ever been a music major or professional musician, but I think that one CAN be a musician without playing piano.

[TubaRay]

Obviously, the assertion that one must play piano in order to be a musician is a bit extreme. There are many great musicians who have had limited, or no, piano skills. I have a similar experience to Tom's. For one thing, I didn't feel I had an adequate amount of time to devote to learning piano while I was in college. As a music major, I was studying some instrument almost every semester. Sometimes it was more than one. In addition to that, I was studying very seriously on tuba. I must admit that I did enough to get by, pass the barriers, and move on.

Now, had there been more time in my schedule, I actually would have worked harder on the keyboard skills. Unfortunately, I moved from the collegiate setting to the regular workaday world where I have enough difficulty finding time to spend practicing tuba. So, once again, I have not really even attempted to learn to play well on the keyboard. I would like to do so, but it falls somewhere in line behind other priorities I have(which are not happening right now) such as my golf game.

[windshieldbug]

Not being able to read and play will really limit your ability to do things to make a living. I had no piano before I went to school, toughed it out, but I never even got good enough to read simple stuff (I was a MUCH better improviser than reader, but that's another story... )

You've already limited your options by staying with the euphonium. My recommendation would be to pick up what you can, while you can. All that time I spent slaving over a piano in a practice room was time I would rather have spent ON MY HORN!

[Rick Denney]

As an amateur, I don't regret a minute of any of the musical instruction I have had. I had way too little. What little I had as a child was on the piano.

To this day, I have no hand independence and cannot read music in vertical blocks. But the reason I know chords and keys is because of the time I spend entertaining myself (and ONLY myself) reading leadsheets on piano for fun. I have to improvise thorugh the technical stuff, often because I'm just too lazy to work out the fingerings or spend any time on the fundamentals. It's just something I do to relax when I have too little time to warm up on the tuba. I don't think it's done my ears any harm, though.

Rick "who wishes he could play better" Denney

[Chuck Jackson]

I can pick a piano out of a room full of dead cats on the third try.


Chuck"who likes the piano, albeit at a safe distance"Jackson

[Allen]

I wasn't going to comment, but after reading Rick Denny's post above (my piano experience is about like his), I got an idea.

How about a piano course titled: "Piano for Those Who Don't Intend to Actually Play the Piano." Let's face it: The vast majority of piano students will never play piano proficiently, despite the best efforts of their piano-proficient teachers. Why not just concentrate on the extremely useful music skills that can be learned in the course of piano studies. This instrument is an excellent graphical display of all the notes, and the simple act of pressing more than one key at a time allows the exploration of harmony. Even though I can't play the piano (according to any common definition), I will forever be grateful for my piano lessons.

I suspect the problem with a piano for non-players course is the teachers. They usually hate to expend their efforts on students who won't really try to learn to play like their teachers learned to. Imagine a tuba teacher trying to teach a student who really didn't want to learn to actually play the tuba.

It would probably take a huge effort on the teacher's part to set aside ego, and simply do good in the world. I am reminded of renowned scientists who will teach a science course for liberal arts majors -- they know that it is unlikely in the extreme that their students will go into science, but they still think the cause of science is helped by having non-science majors introduced to science by the best possible teaching.

Cheers,
Allen

[MaryAnn]

I started piano at six and stopped at 17; later in life I put in some time on learning more advanced pieces, like Chopin nocturnes, than I had in my lessons/classes. I think it was very valuable. I learned to read two clefs, treble and bass, which helped me later as I needed to learn other clefs; already having two took away the fear of not being able to learn another one. That made learning horn later in life not such a big deal.

I vote for taking piano lessons in high school now; maybe you can get good enough to pass your piano proficiency and not have to take the classes.

What seems to be not taught is how to practice, I mean how to do it physically. There is a method that works really well for both piano and classical guitar, which share the independent/together operation of the hands. Doing different stuff but coordinated (drum kit is worse, BTW.)

Here it is; print it out! whatever piece you have to learn, don't bother learning the right and left hands parts separately; it won't help you. What you DO do is this:

start with the very last measure of the piece, or even the last three notes. Play it, hands together, with the correct fingerings (VERY important) until it is rote, easy, perfect. Take it at warp zero if you have to, but do it right. It will speed up as you keep repeating.

Then, back up another measure or another three notes; do the same thing (correct fingerings) but when you get to the notes you already know, go ahead and play to the end, which will be easy because that part is already rote. Do this until these last two measures, or last six notes or whatever, are, once again, rote, easy, perfect.

Work your way backwards through the piece this way; it takes discipline but it will cut your practice time dramatically, and you will be able to learn pieces that are much harder than you otherwise could.

Try it. It works.

MA

[XtremeEuph]

Thanks a lot guys.............I guess ill get working at it but i dunno who mentioned it (too lazy to quote) but they said something about a small investment. I have a keyboard i am borrowing right now and my brother is interested in piano so he is going to purchase an 88 key keyboard......with weighted keys btw. I think the only thing lacking is the pedals which isnt a big worry for me. Lessons at this age "seem embarrasing" even know they shouldnt be..............and i also agree its the theory thats important and its what i am mostly worried about.

[LoyalTubist]

I didn't touch a piano until my first year of college. I had to pass the normal piano barrier and all of that. THEN I DROPPED OUT OF SCHOOL! I joined the Army as an Army band tuba player and took piano lessons. After I was honorably discharged, seven years later, I went back to school. I still had to go through all the piano things I had to go through before, but it was much easier. When I went to graduate school, which was a theological seminary, all music majors had to follow the same piano plan, piano majors or not. My piano skills were not that great but I got through it.

As a musician, you will never regret honing your piano skills. You need to know how a piano works, no matter what you do in music. I am a visual learner and with the piano keys, you have an excellent picture of intervals and tone patterns.

I still hate to play for other people besides myself.

[XtremeEuph]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHh I guess ill see how far i get on my own in a time period then if im not making much progress, lessons it is.

[IkeH]

I think it's a little extreme to say you can't be a musician if you don't play piano, but having a working ability to get around it to study chord structures and such is worth it's weight in gold. If you only practice an instrument that plays one note at a time without getting into the understanding of what's happening with the rest of the music is near criminal behavior to me. You'd be missing an awful lot of music not to explore the entire meaning of what's going on in a given piece. Getting a great sound and all the technical stuff is great, but missing out on the rest of the story of a piece of music is just wrong.

That being said, I was a pretty good guitar player going into college, having tuba as a major. I had to do the required piano thing with gritted teeth like everyone else, but managed to get through it. Having a couple of years of lessons in childhood helped some. I used my guitar mostly as a tool to work through theory but I could see a larger benefit in the more advanced stuff if piano was on the back burner. It's just literally laid out there in black and white.

I play mostly bass these days and along with guitar and piano they are instuments that you can literally see how the notes are laid out. Some people learn better by seeing, others hearing or feeling, etc. Wind instruments give you a different dimension on the whole thing, but if you have a working knowledge of some chordal instrument it's just a great thing to have.

Ike

[ken k]

I am not saying you must become a virtuoso, but any knowledge of piano will help you understand music theory concepts and will just help you complete your assignments much more easily and better. I would not call myself and pianist by any means and would never be caught playing piano in public but i can get around the keyboard enough to fake accompaniments for my students and work out harmonies and voicings for arranging.

As has been mentioned by most of the other posters here, just do it. Of course you can be a musician without it, but learning piano will be time well spent and will make you a better musician, not just a euphonium player

ken k

[Chuck(G)]

I couldn't imagine using any other instrument (well, maybe an organ or harpsichord) when arranging music. It's so ingrained in me that even with a computer, if I don't play back the score wtih piano sound, I can't really hear all of the clams.

Forget about playing parties; if you have any aspiriations toward composing or arranging, learn your way around the ivories.

Besides, I can sit here at the computer, and flip through online music with my left hand on the mouse and my right hand on the keyboard. It'd be pertty awkward with a tuba.

[XtremeEuph]

I stilll know what u guys mean but I wanted let u know that BTW......... I do know a lot of the theory....and i can read up on it and see it on my brothers keyboard im mostly just worried about the playing part and the practice ........its grueling. I force myself to do it but patience is something i really lack when learning a coordination instrument if you know what i mean.

[windshieldbug]

its grueling. I force myself to do it but patience is something i really lack when learning a coordination instrument if you know what i mean.

I know what you mean, but speaking from experience, I always wished I had done it sooner when having to do it when I went wanted to graduate from music school...