26March2010
Drills For Keyboard Lessons
Can drills be fun? Well, not really. By nature, you must conduct drills over and over-and over, again. That said, it’s possible to make them bearable. And when drills are bearable, the rest of your piano practice session will become more effective. Here are some of the most popular and valuable drills that you can do while taking keyboard lessons for beginners.
Arpeggios
Aside from having a fancy name, Arpeggios are certainly effective for keyboard lessons for beginners. These hand-over-hand drills provide two main benefits to the beginner piano player. They help beginners to begin mastering the Triad, which is a key component in piano playing. Wait, there’s more! They also allow beginner pianists to use the entire keyboard when playing. After mastering some basic Arpeggios, you can move onto songs with a melodic scope of five fingers.
Articulation and Elision
These fancily-named drills are perfect for piano students taking keyboard lessons for beginners. They include several types of drills that require you to master keyboard playing, including:
* A note series (two or more notes)
* Two or more notes at the same time
* Staccato
* Legato and Staccato, using two different hands
* Piano and Forte using two different hands
Scales
The set of musical notes that start at a certain note are called scales. They are also commonly referred to as “boring.” There are a couple of very good reasons that piano students that have begun keyboard lessons should not learn the scales. One reason is that if they feel it is too boring they may just give up before they even get to their second lesson.
Skill Drills
The short but technical drills that put focus on a certain skills are called skill drills. Be sure to do your research about which of the many types of skill drills will be most useful for your needs as a beginning keyboard player. It is good practice to use several different skill drills so that you can work on a wide range of skills on the piano. You may also discover drills that will allow the player to work on the areas that need the most attention in their piano playing. It is true, no matter how hard it is to admit, that we all have short comings that could use some fine tuning.
Why are piano drills so necessary? One of the most important benefits is that you can work them into your regular routine that warms you up. You need the warm up so your fingers are more nimble, just like you have to preheat the oven before you bake a dish. You also get the benefit of working on areas that you may not have much time to focus on during the main part of your session of practice.
While piano drills are a great addition to learning to play the keyboard for beginning piano players, you can also learn to play by using the Rocket Piano. If you are doing drills that are right for you, you will certainly be less bored. Rocket Piano livens up your piano learning in every way. Using the different media that is available will give you the opportunity to tickle the ivory and have fun while you are lifting off to greater piano learning!