Hal Leonard Corporation - piano For Dummies

Piano For Dummies, 3rd Edition

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2020 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2020938973

ISBN: 978-1-119-70097-5 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-70102-6 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-70106-4 (ebk)

1. Chapter 7
2. Chapter 14
3. Chapter 15

1. Chapter 2
2. Chapter 5
3. Chapter 6
4. Chapter 7
5. Chapter 8
6. Chapter 9
7. Chapter 10
8. Chapter 11
9. Chapter 12
10. Chapter 13
11. Chapter 14
12. Chapter 15
13. Chapter 16
14. Chapter 17

Welcome to Piano For Dummies, 3rd Edition. Dont be nervous about wanting to play the piano; its just a big, lazy piece of oversized furniture with a bunch of black and white keys on it. By selecting this book, youre taking the appropriate action to keep your piano from becoming a giant dust collector.

If youve never seen or put your hands on a piano or keyboard, no problem. This book starts at the very beginning and walks you through everything you need to know to tame that beast and make it sing sweet music. Youll also have fun along the way.

Because youre in possession of a piano or keyboard or you have access to one, you may need this book to figure out how to play it. Or you may want to study how to read music. Maybe you already know how to play and you just want to improve your playing skills or develop your style. Could be youre interested in knowing more about pianos and their performers. Or you may need some help buying a keyboard or finding a teacher. For any of these reasons, this is the book for you.

You can use Piano For Dummies, 3rd Edition, as a teaching aid or just as a reference book. Even if you already know how to play music, you may run across some new tricks or techniques in these pages. If you read every page of this book and set about to play the examples and listen to the audio tracks and watch the video clips at www.dummies.com/go/piano , youll be able to read piano music; know the names of notes, scales, and chords; understand a lot about different musical styles; and in general get a solid handle on some fundamental piano skills.

If you have a few specific questions about playing piano or want to go directly to something youve been dying to know, youll find the part titles, chapter titles, and section headings practical and helpful. They make it easy to maneuver through the book and find what youre looking for.

Note: Truth be told, reading music and coordinating your hands and fingers to play musically on the piano are skills not learned in a day. It takes a bit of time and dedication. Although you may have seen or heard about methods to play the piano without reading music, this book isnt one of them. Piano For Dummies, 3rd Edition, follows the tried-and-true method of teaching the basics of reading notes and rhythms from the get-go. And this book aims to do all that in a simple and fun way.

Within this book, you may note that some web addresses break across two lines of text. If youre reading this book in print and want to visit one of these web pages, simply key in the web address exactly as its noted in the text, pretending as though the line break doesnt exist. If youre reading this as an e-book, youve got it easy just click the web address to be taken directly to the web page.

In writing this book, I made a few assumptions about you, the reader:

• You like to listen to music and especially like the sound of a piano.
• When you hear someone play the piano, it sparks something in you. You say to yourself something along the lines of, I wish I could play the piano.
• You havent had any piano lessons before, or you had some lessons at some point in your life but you basically see yourself as a beginner. Either way, youd like it all laid out and explained in a simple and easy-to-understand way.
• If you have a piano or keyboard, you arent playing it as much as you want to and need some help getting to the music-making.