At Musicarta, adults and young people alike will find FREE piano lessons online, lots of creative ideas for home study, and a wealth of starting points for keyboard improvisation.

Beginner songwriters and young musicians will find music theory lessons you can actually use - like which chords go together, and why (the Chord Progressions series). Piano teachers will find free material to supplement more traditional piano lessons (ex. The Pyramid Variations) – and everyone will find ways of making practicing more fun and more effective.

Latest Additions

The Enya mini-series

Enya's easy piano style and haunting Celtic melodies are a gift to the 'New Age' piano soloist. Her standard keyboard texture is simplicity itself. Click through to the Enya one-page mini-series here to catch up on it and watch the MisterMusicarta YouTube videos – you can’t fail to master these sweet, winning gems in no time at all!

Blues and 12-bar piano styles

The 12-bar blues form, in all its many guises, is one of music’s best-loved meeting places. It has practically universal appeal, and there’s hardly a pop/rock/jazz musician who can’t play along, or doesn’t wish they could!

The ’12-bar’, with its simplicity of form and driving rhythm, is an ideal musical training ground and a great warm-up for any combo music-making. The Musicarta Blues Piano Lessons series kicks off with an irresistible and familiar riff – click right through and see if you don’t recognise it straight away!

Stay tuned!

In a hurry? Stay up to date with Musicarta’s ongoing roll-out by bookmarking the Musicarta blog page now and checking in regularly, or get the RSS feed (orange button, below the navbar, left) for no-hassle updates. (Not sure about RSS? Click here for a short explanation.)

You can also search the site (there’s an index on the Search page as well), or listen to the sample audio files in the Musicarta audio Table of Contents and see if there’s something there you’d like to play.

Now with MIDI support!

As well as audio clips of the performances and thousands of helpful diagrams, you can also download free MIDI files of the Musicarta learning material and play them on MidiPiano, Musicarta's recommended 'virtual keyboard' (or similar MIDI application).

These applications will give you a visual display of the music as it plays with a ‘piano roll’ representation and lighting-up keys on a virtual keyboard.

Here's a short video demonstration of MidiPiano playing the module performance from Lesson Two of the Pyramids Variations, Musicarta's flagship series of online piano lessons:

(Use the full-screen icon in the bottom right hand corner of the video player for a more useful view. Use the 'Esc' (escape) button on your computer keyboard to return to normal view.)

Full instructions for downloading and using MidiPiano and Musicarta MIDI files are available on Musicarta’s

MIDI Piano page

You can download Musicarta MIDI files via the

MIDI files page

MIDI support is currently available for:

• The Pyramids Variations, Lessons One to Nine,

• The Musicarta Canon Project,

• The Canon Project Transposing mini-series,

• The Seventh Chords drill.

• The Yann Tierseen Comptine improvisation mini-series, and

• The Enya mini-series

• The Moving Pair 12-bar blues riff.

See the relevant sections below for details and links. Bookmark and visit the Musicarta home page regularly for roll-out updates.

The Pyramids Variations

Musicarta's flagship project, The Pyramids Variations, is a series of home-study free piano lessons which introduce music theory basics methodically and with lots of explanation and audio clips of the performances. An ideal supplement to conventional piano lessons, you’ll find the Pyramids Variations in the navbar on the left.

And don’t despair if you’re a complete keyboard beginner. All Musicarta material is explained in words and diagrams, audio and MIDI clips as well as written-out music manuscript .

The Pyramids Variations actually coaches you, step by step, all the way to an impressive ‘concert performance’, so you don’t actually have to read music to make real progress.

...with MIDI support!

The Pyramids Variations now has accompanying MIDI clips for download so you can actually see all the musical examples playing on MidiPiano or your favourite MIDI application.

...and there's more!

The audio performance files of a third 'Variations' section of the Pyramids Variations are now available. Develop your keyboard and improvisation skills by giving the familiar Pyramids chord sequence a number of different treatments.

Listen to these audio files on the Pyramids Variations 'Continuation Page', and see if you can rise to the challenge of 'playing it by ear'!

Chords, Chords, Chords!

Musicarta's Chord Finder page is our portal for all things chordal. There are links to the Visual Chord Generator, which helps you find all the inversions of all the triads at the keyboard; a simple but effective keyboard drill for learning Inversions; an explanation of Seventh Chords, along with a drill for mastering these sophisticated chords, and through to the Chord Progressions series of lessons, which introduces by stages all the key chords you need to play pop and rock music – with great riffs in every lesson.

...with MIDI support!

The essential Seventh Chords page in Musicarta's Chords section now has accompanying MIDI clips for download. Now you can see-and-hear the Musicarta Seventh Chords drill playing on MidiPiano or your favourite MIDI application, and get to grips with these vital chords.

Pentatonic Scales

The Pentatonics tab will take you through to Musicarta's series of free lessons covering these wonderfully productive and easy-to-learn scales. A must for blues and heavy metal fiends, rock jammers and New Age improvisers alike, You’ll soon see that half your all-time favourite solos are built on the pentatonic scales, and find the knowledge you need to be playing right up there with the greats

Beat and Rhythm

“It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing!” Well-developed beat and rhythm skills are an essential qualification for the modern keyboard player. Syncopated hand and finger patterning generates great riffs from even the simplest material. Get started right away with the step-by-step Syncopation and Anticipation exercises. And don’t leave the development of your natural rhythm skills to chance. Musicarta’s series of graded tapping exercises will put your inner drummer on a body-building diet and deliver speedy benefits.

Yann Tiersen's Comptine

Jann Tiersen’s ‘Comptine’ has become a much-loved classic of its type. It’s within most players’ reach and offers many opportunities for variation and improvisation. Musicarta’s ‘Comptine’ improvisation mini-series shows you how to practice and master this little gem, which should have a permanent place in your repertoire.

...now with MIDI suppoert!

Musicarta's Comptine improvisation mini-series now has accompanying MIDI clips for you to download. Now you can see-and-hear the musical examples and improvisations playing on MidiPiano or your favourite MIDI application, and double your progress.

Musical Modes

The modes offer the modern popular musician an easy-to-handle alternative to conventional major/minor harmony. Some truly classic popular music chord sequences are drawn from the modal chord families. The Musicarta Musical Modes series puts compelling modal chord changes under your fingertips in minutes. An optional theoretical background module opens the series – but you can skip straight through to the riffs if you want.

Sounds - TOC

‘Sounds’ is Musicarta’s audio table of contents. Here, you can easily get a flavour of the various sections and hear the performances the individual lessons build up to. The ideal way to pick your entry level! Click through here.

Sources

‘Sources’ is Musicarta’s ultra-selective links page. It hosts links through to other musical glossaries - for further research; to similar online piano lessons sites – in case you’re not finding what you need at Musicarta; to legitimate sources of piano sheet music, and to a small but growing selection of digital music resources. Click through here.

Site Map

If you know where on the site you want to be, the site map offers the conventional collection of direct page links.

So, welcome to Musicarta! Please stay and browse the pages via the links at the end of each explanation paragraph or using the navbar tabs on the left. Bookmark us and come back regularly to see what's new - you're sure to find something among the many free piano lessons on offer to get your creative juices flowing!

Thanks for visiting Musicarta.com! Come again soon!

© Copyright R A Chappell/Musicarta.com. For private study use only.

SBI!