FREE PIANO LESSONS ONLINE
The Pyramids Variations
Have you ever said to yourself, “I wish I’d never given up the piano!”? Have you ever said, “I’d love to be able to sit down and ‘just play’ …”? Have you ever wished you could play piano chords as easily as a guitarist? Well, if you can put your hands on the keyboard in this
Basic Music-making Position
- You can easily take up the piano again – with a tailor-made series of free piano lessons!
- You can learn to ‘just sit down and play’!
- You can learn to play chords from a chord chart like a guitarist!
And in just eight progressive lessons, you can build up to a Concert Performance, which looks like this:
And all without reading a note of music – if you don’t want to! Musicarta's Pyramids Variations has full MIDI support - you can download MIDI files and play them on a free 'virtual keyboard' like this: This text you don’t see If you download and install MidiPiano - it's quick, easy and safe! - you can see what to play and use the application's slow-down, repeat and zoom features to help you learn more quickly.
The music theory you will learn
The Pyramids Variations cover both the practical and theoretical aspects of:- Finding chords and naming them
- Major and minor chords
- Understanding chord symbols
- Playing a chord sequence in various time signatures
- Adding a chord-tone melody to an accompaniment
- Developing the melody with non-chord tones
- Seventh and minor seventh chords, and
- 32-bar song form.
This list of popular music theory basics may look daunting, but Musicarta's Pyramids Variations series of free piano lessons show you - with diagrams, examples and audio clips - how to play music which demonstrates each element in turn. You build your theoretical knowledge naturally, in step with your performance.There are free pdf printed-music downloads of all the lesson performances, but every piece of music manuscript (written music) in the Pyramids Variations has an mp3 audio clip to show how it sounds and diagrams to help you find the notes. These aids will help you learn to read music if you’re a beginner or just ‘picking it up again’ as an adult re-starter. The many illustrations will also help classically trained pianists and adult re-starters break free of written music and start to see the ‘music in the keyboard’.
MIDI support for The Pyramids Variations
Musicarta is introducing MIDI support for selected modules. In addition to the usual audio clips, you will find MIDI file reference numbers. These small files can be downloaded free and played on the free applications MidiPiano or Synthesia or any other MIDI application or instrument.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. 
You will find the the MIDI file reference numbers in a table to the right of the audio file (see examples below).
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. Take time to download the player and files - MidiPiano is bound to become a great help as you build up to tthe the Pyramids Concert performance. Also, visit the Musicarta home page regularly and stay up to date with Musicarta MIDI file roll-outs.
Link through to your free piano lessons here!
The eight Pyramids Variations free piano lessons are:
LESSON ONE: The Basic Music-making Position
You learn this simple but powerful technique for finding chords on the piano, and how to use chord symbols to find the eight chords in the Pyramids chord sequence. Here’s what your performance sounds like:
LESSON TWO: Pyramids with Left-hand-over Patterns
Add a left-hand-over note that doubles the effect to make an introduction and an ending, and you’ve already got a performance to be proud of!
LESSON THREE: Adding the Melody
Your knowledge of chords also tells you which note to use for the melody. Adding just one note per bar turns your chord piece into this great little solo:
LESSON FOUR: A Four-chord Version
The Basic Music-making Position lets you play up and down the keyboard freely:
LESSON FIVE: Developing the Melody
Next in your series of free piano lessons – right under your fingers are the in-between notes which develop the melody into this beautiful, expressive tune:
LESSON SIX: The 32-bar AABA form
The four-section AABA song form is the heart of the jazz standard – but three of its four parts are practically the same! Eight new bars of music including sophisticated seventh chords take your performance to a new level:
LESSON SEVEN: The Four-chord B Section
and
LESSON EIGHT: Pyramids Concert Performance
Repeat your Lesson Four four-chord trick on the new music from Lesson Six, and you’re there – the Pyramids Concert Performance!
Once you have completed the eight Pyramids Variations Lessons, it’s ‘over to you’! The Continuation page helps you move forward into improvising and ‘just playing’, showing you how to put your new skills to use and play the Pyramids chord sequence in a myriad different ways. Here are some samples and the page link:
LESSON NINE: The Continuation Page
So why not open Lesson One and give it a try? You'll be playing from a chord chart in no time! You can work at your own pace, taking as long over a lesson as you like. Use the bullet list above to link through, and – enjoy!
The Pyramids Variations is the perfect creative supplement to conventional piano lessons. Teachers can familiarise themselves with the content of the lessons one at a time and use them as a 'script' for a manuscript-free lesson segment. Coach pupils to a performance well beyond their expectations and put them on a progressive structured programme of creative music theory at the same time! Teachers can decide on an individual basis how much of the related theoretical background to present.Link back to the Musicarta home page here and browse the other
free piano lessons online
from Musicarta.com.
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