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MUSICARTA

Welcome to Musicarta, a collection of piano lessons online and creative keyboard tips and techniques! Where young keyboard players and adult re-starters, songwriters, budding composers and students will find FREE piano lessons online, creative ideas for home study, music theory work-outs and a wealth of starting points for keyboard improvisation. Welcome to Musicarta’s piano lessons online!

What's Musicarta about?

Musicarta offers a structured and creative home-study approach to popular music performance styles and harmony. 

For many people – adults with busy lives, young or semi-pro musicians wanting to up their game and anybody living far away from possible teachers, organising your own learning is the only alternative.

Musicarta is here to help you succeed – and have a great time doing so!

Site content and navigation

Musicarta has more than one hundred web pages packed with learning material and creative ideas. To help you navigate the site and find the material you need to progress as a musician, the contents are grouped on the main left hand navigation bar (navbar) as follows.

First come the sample-and-sales home pages for the three major Musicarta digital home study downloads (Pyramids, Canon, Key Chords).

Next come the other extended study series – the Modes, Pentatonic Scales, Blues and 12-bar and Beat and Rhythm material.

Below these come the home pages for the Chords and Scales material, then some featured theory pages (Suspensions, Transposing).

(Note that all series and category home pages have further navigation in the right hand column.)

Then come the performance material pages for ‘Mariaan’ and the other Musicarta solos (tab/page to make – ‘Mariaan’, Southern Comfort et al), and looks at some other popular and easy keyboard styles.

Below these are the various Musicarta ‘assets’ pages, and finally the admin tabs.

The Musicarta home-study digital downloads

Musicarta’s first-choice recommendation for getting your programme underway would be one of the three major Musicarta digital home-study downloads: The Pyramids Variations, the Canon Project, and Musicarta Key Chords Vol. 1.

These easy-to-use study packs contain:

• An illustration and music-rich PDF work-book;
• The audio and MIDI files for the musical examples;
• The MidiPiano virtual keyboard application (Windows OS); and
• Play-along backing and drum tracks, coaching videos and other useful resources (see download home pages for exact specs).

Here are snapshots of the three downloads, with ‘Learn more’ links through to the try-before-you-buy sales and sample content pages.

 The Pyramids Variations

The Musicarta Pyramids Variations aims to exceed expectations by coaching beginners and re-starters to an impressive ‘Concert Performance’ (watch the YouTube video) in just eight lessons, with key aspects of music theory explained along the way.

The performances are all based on a simple hand position and the Pyramids Variations work-book is packed with illustrations, so you don’t have to read music to make swift progress. The digital download also has audio and MIDI performances to copy.

Practising can easily become a rod for your own back, but with Musicarta’s ‘build’ architecture, you always have the satisfaction of a performance you can be proud of – and encouragement to press on further.

 The Canon Project

Pachelbel’s Canon in D is perhaps the most famous chord sequence of all time, and its regular chord sequence makes it the ideal place to start learning about harmony, how to play a chord sequence, melody writing and improvisation.

Orchestral backing tracks are included in the download to support your performance and improvisations and make your sessions at the keyboard a real pleasure. The first two audio samples below are of a learner practising musical elements over the backing tracks, and a fuller performance.

The Canon chord sequence forms the basis of numerous other pieces of popular music too, and you’ll be able to apply what you learn in the Canon Project modules to lots of other chord sequences going forward. In fact, if you can play and understand the Canon chord sequence, there isn’t much in popular music harmony you won’t be able to figure out! The third audio sample above shows a possible modern treatment of the Canon chord sequence.

 Musicarta Key Chords Vol.1

Most of the music we hear is built on just four of the chords in that particular piece’s own key. Guitarists regularly learn these chord families as a matter of course, and seem to be strumming along with the pop classics in no time at all. Musicarta Key Chords Vol.1 aims to make it just as easy for keyboard players.

Key Chords builds your chord vocabulary by progressively introducing these chords – the tonic, subdominant, dominant and relative minor (I, IV, V and vi) – and practising changing between them in contemporary riffs, with easy step-by-step rhythmic build-up of impressive keyboard syncopation. Drum backing tracks are included to help keep the notes coming.

Here are the exercises for the first two pairs of chords and the first three chords combined. Only a methodical approach like this will give you true creative skill, way beyond copying this riff or that one!

These three projects all have extensive free-to-view sample content on Musicarta. Click through to the title home pages using the ‘Learn more’ links to decide which project is best for you to start with.

 'Mariaan'

The three major Musicarta study downloads have recently been joined by ‘Mariaan’, a beautiful teach-yourself piano solo.

Playing a melody plus its own full, satisfying chord accompaniment is THE benchmark achievement for the modern-styles keyboard player. ‘Mariaan’ builds just such a performance, step by step, and provides a great foundation for mastering solo chord-plus-melody contemporary keyboard technique.

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Musicarta - with MIDI support

MIDI files are computer-coded music files. They can be played in many computer music applications. (Your computer media player will probably play them as very basic audio files.)

Most Musicarta learning material has accompanying MIDI files, and to make the quickest possible progress, Musicarta strongly recommends that you install and learn to use the FREE ‘MidiPiano’ virtual piano. (MidiPiano is included in all Musicarta Publications home-study downloads.)

MidiPiano is simple to use, and shows the music in the MIDI file being performed on a virtual piano keyboard and scrolling past in a ‘piano roll’ pane as it plays, turning every Musicarta MIDI file into a mini how-to video, so you can see-and-hear what to play. This helps learners who don’t read music well to make good progress – and helps note-bound classical musicians to start ‘seeing the music in the keyboard’!

Here’s a demo:

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MIDI files are tiny so there’s no delay waiting for MIDI files to load or buffer. Musicarta strongly recommends you take the time to install and learn to use MidiPiano – it will quickly prove an invaluable addition to your learning resources.

Here’s a direct link to the preferred download site. (The download folder is only just over one megabyte.) Full instructions and alternative MidiPiano download locations can be found on the site MidiPiano page.

Musicarta offers free-to-download MIDI files for selected learning modules. Look out for on-page download links. Please note that MidiPiano is a Windows OS application –  Synthesia is a good Mac-compatible alternative.

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Modes

The modes offer the modern popular musician an interesting and productive alternative to conventional major/minor harmony. Many classic popular music chord sequences are drawn from the modal chord families, and the Musicarta Musical Modes series puts compelling modal chord changes under your fingertips in minutes.

Here are some typical modal sounds: Mixolydian two-chord set, Aeolian three-chord set and a minor-mode two-chord melodic improvisation.

Modal chord changes have traditionally provided great support for improvisers across many musical genres. An optional theoretical background module opens the series – but you can skip straight through to the riffs if you want.

Click through here to start getting to know your musical modes.

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. Blues and heavy metal fiends and rock jammers will soon find that half their all-time favourite solos are built on the pentatonic scales, and find the knowledge and practice material they need to be playing right up there with their favourite musicians. Traditional folk music is almost all pentatonic, and New Age improvisers will find the music pouring out after a few sessions with the Musicarta pentatonic primer series.

Here are samples from the three E minor pentatonic riffs in Module Two of the series.

(The ‘mix’ is pretty tame – you could make a lot more noise!)

Click through here to sample the first pentatonic scales module.

Beat and Rhythm

Well-developed beat-and-rhythm skills are an essential ingredient of modern keyboard technique, and syncopated hand patterning can generate great riffs from the simplest material.

Access these sessions via the Beat and Rhythm home page.

Blues and 12-bar

The 12-bar blues form, in its many guises, has practically universal appeal, and there’s hardly a pop/rock/jazz musician who can’t play along to some extent. With its simplicity of form and driving rhythm, the 12-bar is an ideal pop-rock musical training ground and a great warm-up for any combo music-making.

The Musicarta blues and 12-bar lesson series kicks off with a riff your sure to recognise straight away – play the first audio and see if you don’t!.

The music in the second audio clip is generated from the same notes, but re-arranged. Can you hear how it’s been done? Click through and find out!

Interlude..

 Musicarta for teachers

Classically trained musicians frequently admire the pop musician’s ability to play by ear or from lead sheets and improvise chord sequences and melodic lines – and today’s piano pupils are increasingly demanding more contemporary content in their lessons.

Mainstream classroom and instrumental music teachers will find a ready-made creative lesson component in the three major Musicarta study projects, while many of the site’s other pages will suggest lesson material and ways of making learning more enjoyable and effective.

Next come the the theory-in-practice tabs...

The Chord Finder home page

The ‘Chords’ navbar tab will take you to Musicarta’s table-of-contents page for all learning material concerning chords, from a simple explanation about the difference between major and minor chords to an explanation and a drill for mastering sophisticated seventh chords.

There are links to Musicarta’s popular Keyboard Chord Generator, which helps you find the inversions of all major and minor triads at the keyboard, simple but effective keyboard drills for learning inversions and practicing broken chord patterns and a selection of keyboard accompaniment patterns – the notes you actually use the ‘play’ a chord.

Click through here to the access these free piano lessons online.

The Scales home page

There are two good reasons for learning and practicing the musical scales. One is to develop finger dexterity; the other is to learn the keys.

All musicians should practice playing up and down the notes of their instruments quickly and evenly. Scales offer a perfect answer to the ‘Which notes?’ question and simultaneously teach you the ‘look and feel’ of the advanced keys you need to know if you want to be a ‘real’ musician.

The Musicarta Scales page has solutions to take the pain out of learning scales (and keys) – and maximise your scale practice benefits.

 Transposing

You can really only say you know a chord sequence when you can transpose it. Similarly, if you want to really know a chord sequence – learn to play it in another key.

It’s generally agreed that transposing easily is the mark of a true musician – so the sooner you get started, the better! Transposing needn’t be as intimidating as all that, however, and MidiPiano proves an almost made-to-measure learning aid.

 Suspensions

Suspensions – the pulling-out-of-place and releasing of chord tones – make chords more interesting, and are a great way of getting more mileage out of any chord sequences. You'll recognise the technique as soon as you hear it - play the practice riff audio below.

This focus page explains briefly how suspension-release works and hosts the teaching notes for the various Musicarta YouTube videos with suspensions as their main focus – and hopefully offers a wild-card introduction to the joys of  ‘messing around at the keyboard’ generally.

Musicarta piano solos and other artistes

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.

Musicarta's Comptine improvisation mini-series is one of the many modules with accompanying free MIDI files to download, so you can see-and-hear the musical examples and improvisations playing on MidiPiano or your favourite MIDI application, and double your progress.

Why not watch one of the many YouTube ‘Comptine’ videos, download MidiPiano, download the Comptine mini-series MIDI files, open the Musicarta ‘Comptine’ improvisation page and get started right away?

Styles is a wildcard creativity challenge page - a score or so of begged and borrowed generic pop styles recordings. This is what pop-rock keyboard players do - how far can you get copying them? Musicarta wants you to be able to say “All the way!” and, with your 100% commitment, Musicarta can show you how!

Keeping it alive

Musicarta knows that keeping your musical development powered up and on track is a mission – and is organised to help you.

There are a few other ways of making sure you get the most out of your visits to Musicarta. You can search the site from any page using the Search tab. There’s an index facility on the Search page as well.

Mister Musicarta YouTube (see next section) also premieres new material regularly – subscribe to the channel to receive news of new postings.

Mister Musicarta YouTube

The Musicarta YouTube channel hosts over a hundred short teaching and performance videos, and is an important part of Musicarta’s educational material. Some of the videos are trailers for Musicarta home study downloads (arranged conveniently in playlists), and there are ‘Diary’ entries also – ongoing explorations of Pyramids and Canon Project material, for example, or the Enya Studies.

There are pure theory videos covering inversions and so on, pure performance videos like ‘Mariaan’ and ‘Southern Comfort’, and videos which illustrate certain chord sequences like 'I and vi in Three Places' or harmonic techniques like suspensions.

Spend a little time browsing the channel and ‘Subscribe’ to the channel to get automatic notice of new uploads. There’s a Musicarta YouTube links table in the web page right hand column site-wide, too, featuring recently uploaded videos and the playlists.

Musicarta assets pages

So, welcome to Musicarta! Please stay and browse the pages via the links in the explanation paragraphs 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 to get your creative juices flowing!

Musicarta is streaming on Twitch TV! Bookmark keyboardcomposing and check the schedule for your local times!