A how-to instructional video teaching you how to play piano! In this lesson I cover dynamics, staccato vs legato playing, and the A minor scale. I hope you find it useful!

Video Transcription

Hello! Welcome to piano lesson number 9. So, in this lesson I am going to show you guys how to read sharps and flats and also I am going to show you the circle of fifths. Down here. So, you guys can know all the keys in the piano. Okay. So, sharps and flats really are that hard to understand. So, I am going to start with adding them, from there, then I am going along that way, the circle of fifths and this is how you derive other key in piano. So, I will show you some method from other part. Anyway, Okay. So, first thing we are going to learn is what a sharp is. Okay, I do not if you can see this. Let us find a sharp on this music. Okay. Right there, while it is really blurry, far more blurry than I thought it would be. Okay. Anyway, a sharp looks like that. It looks like the number sign. That is a sharp. Okay and it is always going to come before the note that it is sharping. So, what a sharp does is, okay, say so I wanted you to play this on the piano, (music playing) okay? And then they read this note, this note and then they have a sharp sign before this note, so that a little number sign acts in front of this. What that would mean is, they want you to raise that key, one semitone, so (music playing) and then you are going to take this key and you are going to raise it. So, you are going to go this way and raise it one semitone. So, where would that be? Right up here. Okay. So, that means you are going to be like this (music playing). Okay. So, that is a sharp. A sharp means it is raised up one semitone. So, for example here (music playing) this is sharp here, since there is no black note in between it, this E would actually be sharp E, F. So, it would be like one sharp up as that, one sharp up as this and say, you are on a black key. Right? And then, you sharpen it one more, it would be going up. That is just one semitone. These things are called double sharps and they just look like an axe, kind of like a multiplication sign and if you see that in front, the double sharp is in front of the G here. That would mean you go up one and another. So, it will be that. So, there are different reasons for using them but I am not going to get into that because it is not exactly on the cover right now. Anyway, that is for sharps. Okay, now, flat is like a flat tire. Not really. Okay, I guess in a way it could be. A flat looks like that. It looks like a (b) kind of, in a way. Okay. So, what a flat does is, it is backwards. Backwards show more the sharp is. It is going down. Okay, so I am just having fun of the ... Okay, so say on this B here and okay, so you are playing, you start on F (music playing) and then they decide, okay, let us flat this B here. So, you are playing F, E, A and then you see, there is a flat sign right in front of the B so you are going to take this note and move it down one (music playing). Now, if you saw a C, you just go to that note (music playing). That is F major by the way, so you are using B flat, Okay, (music playing). So, flat goes down, a sharp goes up. Now, there are double flats and what a double flat is two down. So, if this is double flat it would be an A and if you are on say, the E right here, you are on the D and say, you are on the F right here, you will be on this one, the E flat, D sharp, whatever you are going to call it. Okay. So, that is sharps and flats and the double flat looks like two of them actually, it is just like the (b) and then the (b), so it is two b’s right together in the note. And I don’t have any in this music up here, I thought you would be able to see it to love it more clearly but you can not obviously. Okay, anyway. So, we use sharps and flats to change the key, the piece because you are going to have C majors like this? Right? And then showed you G major, right? (music playing) It has to follow the set patterns of tones and semitones. So, about that pattern, it is not going to sound the same, it will sound like, I don’t know, all weird. It just does not sound the same, like it would be like (music playing) does not sound like a major scale. All major scales sound very similar, just staying on different pitch or of different frequency, anyway. Okay. So, to derive all the different scales, they came up with the thing called the key signature and the key signature is kind of like setting the parameters for what key you are in. So, it is like they add one sharp for every thing. So, I am going to show fs you how that works.