Re: Re: Piano lessons advice (O.T.)

[Rick Walker <looppool@cruzio.com>]

I yield to the maestro with great respect!

I always disclaim with my relative level of ignorance, by the way.
Musings are sometimes efficacious, however, and I started out
really, as a drummer, which is why I'll venture out
with an opinion.  You never can tell when it will be helpful.

Nice points, Rainer!     The huge one I missed is the octave organization
which is vastly clearer on the piano than the guitar.

Honestly,  I prefer looking at harmony on a piano rather than a guitar,
though I did learn a little bit about the former first.   It is because 
of this
octave orientation and the spacial orientation of chords.

Also,  I should have qualified my statement about the white keys as a point
of departure.  What I meant was that I learned how to spell chords and
play various and sundry scales (most of them ethnic originally when they
actually fit onto a chromatic western instrument) using C as a beginning
point.      Of course,  one needs to know more than 7 notes to play even a
lot of pop music, so sorry for the seeming naivity of that point.  Sorry
I wrote that so quickly without a proof read.   Thanks for catching it.

Now,  how is your guitar playing coming along?     It's a blast, isn't it?
I won't be a Gismonti in this lifetime, I'm afraid, but there is music in
that thing, isn't there?

rick walker

On 7/22/64 11:59 AM, Rainer Straschill wrote:
> (all of my statements describe my personal learning experiences here, 
> which might differ from those of others, and actually be 
> counter-intuitive or even inefficient):
> Piano is very neatly organized in octaves, and how fingering stays 
> constant from octave to octave, which the guitar is not so much, at 
> least not intuitively (the major 3rd between G and B string doesn't 
> help here...). However, the guitar is (with the exception of the major 
> 3rd...) more consistent with intervals, e.g. 2 frets = one tone, 1 
> string up 1 fret back = major 4rd etc, which the piano is not (unless 
> you're counting keys, which, due to the white/black logic, is not the 
> intuitive way to perceive it). On the piano, the step from the goal to 
> play a certain chord to fingering the right keys is chord -> intervals 
> -> notes -> fingering, i.e. from "maj7 on B" you go via "major third, 
> minor third, major third" to "B D# F# A#" to the actual hand position. 
> And this works well in all keys (and imo it actually helps if you 
> start doing so early on). And btw, you'll have a hard time even 
> playing standard pop/rock/blues chords when sticking with white keys.
> Let's say you want a blues - do it in A (because its similar to 
> Aeolian), so you have the chords Am (works fine), Dm (works fine), Am 
> (works fine), E7 - buggers. Same if you play major (in C), and then 
> want to emphasise the tonic's double role as the subdominant's 
> dominant by adding a 7...
>
> That being said - I'm mostly curious about the "guitarists who later 
> picked up piano and are famous for both" suggestions!
>