Interactive Keyboard for Rookie-Moderate and up

[Armor9]

Hello all, new here, only been practicing for about 1.5 months. Been trying some songs, but like most that are new I am very bad at reading music. The problem is, it seems with any songs that are not Rookie-Easy, it does not show you which fingers are supposed to be on which key. If there any way to make that happen? Or is it possible to show both the key and the finger that is supposed to press it?

For example, in Little Drummer Boy, in the first couple lines the right thumb (#1) presses C. But then it shifts over one and the right thumb (#1) pressed D. Since I am bad at reading music I don't see this in the song. Plus then a couple of lines down it gets even more funky which only compounds my problems.

Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks.

[SJunior22]

Hi Armor9!

Here are my thoughts to your issues: First, have the grand staff written out and near you. When I first started learning to read piano music, I wrote out the entire grand staff on a sheet of paper (lines and the spaces with the specific notes). Then, I wrote out just the treble clef notes separately (Lines = EGBDF, Spaces = FACE) from the bass clef notes (Lines = GBDFA, Spaces = ACEG) so that I could reference the "right hand" notes from the "left hand". I looked at this sheet of paper alot as I was going thru the rookie and intermediate bootcamps. Eventually, it became "burned" into my subconscious.

My guess is that you haven't gotten entirely thru the "rookie bootcamp" for your fundamentals. The rookie bootcamp is very essential to teaching you how to read music and learn patterns. I highly recommend you go thru the rookie and intermediate bootcamps to get your competencies up (also throw in some rookie and intermediate "courses" to your routine as well).

As you get better, the fingering patterns and such become null because your style will begin to grow and show thru. Eventually, you will have your own "fingering pattern" to play the song and not be dependent on it being pre-written for you.

Hope this helps and I wish you all the best on your journey!

[sw1tch73ch]

I like SJunior22's answer.

A second thought is that the lessons aren't a race and there is no best pace to work through them. Work on each one more than you might think you need too - but not all in a row. Go back to previous lessons and play through them so that they are fresh and somewhat challenging again.

So the display of the finger positions in early lessons are their as an aid until you should be familiar with the piano keys and where the notes are on the staff. You don't have to be able to sight read yet, but you should be able to work out where the notes go. And there is a secret here - if you click on a note on the staff, it will show which of the piano keys it is. So the information is still there, but less immediately available to make you have to work harder to get.

There are charts in the Facebook Playground Sessions Community page Files Section that show things like the grand staff lined up with a picture of the 88 keys of a piano (well, a drawing). I don't know the original source of the diagram - Rami Jas on Facebook shared it and I recreated it for myself. I find making the pictures for myself helps me learn it better. So you can draw your own (I'd upload mine but the forum software tells me it doesn't like the file). But more important than having something to look at is practicing figuring it out yourself, that is the closest thing to a shortcut to sight reading as there is. Still you will need to practice reading and figuring out the locations. You'll note that that is essentially what SJunior22 did.

Basically I made a "Grand Staff" that was spaced just big enough to line up a "white key" from the piano drawing with each line and each space. I put the letter of each white key and also included the black notes as appropriate between the white keys. I lined Middle C of the piano to the Middle C of the Grand Staff.