Minimal Piano Skills for the Non-Pianist

Why are both of these skills important? It's because they teach you uniquely different aspects of musicianship.

There are things that you will learn on the piano that you will never get with singing and you won't get with a lot of other instruments.

Likewise there's some aspects to singing that if you only ever play the piano it just doesn't quite cover it.

So here's some of the things that the piano uniquely offers.

First of all, it has one of the largest ranges, so you can explore what is known as an A0 all the way up to a C8.

It's a seven and a quarter octave range on a full size piano.

This also means to play well while looking at sheet music, it requires you to learn treble and bass clef.

If you play an orchestral instrument, you typically do not need to know treble and bass clef.

A lot of times if you have a secondary clef, it's usually alto or tenor clef.

Or in the case of a viola, alto is the primary clef and treble is the secondary clef.

if you play violin viola flute clarinet oboe any saxophone french horn well actually not french horn french horn is an exception trumpet i'm sure there's some others out there well you need to know treble clef you don't need to know bass clef to in order to play your instrument if you play trombone or bassoon or tuba or timpani you don't need to know treble clef And for the most part, you don't need it to play cello.

It's only the really harder pieces that will actually use treble clef.

Usually you'll go to tenor clef.

But piano actively uses both clefs at the same time, treble and bass, as a regular thing.

So not only do you learn both clefs, you learn to read both at the same time.

There's very few other instruments that do that.

Now, just to compare, what does the piano offer that say that the harp doesn't? The harp is another instrument with a big range, not quite as big as a piano, but still pretty big.

And if you play harp, you read treble and bass clef at the same time.

So what does a piano offer you that the harp doesn't? Well, one thing it offers is a visual layout of a chromatic scale.

You can plainly see where there are sharps, where there are flats, where there are no sharps or flats in between two naturals.

And so if you want an instant way to think about music in a visual way, you cannot beat understanding the keyboard.

Another thing that keyboard skills gives you is it gives you the ability to understand harmony and melody at the same time and to explore a wide variety of chords at different sizes.

And last but not least, but the keyboard is just so common.

It is always easy to go somewhere and find a piano or find a keyboard and to have an opportunity to play.

And it's good to have the skills to be able to do that.