Piano Chord Charts and How to Use Them
By Edward Weiss

Piano chord charts are used to help you keep track of chord changes. And the cool thing about them is that you can use them for improvisation and composition. Here's how.

Let's say you have an 8-bar phrase to play. There are no chord symbols yet so you don't know what chords you'll be playing. You just have 8-bars in front of you. The first thing you need to know is the time signature. For our purposes here, we'll keep it simple and use 3/4 or 4/4 time.

Now let's select 4/4 time for our 8-bar phrase. Now we know the meter but what about the chords? Here's where we can jot down chord progressions for either improvisation or composition. For example, you may want to begin something in the Key of F Major. Having made that decision, you know that you have 6 chords to use right away. These are F Major, G minor, A minor. B flat Major, C 7, and D minor.

All that's left to do now is begin your piece in the Key of F Major. We usually start with the F Major chord itself so you now know that your first bar or 2 will be the F Major chord. But now a problem arises - how do you fill up the rest of the space? By using an 8-bar phrase to begin with, you don't have to worry about filling up a lot of space and taking forever to complete a section of music.

For instance, let's suppose we want to chart out an 8-bar phrase for improvisation purposes. We know what chords we will be working with. Now it's just a matter of fooling around on the piano and playing with the chord choices. You may want to place a chord change at every 2-measures. You can even use 2 chords for the entire 8-bar phrase such as F Major and B flat Major.

The whole point of the piano chord charts is to have a tool that will help you navigate what chords to play and when to change chords.

Piano Lessons For Adults
By Claire Diner

If you're an adult who is thinking of taking up the piano, then I want to congratulate you.
Why?
Because many adults seem to think that you must start when you're a child, if you're ever to make any progress with learning piano. And it simply isn't true.

So with that out of the way, what's the best way for an adult to go about learning piano?

Well, the best way to learn the piano is to find a good piano teacher. This is the common advice, and it is usually the best option for most people. But its also the most time consuming and expensive.

Fortunately, there are plenty of other options for you to chose, if adult piano lessons isn't something you have the time for, or can afford.

The first option I would recommend to you is to take some online piano lessons. There's some great products out there on the web, which are very high quality, and also as good as having a real life teacher sitting next to you. These products often include videos and audio as well, which really speeds up your learning.

But if that's an option that you're not keen on, you can always get some adult piano lesson books. A quick look on Amazon should reveal plenty of books that will get you on the right track. Although something to be wary of when learning from a book, is the fact that you can't actually see what to do like you can in a video or real life. This means you can easily learn things incorrectly, which can hold back your learning as you become more advanced.

Another option is to find videos and DVDs that teach piano. There's plenty that cater specifically for adults. By learning this way, you can actually see what's happening, which means it will be faster and less confusing to learn new music and techniques.

I hope this quick overview of the different ways you can learn piano as an adult will inspire you to find the method that works best for you. And don't let anyone tell you that you can't learn piano as an adult, because it simply isn't true!

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