Update: Where to Get Free Chord Sheets
For years, I’ve been telling my online students about Wikifonia.org. It’s been a great place to get free chord sheets for your favorite songs.
Well, Wikifonia has been unavailable for weeks, so it may be discontinued.
The good news is that there’s now an even better source for free chord charts: Ultimate-Guitar.com. It has everything Wikifonia did. (Except that melodies are not written out–but you don’t need that to play an accompaniment.) And Ultimate-Guitar has a much bigger selection of songs than Wikifonia did. Like Wikifonia, Ultimate-Guitar will also transpose (change keys) for you.
To the best of my understanding, Ultimate-Guitar is now fully legal, meaning it has some sort of arrangement with the publishers, and composers get paid for their efforts. So I now have no qualms whatsoever about recommending it.
Enjoy!
Sheet music for Prelude in C now available
Some of you have asked about the sheet music for the piece I play at the start of Piano Technique: A Whole-Body Approach. Well, with just a few clicks, you can now instantly download and print out a beautifully edited and fingered score of it, and be playing it within minutes. Watch me play Prelude, and/or purchase it here.
Free Chord Charts and Where to Get Them
As you may know, I’ve been talking up Wikifonia.org as a great place to go for free lead sheets. Wiifonia will even transpose songs into your key, and give you beautiful files, ready to print. Well, I just found another free online source. Each has its pros and cons. Continue reading
The Top Three Myths About Learning to Play the Piano
(NEWER POSTS ARE BELOW THIS ONE)
I keep this old post up top because, as one of the commenters says, it looks at the BIG picture of how we learn to play. You’ll find practical tips here as well as exercises, resources, and the philosophy behind the DoctorKeys piano courses.
Whether you’ve been playing the piano for years or are just getting started, what you think you know may be holding you back.
Here are the common fallacies we’ll debunk:
• It all starts with learning to read music.
• It’s all about the fingers.
• Practicing means playing a piece over and over.
Two secrets to better sight-reading
I sometimes participate in the great forums at PianoWorld.com. Recently, one of the posters wanted to know how she could improve her sight-reading. I responded, and since I’m basically a lazy guy and this is easier than writing a new blog post, here’s what I said to her. Continue reading
An academic recommends learning music by ear
One of my biggest gripes about piano teaching as a whole, is that students are almost always taught to read music before they learn to play by ear. That’s why I was thrilled to hear this interview with Rob Cutietta, Dean of the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California, Continue reading