“This is an ancient way of teaching, using the simplest language and the situations of everyday life. This means the student should teach himself.” Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
There are twelve tones in music. We will start with five tones on the white keys of the piano, since the black keys (and even some of the white keys) have more than one name. a bit like the characters in a Russian novel.
Notice that the black keys are arranged in groups of two and three. The key directly to the left of the two black keys is C. Although the way music is written is the same throughout much of the world, the keys you play and the notes you read on the page may have different names in different countries: Instead of C,D,E,F,G they may be called Do-Re-Mi-Fa-So, for instance. The advantage of thinking of these five notes as the first, second, third, fourth and fifth degrees of a scale is that it gives us a sense of distance between the notes.
Reading by pattern or interval is the quickest and most accurate way to read music, and it involves more right-brain activity than the old way of thinking letters. Reading patterns also is more likely to produce real phrases than note-note-note playing by letters. However, we need the letters for points of reference so we don’t have to say “the white key to the left of the set of two black keys” every time we mean C.
So put the thumb of your right hand on C, and the adjacent fingers of the right hand on the neighboring keys. If you are still using the virtual keyboard, you will have to use your imagination, since the keys on your monitor will be too small to fit under your fingers.
Play the 1-2-3-4-5 pattern you sang in lesson one and listen carefully to each sound. The fingers of the right hand are numbered 1-2-3-4-5. Now put the little finger of the left hand on the C and play the same pattern. The notes you play will still be C-D-E-F-G, but the finger numbers are mirrors of the right hand finger numbers. The left thumb is finger one, so you will be playing the pattern with fingers 5-4-3-2-1 of the left hand.
If you are feeling bold, you can play “I Know Where I’m Going” , temporarily substituting finger numbers for notes. Don’t forget the rests. And if you want to play along with the cuckoo in the video, the notes he is chirping are C and A.
