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This specialization will give you the necessary practice techniques and performance skills to play the piano either alone or with a group. You will begin with Piano Techniques for Modern Music, which provides an essential foundation and overview to build your piano playing efficiently and healthily. You will learn to read piano music and strengthen your hand independence using exercises and examples from popular music. From there, you will move to Piano Scales for Modern Music, which will give you insight into how to use well-known scales to create melodies and improvise over common chord progressions. Finally, you will complete Piano Chords for Modern Music, where you will combine all of your previous knowledge to build and use chord progressions that fit every genre of music. Across all three courses, you will experiment with various musical genres, discover common rhythms and patterns that will elevate your playing, and develop the skills to confidently perform both as a soloist and in ensemble settings.

Syllabus

Course 1: Piano Techniques for Modern Music
Course 2: Piano Scales for Modern Music
Course 3: Piano Chords for Modern Music

Courses

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If you have always dreamed of playing the piano or keyboard but did not know where to start, this is the course for you. This course will take you through the fundamental skills necessary to build your playing capability quickly and healthily. In addition to the fundamentals, you will learn from exercises and examples from popular music so that you can start playing in multiple styles. You will start by focusing on posture, breathing, movement, and sound production that will help you strengthen your finger independence and control over dynamics, phrasing, articulation, tempo, and pulse. At the end of this course, you will have all of the tools necessary to build a dependable piano technique for performing contemporary music. You will be able to identify common chord progressions used in contemporary music and learn how to play both as a soloist and as an ensemble member. Finally, you will be able to improvise over common chord progressions in various contemporary music settings.
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Scales are an essential part of musical study and are a vital part of an effective practice routine. But as you develop your musicianship, scales can also lead to better improvisation and understanding of melodic structure. This course will provide you with a new look at practicing and using scales to guide your musical creativity. You will start by learning standard and non-standard fingering for scales commonly used in popular music, before using these scales to create new melodies. In addition to the examples covered in the course, you will also be given extra exercises and backing tracks to help you improve your playing and improvising. At the end of this course, you will have improvised using scales such as major and natural minor, major and minor pentatonic, the Blues scale, as well as several modes. You will be able to develop a practice routine to continue memorizing these scales, and be able to identify which scales would work best for a specific genre and chord progression.
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This course is designed to introduce keyboard players to the various chord types utilized in contemporary music. In these lessons, you will learn the theory behind chord construction and perform exercises to drill chord types into your muscle memory. You will apply the chord types to tunes by performing with backing tracks. Upon completion of the course, you will have the knowledge to construct, recognize, and musically apply common and essential types of chords used in many styles at the keyboard.