Do you know the min 7th, min 6th, min7b5, min7b9, dim., dim 7th, 13th, sus4, 11th etc….

Play anything. Once , you know the chords and scales. Or are you like a cook in the kitchenm, with all the ingredients but cannot cook ?

E minor
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A minor
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The song is "Make some noise by Hannah montana".
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/tabs/h/hannah_montana/make_some_noise_ver4_crd.htm

oh and you need to know D also

2
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But do get an excellent "studio upright" piano. Both Yamaha and Baldwin have very good studio uprights with action that will approximate a grand.

i’ve had a yamaha grand piano ever since i was 7. it’s better than most of the ones i’ve ever played. it was a good chunk of change when my dad bought it as well.

recently i bought a yamaha motif ES8, which is a synthesizer with acoustic piano voices. elton john & prince use them in their studios. the great thing about the voices tho is that they’re multisampled, meaning, you hit the keys harder, & it sounds like you’re hitting real piano keys harder. it plays a whole different sound than if you hit it lightly. i actually enjoy playing it more than my grand! it actually resonates and rings better in its own way as well. i feel like i can get more creative with it.

but i’m not telling you this to talk about myself. the motif is OK. i wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. it’s about $2500.

the thing about the motif is it has the best key action for an electric piano/synth. it feels just like a real piano.

if i was YOU… I… would look into getting a midi controller, like the CME VX8. it’s distributed by yamaha and has an AWESOME action to it. it runs for about $1000 m-audio’s midi controller is very spongy. even tho it’s half the price go with the CME. now the cme isn’t a synth like the yamaha, it’s a controller, which means you need either a hardware module like a synth rack, or a computer program like Ivory or Native Instruments’ Akoustik Piano.

i actually have akoustik piano, and i use my motif to control the sounds on it, completely bypassing its internal sounds (yes i’m using a $2500 synth as a $1000 controller.. i didn’t know better when i bought it.)

akoustik piano is $299. it also has the multilayer sampling like the motif. you hit it harder, and it rings more. it even has settings for the ‘Lid’! it includes a Steinway and a Bosendorfer (obviously head to head with a REAL steinway you could tell the difference, but tonally i’d definitely recommend this setup over an upright any day. you’ll get all the resonance) the ONLY thing here is i don’t know if you have a computer, or would be willing to hook this stuff up. personally i have a macbook pro, and it’s AWESOME for doing this type of thing.

oh you’d also need some decent speakers. you’re probably looking at $500 for those. tho i’m sure you could get by with cheaper (i’m using some $1200 8" jbls but not every one NEEDs that.)

another acoustic piano app that’s very well made is Ivory by Synthogy.

more upsides to this setup:

* you can play at ANY hour (Headphones!)
* takes MUCH less space & a LOT easier to move
* honestly i think MUCH cheaper. you go sound for dollar, compare. you’ll see, i promise.
*if you use a program like Logic it has a notation view so you can use your controller to play the midi & it’ll show it as notation. you can also use Finale the same way.
* if you get any type of synth module or apps, not only do you have a classical instrument but you also have any other instruments that are included in the app (the motif synth has thousands of sounds, you woudlnl’t believe the sounds of some of the acoustic instruments.) akoustik piano has 4 pianos. i also have NI Komplete 4, which has thousands of sounds…

if you’d like to email me i’d be more than willing to help you.

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actually i wanna add to this. i don’t want to talk out of my butt. what i suggested to you would definitely sound awesome. but in reading some of the other posts, i might have to agree that this setup may not be as good for technical skill.

sometimes when things sound good they DO make you lazy.

BUT then again, i almost want to disagree with the person who posted about that because having the electric actually IMPROVED my technique – as the keys were harder to depress, they strengthened my fingers, so that when i did sit down at my grand, my technique and facility was more fluid, as my fingers didn’t have to strain or do anything that felt unnatural. kind of the same way playing bass makes it easier to play guitar. also stylistically having the resonance and sustain in the ‘virtual’ steinways & bosendorfers piqued my imagination so that when i sat down on my yamaha i’d try & squeeze different sounds out of it that i normally probably woudln’t have thought to do.

yeah, you know what, i’d still go for the setup i mentioned. & here’s why. you WILL still have grands at the school you can play on to develop your skill.

personally i don’t like the sound of uprights and i think the lack of resonance and sustain can influence a person’s style and inhibit the creative development that may better occur on a warm, ringing grand.

i’m gonna get flak from this, but it’s like when bach moved from harpsichord to piano. it took a couple hundred years for them to really learn how to write for the piano. :-p

same keys, but the character of the instrument DOES effect style. when i think of uprights i think of.. well, jazz & blues.

i think with the midi setup you can very actively pursue the classical disciplines (when you can’t make it to the grands of course) and at the same time if you’re into modern stuff (i’m a bit of a depeche mode freak) you can creatively expand yourself with synths. all on the same gear. kind of a nice bonus.