Play Piano Now

In music, Dynamics refers to the character of your playing- a combination of tempo, volume, and style. This is especially important in playing the piano because you are often the only instrument playing. When you’re playing the piano, you should think of this as what makes the way you play piano music differently than somebody else would play the same notes. Here’s the ones you’ll need to Play Piano Now.

Sometimes the composer notes parts of the dynamics on the piano sheet music. A composer may technically write anything they want in the score to suggest how you should play the piece on you piano. Some markings, however, you’ll continue to see all the time. Typically, these are written in Italian, so you can always translate directions on the web.

Tempo- at the beginning of the piece you’ll see one of these suggestions, sometimes with a metronome setting added by the editor:

Adagio — rather slowly, erect (literally, “at ease”) (66–76 bpm)
Allegro — literally “joyful”, brisk (120–168 bpm)
Largo/Lento — slow (40–60 bpm), like lento
Moderato — moderate (108–120 bpm)
Presto — a very quick clip (168–200 bpm), (prestissimo- as fast as you can)
Vivace — fast and lively(≈140 bpm)

Volume

f – forte (loud)
ff – fortissimo (louder)
fff – fortississimo (really loud)
mf – mezzo forte (medium loud)
p – piano (soft)
mp, pp, ppp – like above

There are also several different types of markings which go along with single or multiple notes. The first is a slur, which means to play the notes in one phrase without lifting between:

The next are several different types of accents, which means to give a certain note more weight:

Finally, we’ll look at a cresendo and decresendo. This means to slowly change your volume over time.

There are many other types of dynamic markings, but knowing these should be good while you’re a beginner. To Play Piano Now, these are the ones you’ll need.

In music, fingering means, basically which finger you should play a note with. Fingering according to the music is technically optional, most fingering is written by the editor, not the composer. However, it can sometimes be very difficult to play some passages without using the proper fingering. In playing the piano, each finger has a designated number, shown here:

In most pieces of music, there will be small numbers above notes in tricky passages indicating which finger should be used to play the note. Consider this short excerpt from Mozart’s Third Piano Sonata:

The small numbers above the notes (below for the left hand) indicate which finger should be used to play each note. While it’s okay to use different fingers, it would be nearly impossible to play this passage any other way. So as you’re learning a new piece, pay close attention to the indicated fingering and don’t practice any other way. If you learn the wrong fingering, it can be very difficult to correct later. Nothing will screw up a run like running out of fingers before you get to the end.