Teach Yourself Pachelbel's Canon on Piano! (You really can, even a total beginner!)

Introduction:

I play piano. Well, I WISH I played piano! But I can make a few nice sounds on a piano, and I think you probably could too!

So, if you wish you could play some piano too, something that sounds really nice, but isn't too hard to learn, I think I can help you out... or if you already tinker around, maybe know a couple of nice tunes you learned by ear, then this will be even easier. Using your (even untrained) ear, your eyes, and I guess your fingers, you'll be playing beautiful wedding music in just a few fun weeks of practice! It's adaptable to other occassions as well... [grin]

The problem I encountered, so many years ago, whilst fiddling with keyboards, guitars, etc, was: How to find something really nice to play? Beautiful, but easy enough to learn, gradually, with nice LOW frustration level? Well, there is a very beautiful baroque piece called Pachelbel's Canon, that you've certainly heard many many times - it's sort of 'iconic' of classical music. Written by Johann Pachelbel sometime around... uh, a long time ago, it's usually arranged and performed in 'D' - which is not the easiest key for the piano.

So I learned it in C, by listening to George Winston's 'December' CD about a thousand times. I still can't play it anything like he does, Winston is a master! (and besides, he doesn't play it in C!) But anyway, I CAN make a website all about 'Teach yourself Pachelbel's Canon on the Piano" - hope somebody out there gets some enjoyment, learning, pleasure from this... maybe email me if you do! ( Lorenzo{at}Lgonzalez.net ) use the simple feedback form I setup! The very best thing about the Canon is how easily you can make 'variations' on it - improvise and invent new melodies and styles on top of the basic progression!

So, let's get started. You'll need an MP3 player to listen to the clips, if you're using a recent version of MacOS or Windows, you're all set. If not, I highly recommend Zinf (was FreeA*p).

Prerequisite/Step Zero:

First, do you know the names of the notes on the piano keyboard? You really (kinda) need to. Click here for a graphic, if you don't.

Lesson One (The basic chord progression):

The basic "progression" of Canon (in C!) goes like this: C - G - A - E - F - C - F - G ... and repeats over and over. It sounds like this. (played through twice) For guitar folks, and/or the more musicly "experienced", the chord progession is C - G - Am - Em - F - C - F - G

Naturally, you want to play it with at least a little more action, right? Well, hold your horses, first learn it like this: use your left hand to span the octave (an octave is basically "8 notes", get it? "Oct - tave"? okay, sorry), play the notes with both your thumb (finger "#1") and your pinky (finger "#5") at the same time. Here's a pic, me playing 'G' in octave, but of course, you'll do the same, starting with 'C'. Here's an mpeg video clip, of the basic bass line, played in octaves. (kinda fast, to reduce file size and download time) Here's an MP3 clip. The clip should sound like the single-note clip, only "richer".

Lesson Two (Walking the left-handed bassline):

The bassline might be nice if it walked along in quarter notes, no? (A quarter note is a note that falls -on- the count, and lasts for -one- count, Canon is played in 4/4 time, there are four beats per measure, also called "Common Time"). The bassline in this Mp3 clip is all quarter notes. The neat thing is, it's exactly the same pattern, played 8 times, played exactly once for each note in the progression you learned above. Your left hand will do the same thing, 8 times in a row, then just start over again. The first four notes are C - G - C - E, and they are played with your pinky, index finger, thumb, then index finger crossing over the thumb. Here's a pic of my hand on the first three notes. (C-G-C) though you will play them one at a time. And here's one of my index finger reaching over, for the fourth note. Occasionally, rather than reaching over with your index finger, you might like the play the first note again with your pinky. Also, the first note of the "walking chord" can be played in the octave, just like you learned in step one. Here is the video clip, played through only once.

Here are all 32 notes of the bassline. (Four notes that construct a "walking chord" for each note of the eight in the progression)

1. C-G-C-E (start here, like in the picture)

2. G-D-G-B (put your thumb where your index finger was in chord 1)

3. A-E-A-C (shift your hand up one key)

4. E-B-E-G (put your thumb where your index finger was in chord 3)

5. F-C-F-A (shift your hand up one key)

6. C-G-C-E (put your thumb where your index finger was in step 5!, this is one whole octave down from the starting point)

7. F-C-F-A (same as step 5)

8. G-D-G-B (same as step 2)

• Sheet music (26kb gif)

Lesson Three (pound Lesson Two into the ground):

Practice lesson two until you can play it like crazy, no mistakes, over and over again. Seriously. When your right-hand comes into play (next lesson!) you'll wish your left hand could just play the bassline without your attention, just automatically. Here's your chance to practice that little wish right into reality. You should be able to play it without pausing, without thinking about it at all, before you move on. Even then, you'll wish you had practiced it more, trust me! Here's a clip of me playing it twice through (and kinda pounding on it), notice on the second pass, at the bottom (the low 'C') I hit the pinky again, rather than reach over with the index finger for the 'E'. You can do that at your discretion, as a nice accent... alternatively, try leaving the last note totally silent, just let the first three ring through the 'quarter-rest' by staying on the sustain pedal. You'll hear that in a clip in Lesson Four.

Lesson Four (your first right-hand stuff!):

We're going to keep this lesson very, very simple.
To start, you'll be playing a very simple, one-note melody with your right hand. It goes C-B-A-G-F-E-F-G, I suggest you play it with just your right thumb, sliding down one note at a time, it's very simple. Here's the photo-diagram. Got that? It's very lame, just starts at 'C' walks down 6 notes to 'E' and walks up two notes, ending on 'G' before starting again.
Now, you'll do the same thing, but make a two-note chord (see pic), by adding your middle finger to your thumb. Then you use those two fingers to walk down and up the same melody as before. In the pic, I'm holding my index finger up out of the way so you can see the keys. Normally, you should just let it lay on the key ('D' in this case).
C/E - B/D - A/C - G/B - F/A - E/G - F/A - G/B and it repeats itself! Here's a clip.
When you've got that down, add the bassline from Lesson Three. It'll hopefully sound like this, or perhaps, even better! It's starting to get pretty, isn't it!?

Lesson Five:

Starting with this lesson, you will need Microsoft Windows Media Player 8 or higher (7 or higher on Mac)... sorry!

Here's a clip of the two melodies in lesson five.
The first melody in that clip is so easy you should be able to figure it out for yourself! It's actually a simple variation on the down/up scale "melody" you mastered in Lesson Four... I suppose if enough people complain about this, I might go ahead and make video - but I challenge you to figure it out yourself from the audio recording! It's a very important exercise, and in fact is exactly how I learned all this stuff (except for some variations I made up myself, which will eventually appear in later lessons)

But the second melody in that clip - while easy to play, is very difficult/impractical to describe in words. (why music notation was invented). For now, I'm just going to say "start with your right-hand pinky on the C above middle C" and put up video clips.

• Plain, and slow (853kb)
• With the bassline added and a little trill*
• Variation with some chord decorations
• Sheet music (36kb gif)

And here's a clip of Lessons 1 through 5, all together... nice!

Lesson Six (The melodies have two-note and sometimes three-note chords now...):

Listen - I'm just really crunched for time these days, but I wanted to get something new up here, since so many people are emailing and begging for new lessons. So at the moment - this is just a single clip, with the melody played three times in a row, first with a simple bassline, then twice with full walking bassline. I'll break it up into separate files (and maybe play it slower!) as soon as I have time. In the meantime, sorry this video file is so big! (2.4mb)

One tip for this lesson, and lesson seven: practice making two-note chords with your right hand! With your thumb on 'C', play fingers 1/3, then 2/4, then 3/5, then 3/5, 2/4, 1/3. Go back and forth. Halfway, and around and around. Then try sliding it up and down the keyboard one key at a time. I'll post a video of this if folks don't get it. But from the video of this lesson, you'll probably know what I mean!

• Lesson Six, three times in a row! (2.4mb)
• Sheet music (54kb gif)

Lesson Seven (One of my fav's, and a little improv):

If you did alright with Lesson Six, this one shouldn't be too hard. Note carefully that the right hand does NOT START ON THE BEAT! Hear the bassline start first? That can make this melody quite dramatic, but a little tricky the first few times you try it. I play it twice through, then break out and have a little fun. Listen carefully - that's my almost-8-year-old son humming in the background!

Like lesson six, this one isn't nicely broken up into separate video files yet...

• Lesson Seven, twice in a row, then some foolin' around (2.3mb)
• Sheet music (53kb gif)
• Sheet music w/improvised melody (73kb gif) [by special request from one of my favorite students]

Lesson Eight (Easily the most famous melody):

Okay - here it is! The most famous of all the melodies buried within Pachelbel's Canon! This one has "too many notes!" (name that quote! heehe!)

Like lessons six and seven, this one isn't cut into separate video files yet, and worse, I played it a little too fast. I'll make better video soon, I hope! Luckily I play it 4 times: no bass, simple bass, walking bass, chorded-melody, then bust out a little lesson 5!

• Lesson Eight, for the most Ambitious Students only! (3.3mb)
• Sheet music (45kb gif)

• Semi-traditional Performance
  Sounds basically like all these lessons strung together in various order, with some minor variations thrown in to confuse you. Rendered with PMI Steinway D. 5.2MB, about 4:30 minutes long - Feb 22 '04.

Lesson Nine (what next?):

Coming soon... send me an email (Lorenzo(-at-)LGonzalez.net), or use the Feedback page if you're in a hurry or just to give me a nudge. Amazingly enough, I get emails from all around the world about these lessons, and it makes me very happy. Please do send a note or use the feedback page!