Play Music Keyboard

Part-1

Dear Children,

This Website helps you to learn the basics of your musical keyboard. Even if you have SA-20 or SA-21 it will be good to start it here. Keyboard like SA-64 or higher will be very good as it will help you see the notations that you are playing on the keyboard's display screen.

You may find some difficulty in learning afresh if you are using a 'Harmonium' as it does not have an automatic beat generator to help you understand 'Time' i.e. the duration for which the keys are supposed to be pressed.

Before we actually start 'reading the music' we must first learn to know the keyboard itself. Is there any mathematics involved for placing our fingers or can we play the instrument the way we find it easier? How to move our fingers and jump from one key to the other. How to play with both the hands (Harmonium Player will be able to use only one hand either right or left as the other hand will be engaged for pressing the frame for filling air in the instrument.

A small instrument may have 2 Octaves

(Or 3 Octaves as shown in the figure)

(An Octave is a musical interval of eight tones)

1st 2nd 3rd

A big musical keyboard may have up to 8 octaves!

Do not be confused over the length of the keyboard and the number of octaves it has. Just concentrate on one of the octaves and then apply the same throughout. Let us first see this on "C MAJOR SCALE"

SA RE Ga Ma Pa DHa Ni SA

DO RE ME FA SO LA TE DO

C D E F G A B

These 7 'swar' is called as SARGAM. The extra 'SA'/DO at the end are put simply to complete the octave.

The English alphabets A,B,C,D,E,F.G are normally used in English notations.

The Hindi equivalents for the same are:

Play one octave forward and backward by pressing

C D E F G A B C è

ç C B A G F E D C

To be continued in Part-2