Music Magic: Online Piano Lessons/Tutor - Lesson #1: Introduction Lesson

Lesson #1 Introduction Lesson

Welcome to the unique, one of a kind online virtual classroom! You are in a music room. I am your teacher, you can call me Musica. Do you know what I look like? Well, if you haven't caught on, I'm the little musical quarter note (you'll learn about these later) at the bottom right of your screen. I will be with you for the whole ride through all fifteen lessons. Yes, count 'em, there are fifteen, 15, one-five lessons. Ideally, what you should do is go through one lesson each week. If you feel this is too slow for you, you may move a little faster. But don't take that incorrectly. Don't go through all fifteen lessons in one afternoon - if you're a beginning student, you'll be hopelessly confused. Go through each lesson twice, three times, ten times - as you see fit for your level of understanding.

Now for the interface. We've tried to create an interface that was inviting and simple. There is the "main" frame at the top two-thirds of the screen. The bottom one-third is made up of the "piano" frame and the "musica" frame. There is one more frame, but you do not need to know about this. The "main" frame is where you'll do most of your learning. You'll see instructions, sheet music, downloadable midi files, etc in the frame. In the "main frame, you'll have the ability to control what page you want to go to with these buttons:

The "Previous" Button goes to the previous page. This will not be shown on the first page of each lesson since there is no previous page to turn to. The "Next" button, you guessed it, goes to the next page. One way you know a lesson is over is if you don't see the "Next" button. The "Index" button goes back to the web page with the listing of all fifteen lessons. Ideally, you should click this when you are finished with a lesson, but you may want to use this when you think you're in the wrong lesson.

The "piano" frame has the keyboard with two octaves of notes (you'll learn about octaves in a later lesson). How do you operate this keyboard? The first thing to note is you can't play this keyboard with your computer keyboard - you must use the mouse, trackball, touchpad or whatever pointing device you use. Go ahead and click on the virtual piano keyboard below to see how it works. You'll like it! This is basically all of the introduction lesson. More things to note are:

Don't play more than one MIDI file (the music file you'll be using) at once. Chances are, your sound card doesn't support this.

Again, go at a pace that's comfortable but at least a little challenging for you. Make sure that you know the stuff before going on.

Last and most importantly, have fun!