Introduction to Singing and Piano
What you'll learn
- How to play and sing multiple songs
- How to do a self guided vocal warmup
- How to read notes, time signatures and rhythms
- How to identify and play triads, inversions, close chords and open chords
- How to improvise over a chord progression on the piano and in the voice
- How to be creative in your daily practice
- How to read chord symbols
- How to play multiple scales, and sing in solfege
- How to identify harmony
Requirements
- No experience necessary (but a little music knowledge is a bonus).
- It is helpful to have a keyboard or piano, but students can also benefit from singing along, developing their ear and learning how to read music and improvise.
- An enthusiastic and positive attitude will take you far!
Description
Sarah Bonsignore is an award winning musician with over twenty years in music education. If you are looking for an introduction to singing and playing the piano, this lesson course will teach you the fundamentals of music notation, how to build chords and improvise melodies, how to produce a clear vocal sound and accompany yourself with simple triads (root chords) and their inversions, as well as how to play scales and open chords with lots of rhythmic patterns to make your songs come alive.
Music fundamentals can't be learned over night. Please be prepared to practice for a few minutes everyday. The more time you practice each lesson, the better you will get! It's that simple. Take the lessons at your own pace and move on only when you are ready. By the end of the series you will have gained a deeper understanding of how music works, and you'll have 8 songs in your repertoire as well as chord exercises for improvising. The lessons will give you some tools you need to read music notation and chord symbols so that when you are done, you can download or buy easy sheet music for all the songs you love.
These lessons will also help to develop your "ear training" skills (how to hear harmony), time signatures, scales, phrase and cadence. Each lesson will have sheet music attached which should be printed out and used for independent practicing. Videos should be watched multiple times, focusing in on one hand at a time until you are ready to play the songs with both hands. Many of my students work on songs hands separately for a few days to a week before attempting to play with both hands. It's not so easy, especially for a total beginner, so please go easy on yourself, and don't give up! With a little effort, you WILL get better!!
There are always challenging options at the end of the lessons so that students who want to take their music to the next level will have an opportunity to do so. These lessons are designed for the motivated beginner, but they are also appropriate for intermediate and advanced students who are interested in learning how to play and sing songs by ear, as well as develop their ear for harmony, sight reading and theory skills.
If you have any questions or concerns along the way, please don't hesitate to reach out!
Who this course is for:
- This course is designed for aspiring pianists and singers
- Musicians who play other instruments but are interested in singing and playing the piano for fun.
- Songwriters who are looking to write in a piano style
- Students who want to develop their ear for harmony and learn how to create melodies and write songs.
Course content
- Preview09:57
Instructor
![Sarah Bonsignore](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.9 Instructor Rating
- 29 Reviews
- 69 Students
- 4 Courses
Sarah Bonsignore is a South African born American musician and recording artist living in Nashville, TN. She earned her Bachelors Degree in piano and vocal performance in South Africa before moving to New York to pursue her Masters Degree in voice.
Sarah was on the faculty of two prestigious schools in New York, the Hackley School and the Trinity School, for almost twenty years. She taught piano, voice, musical theater, songwriting and AP music theory, advised students, directed chapel music and multiple a capella groups, arranged shows and concerts, and led international trips. Sarah also taught eurhythmics and early childhood classes when her children were toddlers, and trained in the Dalcroze method at the Lucy Moses School and Diller Quaille School of Music in Manhattan.
A highlight of her career was playing for Nelson Mandela's inauguration ball in her hometown of Durban. Sarah was also thrilled to play on South African radio and TV as both a pianist and singer, and she landed the first of her US sync placements for TV in 2019. When her husband was transferred to Music City, Sarah decided to leave her beloved teaching position to write and produce music (and raise her three children) full time. The pandemic changed her plans a little, and she began making practice videos for her three boys to keep them on track with their music while they were quarantining. This led to the idea of starting her own music school, SingPlayStudios in Nashville, which she opened (virtually) in August of 2020. She already has sign ups from four continents and hopes to start a global choir in 2021.
Sarah's third full album, "Future Memories", was released in August of 2020, and her holiday EP "Wonderland" was released on December 4th, 2020. Sarah has received many awards for her music both as a classical performer, and as a writer. She was most recently a finalist in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest with her co-writers Becca Schack and Jonathan Ray Case. She loves teaching, and believes that music and the arts can give you wings!