Best exercises to learn chorales?

[manontroppo]

Hi! I'm actually a singer. I would like to improve my limited keyboard skills in order to better accompany myself in the practice room. At the moment I can play one melody line pretty well with my right hand with a slow bass line. I am well studied in music theory but I "transpose" in my head to read bass clef, as all of my other instruments use treble clef.

My goal is to be able to open a standard church hymnal and sight read a 4-part chorale notated on two or four staves. A second goal is to be able to sight read/realize a lead sheet with good voice leading. (I'm almost able to play lead sheets, but it's slow because I have to find all the notes on the piano.)

I have a collection of public-domain piano exercises but I'm not sure where to start. Many of the exercises look great if your goal is finger dexterity, but chorales don't require that. (I appreciate that I could be wrong about that, but I don't think the main thing blocking me right now is finger dexterity. I think it's reading/playing simultaneous lines. Every other instrument I play I only have to read one note at a time.)

I have to spend most of my practice time on my primary instruments, so I want to find the most relevant piano exercises. I don't have time to take (and practice for) piano lessons, but I do have time to spend 10 or 15 minutes a day on piano technique.

This is the collection I own:
https://www.cdsheetmusic.com/products/disk_contents.cfm?product=16
https://www.cdsheetmusic.com/products/disk_contents.cfm?product=17
Of course if there are other helpful piano books please recommend them.

Thanks very much!

[j_menz]

I'd suggest you get a standard piano instruction book (Thompson, Alfred etc), at least the first three books. They will give you the basics you need in a fairly well ordered fashion (help with the bass clef and reading/playing simultaneious notes). Since you already read some music, you should be able to progress fairly rapidly, even with yor time constraints.  After that, just get a standard hymnal and start off on some of the easier ones (friendly keys and nice and slow) and go on from there.

[quantum]

Develop your sense of keyboard geography.  Learn to feel your way through the keys, and locate notes through your tactile sense as opposed to depending on visuals.  This will allow your eyes more time for looking the score.  Use the black note groupings as marking points.  Start by locating all the B-C and E-F spaces on the keyboard, but don't look - feel the keys.  If you want to check if you have the right notes, play them without looking.  Does it sound right?  If not, self-correct and find the notes you intended to play without looking.  Visualize the keyboard in your mind, and use that "virtual" keyboard to help you find notes. 

From those B-C and E-F spaces, start filling in the adjacent notes and locating them with your tactile sense. 

Sight reading fluently at the keyboard requires you to both recognize the notes on paper, and play them at the instrument.  Unlike other instruments, take the flute for example, where your fingers stay on top of the same keys the majority of time, piano requires a lot of moving around and repositioning.  That is why it is important to learn to locate notes efficiently on the piano, so you are ready to play them at a moments notice. 

Hymn playing does have its own techniques, not often encountered in the standard repertoire.  Things like unconventional fingerings, finger crossing of 4-5, 3-4, and 2-3, redistribution between hands, and so on.  You will become more comfortable with these as you gather experience playing hymns. 

Start playing easier hymns now.  If 4 voices is too troublesome, start with Soprano and Bass.  Or even Soprano unison played with both RH and LH, separated by an octave or two. 


Be sure to practice your Bass clef reading.  Play the Bass alone, or Tenor RH and Bass LH.  Make an effort to directly recognize a pitch belonging to a specific line or space - as opposed to transposing.  It will be difficult in the short term, but you will thank yourself for leaning to read bass clef properly. 

[theodore]

Hello manontroppo:

Go to Google and key in:

Deutsche Weisen

These are German songs in an easy format with not too many vocal stanzas. They are short an easy to sightread.

The IMSLP online library has them in PDF format