You see, there’s a website that allows me to gain certain information about the people who study my tutorials. Because when I see a pattern of frequent visits, I sometimes can’t resist typing in the internet address to see what part of the world that enthusiasm is coming from.

It’s kinda cool. I’ve got students from just about any country you can name, and have been learning a lot about geography.

So I punched in the address for one guest today and here’s what came up:

And I got intrigued because several of my former hometowns are on that map (Teaneck NJ, Fort Lee, Union City, and New York City).

So I zoomed in to get a more precise location, and here’s what I saw–I kid you not:

———–
So what’s the story here? Is this because “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” and “Octopus’s Garden” are on one of my most popular tutorials?

Or is there a different reason entirely why someone from the Bronx is going ape over my videos?

Whatever the case, if you’re the mystery visitor, please understand that I’m not trying to rattle your cage. But if you’d stop monkeying around for just a moment and send me an email, I’d appreciate it.

Or, depending on who or what you are, all you need to do is tweet (or howl, or grunt).

And to my other readers, before you start worrying that I’m spying on you, all I can find out about anyone is the general neighborhood where someone lives. So rest easy, you animals.

My new discovery is UltimateGuitar.com, and if you click that link, you’ll see the chords to Imagine, a song I help you play on Piano Accompaniment Styles for 50 Great Songs (part 1).

Though I’ve yet to explore UltimateGuitar.com in depth, it seems to have a really extensive catalog of songs. I tested it by searching for something I was pretty sure would not be there–Send in the Clowns. (It’s an artsy kind of song, and not at all guitar-friendly.) But there it was, wouldn’t you know, and in several different versions, no less.

A few points: one thing I like about Wikifonia is that it’s 100% legal and ethical–composers get paid when you download, though the service truly is free to users. (I think someone with deep pockets funds the project.) I question whether the same can be said for UltimateGuitar.com.

And unlike UltimateGuitar, Wikifonia provides real lead sheets with melody and bar lines notated, so you can actually count out the beats, instead of just syncing up the chord changes with the lyrics. For some songs, like Adele’s Someone Like You (which is also on my video), the Wikifonia sheets even show you exactly what notes to play in the right hand.

When you use UltimateGuitar, under “type”, choose chords rather than tabs. (Tab is short for tablature, and it stands for a kind of notation that shows you where to put your fingers on the guitar frets.)

Like Wikifonia, UltimateGuitar will also transpose the song into your key, a really useful feature.

I’m delighted to turn you on to these sites, because they’re a perfect complement to the tutorials on DoctorKeys. I’m thinking, in particular of Piano Accompaniment Styles for 50 Great Songs (parts 1 & 2). With the accompaniment styles you’ll learn in those two videos, and all the song sheets you can now get online for free, you can build yourself a pretty cool repertoire.

Enjoy!

If you’re a student of my online course, you know that it teaches you, step by step, to accompany your own singing. We began with songs that use only three chords, and in my most recent tutorial, Accompaniment Styles for 50 Great Songs, we added a fourth.

That’s why I was happy to come across this Axis of Awesome video. On it, the talented and very funny Australian group plays dozens of hit songs (see the complete list below) that use the four chords we’ve studied so far, and most of the songs are pretty recent (unlike the ones I often choose).

And here’s the interesting part: not only do the songs all use the same chords, they use them in exactly the same sequence.

To bring this home, go to 08:57 on Accompaniment Styles for 50 Great Songs. At that point, I play the chords for Let it Be: I, V, vi, IV. In the key of C, that’s C, G, A minor, and F.

Now re-play that part of the video, and notice how you can not only sing the verse of Let it Be over that accompaniment, but also the chorus of Can You Feel the Love Tonight, the chorus of Someone Like You, and . . . . well, the entire list of songs you see below.

And that’s exactly what Axis of Awesome does.

So I thought I’d share with you this video and list of songs. If you’ve worked your way through Accompaniment Styles for 50 Great Songs (at least the beginning), and are looking for more music to play using the same chords, this will be of interest to you.

Clearly, If you’re a songwriter, you need to know this progression.

Update: I just found another video called “4 Chords, 65 Songs”, based on exactly the same premise.

On the video:
0:52 Journey – Don’t Stop Believing
1:00 James Blunt – You’re Beautiful
1:09 Alphaville – Forever Young
1:17 Jason Mraz – I’m Yours
1:25 Mika – Happy Ending
1:34 Alex Lloyd – Amazing
1:41 The Calling – Wherever You Will Go
1:49 Elton John – Can You Feel The Love Tonight
1:56 Maroon 5 – She Will Be Loved
2:04 The Last Goodnight – Pictures Of You
2:12 U2- With Or Without You
2:19 Crowled House – Fall At Your Feet
2:29 Kasey Chambers – Not Pretty Enough
2:38 The Beatles – Let It Be
2:42 Red Hot Chilli Peppers – Under the Bridge
2:48 Daryl Braithwaite – The Horses
2:54 Bob Marley – No Woman No Cry
2:56 Marcy Playgroung – Sex and Candy
2:59 Men At Work – Land Down Under
3:03 Banjo Patterson’s Waltzing Matilda
3:05 A Ha – Take On Me
3:06 Green Day – When I Come Around
3:22 Eagle Eye Cherry – Save Tonight
3:23 Toto – Africa
3:30 Beoynce – If I were a Boy
3:32 The Offspring – Self Esteem
3:38 The Offspring – You’re Gonna Go Far Kid
3:47 Pink – You and Your Hand
3:53 Lady Gaga – Poker Face
4:00 Aqua – Barbie Girl
4:04 The Fray – You Found Me
4:09 3Oh!3 – Don’t Trust Me
4:16 MGMT – Kids
4:23 Tim Minchin – Canvas Bags
4:33 Natalie Imbruglia – Torn
4:49 Five For Fighting – Superman
4:53 Axis Of Awesome – Birdplane
5:05 Missy Higgins – Scar

To play most of these songs, you’ll need only the four chords you’ve learned so far in the course: I, IV, V, vi. In the key of C, that’s C, F, G, and A minor. (The vi chord is introduced in this lesson.) On the video, I even tell you where to get free lead sheets, transposed to your key and ready to print out.

Read more and watch the video. . .

If the answer is yes to either question, you may be interested in the Pattern Play series of books by Akiko and Forrest Kinney, which I talk about here. (Under Myth #1.)

The course’s first lesson or improvising format, which they call “World Piece,” has been a hit with my students–not to mention that I’ve been having fun messing around with it too.

Here’s a clip of me doing just that (recorded on my Ipod Touch, with me humming in the background).

To help you understand what you just heard, this first lesson in Book 1 has the left hand playing a simple pattern of open fifths (the notes Gb and Db to start), while the right hand improvises on the black keys only. In my recording, I started with a slightly harder left hand rhythm than the Kinneys suggested, and got more complex from there. Here’s the left hand pattern I usually use with my beginning students:

In the past, I’ve often used a scheme similar to “World Piece” for teaching improv in the key of C, but the Kinneys’ idea of staying on the black keys makes sense, since that makes it child’s play to stay within the pentatonic (5-note) scale.

On their publisher’s site, the Kinneys share with you their own improvisation on World Piece (without my melody, of course.) Compared to what you just heard me play, it couldn’t be more different, though it sure is nice.

Here are the common fallacies we’ll look at.

• It all starts with learning to read music.
• It’s all about the fingers.
• Practicing means playing a piece over and over.

(Note: This is really three separate articles, so if you’re particularly interested in one of the topics, just click on one of the links above.)

Our conversation will touch on all styles of music–-pop, jazz, classical, etc. Somehow, a simple blog post has grown into a three-part tutorial, complete with tips, exercises, and resources.

So let’s get started. Just ahead: fresh thinking about the piano, and how we learn to play.

MYTH #1 “It all starts with learning to read music.”

For many, this is a given. Without sheet music, after all, how does a beginner know what notes to play?

But others see things differently. Among the growing number of programs that delay the introduction of reading is the highly regarded Suzuki Method, as well as the more recent Music Moves for Piano and Simply Music. (Not to mention countless independent teachers, universities, websites, and so on.)

So what’s going on here? Are things changing, or are the rest of us just catching up to what the best pianists and teachers have always known?

To get a handle on all this, let’s start by looking at some disadvantages of the reading-first approach.

How not to enjoy the piano

Say you’re a beginner studying on your own, using a method book that teaches you to read music from the very start.

If you think about it, that book is asking a lot of you. With your eyes focused on a page filled with mysterious dots and lines, you’re being asked to curve your fingers, relax your wrist—and all this, remember, while also having to keep track of where C, D, E, and so on, are located on the keyboard.

Oh–and don’t forget to count out loud!

Having to do so much at once, leaves little opportunity for you to use your musical instincts to simply play.

You know–to express yourself. To make music.

And emphasizing reading at this early stage shortchanges you in another, equally important way. And to understand what that is, let’s look at some musical success stories.

How the best musicians learn

If you read about the formative years of the great performers and composers, one fact that stands out is how many of them were aural learners. For Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and countless others right up to today’s jazz and pop icons, the focus from the start was on playing by ear and improvising.

For example, here’s an excerpt from the biography of Richard Rodgers (of Rodgers and Hammerstein) by David Ewen.

When he was four he could piece together on the piano bits of melodies, using two fingers. . .By the time he was six, Dick played the piano by ear with two hands. . . He disliked trying to read music from the printed page . . . Instead, he would spend hours either improvising melodies or trying to perform the songs he had heard his parents sing and play.

Like other musical greats, Rodgers’ introduction to the piano had much in common with how we learn to speak: talk (play) first, read later.

We’ll look at similar accounts in just a bit, and put these insights to use. But first, we need to clarify a key point.

How your ear fits into the picture

Can you carry a tune? Most people can sing to some extent, and let’s be clear about what that means: when you hear a melody for the first time, you can sing it. (As much of it as you can remember, anyway.)

In other words, you can “play” your vocal cords by ear.

Now that’s an unusual way to describe singing, but it may help you to understand how natural it can be to play an instrument when your ear is in control.

OK, now contrast that to what happens at the piano in the reading-first approach. You are shown a symbol on a page. You are taught that it tells you to put your finger on middle C. You play the note.

But here’s the strange part: your ear never had a thing to do with it.

In other words, teachers and students usually bypass the ear. Instead of encouraging an organic process in which your ear gradually learns to guide your finger to the note, the standard approach has been to use reading as a shortcut, a crib sheet, of sorts.

Are you beginning to understand the drawbacks of this approach? How it leads to a way of playing that’s quite different from the experience of those accomplished musicians we were talking about?

If so, it’s time to look at alternatives.

Getting practical

A word to the beginner: if you can possibly study with a teacher, now’s the time to do it. After all, you’re building the foundation, and you want to do that well.

If you choose to work with videos or other self-instructional materials instead, then by all means, find ones that show you not only what notes to play, but how to play them. Videos that cover basic technique, in other words.

(And check out the forums at Piano World. You’ll find a supportive community of students, professionals, teachers, tuners and so forth discussing every piano-related topic imaginable.)

If you do decide to study privately, you now have a better idea what to ask a prospective teacher. For one thing, at the first lessons, will he or she focus on playing rather than reading?

But maybe you’re wondering how that’s even possible. Maybe you’re asking the question we raised earlier:

Without sheet music, how does a beginner know what notes to play?

One solution is to study with someone who has a repertoire of simple pieces he or she teaches by rote, chord, and pattern.

Let’s break that down.

Rote learning: involves simple repetition without any true understanding.

Chord approach: better, because it teaches you about the basic structure of music. (If you don’t know what a chord is, go to your piano and play C, E, and G. That’s a C chord.)

As to pattern, think of it this way. Music is repetitive, recycling the same elements over and over, in different ways.

For example, a piece might start with a C chord, played one note at a time (C, E, then G), in a certain rhythm.

Next, that same pattern, including the rhythm, might repeat on an F chord (F, A, C). Then again, on a G chord (G, B, D).

So by knowing a few chords, and grabbing on to the rhythm by ear, you can learn to play simple music without ever having to read it.

Chords and Lead sheets

In a sense, chords are the “words” that make up the language we call music. (It’s as true for Beethoven as it is for the Beatles). Which is why a little chord savvy, which you can easily pick up, can help you get off to a great start at the piano.

But the good news about chords doesn’t stop there. Though learning to read standard notation takes time, there’s a way to read and write chords that you can grasp immediately: lead sheets.

Go to wikifonia.org and enter the name of a song you like. When you get to the page for that song, here’s what you’ll see: the melody written in standard notation (we’re not concerned with that), the lyrics, and the chord symbols, which are the big letters at the top of the staff, sometimes followed by a flat, sharp, number, or abbreviation.

Lead sheets can be used in all sorts of interesting ways (we’ll talk about one shortly). And unlike standard notation and its typical use as a crutch for beginners, lead sheets tend to nurture the ear. Why? Because they encourage improvising, jamming with friends, singing, and songwriting–just the sorts of activities that develop your ear rather than neglect it.

A collection of lead sheets is called a fake book. And a great one for beginners is Your First Fake Book, published by Hal Leonard.

The advantages of learning to accompany

If chords are a great starting point for beginners, one way to begin using them is to back up your own singing. For the student, accompaniments have several advantages over piano solos.

For one thing, because you sing the melody rather than play it, learning to accompany is relatively easy. Often there’s not much more to it than repeating a chord in a steady rhythm with your right hand, while your left hand holds down a single note (the root of the chord–the note that gives the chord its name, like C, for a C chord). Your lead sheet will tell you what chords to play.

If you’re a beginner, the ease of this style of playing allows you to focus on things like technique, rhythmic flow, pedaling, and so on.

And don’t worry, if playing and singing at the same time sounds difficult, you can always add the singing later. Or have a friend do it.

After just a few weeks or months of lessons, a complete beginner can master basic accompaniments for 3-chord songs like Hey Jude, Imagine, or Amazing Grace. In contrast, learning to play the same songs convincingly as piano solos would take much, much longer.

Not to mention the fact that songs are meant to be sung!

Chords for the classically-minded

But chords aren’t just for pop players. The classical-sounding pieces in beginners’ methods are sometimes composed entirely, or almost entirely, of chord tones. Often they use broken chords, meaning the notes are played one at a time, as in the illustration we looked at earlier for learning by pattern.

Pieces like these are easy to learn without reading, which makes them exactly the sort of repertoire teachers can use with students in the early stages.

But there’s a lesson here for advanced players and readers, too. When you learn a new piece by grasping its chords, you can memorize it quickly and securely. Then, since you’re not distracted by having to read, you have the freedom to focus on technique and expression.

Some favorite intermediate pieces that are largely chord-based are Fur Elise (beginning section only), Angels’ Voices by Burgmuller, and Bach’s Prelude Number 1 from “The Well-Tempered Clavier” (Book 1).

With music like this, you can study the score, label the chords, and memorize the piece before you ever begin to practice it. Depending on your abilities, you could also record yourself as you read the piece at the piano very slowly, and then learn it by ear.

But maybe you’d like to take an occasional break from playing other people’s music, and begin to play your own. It might be easier than you think.

Improvising

Think about how we learn to speak. We pick up a few words (by ear), and immediately begin to use them in our own way, stringing together various combinations to create phrases, and later, sentences. In other words, we improvise.

Even after we’ve learned to read and write, improvising (speaking) continues to be at the heart of how we use language.

Unfortunately, when it comes to music, we often equate improvising with jazz. And that makes us think of it as a terribly complex skill, certainly not within the reach of beginners.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Your first improvisations

Try this: in the octave below middle C, play a C chord with your left hand, but leave out the E. That’s your accompaniment.

With your right hand roaming just three notes–C, D, and E–see how much interest you can create. Long notes, short notes, silence–mix them up for maximum effect.

Re-play the left hand part every now and then to renew its sound.

Most of all, don’t stop for anything you might consider to be a “mistake.” Just keep the music flowing, because continuity is essential to improvising–its only rule, you might say.

Gradually, expand your vocabulary to include G, then A. That gives you the full pentatonic scale, one of the improviser’s favorite resources. (It’s probably best to save F and B for later as they’re likely to introduce more dissonance.)

You might also try switching to an A chord with your left hand, which will instantly give your music a darker (minor) flavor. Then switch back to C.

Then try an F chord, and then others, too.

As you get more comfortable, you can begin to play the left hand part in a well-defined rhythm, perhaps playing it every beat, every two beats, or every 4 beats.

Or, try a simple waltz feel, with the left hand playing every three beats. Or, on the first and third beats.

While still keeping a 3-beat groove, another possibility is to break up the two-note chord, playing the lower note on the first beat, and the upper note on the second, continuing to hold it on the third. (Hold the lower note down for all three beats.)

For those of you who can read music a bit, a great resource is the Pattern Play series of books by Akiko and Forrest Kinney, published by Frederick Harris.

Beginning with the simplest left hand patterns and right hand scales, the lessons gradually help you to improvise in a variety of styles including New Age, classical, blues, jazz, and so on. (You can hear me improvise on the first Pattern Play “piece” here.)

And here’s another way to get started creating (or at least, co-creating) your own music. Remember those piano accompaniments we were talking about? Well, they can be great vehicles for learning to improvise.

As I’ve said, with piano/vocal arrangements, you’re likely to be playing the chords with your right hand. And one way to get creative is to play broken rather than block chords, inventing patterns and rhythms as you go. Jamming on the chords of a song is what jazz is all about.

As you learn to improvise, you’ll eventually want to do more than just stick to the “safest” notes (chord members, for example). You’ll want to be able to range farther afield and play precisely what you hear or imagine. And for that, you need “big ears.”

Ear Training

Remember how I said that when you sing, you’re “playing” your voice by ear? Well, one way to start transferring this ability to the piano, is to jump right in and practice with simple melodies like Are You Sleeping and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

These tunes, as well as other childrens’ songs, folk songs, and many Christmas carols, use only the notes of the major scale (do re mi fa so la ti do). That makes them good choices to start with because instead of twelve tones to choose from, you have only seven.

At first, it’s trial and error. But if you keep doing it–and I mean if you play by ear a lot, day after day–you start getting quicker and more confident. (As we saw with the young Richard Rodgers.)

As your ear becomes more practiced, you begin to notice that one note has a special feel or quality to it: it’s at rest.

For example, if you play a melody in the key of C (in other words, use the notes of C scale), you’ll notice that, C, unlike the other six notes in the scale, doesn’t “need” to resolve to any other tone. It’s tension-free.

We call this note the keynote or do (as in do re mi). Since the keynote feels like home, it’s almost always the last note of a tune. And learning to hear how other tones gravitate towards the keynote is an important part of being able to play by ear.

The ability to recognize tones in this way is called relative pitch. If you have perfect pitch, on the other hand, you can recognize tones without needing to compare them to others. That’s why it’s also called absolute pitch. And contrary to popular belief, it’s possible to develop absolute pitch as an adult, at least to some extent.

Playing songs by ear

Here’s Paul Shaffer, long-time keyboardist and bandleader for David Letterman, talking about his musical beginnings (as quoted in John Novellos’s Contemporary Keyboardist):

. . . right away I started playing by ear. First I played the songs I heard that had only three chords; once I knew the three chords, I could play a lot of songs. . . Although I had started taking private classical lessons at the same time, playing and expanding my repertoire of chords by ear were really the most important things to me.

Notice the reference to “three chords?” They’re the ones I was talking about in the section about accompanying–the three chords that make up the entire harmonic vocabulary (or close to it) of Hey Jude, Imagine, and countless other songs.

We call them the I, IV, and V chords, because they’re built on the first, fourth, and fifth notes (do, fa, so) of the major scale.

And my point is this: to an extent, playing by ear means playing by understanding–knowing what chords, and chord sequences, are used again and again in styles like folk, jazz, classical, and so forth.

Here’s a project for you. Once you can play (or accompany) a few songs that use I, IV, and V, listen to recordings of other songs that use the same three chords, and learn them by ear.

One way to do this is to listen to the bass line (the lowest notes you hear), because those are likely to be the roots of the chords. Once you know the root, you can find the chord.

If you find it difficult to hear and identify the bass notes–it can be tricky!–you can find the chords by trial and error. Just use your ear to guide you as you sing the melody and play different chord combinations to see what sounds best. Your task is simplified by the fact that songs usually begin and end with the I chord.

Songs that use only, or mostly, I, IV, V, include:

• Knocking on Heaven’s Door (the Dylan version)
• The Lion Sleeps Tonight
• The Gambler
• Jambalaya
• Hey Jude (coda, or ending, adds another chord)
• Imagine (bridge adds another chord)
• Amazing Grace
• Silent Night
• Koom Bah Yah
• Michael Row the Boat Ashore

And many, many, more.

Learning to play songs and pieces off of recordings is a powerful form of ear training. If you then go a step further and notate the music, it’s called transcribing, and Chick Corea (also in Novello’s book) says:

From very early on. . . I would listen to the record through and pick out a very simple thing to begin to transcribe, and pick at it until I got it. . . And through that process I actually learned almost everything I know about notating and reading music and recognizing sounds.

Now that’s a way to learn to read that trains your ear.

Getting past the “reading myth”

So don’t be like that fish we talked about who was blind to the big picture.

Are you just getting started at the piano? If so, you now know why it might be wise to delay reading, or at least de-emphasize it at first. And you’re also beginning to understand your options.

On the other hand, if you’re an experienced pianist who enjoys reading but also wishes to be more spontaneous and creative, take another look at the possibilities I’ve outlined. Find ones that appeal to you, and explore them on your own or with a teacher.

In your efforts to break free of the page, you may be surprised at how rewarding even the smallest steps can be.

MYTH #2 “It’s all about the fingers.”

Are you playing the piano with your fingers when you should be using your arms?

If that sounds like a silly question, think of it this way: you can either push keys down using your own power, or, you can relax, and allow the weight of your arms to do the same thing.

In other words, you can let gravity do the work.

So which of these two approaches do you think will help you play with an easy flow while avoiding strain or even injury? In the first, your brain keeps sending the message “push, press, work.” In the second, it whispers “release, relax, let go.”

Ahhh—doesn’t that last sentence make you feel good just thinking about it?

The experts weigh in on arm weight

If you’ve never given much thought to how gravity can be the pianist’s friend, you’re not alone. But many top players and educators have.

Take Paul Wirth, for example, a renowned teacher of prize-winning young pianists. He stresses the importance of using a gravity-based approach from the first lessons.

You can hear some of his students by clicking the link in the previous paragraph, though you’ll gain even more by actually seeing their seemingly effortless playing. (Which you can do on his Gravi-DVD.)

Also advocating the use of arm weight are, to name just a few other pianists and educators, Madeline Bruser, author of The Art of Practicing, and Nancy and Randall Faber, creators of the highly regarded Piano Adventures piano method.

Better control; more exciting rhythm

Besides keeping you relaxed, using arm weight gives you a more precise way to control dynamics (loudness and softness). And one student was excited about this approach for an entirely different reason: with his arms in motion, his playing suddenly became more rhythmic.

“This feels wonderful,” he said. “It’s like dancing.”

An arm-weight exercise to get you started

Ideally, you’ll be using a gravity-based approach from the start. But for those of you who’ve been playing for years with technique that’s less efficient, it’s never too late to change. One caveat, though: don’t try to master the use of arm weight by practicing music you already know–the complex sequence of habits you’ve already built up for that piece will get in the way.

Instead, start with a simple arm-drop exercise. Seated on the bench away from the piano, raise your right arm to shoulder level, wrist limp, concentrating entirely on feeling the weight of your arm. Then, let it drop on to your lap.

Make sure you’re not putting or placing your arm down, but rather, allowing it to fall freely. If the release is genuine and complete, your hand will hit your thigh with a loud slap.

Repeat several times, then do the same with your left arm.

A 5-note scale and beyond

Then, slide the bench back to the keyboard, and with your fingers curved (as they usually are for playing), play a 5-note scale with one hand by “walking” your arm weight from one fingertip to the next. Do it slowly, focusing on the sensation of the entire weight of your arm resting on the keyboard, supported only by a single, curved, finger. (The thumb, of course, plays on its side, instead.)

Pay special attention to your wrist, which should be loose and flexing. For each note, it starts from a slightly elevated position, and drops down until the back of the hand forms roughly a straight line with your arm, a line that’s about parallel with the floor.

If you drop your full arm weight onto each key, the tone that results will be loud (but not harsh), and exactly the same from note to note. This effortless evenness is one of the exciting benefits of this way of playing.

To play softly, the motions remain the same–the only difference is that you release less weight into each key. (But use full arm weight for a while, until the exercise becomes second nature.)

Gradually, you can apply this technique as you practice other exercises and pieces. It’s best not to play music that requires you to read at this early stage, because reading will only distract you from your prime focus: feeling and releasing weight.

Playing the piano with your whole body

Obviously, a lot more goes into great technique than simply taking advantage of gravity. That’s just one aspect of our real subject–a whole-body approach to the piano. In lifting your arm so you can drop weight down into the keys, you’re using big, strong muscles, instead of relying on the more vulnerable fingers to do all the work.

Teamwork between muscle groups–that’s the key. Don’t try to solve problems with fingers alone that are best handled with the help of wrists, arms, and upper body. For example, your teacher may point out passages that work best with these (non-gravity-based) techniques:

• A gentle lifting of the wrist, ideal for playing the final note of a phrase more softly, and then releasing it.
• A quick upwards flip of the wrist for playing rapid staccato (short) notes.
• Forearm rotation–a rolling of the hand from side to side, useful for trills and various other situations.
• A swaying or dance-like movement of the upper torso, often an integral part of playing rhythmically and emotionally.

Movements like these can be easy to see, or they can be nearly invisible. Often you’ll want to combine them with each other, or with the use of arm weight.

But whatever the specifics, it pays to remember Thomas Mark’s words in What Every Pianist Needs to Know About the Body: “Saying that we play the piano with our fingers is like saying that we run with our feet”.

A final thought: getting past “one-note-at-a-time”

As a pianist, your fingers have important work to do. There’s no question about it.

But each finger strikes just one note at a time, whereas when you play with your entire upper body, you operate from a different mindset. You begin to play groups of notes, rather than single, isolated ones.

And that’s one of the secrets to effortless control, and rhythm that never falters.

One student who was introduced to this way of playing after years of struggling with a more finger-oriented approach, was amazed, after a period of adjustment, at how natural it felt.

“Now I know how it feels to be one with the piano,” she said.

MYTH #3: “Practicing means playing a piece over and over.”

When you’re learning a new song or piece, do you spend most of your time going through it from first note to last?

If so, you’re not really practicing, at least not efficiently.

What you’re actually doing is trying to play the piece. You’re trying to express yourself through the music before you’ve laid the necessary groundwork.

And that’s understandable. You’re excited by the music. And boy, do you ever want to play it now, not weeks or months down the road.

But at some point you need to be clear about whether you’re playing or practicing. Because the fact is, they’re two different ways of being at the piano.

(If your problem is the opposite–if you never play your music all the way through but always seem to end up with bits and pieces of a performance–we’ll talk about that, too.)

Playing vs. practicing

Playing is all about ease and flow. When you play, thinking takes a back seat and your emotions take over. You might even say that to the extent you’re still thinking, you’re not yet playing.

And practicing? Well, that’s what gets you to that special place where you don’t have to think. That’s what makes playing possible.

So let’s talk about an approach to practicing you can live with.

Don’t struggle, simplify

At the heart of practicing is repetition. Everyone knows that.

But what we often forget is exactly what it is we need to repeat: only the right notes, rhythms, and motions. That way, we’re spending our time building good habits, instead of good habits mixed in with bad ones.

And believe it or not, there really is a way to practice without making mistakes.

Three ways to make the difficult easy

You can:

• Practice one hand at a time.
• Practice slowly (or very, very slowly).
• Practice only a little bit–a measure perhaps, or even less.

Usually you’ll combine these options, two or three at a time, to get exactly the degree of difficulty you need.

At that point, you can practice without struggling. You can relax, and focus all your attention on getting the job done. (Rather than feeling discouraged about what you can’t yet do.)

When you want to practice slowly, it’s a good idea to use the metronome. Otherwise you’re likely to get faster and faster, drawn by the gravity-like pull of the actual performance tempo–the tempo you keep hearing in your head.

But keep this in mind: while slow practice may be the default mode, sometimes you need to work on a passage up to tempo. Otherwise, you might be using motions and fingerings that work perfectly in slow motion, but can hold you back when playing faster.

To use the up-to-tempo approach, you might start by playing just a single beat, then add another, and so on.

But let’s backtrack for a moment. Just as important as how to practice, is what you need to do before you begin.

Getting ready to practice

Memorize first. Students often assume that committing a piece to memory is the final step in learning it. But think of it this way: when you memorize right away, you’re reinforcing your memorization of the music every time you practice it.

Then too, if your eyes aren’t glued to the page, you can give all your attention to overcoming technical challenges. Many difficult passages simply can’t be played up to tempo under any circumstances, while reading.

So let’s look at the single most helpful step you can take in memorizing music.

Learn the chords. In myth #1, we saw that a musical composition can be looked at as a series of chords. So it shouldn’t surprise you to learn that identifying and memorizing the chords in a piece can go a long ways towards helping you play it by heart.

Obviously, if you’re using a lead sheet to work on a song, the chords are already labelled for you. But for classical music, you’ll need to write in the chord symbols yourself. Using a numbering system (Roman numerals) to label the chord progression is an especially powerful way to understand and remember it.

(See Myth #1 for classical pieces and pop songs that may come in handy for getting started with chord study.)

Work out the fingering. Here’s an all-too-common scenario: a student spends days or weeks trying to master a technical difficulty, only to discover, down the road, that with the right fingering, the passage is actually pretty easy.

Clearly, good fingering can make a huge difference. But even when the benefits are more subtle, many small improvements can really add up.

So take the time to explore fingering before you start to practice, and jot down your tentative choices. Even where fingering is already indicated, don’t assume that the editor’s suggestions are necessarily right for you.

Listen to recordings. Can you learn to speak a foreign language convincingly without hearing it spoken?

Well it’s like that with music, too: symbols go only so far in conveying its actual sound. This is certainly true of pop songs because so much depends on the rhythmic groove or feel, which is virtually impossible to capture on paper (and is not even hinted at on a lead sheet.)

But it applies equally to classical compositions, even though every aspect of the music is supposedly right there on the page.

I say “supposedly” because if your only exposure to a piece has been through the score, and you then listen to a recording, you may be surprised at the range of interpretive decisions a performer will bring to the music.

A small accent here, an almost imperceptible silence there, a slowing, a rising and falling (crescendo and decrescendo), pedaling (or its absence)–these are the sorts of details that bring music to life, and that often don’t show up in the score, or are only hinted at.

So listen to recordings of your song or piece and be inspired by the magic a creative player can bring to it.

Pure playing mode

OK. Let’s jump ahead in the process. You’ve done your preparation. You’ve practiced well.

So what’s next?

Of course–it’s time to play. The question is, will you actually do it?

Here’s my point. Remember I said earlier that people who are supposedly practicing are often actually playing (or trying to)? Well, the reverse is also true: some students can’t play without stopping to practice–to make corrections.

And that’s ironic, because pausing is 100% fatal to the spell you’re trying to create, worse than any wrong note could ever be.

So the message is, you need to spend plenty of time in pure playing mode. Just say, “OK. Whatever happens, I do not stop. I keep going.”

Psychologically, this can be tricky. Up to now, you’ve been listening critically to every possible weakness in your performance. Your focus has been on working and improving.

But now you need to let go of all that. It’s time to let yourself be carried away by the spirit of the music and your emotional response to it.

One way to get comfortable with this free-flowing, non-judgmental state is to improvise. (See how to get started in myth #1). You don’t have to be a jazz master. But until you make improvising part of your routine, you’ll never know what a difference it can make in how you play.

The three piano myths: a final thought

In this three-part article we’ve talked about:

• Developing your ear (rather than just your ability to read).
• Using your whole body (not just your fingers).
• Knowing the difference between playing and practicing.

As you begin to apply these principles, the key to success is starting simply. And this time, I’m not talking about breaking your practice down into manageable tasks. I’m encouraging you to choose songs and pieces appropriate to where you are and what you’re trying to accomplish. (Or if you’re improvising, to start with a very basic vocabulary of notes, chords, and rhythms, as in the improv steps outlined in Myth #1.)

Which brings up an important point. While beginners may be thrilled to play anything at all, you more advanced players may be less excited about playing children’s songs by ear, or practicing easy pieces to learn how to use arm weight, or choosing repertoire with chords simple enough to grasp and memorize.

But remember, this is a big moment in your musical life. In some ways, you’re building, or re-building, your foundation, a task worthy of taking (what may seem like) a few steps backwards.

And the payoff may come sooner than you think. Living in a culture obsessed with the flashy and the difficult, it’s good to remember that simplicity can be a beautiful thing. Especially when you find yourself, more than ever before, playing straight from the heart.

—-

Bruce Siegel has been teaching piano in Los Angeles since 1980. Go to DoctorKeys.com for his online video tutorials based on the principles in this article.

My simple arrangement helps you learn to play a melody in the right hand, over chords or intervals in the left.

I like to teach this piece by rote rather than having my students read the music. (Though the sheet music is available for download.) That way, you can put all your attention on building basic playing skills while enjoying a wonderful addition to your repertoire.

STEPS, HALF STEPS, SHARPS & FLATS

Intervals are the building blocks of music, and the half step is the smallest and most fundamental. We’ll talk about that, as well as sharps and flats, in this lesson.

In our online course we’ve been sticking to the white keys so far (playing in the key of C). Now you’ll see how the black keys fit into the picture.

HOW TO PLAY ANY MAJOR SCALE OR MAJOR CHORD

When you know the pattern of whole and half steps that make up the major scale, you can easily find any major chord. And the major chord is the starting point for building all others.

Sound like a useful lesson? You bet!

HOW TO TRANSPOSE A SONG USING NUMBERS

To transpose is to raise or lower the pitch of a song so you can sing it more easily. The numbering system you’ll learn in this video makes transposing simple.

What’s more, labelling chords with numbers instead of letters makes it infinitely easier to grasp the standard chord progressions songwriters use again and again.

Notice that Ali is playing a genuine accompaniment, rather than merely duplicating the melody. It’s musically effective because what she’s singing and what she’s playing are completely independent of each other.

Since her hand is still small, Ali is playing only two notes at a time in the right hand, as opposed to the 3-note chords an adult would be playing.

Besides the all-important fun/motivation factor, there are powerful reasons for learning to play and sing arrangements like these. For starters:

• They’re great for teaching chords. And when you have a handle on chords, you can memorize faster and more securely, sight-read more easily, and be more creative.
• Since Ali learned this arrangement by ear (and thus never had to read from the page), she’s been able to put all her attention on technique, rhythmic flow, and singing. (Notice how strong she is in all three areas.)
• When you sing, you develop your most important musical asset—your ear.

Teachers: don’t expect to find arrangements like this in books. But you just might begin to enjoy the process of custom-tailoring them yourself, which includes finding a key to suit your student’s vocal range, and making adjustments to the piano part based on hand size and level of ability.

Ali and her mom, by the way, are a great learning team, and you can read about that part of the story here.

[12.14.10 update: here's Ali playing and singing Imagine, with its more complex accompaniment. ]

And on this page, you can hear other examples of students playing and singing piano/vocals—some are harder, some easier.

If you’d like to hear me playing standard (more difficult) repertoire, you can do that at PianoSociety.com, where I’ve recently become a contributing artist. For those not familiar with PS, here’s a description from their home page:

“With more than 100,000 unique visitors and over 1,000,000 downloads per month, the Piano Society is the largest resource of free classical piano recordings on the Internet.”

As you might expect with a site that has such a large collection and distributes music for free, the quality of the recordings at PS varies enormously (in terms of both performance and sound). So to help make your first visit memorable, here are some PS pianists I’ve enjoyed listening to. (Bear in mind that I’m just getting to know the site myself—I’ve had time to sample but a small fraction of the musicians listed.)

(Listed alphabetically)

John Clement Anderson. Don’t miss his colorful “Reflets Dans L’eau” by Ravel.
Alfonso Bertazzi. A nice range of repertoire beautifully played. His instrument may not be impressive, but what he does with it certainly is.
Rami Bar-Niv. The distinguished Israeli concert pianist has provided a couple of concertos. I just listened to his gorgeous Schumann.
Daniel Blanch. More fine Schumann.
Benjamin Kopp. I was going to tell you about his delightful Brahms Concerto movement, but then I heard his crystalline Mozart, which may be even better.
Sarara Momokawa. Listen to her rendition of the Barber Sonata, at times soulful and thrilling.
Hanna Shybayeva. She tackles some of the most difficult Rachmaninoff and does it impressively.

It is indeed an honor to have my recordings on the same site as these artists.

By the way, PS really is a community. When you audition to become a member (as I did), you post a few mp3′s in their “Audition Room” section, where anyone can download your playing and comment on it. This sometimes leads to spirited discussions on various aspects of playing and recording.

The level of expertise of members and administrators is excellent—I’ve gotten some candid feedback that is proving quite helpful.

So far, I’ve contributed recordings of Chopin, Beethoven, Joseph Lamb, and Frederic Mompou, and a few others.

As I said, I’ve heard only a small fraction of the PS artists so far. So if you visit the site and find other artists and recordings especially to your liking, please let me know about them!

[Update: I just visited PS after posting this, and had the unexpected pleasure of hearing two lovely recordings, just posted, of music composed by one of Chopin's students at age 11 or 12. (He died at 15.) You can catch the music and the discussion here. What a great find this site is.]