A Philosophical Approach to Piano

What's In A Song?

2023-03-06T12:31:00.001+01:00

A lot!

Often, students think that they need to learn a whole song when it comes to jazz but this is not the case. Jazz is mainly a common collection of chord progressions that you take the time to master 'away' from repertoire so that, once down, you're freer and less distracted to be able to improvise and embellish the chords and melody.

On my channel, I have many song tutorials but over the years, I have come to realise that most do not want to learn the song so for the last few years, I've mainly (unless the song has been requested in detail) used a song to emphasise another point, without the intention or expectation that you'll actually care to learn the whole thing.

With this in mind, I made a few videos recently which didn't get too much love (I guess the algorithm doesn't like nice jazz songs!) so I wanted to promote them in this post

The first one is this:

All My Tomorrows is a very pretty song and Section A has a particularly lovely chord progression that you should learn. It goes: 251... 36251! Yes, that old classic but the melody embellishes these chords (as many jazz melodies do) by landing on the 9 or b9.

A demonstrate in this song, you can't avoid the (3 6) 2 5 1 progression. It also demonstrates that melodies were so well constructed that they embellished the otherwise basic chords of M7 and m7. You may not want to learn the whole piece but at least see, experience and understand what is happening and why it sounds so pretty.

The second song is:

Over the Rainbow is one of the top ten jazz songs of all time but section B demonstrates very well what I call 'note value awareness': the idea that one same note changes it value and therefore feeling as the key of the chord changes.

Section B relies on alternating two notes, such as G and Bb which, in the key of Eb are the 3rd and 5th but over Fm7 for example, they become the 9th and 11th and in Bb, they're the 6th and root... two notes, lots of different feelings! Therefore, the takeaway from this video, if you don't want to learn the whole song, is that with very few notes, you can play many chord types which contain those notes and get a lot of sounds you maybe don't realise are possible from the two same notes.

Finally, we have this:

Moonlight Serenade! One of the first songs I ever learnt on the piano. It's in the key of F which is a nice warm jazz key. Again, we look at section B (even though section A is just as pretty) because it is structured whereby the melody is composed of 'leaps', or 'large intervals'. It's very symmetrical-feeling and a great example of how choosing the right note value against a chord writes an absolute classic of a tune!

Just a short article this time but I hope you'll take away lots of lessons and theory, plus a few performance tips from these videos and be able to apply what I discuss to the jazz repertoire you'd like to or are already working on.

Enjoy!

A Spiritual Boost for 2023

2022-12-31T16:58:00.002+01:00

A few words of advice...

- That in answering now for one, I may forever answer for many -

"... whenever I’d be at the computer to concentrate on design work, I began noticing I was holding my breath and my shoulders were up. After a while my hands would begin to stiffen, my neck & back would ache, etc."

Absolutely everything originates in mind. I am reminded of Shakespeare's Henry V, in which the King proclaims, "All things are ready if our minds be so". How true indeed, and that was in preparation for a battle, not the arguably gentler task of sitting in a comfortable chair to be creative or, more on topic, to exercise the fingers and produce some joyous tones without being speared in the back by a French knight on horseback.

Doing some stretches can of course help, as well as sitting in a more beneficial position on a more comfortable chair but these do not unriddle the addressable root causes of tension. One always does well to self-analyse and observe detachedly. Often, fear plays the ghastly role behind 'tension before creation'.

Being afraid is beneficial in that an issue is highlighted to us without the need to look for it for too long. Fear simply says: "That's it, over there!" You are then obliged to thank your fear for its guidance. The result may be results-driven, feedback-driven, or ability-driven, meaning (respectively): Are you afraid your output will not be equal to or, better, greater than your input? Do you not want to hear anything bad about what you've been working on, or better, can you not handle so much success and admiration!? Finally, are you really capable, theoretically and technically, of carrying out the desired task yet?

The opposite of fear is truth. Only You know your truth following some introspection, in order that you might free yourself from the physical side-effect of such unknowns: tension.

"I’m curious, in fact passionate about understanding what goes on behind the scenes: The struggle to master eye-hand coordination, hand independence, the battle to quite the mind and allow the music to travel from heart to instrument. The frustration of playing something a million times and it still not becoming “second nature.” The intermittent depression that accompanies the disappointment of not being as proficient as you think you “should” be after putting in your 10,000+ hours…"

The first sign of error upon the questioner's path is the verb 'struggle to'. Even before setting out, the mind is falsely prepared for a difficult journey. This adds extreme psychological weight and renders progress inherently impossible, as can be seen by the long (and unfinished!) list of 'hurdles' to overcome. Can you see why I started this article with the Shakespeare quote?

Let me discuss each item individually:

To the Water Pianist, hand-eye coordination is a misnomer since most of what is executed at the piano is shared between internal piano/jukebox time away from the piano and eyes-closed time at the piano. This leaves very little for the eyes to actually do! It should rather be called 'mind-fingertip' coordination because the Water Pianist does not think in terms of two hands but ten individual fingers, no matter their positions. Finger independence is the goal, therefore, not hand-eye coordination. This mentality comes from someone who hopes to improve solely at the piano... something which is not possible beyond absolute beginner level.

Water Pianism Syllabus

Hand independence problems arise from assuming that the left hand 'does this' and the right hand 'does that' at the same time. This is false from the perspective of the piano itself. Detaching for a moment, imagine being the hammers inside a piano striking the strings as your key has been struck... by which finger? On which hand? It simply does not matter to the hammer or the string; they simply want to produce the sound required of them. Thus, the Water Pianist is able to play with any finger on any hand doing what is required to produce the result of what is intended (via score or improvisation), rather than worrying about how (which finger on which hand) the sound is to be made. In fact, I have demonstrated in person and in some videos this very point by playing a classic jazz song with only the index fingers of each hand. In person, I asked them to turn around while I played. I then asked them about the technique. You can imagine the shock when I demonstrated what I had done... with two fingers!

Quieting the mind and allowing music to travel from the heart to the instrument is all very poetic and endearing but falls flat for two reasons: lack of theory and lack of technique... but no need to feel disheartened; these are very easy to fix!

People often ask me how I know what to play. They also ask me, or are in awe of how I can play so fluently, as if my fingers are one with the keys. Nice compliments - but the answer is like a magician revealing how an amazing trick is done (and I speak as a card magician of almost 20 years when I say this): it's usually very easy, obvious or logical and you were too easy to fool! In the context of piano, this implies: all you had to do was truly know the melody, the chord progression and how the song goes! And if you happen to be improvising, then all you had to know was which chords sound nice together and which note values work well with those chords! In card magic, this would involve knowledge of card handling and card positions after false or authentic shuffling and cutting.

I'm not saying you're born with this knowledge but this is entirely the point: there is playing... and there is practising... and for the most part, they are not the same thing done at the same time. Often, one hopes to run a marathon before buying the trainers, and all other analogies in a similar vein. So, know what is required of you theoretically and technically by the piece, master those at and away from the piano and you'll be good to go! No tension required.

Charles Darwin wrote, and I quote, "Anything performed very often by us, will at last be done without deliberation or hesitation, and can then hardly be distinguished from an instinct". The most important words in this otherwise true sentence are very and often... but there is a huge unspoken condition attached: the action being performed 'very often', which is to become as if instinctual, has to be being carried out correctly from the outset, otherwise this philosophy will work in the wrong direction: you'll become really good at doing something really badly. It's a case of 'the right tools do the wrong job in the wrong hands' and variations thereof. And since we as creative beings have a generally uniform interpretation of what 'good' and 'bad' mean in terms of creativity and performance, we can pretty much all agree on who is doing something adroitly and who should seek some guidance!

Therefore, upon realising that we are not attaining the desired, required results, an interjection must take place. But what kind? The Water Pianist here applies the 'dissection philosophy': identify the overall problem (theoretical, technical, feel, confidence, endurance, coordination, state of mind, etc.) and see how many sub-sections can be created from it. The original questioner mentions playing something a million times and it still not becoming second nature to them so clearly repeating the song isn't helping, meaning there could be a memory issue to dissect (master 4 bars at a time until second nature, or perhaps two bars if four is still too many), or it could be that a mistake always arises in the same place in the song, meaning it's not a memory hiccup but technical, resulting in the whole piece being ruined, even though in fact the whole piece can otherwise be played very well.

Is there a chord not truly known yet? Does the melody suddenly go out of key and throw you off? If so, spend a while with that particular chord type in all keys, playing it in many different ways with both hands and visualising it on your internal piano away from the piano so that when you encounter it in the song, it passes effortlessly. If the melody is 'weird' in some place, practise only from a bar or two in front into the weird part, followed by one or two bars after. This dissected, focused repetition will eventually iron out the problem crease so that the song can now be played fluently.

The 10,000 hours concept is hogwash, along with many other examples I'd just like to irritably mention: High education equals high intellect is hogwash. Wisdom comes with age is hogwash. Faking it to make it is hogwash. I could go on... but my point is that comparing oneself to a provably, demonstrably incorrect myth is so detrimental that I can't find the words to express myself. Thus, the questioner's comment which regrettably includes the words depression, disappointment and not proficient must be rejected immediately so that all the mind's energy can be focused on beneficial progress and only beneficial progress without compare.

"Please describe in detail, what changed in the way you perceived yourself before and after ["crossing over from being 'a person who plays music' to 'a musician'"]? Had you always thought of yourself as a “Musician” even before your ability matched your identity? What was your process?"

A subconscious burden many seekers carry is the compulsion to label; by noun, verb or adjective. Of course this is the foundation of communication but when it comes to matters of the mind and for want of a better word, wisdom, seeing things as they are without the label does indeed bring about changes in our psychology and thus, our state of mind and therefore, the potential for greater progress upon a better path. By way of example, one doesn't get wet at the sound of the word 'water', much in the same way as one is not actually harmed by my saying, "I am hitting you with this hammer". It is much less of a strain on the mind, therefore, to avoid chasing labels which have the effect of solidifying their target which otherwise is not tangible at all. In context of the question, I can categorically say that there was no transitional process from 'a person who plays music' into 'a musician', since neither objects are tangible but mere irrelevant notions which have no inherent value whatsoever and it is for this reason the Water Pianist does not carry such an impeding burden. I simply 'played according to my musical personality' and 'acquired what I needed, when I needed it', referring to both theory and technique.

"What is it inside of you that allows you to sit in with anyone and immediately hear the key & the chord progression and play with abandon?"

Non-stop: Ear training. A lot of listening to (not just hearing) music. Transcribing bits of songs here and there out of curiosity. Developing an emotional connection to chord types (relevant video). Studying chord progressions from lead sheets (useful free resource here) and hearing them when doing 'purposeful listening'. This does not mean I have perfect pitch, for I do not. At all. But if sitting in with a band, I can very easily hear what the bass player and guitarist are playing and then identify the key. In addition, some theory is required: major scale mastery (relevant mastery playlist) (I had to write this eventually, didn't I?) and knowing some common chord progressions (relevant video). These are all things which can be acquired relatively quickly and once known, just need to be maintained rather than relearnt every few months.

To "play with abandon" could imply some level of improvisation or it could mean simply playing along with the chords so I'll focus only on the former since it requires more blurb...

Improvisation can be practised over three layers:

1. Notes of the chord;
2. Adding notes of interest;
3. Chromatically and melodically connecting 1 and 2 together.

1. This is quite straight-forward. Once you know the chord progression, you only have to deal with either three notes (some kind of triad) or four notes (most other chords). Practise alone playing whatever your fingers want to play over a manageable but common chord progression, especially in common keys (C, F, G, Eb, Bb). I have a whole playlist of chord-related videos here;

2. The 9th (or 2nd note) works with basically every chord type so add that to the notes of the chord sometimes. If it's a bluesy type song, add the b5 since that's the blues note. The 6th is also safe with most triads. This gives you an easy to identify 6-7 notes to mess around with. You can do a lot with those and they're all safe so you don't need to worry about going 'outside the box'. Or, if you do, you can because you know where the 'box' is, so if you want to get adventurous, play a note note as discussed in part 1. or 2. but only very rarely or you may be asked to leave the stage.

3. Instead of playing the above notes independently, it's nice if you can connect them at least half the time with notes which exist between them. Since you're highlighting the notes discussed above, the 'passing tones' won't sound wrong; they'll sound nice and make you sound like you know what you're doing! For example, don't just play E and G; arrive to G via F and F# or even come from above via the A and Ab. Adjust the dynamics, play with note repetitions, alternate two notes for a few beats or bars (common in blues), use octaves, slide from one note to the next (called a 'grace note'), etc. It should all sound pretty good! Note that a lot of these embellishments come from listening to a lot of musical greats!

Water Pianism encourages you to Play You. This is a very deep, albeit short, titbit of wisdom. It implies so many things you may not have considered, all of which exist to help you on your personalised, destinationless journey.

First, the word Play. It implies fun. We play the piano for a reason. We don't 'toil away' or 'labour' at the piano. We enjoy it. Everything from slow technical exercises and learning major scales to finding comfortable fingering for chords and enhancing our endurance and precision. These are fun things because they are the unavoidable foundations that enable us to go as far as we dare; things we acquire through effort and then maintain almost effortlessly.

Water Pianism Syllabus

Second, the word You. Now there's a topic! You, in the plural from my perspective, come with unique hands, fingers, musical feels, ambitions and desires, stories and experiences. What is easy for half of you is challenging for the other, and vice-versa. You all like different genres of music and want to play an enormous array of repertoire. None of you are the same but for your desire to self-express and share in the joie-de-vivre that is music, not to mention being fellow Water Pianists!

And to close, I would like to explain what the graphic means at the top of this article, "No questions, no answers". It means let be. It means observe and accept, internally and externally. It means act now on truth. It means everything is as it should be for you to make progress. It means you don't need to get tangled up through overthinking. It means no conscious interference. It means that by adhering to your musical personality and accepting your truth, your Way is cleared.

It does not literally mean don't ask questions, otherwise I wouldn't have taken hours to happily write this article in response! I hope you can detect the difference.

Thank you for reading and happy playing!

Favourite Videos of 2022

2022-12-08T16:36:00.004+01:00

Recommended viewing...

As the year comes to an end, I thought it would be a good idea to look back on the many videos I made for you and pick out my favourite ones (not the ones which necessarily got the most views). They are provided below, from earliest in the year to most recent, with a little explanation as to why I have chosen them. Enjoy!

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Most songs are composed 'diatonically', meaning that the melody and chords used are 90%+ in the key of the piece, so they use only the notes of the major scale of that key. Pop more often that note only uses major and minor triad; it's jazz which uses all the fancy chords, so it's a good idea to get used to the triads first. You simply go through the notes of any key and apply either a major or minor triad. The results are as follows: Major, minor, minor, Major, Major, minor, diminished (a b3 and b5, very rare in pop but common in jazz). This video gives some mastery exercises to help you.

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This is the link to the free PDF of Liszt's Technical Exercises. What I do in this video, and what I recommend you do with exercises from any source, is personalise them! I chose three at random and made them my own. There are many ways to personalise exercises: rhythmically, different keys, various finger combinations, eyes closed (as much as possible), tempos, different octaves, applying rhythms and time signatures, blending two exercises together, ... many ideas! I think you'll benefit a lot from this video.

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A lot of people want to be able to play Boogie-Woogie piano so I made three videos on it to take you through common left hand and right hand components, including the blues structure. Nothing too complicated. I also have videos like this for Ragtime, part one here.

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This idea starts with taking 4 notes randomly then, with progression of difficulty, choosing chord types to play based on them. The second half of the video is choosing chords which contain the note but not as the root note. Chords are so, so very important that I have an entire playlist of videos dedicated to chord mastery here.

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This is really good. Often, people ignore the black notes because they aren't in the oh so common key of C major but that's like ignoring a few strings on the guitar! You just can't play it properly. This video brings together a few favourite and useful exercises using only the black notes. They're a little thinner and shorter than the white notes so it's great for precision. Close your eyes while doing them for enhanced precision.

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For you jazzheads, this video is probably the most important one you'll ever watch. You see, 80%+ of jazz repertoire is based on, meaning, not too different from even when it isn't exactly this, the 362514 progression. You may get 12341 then a 251 to somewhere. It could be 25 25 36 36, 251... so I encourage you to see jazz repertoire as one fixed chord progression and then you only need to remember the variations which make each song unique. Please trust me on this; you'll save yourself a lot of time while feeling pretty proud of yourself for being able to learn lots of jazz songs pretty quickly!

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I really wish more people composed. Not to become the next Chopin but for the sheer enjoyment of doing it. You may think you need loads of theory and technical skills but you really don't. I propose three ways of composing and this video demonstrates each one for you. First, you hit random notes and find any chords that fit, write them down and there's your composition. Basically a 'pretty chaos'. Secondly, you compose within rules (either established theory or your own confines such as structure, key and chord types). Third, which is how I do it, is to listen within and as melodies and chord types arrive naturally, play them at the piano then write them down so you don't forget. Please have fun with this!

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I always wanted to learn Blue Danube but I wanted to play it my way, not according to some strict black dots on a piece of paper. How does one go about doing that? You listen to the song a lot of times so it's burnt onto your internal jukebox, then you work it out at the piano, basically! In this video, I do that live for Blue Danube. No cheating, just using my ears and anticipating chord types. Melodies are usually quite easy to hear but chord types require a bit more practice. Part two is linked in the video itself...

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Knowing chords is one thing. Remembering which comes next while playing is a whole other problem! In this video, I propose that you get used to alternating between just two chords (in two different keys) and slowly adding another and another. You can also write a chord progression down and memorise it numerically away from the piano and then come and play it multiple keys. The more you do this kind of exercise, the better you will become and the more fluently you will play! Often, it's not that you can't play the piano or don't know the piece, it's that you don't remember what chord comes next! So, let's fix that.

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Another 251 progression mastery video but in this short one, you are forced to play along with me through the 251s but ending on going up a 4th, as we therefore go round the circle of fourths! Starting on C, we'll play Dm7, G7, CM7, FM7... the the 251-4 of F (Gm7, C7, FM7, BbM7)... then from Bb, etc. You need to know these because they're in every single jazz song, so take this video as an opportunity to get them down once and for all!

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It wouldn't be right not to end with a Christmas song tutorial and performance so why not try to get this lovely classic, full of 251s (!!!) into your fingers!

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Thank you for your support by watching my videos and for considering to contribute to my Patreon page or getting involved in my Water Pianism Syllabus.

Happy 2023!

By Ear & Personalisation

2022-10-06T12:23:00.004+02:00

Blue Danube example

Not everybody wants to take the long journey of being able to sight-read extremely well. There are arguments for and against this but in this post, I'll focus on why you don't need to... because you have an ear!

If you've followed my content for a while, you'll know I always talk about mind first and mention the following concepts: internal piano, internal jukebox and internal manuscript. The second one is of interest to us in this article.

Once you have chosen your song (I demonstrate this on my channel using Blue Danube over three video parts, see below), find the original and listen to it many times. You want to get familiar with the structure, the melody, the chord changes and when they happen, as well as little musical subtleties such as slight melody differences the second time round, or a major instead of minor chord as it was previously, etc.

Water Pianism Syllabus Overview Document

Then, if there are lyrics, learn these too. They help with how the melody goes and remind you of the structure of the song.

Finally, listen to other versions of the song being played on different instruments and/or in different genres. This will show you what's possible with the song when it comes to your own personalisation efforts once you've learn it.

All the above is 'away from the piano'. Only once the song is firmly on your internal jukebox should you then go to the piano and begin by identifying the key (if you don't have perfect pitch, like me, simply play the song and find the key). No sheet-music is allowed in this process because it's an ear-training activity!

Once the key is established, expect 95%+ of the melody to fall on the notes of the major scale (one of many reasons why major scale mastery is so important; for orientation too). Now, knowing that you know the structure, start to play the piece's first section and refine it as you identify its path through the major scale, noting any 'out of key' notes. In Blue Danube, I play it in Eb (original is in E, you can change it if you want), there is a common out of key note which is B but we get the occasional A, too. The rest is notes of Eb, as expected.

Now that you've identified this melody section, it's chords time! This requires first and foremost an ability to recognise/feel the difference between major and minor-based chords, since all other chords (apart from sus4/2) are major or minor-based, no matter how fancy and complex they can become. Since you know the song so well on your internal jukebox, you should be able to identify the first chord at least then, applying some theory, you should expect the next chord each time to be either 'up a fourth' (C to F for example), or following the 251 progression (which is up a fourth movement in itself actually), as well as when the chord should be major or minor (2 3 6 are minor, 1 4 5 are major, 7 is half diminished).

You'd be surprised how easy this is because all the music from the last 200+ years is based on the same kinds of chord progressions: 1 4 5 / 6 2 5 1 / 1 5 6 4 / moving in 4ths / 2 5 1s which don't land on the root (I call these 'floating 2 5 1s), etc. There's rarely anything super 'out there'. Blue Danube is mainly 1 and 5, with 2 5 1s in there and a 4 here and there. All easy to identify. Plus, because you're playing by ear from your internal piano and not listening to the piece live, you can use some trial and error and you'll know instantly which chord works.

As you work through the song, by all means take notes which can help to recognise chord progression patterns and sections. Eventually, you will have played through it so many times that you no longer need the notes! This is the aim and is how I've learnt Blue Danube.

Eventually, you'll want to personalise it, I assume (otherwise you would have learnt it note for note from the original score!) Personalisation means there are no rules. You can slightly change the melody (there's one part in BD which I really prefer my way for the out of key notes, which is highlight in Part 3 - coming very soon at the time of writing). I also don't like Waltzes as a time signature so I'd rather play this either free-style, with no timing, just a nice melody and chord exploration, or as a slow, bluesy swing, which is totally my thing. Nobody will crack a ruler over your hands for experimenting and personalising! There's enough people who play all the classical repertoire note for note; we've heard Chopin played a billion times already. I think it's time for some modernised personalisations, don't you?

Good luck!

Benefits of Composition

2022-07-16T13:15:00.002+02:00

No more technical exercises!

Sometimes, you need a break from playing what you already know, trying to learn new repertoire or working on technical exercises. Of course these all have benefits but it's human nature to get bored of repetition after a while. The best alternative for the pianist is composition, a word which seems to have a very negative connotation to many so I'd like to address the benefits of composition in this article and soothe your perhaps too negative concept of this very enjoyable and rewarding activity.

First of all, here is the video which relates to this article. In it, I share three approaches to composition (which I shall expand upon in this article), as well as some examples from my own compositions by way of demonstration. I hope you'll benefit from it after reading this article:

I think it's a good idea to begin by softening what composition is, which will hopefully edge you a little closer to seeing it as a fun, beneficial exercise rather than some huge, never-ending task, as if composition means working 3 hours a day for 2 months, pencil in bleeding hand and a piano covered in manuscript paper with scrunched up balls of the stuff all around your stool. Not at all!

Water Pianism Syllabus Overview Document (PDF)

Composition need not have such conditions placed upon it such as: it must be long and complex; it must have a fixed (complicated) structure like a concerto; it must have a start, middle and end; it must begin with a motif which is developed into more advanced variations; it must require at least an intermediate technique; sight-reading is a must because it must be written down or recorded on-screen; it must be given a title; it must, it must, it must...

None of these at all, in any way, are part of how a Water Pianist thinks or composes!

Why not? Well, above all, because a Water Pianist doesn't follow traditional rules (!) but aside from that, because composition for us is personalised (like everything else on our destinationless piano journey), which means you will compose in your own way, according to your own technique and emotional preferences and will rubber-stamp the final result as Yours and nobody else's!

Before discussing the three approaches to composition, I'd like to highlight the benefits, which are more than you might imagine and include ideas you may not have considered:

1. It's a pleasant break from technical exercises and repeatedly playing what you can already play (which isn't progress, it's instant gratification);

2. Its result is something unpredictable, unlike learning existing repertoire which you can listen to over and over and hear many interpretations of it and know how it goes very well;

3. It's completely personalisable, so you can choose a frame of conditions within which to work according to your abilities and interests, such as how many bars, which key, which chord types, what techniques it requires, what rhythm it will have, what time signature it's to be played in, its tempo, its structure (verse, chorus, bridge, or just one long flow like something of Eric Satie) - you can add any conditions you wish!;

4. Instead of thinking that technical exercises are the only way to improve, composing your own piece can focus on elements that you'd like to improve. Think of it as an 'exertoire': you put exercises to your own repertoire. If you need to practise certain chord types, compose using only them; if you need to work on rarer major scales like Gb or B or C#, make sure to write in those keys; if you need to work on leaps and larger intervals, make the melody involve those; if you need to enhance your ragtime, make sure the left hand part follows standard ragtime patterns and that your melody is syncopated, etc., etc;

5. You will be very amazed at what melodies you will create, either by hearing them in your mind or finding them by trial and error. If you note every chord progression you come up with and try to record then memorise your melodic patterns, the sheer pleasure of experiencing this process should keep you motivated to continue your piece to its natural conclusion!

So what are the three approaches to composition, no matter your current abilities or knowledge?

Trial and Error

This involves no conditions or pre-intentions. You simply sit at the piano with a pen and paper and play a bunch of notes (around 5-10) which sound nice to you. You're not thinking about what key they're in or what chords will go with them just yet, just a bunch of notes. It doesn't have to be an introduction or the main melody. It's just a bunch of notes. Write it down or be sure to play it enough times that you have memorised it with ease.

Then, take a few of the notes (1-4 or so) and see which chords contain those notes, or chords which contain most of the notes, where the notes which are not in the selected chords (their key is irrelevant for now) will become either exotic sounding notes or just passing tones so they don't need a key. Write the chords in such a way that you know which few notes go with them and refine the melody notes by a half-step (semi-tone) if something sounds clearly off. Within half an hour, you could easily have 2 or 3 chords against 10-15 notes!

Then, you'll start to feel a rhythm and how long each note should be played against each chord. This will then enable you to feel what the time signature is (probably 4/4 but it may be a 3/4 Waltz). See now if you can enhance the melody with grace notes or playing some of it in another octave; perhaps one note sounds good if you play it a few times repetitively?

Eventually, if you do this a little each day, you will have a 2-3 minute composition that you created from nothing. It doesn't need a key, the chords will sounds nice and the melody will work. This is trial and error and is the best way to get into composition. You choose everything at will until you're satisfied with the result, no matter how long the piece is or what traditional rules it breaks.

Theoretical

A little stricter than trial and error, this method dictates a few confines within which you can choose your notes and chords, which is also a useful thing for beginners. This is where you choose a master key (in my video, I chose Bb for demonstration purposes) and note the diatonic chords according to modal theory (video on that here). You have a strict pool of notes (the Bb major scale) which can be enhanced using an occasional out-of-key note for exotic or spice reasons.

You choose an established structure (such as a 32 bar pop song with intro, verses and a chorus and maybe a bridge... maybe an ending), the tempo and time signature, as well as rhythm and overall feel for the song before you start finding notes. This template-in-mind is useful and can save you from getting totally lost, especially if it's your intention to write an actual song (whereas by trial and error, it is not).

You'll mess around with a chord progression (I chose 1 3 4 5 in my demonstration video) and then find a melody which fits nicely to those chords. Again, note everything you do once you've settled on it and played it a few times. You will be very happy with the results!

Inspirational Source

This is how I always compose. I didn't know this is how I compose the day before I started composing but it was my natural way when it did happen and that's always important to identify. I don't fully adhere to theoretical standards but I don't allow myself to get too lost as in trial and error. I don't have perfect pitch so I don't know what key the melody and chords are in that I'm hearing but when I get to my piano, this becomes established very quickly (as demonstrated towards the end of my video).

My first composition was this one - Budapest Theme Part 1 - the melody for which, along with what were probably the right chords which I knew thanks to having an emotional connection to chord types (video on that here), I could hear while walking along the Danube each evening. In fact, this was the reason I had to get a piano (the one you see in my videos) - I had all these melodies pouring into my head and I had to get them out (as well as being inspired by Liszt and wanting to work on technical exercises with my eyes closed!)

So it's about listening from a quiet mind to what your inspirational source throws at you. You don't seek the melody, it arrives. You don't decide which chords go with that melody, you just feel how the melody makes you feel and know which chord type that is (thanks to watching the video provided previously) and then once at the piano, you refine the melody, find your natural fingering and experience for real what was only in your mind.

Sometimes, I need to use the trial and error (5%) or theoretical (15%) approaches because my inspirational source is unable to feed me the entire song but that's fine, I still make sure I like the result and be happy that it fits with what I already have.

I hope that this article inspires you to give composing a go and to spend a little less time doing technical exercises and playing repertoire you already know! You'll love the feeling of composing, I assure you!

Oh, and you may enjoy this video!

Play Along with Chords

2022-06-05T13:39:00.003+02:00

Let's do all the keys!

Your chord-type mastery and ability to play them comfortably and instantly in all twelve keys is one of my ambitions. If you neglect this practice, you are only making your own journey more difficult: you will hesitate more, you will struggle to remember progressions, improvising will be impossible and your general key mastery and fingers-on-keys time will all be jeopardised.

My remedy to this mountain you must peak is to give you the opportunity, four chords at a time (per video), to play them along with me slowly, until you can do them yourself more quickly. To date, there are two videos but I will add one or two more including even more chords (even jazz extensions - and this article will be updated at the time). In the videos, I give you the template of the four chords to be mastered before playing them through all keys, moving chromatically to the next key and giving each chord two beats. You are naturally encouraged to pause the video when required to verify the shape. I further propose to play them with your eyes closed and go straight into doing it with both hands since both hands play chords, not only the left!

Water Pianism Syllabus Overview Document
(auto PDF download)

Video 1 provides you with the four primary chord types, which means the only 4 possible variations of 1357 in which the 3rd and 7th are altered, giving: M7 (1 3 5 7), dominant 7 (1 3 5 b7), m7 (1 b3 5 b7) and mM7 (1 b3 5 7), this last being the least common but still needing to be understood.

The second video gives you the next (but not last!) four in-octave chords: 6th (1 3 5 6), m6 (1 b3 5 6), whole diminished (1 b3 b5 6) and half-diminished, also known or written as m7b5 (1 b3 b5 b7). The more you play along, the more you'll get familiar with the tiny finger movements required. I have ordered them in such a way as to limit multiple finger movements to enhance precision.

To find more videos relating to chord-based exercises in which to use or further refine your new chord mastery, see this playlist. It currently contains 152 videos (!) ranging from simple chord games to jazz repertoire application and improvisation or composition games so I hope you'll enjoy looking through it.

A similar playlist which takes you through very important fundamentals step by step is my Absolute Major Scale Mastery Playlist, the first video of which is provided here:

Good luck!

Channel Deep-Clean & Updates

2022-05-24T13:26:00.006+02:00

Out with the old...

Over the course of a week, for around 6-8 hours each day, I started on a clean-up project to help my YouTube statistics in terms of views, watch time and viewer retention. After studying many videos and articles on this topic, I decided it was time to start doing some cleaning up for my benefit and that of my viewers (subscribers or new).

Looking at the (very, very detailed) analytics that YouTube provides, I wanted to find the most viewed videos to date but only for videos published since the beginning of the channel (June, 2014) until Dec 31, 2020; to see what aged well from that time to now (mid 2022). I was disappointed to see that most of those videos were from 2014-17, when my recording quality (video or audio) were not the best and when people didn't mind watching longer videos, which is much less the case these days. Almost all didn't have timestamps either, since you couldn't add them until around 2018+.

Starting from the least viewed and working up the list, I checked and chose videos which were not worth keeping, mainly to stop YouTube from promoting them, or because they were just awful, or I had made an updated version already, etc. I started making one written list so I could note the deleted ones that I would want to remake in 2022 but as I got higher up the list, I started to realise that some of them were not too bad and were worth pushing again (especially if made from 2018 onwards). Good views, not bad audio/sound and a useful topic - not to mention not too long (sometimes) and with timestamps (sometimes).

This resulted in a new (longer) list which I quickly realised I could make into a new playlist which, after a poll asking for its title, is known as: In Case You Missed It... - it ended up containing 90 videos, recorded pre-Dec 29, 2020 which are good enough to be pushed again so do please, please have a little browse through it. It contains a mix of topics but you can simply choose what is of interest to you. Order the videos by most recently published, for obvious quality reasons.

As I started to add videos to this new playlist, I realised the pinned comment under each video that everyone sees, cards within the videos which direct to other videos... and end-screen videos (always three, plus my online shop) were out of date! They showed old videos or even ones I'd deleted or was to delete as I came to them so this forced me to set up a procedure in which I fixed the new description text to include much more modern links, to promote my Water Pianism Syllabus and online shop, as well as corrected links for social media. I also deleted from this text links to dead or redundant videos or playlists.

What I ended up doing, therefore, was updating every video, which was allowed to stay, in the following way:

- Fixing the description text by copy/pasting the new text;

- Fixing the end-screen videos to be more up-to-date and promote playlists rather than individual videos;

- Deleting the previous and adding the new pinned comment I'd carefully and thoughtfully composed;

- Sometimes, I shortened a title too.

Of course, I got to the point where I realised that there were a LOT of videos after Dec 31, 2020 and that I'd have to update the description box, pinned comment, in-video cards and end-screen videos of all those, too! So instead of doing it one by one, I did it in sections of customised periods of 4 months for only the most viewed videos first, since I could see they were still being viewed relatively often. Eventually, after a few days, all videos to date were uploaded, including those in the Ten Mins @ the Piano Playlist, the Absolute Major Scale Mastery Playlist and the Short & to the Point Playlist.

I also deleted some redundant playlists and updated the description text of each one to encourage people to order the videos by 'most recently published', so the more modern videos show first.

The result of all this is a much better experience for the visitor because now only better quality videos are seen and any links from them go to modern playlists or newer videos, as well as to my products, blog and Video Management Website. I can now sleep better at night in this knowledge.

I also spent some time studying which themes and topics are most viewed and it is very clearly the following three:

- Chord stuff (jazz, games, philosophical, inversions);

- Novelty ideas (what do I do when I'm bored, using one hand only, how I got to where I am, etc.);

- Jazz, Blues and Ragtime techniques.

However, the lowest-performing videos, surprisingly and disappointingly, and this is undeniable data across the whole lifetime of the channel, are:

- Performance-only videos (diabolical viewership);

- Jazz repertoire tutorials (nobody wants to learn new pieces, it seems);

- Compositions (mine or doing your own);

- General piano theory (dynamics, pedal control, rhythm help);

- Classical piano (Liszt/Chopin) tutorials;

- Podcast-based videos.

There are a few exceptions but this is the general consensus so, going forward, expect a lot more videos with chord and jazz content (but not necessarily repertoire tutorials, although I may use part of or all a song to demonstrate an idea but I won't make the video about learning the particular song), as well as some miscellaneous, novelty stuff such as challenges, more personal stuff about my journey and favourite things, along with anything which seems 'quirky' or unique and interesting to catch your attention.

I will, however, always react to subscriber requests if I think I can make them into my style and if they will or can be made to benefit a slightly wider audience than just the requestee!

To close, I'd like to push my Water Pianism Syllabus and my Water Pianism Podcast Collection which is only £15 for 12 hours of content over 30 episodes! Patreon support is also most appreciated to make up for the humiliating YouTube income (which I am trying to remedy by doing stuff like what I've just written about).

Thank you for your ongoing support in my efforts. I hope you'll enjoy all future content I put out!

Water Pianism Syllabus

2022-04-27T14:11:00.001+02:00

Are you in...?

For the price of only two or three regular piano lessons, you are giving yourself access to a (piano) life-changing opportunity: not just a destinationless journey of Mind, Body and Piano mastery but a personalised learning curve which will provide you with everything You need to go beyond what you would otherwise dare to believe possible from yourself. Your path is unique. Your learning method and speed of acquisition of skills and knowledge is unique. Your musical personality is unique. No book has ever been, nor ever will be written just for You.

This is where my Water Pianism Syllabus comes in.

For more precise information on the topics and philosophies involved, I invite you to read the updated, five-page Syllabus Overview Document.

Included in the one-off price is: the complete syllabus, a free copy of Water Pianism – The Guide (eBook, available separately if you'd like to read it without the syllabus), primarily because you will be asked to share your interpretation and understanding of its content as part of the introductory process, just so that we're both on the same page, so to speak. Also included is a one-off, no time-limit audio call consultation with me, danthecomposer, during which we discuss your past, present and future piano life, your personalised wants and needs, as well as your minimum expectations (which we shall surpass). Feel free to share progress reports or ask questions as part of your progress.

You will not be alone on your journey.

It is $100 for all that is outlined above, which is reduced to $80 if you choose to register on my Video Management Website which is a great way to navigate through my large and ever-growing video bank. You can make this purchase directly via PayPal (correct email address provided when you write to me expressing your desire to go ahead with the syllabus at: danthecomposer@gmail.com - it's a different address for PayPal so don't send any money to this one!)

It will take anywhere from six to eighteen months to fully master the syllabus, during which you are of course encouraged to work on some personalised repertoire, listen to a lot of music and do some extra relevant studying at your leisure.

The syllabus, demanding as it may be, does not at all take the fun out of music; it renders your learning and performance of enjoyed repertoire sublime… if you are consistent in your efforts! I think that you will be because the syllabus is all about You and Your needs, not what anybody thinks you should be doing their way!

Here’s to self-mastery at and away from the piano and I hope to welcome you as a Water Pianist soon!

I'll be waiting: danthecomposer@gmail.com

By the way, have you see this playlist yet? And did you know I have a Patreon support option too?

Keep Those Fingers Movin'!

2022-04-17T14:54:00.004+02:00

My favourite exercises...

Sometimes, you need to spend time away from repertoire to work on finger independence and precision, not to mention their rapidity and comfort in various pairs and keys. Consider a sportsperson: they only perform for maybe 10-20% of their career; the rest is training, with that training not always and only doing exactly what the performance requires but efforts towards a calmer mind, a stronger, healthier body and techniques which provide general overall enhancement during training and important performances.

It's very much similar to how, in the now infamous Karate Kid film scene, Daniel is ordered to perform a "wax on, wax off" movement: he may be polishing a car, which is not a fight at all but the inherent experience of 'relevant arm time' aids in the actual performance need of 'blocking punches'.

This philosophy of 'not doing 'the thing' in order to master 'the thing'' is foundational to my Water Pianism philosophy. For a pianist, this means not only playing the repertoire to get better at the repertoire but mastering its subcomponents in order to enjoy executing pieces with greater precision and fluency. One never learns a piece by staring at the score and repeating it, just as much as one never acquires rapidity by only trying to play quickly. You must understand these unorthodox concepts if you hope to make any significant, personalised progress.

It is for these reasons that I have many technical exercise videos which should not be received as 'boring' but as 'necessary to being able to play anything I want'. You have no hope in acquiring Classical repertoire or improvising fancy Jazz lines if all you do is struggle through a score bar by bar without enhancing finger independence and precision or keep learning jazz theory and scales in an isolated fashion - you'll probably give up because your fingers can't do what is necessary and incorrectly think you're not good enough.

Herein, I present three of my favourite finger independence exercises which I propose you start doing properly, seriously and to a very fluent, comfortable level, with your eyes closed as much as possible. I also recommend doing some physical warm-ups first, every day, as I demonstrate in this video.

This first video includes many demonstrations of the things I personally used to do as part of my 'wax on, wax off' training. It includes, amongst other things: third pairs, octaves, chromatic triplets and black note-only stuff. I hope this video becomes a go-to video for you and that you will further personalise what I present to your own hands and needs.

This was a fun video to do because it shows what I would do naturally. I chose three technical exercises from Liszt's technical exercises book (free here) and altered them to my own version. The point is that any exercises you find online in a video or in a book can be personalised; it's a very important way not to get too bored with them! Often, you might add a rhythm, do it over less (or more) octaves, in a different key, use different fingering than proposed, etc. I actually just took the 'shape' of one of them and made it into my own exercise idea.

This final video is a really beneficial collection, primarily because it's the best technical exercises as proposed in my Water Pianism Syllabus, category i. No matter your path, these are the ones you really should get down. The principle is that you need to have each finger as flexible and precise as every other one! Also, don't get caught in the trap of using 'correct fingering' since fingering is always personalised when playing but forcing yourself to be able to play anything with unusual fingering is of great benefit since you give your brain the ability to use any finger, anywhere, anyhow.. and that's a nice feeling to have! Don't let anybody tell you how to Play You.

Finally, as a bonus video, here is a really useful and of course personalisable chord mastery video which also gives your fingers a good workout:

How to Boogie-Woogie

2022-04-12T18:03:00.000+02:00

Three videos to help...

Boogie-Woogie piano requires mastery of and much time spent with the following four core aspects at the piano. Without them, no or very little progress will be made which may result in you giving up, which would be a great shame! However, as this article will discuss, there's a few things to do away from the piano as well.

At the piano, you'll focus on the following which are presented in videos below:

1. Left hand techniques;

2. Right hand riffs;

3. Hand co-ordination;

4. Steadiness in execution/rhythmic feel.

The first is discussed in the following video and includes many demonstrations:

The second is discussed in the following video which also includes demonstrations combining the left hand techniques from above:

The third is provided in this video for which I composed a little piece which goes around the the 12 bar blues twice and provides a nice mix of the previous videos. It relies on and encourages hand independence and your sense of rhythm, as mentioned in the list above:

Away from the piano efforts are strongly encouraged no matter your path because if you can't do or don't know something in your mind, you'll encounter great struggles at the piano, thinking that you're not advanced enough when often this is not the reason; it's because your mind isn't ready, only your fingers... which isn't enough!

Before you embark on your Boogie-Woogie journey, you need to be aware of the landscape which means you need to listen to a variety of performances; and not only piano ones! After all, blues started by singing then moved to guitar before it started to spread to other instruments and places. I propose reading this link to learn about where Boogie-Woogie came from as a piano style as your first away-from-the-piano step.

The following recording is considered one of, if not the first full recording of Boogie-Woogie as we know it. Try to focus only on the left hand and then on the second listen, note the repetitive patterns he uses in the right hand (one of the things I discuss in the second video above). I'd propose that you go and try to mimic what he is doing, once you've identified the key (hint: G).

This is how you get good quickly at Boogie-Woogie (or any genre): listen to what has been done before, especially during its early life.

Eventually, you'll discover names such as Pinetop Smith, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, albums and tracks of whom I strongly suggest you internalise but do please discover and listen to others. Here is a good starting point:

By listening so much, you will become familiar with a wider range of left hand patterns, right hand riffs and a few do's and don't's. The 12 bar blues will also start to cement itself in your feeling, since you must get to the point of 'just knowing' where you are as you progress through a 12 bar blues structure. The chord types help, as some practice will demonstrate. You will also develop a sense of rhythm and hopefully tap your foot along quite a lot!

Combine all of this away-from-the-piano effort with my three videos above and you'll be a a rare knowledgeable, well-drenched Boogie-Woogie player in no time!

Favourite 2021 Videos

2021-12-26T17:01:00.056+01:00

Wonder How I Do This?

2021-10-11T18:10:00.002+02:00

Two videos show you how...

You could buy an arrangement of this famous song and play how the arranger wants you to play; or you could find the melody by ear, recognise the chord progression by ear (and maybe a bit of trial and error at the piano, perhaps) and then play it how You want: embellishing the melody, choosing your own nicer chords and even improvising over the changes like a jazz tune.

Part 1 below shows you how I find the melody by ear and orientate myself in a key (C, for ease of viewership), while also playing chords which seem to be logical or which are obviously correct. This is all only possible, with any repertoire, once the song is on your internal jukebox. After all, if you don't know it in your mind, you can't hope to play it at the piano!

Identify the melody 'within the scale'; in other words, see where it 'hangs out'. ISL hangs out around 12345 of the master key, so that's useful information when wanting to transpose for whatever reason. Know that most chords follow the 251 up a fourth logic and guess what: this song is no different! It starts on the 6th (like many jazz songs), and goes... and goes... oh, what a surprise: 6 2 5 1 ... up a fourth! It then does a floating 51 onto the 6th (A in the key of C, so E to Am) with the 5 being an augmented (nice 5>1 chord type). The 5 back to the 1 of the main song is done via a sus4... also nice.

Once you know the melody and chords, you can sra

Here's the video in full:

When and only when you have mastered the melody and chord progression (especially away from the piano), you can abandon the melody and improvise. Part 2 below details how to do that but for a little overview:

Improvisation must begin simultaneously from three points: theoretical (so you know which notes will work and why), rhythmically (so it feels good, even if you know what notes to play) and in a personalised way (meaning, don't copy what someone else did or tells you to do... see what comes naturally through your fingers from your inspirational source).

A nice way to start is by playing only one note over all the changes. Each time the chord changes, the value of the note will change. C, for example, is the minor of A, the b7 of D, the sus4 of G and the root of C. Playing it rhythmically makes it much more interesting than just bom bom bom bom on the first beat. Then, add another... and another, until you start to make little melodic ideas using, at first, notes of the chord. Then you might land on or start from 'notes of interest' (9, 13, b5, etc).

So as you see, there is theory but at the end of the day, you must play You, even if what you feel does go through a 'theory filter'.

Here's the video in full:

My Water Pianism Podcast Collection is 33% off for the remainder of October, 2021. Visit here, enter the minimum price then the discount code: october - if you'd like to support me as benefit from 12 hours of brain-cleaning wisdom, theory and ideas!

Miniseries Tutorials

2021-09-15T21:18:00.001+02:00

Bite-sized repertoire

An interesting shift in the content of my channel has recently taken place. I've come to understand that subscribers like me to take a song and play it over 3-4 videos, each video focusing on only one element. I am therefore making such videos in between regular technical and philosophical content.

These videos will benefit you because I don't just give you the melody, chords and performance tips but encourage you to find your own style, visualise everything away from the piano and to experiment with different rhythms, as well as enhancing your playing in general. Of course, whatever you learn in one song's miniseries, you can apply to all other jazz repertoire!

Here is part one of Fly Me to the Moon, giving you the melody:

Here is the video for the chords to it. Note that learning jazz repertoire is about putting collections of common chords together, not having to remember every chord individually:

Here is the third video in which I give some enhancements for the left hand chords and right hand melody:

Part 4 specialises on intros and outros because it's quite boring to play a song immediately from the first melody note:

To date, I have also done three videos on the infamous Misty. If you follow all three, you'll never play it the same as anyone else ever again!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Requests are welcome. At the moment, Emily is next... but I'll also do some classical and contemporary things, too. I also hope you're enjoying the new thumbnails!

To close, here is a nice little video on playing melodies using the major scale notes alongside the chromatic chords of the same key.

Enjoy!

My Favourite Videos of Late

2021-07-06T14:36:00.003+02:00

Jazz? Liszt? Techniques?

I think I'll have to make these kinds of posts quite often because YouTube is hideous when it comes to notifying subscribers. Do remember my Video Management Website which you can join and use for free. There, all videos are available in special playlists, plus you can make your own in your own Watchlist. It also has links to my recent blog articles and online e-shop.

Recently, I've been responding to subscriber requests ranging from Barry Harris' Jazz 6/dim theory scale to becoming a virtuoso with specific technical exercises, with some other stuff throw in between. No matter what your piano journey, you'd do well to spend time in all my videos because I make sure to 'generalise' the content and encourage viewers to personalise whatever I propose. So even if you're not interested in learning a Liszt piece, the process of mastering 'a score' away from the piano is the take-away, no matter who the composer was, or even if you don't want to become a virtuoso, do the exercises but much more slowly for a little workout. It's all for your benefit, after all.

I'll begin with this video on refining dynamics:

It's quite boring and shows a lack of finger control if every note that you play is the same volume. This video hopes to correct this monotony by giving you some exercises using simple chords and scales (personalise, as always!) to let you experience how it feels to play certain notes louder than others, across both hands and all ten fingers. I explain that you are to identify the loudest and softest volumes you can play, settle in the middle and get used to modifying up and down from that point. I demonstrate using Liebestraum which you may enjoy.

Next, I propose a chord-duo idea:

Chord games are always a great opportunity to discover and try out new chords; it's a bit boring only and always using major and minor triads or only the b7 chord. The idea is to pick any key, choose two degrees of the major scale (because you'll transpose the idea later), then two chord types. You are to play them in as many ways as possible by alternating between them - I give many demos of this. Once you're satisfied in that key, take the same major scale degrees and chord types, choose a new key and repeat! Very good idea for major scale reinforcement too, which is paramount above all else.

Why not learn a Liszt piece?

As I said in the intro text, it's not about wanting to leant this piece, it's understanding the importance and benefits of learning the score in your mind (which means mastering it, fully, every 4-12 bars or so via your internal piano visualisation) and then going to the piano without the score in sight... because you know it already! This is about reducing conscious interference and just playing without distraction. If you can keep this up, you'll learn a whole song very quickly and never need to look at the score. You'll also know it fully which is very satisfying. Of course, the piece needs to be on your internal jukebox first because: if you can't play it in your mind, you can't possibly hope to play it at the piano. Next parts are linked in the comments.

This beautiful symmetrical concept is worth your time:

Barry Harris' discovered that if you play a major scale but throw in a b6 too, you get two chord types: the 6th (1 3 5 6) and the whole diminished (2 4 b6 7). They use all the notes of the b6 scale. Once you see these two chords interlocked, you can play the inversions of the chords separately (1 3 5 6 / 3 5 6 1 / 5 6 1 3 / 6 1 3 6) / (1 4 b5 7 / 4 b5 7 2 / b5 7 2 4 / 7 2 4 b6). Then, you can jump around between them... in any key! Certainly something to understand because not only can you enhance your jazz sound, it's just even more major scale mastery and fingers-on-keys-playing-sweet-chords time!

Finally, I propose a collection of 10 virtuoso techniques:

Don't be scare by the word rapidity or virtuoso. These techniques are more about eyes-closed precision and endurance than being able to play them super fast. The fast bit only comes in if you want to see how high you can chase the metronome! It's satisfying when you can do these quickly with your eyes closed, not just because of the speed but the lack of conscious interference, finger control and precision. A very recommended set!

Hopefully you're subscribed to my channel with notifications on. This helps out both of us!

Play Something, Anything!

2021-05-30T19:59:00.003+02:00

Three videos for beginners...

Sometimes you want to have some time away from technical exercises or trying to learn theory, so I made three short videos for you to help you do just that. Below, find each video with a brief overview and explanation of each video's content in order to encourage you to watch it and motivate you to try out what I provide. Nothing is overwhelming. Each video provides a new left hand idea and the right hand only focuses on the first five notes of the major scale so just five fingers in one position. That's not too overwhelming, is it?

Water Pianism eShop

Whatever repertoire you play, the left hand will 100% include one of the left hand patters/techniques provided in one of these three videos, so feel free to watch them in any order. This first video introduces two important ideas for the left hand: the bass note/chord 'stride' technique combined with playing a basic triad in root position and then first inversion.

Try this in different keys using major and minor triads, or any other chords you may know or wish to become familiar with. Try to aim for steadiness in execution, fluidity and precision. Begin slowly at your natural limit - do not rush. Whilst the left hand is doing its thing, the right hand plays 12345 from the same key as that which the chord is in. Note that you can choose to count to 3 or 4 and that this will be symmetrical with the right hand going 123454321 or put it out of sync, which makes for a great brain-breaking game!

The right hand is as part 1 above but the left hand here is playing a broken chord: 1 5 8 3 (in the next octave), causing your index finger to reach over to play that 3. This causes you to count to 6 because you'll descend after playing that 3: 1 5 8 3 8 5 ... repeat. This time, feel a bit freer to play the 12345 in the right hand no so metronomically and in sync with the left hand pattern, even if by one note's hesitation.

This final video gives you a nice, useful technique but also a good finger workout and a bit of a brain-breaking exercise when you introduce the right hand. It's called Alberti bass (after the guy who used it a lot) but is very common in a lot of modern music, not to mention a nice accompaniment for basic compositions. You play 1 5 3 5 and repeat. You can also play 1 3 5 1 3 5, etc. See which one is easier and practise the other one!

Oh, and you may find this video useful on dynamics to apply to either the videos above or your own repertoire or favourite exercises.

Enjoy!

Striking a Chord with You

2021-05-12T16:05:00.002+02:00

This needs more views...

I push major scale mastery enough. I push technical exercises enough. I put internal piano mastery enough. I realised recently that a lot of people have been asking for chord content so I've done quite a lot of videos involving chords (easy and more complex). I then looked at my Chord Type and Progression Content playlist and was both surprised and disappointed. First, because I have put over 110 videos in this dedicated playlist so far and secondly, because not even 2,000 people have seen it!

I am therefore writing this article, for your benefit, to promote it by sharing some of my favourite videos from it and why you would do well to at least start with them. I trust you will then go through the playlist in your own time as a priority and try out some of the ideas and then be very pleased at the rapid progress, in various ways, you will begin to experience.

Chords are not only used as a left hand accompaniment; the right hand also plays chords and often, melodies are based heavily on their notes (which makes melody memorisation a lot easier). Although there are a ton of chord types and inversions, then being able to play all those in all 12 keys, you do not need to be put off because all you need to do is learn a few basic templates and apply them to your major scale mastery (this being why MS mastery is paramount) and the chord will magically appear!

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The Water Pianist has mastered the chords in something like the order presented in the danthecomposer piano challenge, which I strongly recommend: 1 3 5 7 (Major 7), 1 3 5 b7 (dominant 7th), 1 b3 5 7 (mM7), 1 b3 5 b7 (minor 7th) - (the four primary chord types), followed by 1 3 5 6 and 1 b3 5 6... (6th and minor 6th), followed by the two diminished chord types: 1 b3 b5 6 and 1 b3 b5 b7 (whole and half-diminished respectively). Then you can add some others if you want, like the sus4 (1 4 5), sus2 (1 2 5), augmented (1 3 #5) and if you wish, some jazz chords like 13th, 9th, #11, etc. but they're a little beyond the scope of this article.

Recommendation #1

This is the primary video which gives you all the templates to every chord type. I also encourage you to develop an 'emotional connection' to each chord type which helps when listening to music and trying to following a chord progression. Being sensitive to chord types even helps with composition! I hear chords in my head and know what they are. I don't have perfect pitch but I can hear the chord progression and types then when I'm at the piano, I find the key I heard them in and I'm away! I recommend trying to hear a chord type, name it and play it to see if you were right or to play one on the the piano (or use an ear training app) and see how well you got it. You can't forget emotions so a half-diminished will always sound/feel like a half-diminished (unsettled, nervous, wanting to resolve) or an augmented will always sound/feel like an augmented (also unsettled but more dominating and leading than the nervous half-diminished). Try it. You'll see what I mean.

Recommendation #2

I like this one because you can use whatever chord types you want and you get both a performance practice (using legato and both hands) and also a finger practice by playing only one note of the chord while the other fingers keep the other chord tones pressed. Both exercises require a bit of brain power but there's no pressure in terms of fancy chords or high tempos; just choose a chord, even a major or minor triad and enjoy using both hands to play the notes across two octaves, even using an octave stretch to play the right hand notes. An enjoyable, stress-free pair of exercises indeed.

Recommendation #3

This one gives you major scale mastery reinforcement, a finger work out and a bit of tempo pressure if you use a metronome. You choose a key, choose a chord type and then using both hands, bounce from the left-most finger through that chord type but only playing the notes of the major scale you have chosen. The video is full of demonstrations of different chord types in different keys. This requires a good level of major scale mastery and finger endurance but is very, very beneficial if done quite often.

Recommendation #4

This may appear to be similar to #3 but it isn't. Yes, your left hand chooses a chord type and bounces or is played chromatically but the main point is how your right and left hands are doing something different with that chord: the left hand is bouncing it while the right hand is playing it staccato over two octaves. It sounds pretty musical, too! This is a little less about major scale mastery than the previous one and more about precision over octaves, combined with hand independence.

So as you can see, there's quite a lot that you can do with chords and many ways you can benefit from them. I always like the expression 'use and abuse' when it comes to technical exercises and theory because it makes you realise that what appears dry and boring can actually be made into fun, often musical-sounding games. So don't just play major scales up and down like a machine and don't just lifelessly play chords; that doesn't motivate anybody. Try to use and abuse them; twist and turn them into games at the piano using various fingerings and rhythms, or use your internal piano to master templates and see if you can develop emotional connections, etc.

All the music you ever want to play or may compose will be require you to have a good level of chord mastery so do give this playlist a bit more consideration and, as always, share your progress in the comments section to inspire others!

Time to Get Real

2021-04-20T21:03:00.005+02:00

Face the facts...

I have over 310 videos on my channel. That means that I have covered pretty much everything, sometimes more than once, that you could ever need to improve and achieve your piano ambitions. I always take requests and do polls to see what people want and need, as well as throwing in some things I am sure people will enjoy. That said, it's a lot of content and sometimes I struggle with new content.

I have two solutions for this: First is my Video Management Website which is free to join and use. Second is my Water Pianism Syllabus. Consider this article a third solution to help you consolidate your learning and focus your attention on your weaknesses instead of getting lost in the ocean of piano content available (on my and other channels).

This article comes with a free PDF document to download and print off and a video demonstrating the content of the document. I'm making this effort to help orientate everybody onto somewhat of a similar page, no matter your path, in terms of major scale mastery and finger independence. Consider it a mini, free version of the syllabus for the casual learner. Below, I explain the concept behind the document and give you some motivational thoughts. The video is below and demos the content in one place to save you jumping around videos.

The Water Pianism philosophy emphasises the power of your mind, especially when it comes to the internal piano for major scale, chord type and chord progression mastery. If you can't see shapes in your mind, you can't possibly play them at the piano. Further to this, you can practise these shapes away from the piano when you don't have time to sit at the piano itself, giving you many more hours a day to literally practise. Of course, on the other side of the coin is your technical ability.

You must understand that impressive technical ability is very easy to achieve; it just takes a different amount of time for different people, so don't compare; everyone's hand and natural abilities/difficulties are different. It's easy to achieve because you only have ten fingers (quicker if less!) and each finger combination has a particular stretch to work up to. All you need to do is get to the point where each finger combination, across both hands, no matter the hand, is as comfortable, fluent, precise, flexible, rapid and dynamically controlled to within 90% of every other finger combination. Maintaining it for some level of endurance is also beneficial.

In other words, you are aiming for rapidity and precision, plus all the other things I just wrote, whether it's your stronger (right, usually) hand thumb and middle finger or your weaker (left, usually) ring and index, irrelevant of the interval being played. With this in mind, whatever you play becomes easier - chord or melody line, either hand - because you've mastered the only thing required to play the piano: finger independence via interval mastery. You can go through all the technical exercise books in the world, learn all the theory and know tons of chord types but at the end of the day, you need to know your weaknesses and bring them up to the standards of your stronger fingers, then carry them all too levels you would never believe you can attain, otherwise your playing suffers from hesitations and missed notes, not to mention the emotional detriment of not feeling good enough.

I'm here to tell you that you can, and will, attain them, if you adhere to my advice and use this document to get real about where you're at and where you could/should be.

In case you missed it earlier, the document is available here. Feel free to print and share as much as you wish.

As you can see, it's simply two pages with a load of boxes, titles and spaces. I am obliged to explain first, however: doing this is not your forever piano life; it's a few weeks or months. It is a lot easier to maintain what you have achieved than to actually achieve it. I rarely do technical exercises but if I do or have to for a video, they come out quickly, precisely and fluently, even if it takes a few minutes of eyes closed refinement to get there. I've done all the hard work towards very refined finger independence and all the others things I wrote earlier and that's why it's easy to maintain. It is of course my sole intention and passion to get you to this level, than highlight my own ability.

So, identify your weaker fingers by experimenting with the proposed technical exercise. It is beneficial for any pianist of any level and of any repertoire preference. Make a note of which fingers ache sooner, tense up quicker, require extreme concentration to make move, etc. These are the ones to focus on. Don't worry, the others won't suddenly dry up! Find your natural limit with a metronome at which you can comfortably, without too much effort, execute the proposed exercise. It may be 1 note per second (60BPM) - that's fine. It's a starting point and everything in nature has a starting point. One cannot pull a seedling to bloom; wisdom is found in the watering and enjoyment of growth.

You will, upon ten or so successful, comfortable and no-conscious-interference repetitions, increase the tempo by 10-15BPM until you can execute at that higher speed which becomes your new natural limit. Very quickly - and I really mean quicker than you expect - you will be at 120 and above, even with your eyes closed (which is very, very strongly recommended). The difficulty you are perceiving to believe is real, is indeed false. Little by little the bird makes her nest. By all means print more for different exercises you'd like to get good at.

Use this opportunity to identify your weaker major scales and take this opportunity to master them. I have a playlist with 12 videos to help you (linked above). Just finally, once and for all, I beg you, learn the bloody things!!! Combine major scale mastery with a variety of technical exercises and of course personalise. Use both hands together as much as possible and vary your fingering. There is no such thing as 'correct fingering' so remove that nonsense from your minds. As a Water Pianist, you are able to play any major scale with any fingering combination. 123/1234 is just one possibility. Why not 12/1234/123/12/123/12/12345? It just doesn't matter.

Use this opportunity to identify chords you know (and I mean really know: the template, using notes of the major scale). It's fair to say you probably know 1 3 5 (major triad) or 1 b3 5 (minor triad). If so, great - play them in all inversions by highlighting the note values. There are no inversions. They don't exist. There is nothing to remember but the base template so play it how you want: b3 5 1 / 5, b3, 1.. it doesn't matter. Add more complex chords if you wish. I have so many videos on chords (109 apparently, at the time of writing). See this playlist to choose one!

Use this opportunity to identify chord progressions you know or should know. 1 4 5 (blues). 1564 (pop). (3)(6)251 (jazz). Play around with variations of these using major and minor triads to see what you like. Don't worry about heavy theory, just get the root movement (bass note) and chord types going in various keys and personalise how you play them.

Once you've gone through all these things, you should be in much better shape to continue your piano adventures by adding repertoire or composing. Your problem is that you're either spending too much time on repertoire and hoping the technique will arrive (it won't) or you're spending too much time on techniques that you can already do and shying away from those you can't, especially avoiding keys you're not comfortable with.

And so, as the title of this article indicates: it's time to get real. So, how you doin'?

Good luck and enjoy!

Missed Content

2021-02-26T14:46:00.005+01:00

Thrice-weekly videos you've missed!

As always, thanks to YouTube's atrocious notification algorithm, I am writing an article with a few favourite videos you may have missed from the last months, in the hope that in your own time, you will also look at my main Videos List and see if anything tickles your fancy. I'm actively posting three times per week so even if you're not notified, you can be sure that checking back will result in some new content for you to enjoy. I always aim for variety.

Following a poll I did a while back, I'm aware that people want technical exercises (sometimes jazz-related) and some tutorials, so that's what I'll highlight here. That said, people also like to see me performing without talking so I'll begin with this video (likes, comments and subscriptions always welcome!) which is me playing a composition I wrote about 9 years ago; it was to celebrate my ten years in Budapest so it had some sentimental value to perform it. All my compositions can be found here.

You may also be happy to know that I am now in the right headspace to recommence the activities of my namesake (danthecomposer), so expect more posts on my Instagram of composition chord progressions and snippets of melodies as teasers! Follows welcome.

Now that you've hopefully enjoyed that little ditty, here is a selection of my favourite videos that I think you will find most useful, and why...

1. How Do I Practise?

Everybody has different needs because they are following Their unique path but tendon stretches, finger independence and personalising various technical exercises, finding new chords, etc. is important to everybody. In this video, I share, with a voice-over (first time! I liked it; others, too!) what I do pretty much every day. It includes finger alternations with an emphasis on endurance, chromatic ideas and octave stuff. I also like playing around with chord types, arpeggios and all 12 keys. I do 90% of my daily stuff with eyes closed or at least not looking at the keys. You are strongly encouraged to do that, too. Whatever you do, refine your daily work-out regime and really, do it daily.

2. A Stream of Improvisation

Many subscribers want to be able to improvise; not necessarily at the top level of jazz but just mess around with melodies over the top of random/written chords. Improvisation is best approach as described in this video: use notes of the chord at hand, then add some chromatic connections between those. Doing this without stopping is a nice challenge and that's the point herein: it forces you to watch your fingers play what they want to play, how and where they want to play, without being too distracted by theory. Just 4 notes (from the chord) with some chromatic connections. If you want, add notes of interest like the b5 (for some blues) and the more advanced extensions of 9, 11 and 13 (and even alterations thereof, if you dare!)

3. Snapping Out of It

There were two reasons behind this video: not only did I want to share the exercises but the philosophy behind it was to highlight how much progress you can make in minutes, even if you think such exercises take weeks or months to master. No. Minutes! (Or hours at the longest). The idea is that by repeating at a speed you can do it, you can experience what it means to 'become a spectator': you watch your fingers doing what they're doing and your mind's eye can switch concentration from one hand to the other without interfering with what's going on. The more you get used to this, the better your fluency will be, not to mention feeling good that you can do something... just increase the tempo by 10-20bpm when you get comfortable. It's truly minutes and hours, not at all months and years!

4. Bouncing Chords Through Keys

This is probably one of my favourite exercises, for all levels, especially since it can be personalised for any scale and any chord types and the chords can be played in various ways as you see fit to your abilities or path. The idea reinforces major scale mastery (!!!), chord types in new keys, precision, internal piano (because you do it eyes closed), fluency, timing, endurance, thinking ahead... it's just brilliant, quite frankly. Of course you can do it with just one hand but both together is best since then you get both hands used to playing chords which is very important no matter what genres you like.

- - -

I have a feeling, and this is not said negatively, that my channel is going to become a kind of technical exercise database, focusing scales, fingering, chords, progressions and some philosophies. I am totally fine with that but it does seem that my least viewed videos are tutorials. I guess it's because people don't want to learn the song I'm sharing. The problem is that it's not about the song, it's about the philosophies and methods used in learning the song. I often talk about other theory, or listening exercises, or methods for mastering melodies... and so many miss these teachings because they think they're to learn the song. If anybody reads this and avoids my song tutorials for this reason, do please reconsider. All my tutorials can be found in this Sorted Songs Analyses playlist.

Here is a beautiful song, East of the Sun, West of the Moon, in which I share many useful tips, yet it is terribly underviewed (which means YouTube doesn't promote it rather than people don't want to see it, I suppose). Timestamps are always available, despite length.

Finally, don't forget about my free to join and use Video Management Website, on which you can create your own playlists by adding and removing any video from YouTube (via the site itself) and see videos in Themes made by myself for your benefit. More features are coming; we're just seeing how people interact with the website in its first incarnation and noting feedback. If you join it, you also get 20% off my Water Pianism Syllabus, which you can read about in detail, with a free PDF, here.

Enjoy!

The Joy of Consistency

2020-11-18T12:02:00.012+01:00

Please, please stay focused.

Disclaimer: This article is going to be hard-hitting and for good reason: I want you to make progress towards achieving your piano ambitions without any ego interference but for that to happen, some heavy reminders and forceful motivation is required; a few reality checks, if you will. So allow me to begin with the most important question of all: Do you really want to get good at playing the piano or are you just messing around with a passive interest which will go nowhere beyond three chords on the white notes and playing with three rigid fingers?

There are so, so many people who would like to learn the piano; I see that from my own YouTube channel, others, viewers of this blogs, emails, comments, forums, etc. yet regrettably, many either want to be spoonfed the notes and fingering positions, not learn basic relevant theory and/or don't waste a minute a day on necessary-to-them technical exercises... or if they do, they do them half-heartedly.

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No matter what music you'd like to play or compose on the pano, you must know your major scales. You don't need to worry about playing them super fast, just know the shapes. Every chord, every melody, every other scale, every chord progression is based on the major scale or a slight variation thereof. Knowing the major scales helps with orientation in a piece, memorisation of melody and chord progression, makes transposing easy (if you want or need to do that) and can be used to execute a huge variety of technical exercises to help with precision, dexterity and hand independence. You must be consistent until you no longer require that consistency; you then move on to the next thing requiring consistency, ad nauseum. It may be the major and minor chord shapes, playing arpeggios, playing left hand stride, learning chord extensions, etc.

You must be consistent or don't bother starting out in the first place because you'll only get frustrated and think you're not good enough, which is not true.

Consistency is made easier when you're working on things you truly enjoy so you must have spent some time recognising your musical personality and identifying theory and technical holes which apply to your path: Do you like Chopin? Great, so you need to learn how to read music. Not straight off the page like Liszt but away from the piano; just learn what the notes are and a few dynamic markings. It's not difficult. A little consistency is all you need. Want to play jazz? Great, so you need to master timing, rootless extension voicings and modal theory (at least). Listen a lot, learn the theory and enjoy your major scale mastery as you become more and more familiar with chord shapes and common progressions. Just. Be. Consistent! Or don't bother.

Perhaps you're one of those players/students who repetitively plays what you can already play? This is stagnation. If you're not prepared to make even the tiniest efforts to improve, take the money by selling your keyboard. Consistency is such a huge word but is achieved through tiny steps. There is no need to feel overwhelmed by the word. One major scale a day. One chord type in all twelve keys for the next three days. Internal manuscript sight-reading practice for ten minutes twice a day. Score analysis for five minutes while you're drinking tea. These tiny moments will accumulate and you will notice improvements and improvements are motivating.

It may seem as if I never had consistency issues in my life, piano or not. Well, I did but I have always been programmed to dissect difficulties and master these smaller parts. I naturally enjoy dissection, checklists, babysteps; I find it very motivating to observe progress in myself and others. When mastering French, for example, I used to read my wordlists systematically and filter them every few months to a new wordlist with only the words which hadn't stuck, plus new ones, then repeat, repeat, repeat, for many years. I still do it to this day, albeit with less words now (thanks to consistency!) Card magic is another passion: I was consistent in adding material (techniques/ideas) to three categories in my mind: card(s) selection / theme / revelation. There are so, so many ideas for each, involving one or many cards that even after 16 years, I still realise or read new things which can be added to one of the categories. I often dissect into little notes new things, drill them, practise new techniques I never cared for (colour changes, mainly) but above all, I am consistent. I can discuss many other topics such as diet (low carb/high fat/greens/spices), exercise (Qi Gong, fast walks, plank), etc. but I can assure you that I have been consistent in them to this day.

I guess I'm trying to transmit the joy of consistency. In fact, I had originally titled this article: Consistency or Nothing - but as you will have noticed, I updated it after writing the previous sentence because that's exactly why I wanted to write this article.

I want you to be consistent on Your piano path. I want you to know for certain that your piano ambitions are a lot closer than you think; it really, really isn't so difficult. You only have 10 fingers, two hands, 12 major scales, let's say five or six common chords to learn, three popular chord progressions and two common time signatures, plus a couple of rhythms to portray. At the end of the day, there is a limit to what you can play, contrary to popular belief. You are limited to the above and you don't even need to acquire all of it because Your path is personalised and doesn't need every aspect of pianism.

To conclude: Ask yourself if you really care to play the piano. If yes, which I hope is the answer, get the major scales down. Get some chord templates and progressions down and play them in all keys. Listen a lot to your favourite music more closely than before. Try some finger independence exercises. Test your internal metronome. Visualise often on your internal piano. Sit properly at the piano and don't have bad posture or saggy wrists... and bloom, thanks to your new-found...

Joy of Consistency!

And remeber, you're not alone. I have 300+ videos, growing weekly. Specialised playlists. Regular articles. And...

I'm pleased to announce that a no longer secret website project has been under development for the last few weeks. It's a video management website through which you will be able to manage my videos much more efficiently. Once registered (for free), you'll be able to add videos to your own watchlist and enjoy themes, video of the day and personalised recommendations based on what you have and haven't watched already. All videos are ordered from most recent (since YouTube doesn't like promoting my content) so you can enjoy lots of missed content. There will be an FAQ page, testimonials from those who have benefited from the Water Pianism philosophy and more features coming soon such as commenting (nothing to do with YouTube comments) and more recommended playlists by me, for different paths. I'm also starting work on my Water Pianism syllabus, which will be accessible to registered members too, in a few weeks/months. Please follow my social media (Facebook or Instagram) to be notified of the website's release.

And how is all this happening?

Consistency!

My Recent Poll

2020-10-23T13:14:00.002+02:00

And moving forward...

The poll text, comments and up-to-date results can be seen here but after almost 350 voters, 50+ comments and a few emails, it's very clear to me what subscribers want: short technical exercise videos, a bit of improvisation, less jazz tutorials (which doesn't mean none) and more pop/film music on the piano for demonstration purposes.

Such as this recent example!

None of this means that I will throw away my integrity. I will aways remain philosophical, always promote and mention the Water Pianism phillosophy, always push major scale mastery, always encourage personalisation, never spoonfeed any repertoire and constantly push people to use their minds and internal piano away from the piano. The main changes are simply shorter videos, especially with technical exercises, along with using less jazz repertoire to demonstrate points (theoretical, improvisational, performance styles, etc.)

I am also uploading videos at 4-5 per week so be sure to check back frequently and certainly to press the bell to receive regular notifications. You would also do well to follow me on Instagram because I notify of all new uploads there, sometimes in advance. This will benefit both of us because as you can imagine, it's quite disappointing to make so many videos for 110,000 subscribers and only 1,000 people view them over a week. In fact, it's infuriating because I'm aware of the main reason for why this happens (YouTube's sick algorithm). All I can do is give you all what you want and need, as frequently as possible and hope that you check back more frequently.

In other news, I am in the background working with a very kind gentleman on a new website. The purpose of this website is to put all my videos in special playlists (not only the YouTube ones but others, too) and allow you to register and make your own playlists. The website will also share blog articles and have links to Patreon, compositions, social media, my online shop and offer a daily recommended video, amongst other goodies. It will be ready in November so do watch out for my notification of that and become one of the first to sign up! It's all free, of course.

I already wrote an article on a Water Pianism syllabus but I'm thinking about it now in a bit more detail and I will no doubt start putting something together over the coming weeks and months.

So in the meantime, thank you for your support and please enjoy all the links above! I close with a recet video...

Using Songs

2020-08-15T15:39:00.005+02:00

Blue Moon, and others...

Since my last post on refining the content on my channel, I have posted as promised, using jazz repertoire to demonstrate useful ideas in videos no longer than 15 minutes and since I wouldn't want for you to miss them, I'm rounding them up in this article because I'm sure you'll find useful ideas that you can apply to your journey. Any leadsheets can be found here. And as always, likes, comments and subscriptions always welcome!

Blue Moon is a very easy song to get into your fingers: 16251 and a floating 251. Once you've got the piece down (which I provide), the main point of this video is how using only the master key's blues scale (no matter the key, of course) works over all the related chords thanks to a philosophy known as 'musical context': something that wouldn't sound nice alone, works when it's part of something greater. This also forces you to think about note value awareness: for example, the Eb from the C blues scale is the minor in C, the b9 in D, the b13 in G and the b5 in A... one same note sounds totally different as each chord passes. So have a bit of fun playing one same scale over a chord progression and seeing what sounds you like the most, make a note of them and use them in other repertoire in a similar way.

Ain't Misbehavin' is yet another very easy song to acquire and perfect for left hand accompaniment practice. With the focus being on the LH, don't worry too much about the melody. It starts by giving you the basic stride idea but develops it through octaves, open octaves, timing, etc. The point is, as always, to personalise and do what sounds nice and feels comfotable to You so let my content be a motivation and basic idea to get you going. Using common chord progressions with stride is to kill two birds with one stone, plus many other benefits such as precision, endurance and different key practice.

Embraceable You has a slightly more complex chord progression but nothing you can't handle, I make sure of that. I am able, thanks to the richness and slower tempo of this song to teach you how to play chords as melody or melody as chords and offer two options: put the melody note on top and build down the chord you're currently on to give a richer, thicker, warmer sound to the melody... and/or to make an octave out of the melody and drop the chord in between. You don't need to make this overcomplicated with extensions and multiple notes, just start by putting in the 5th only and then maybe the major/minor third as required, and then both together... and then start adding nicer notes like 9, b13, etc. I also provide general practice ideas away from repertoire to get used to the idea. Lovely sound!

When you have a song down on your internal jukebox, internal piano and can play it quite well, you may want to enhance it. The first and safest way to start improvising is to use notes of the chord you're currently on, ignoring the melody but this is difficult if you can't confidently see the notes of the chord everywhere. In this video, I show you how to see the chord all across the piano and to 'pick off' or 'poke' the notes of that chord. In this way, inversions disappear since all you're seeing are the chord tones required, whatever the chord is. E.g. if the chord is Bb7, you'll only see Bb, D, F, Ab but everywhere, no matter the inversion. You then want to play those notes anywhere, with some attempt at being melodic. This video shows you how. Once you've got the idea down, connect those chord tones by chromatic connections. It looks and sounds great yet behind the scenes, your focus is always on the four chord tones. Clever!

I hope you'll continue to enjoy my newer uploads and check back to my channel should you not get notifications. I now post strictly 3 times/week so you're sure to find new content! Remember I also have 7 special playlists which contain every video on my channel to help you get around.

Sorted Song Analyses

2020-07-20T13:30:00.001+02:00

More than just a song!

I am approaching 300 videos on my channel so obviously playlists are very important to help guide visitors and subscribers through them all. I wrote an article in which I provide the seven newer playlists which contain all of my videos, no matter if they're already in another playlist so I recommend having a look at those too!

That said, I feel that one lonely playlist doesn't get the attention it should. It isn't one of the seven, it is its own playlist that I started many years ago: Sorted Song Analyses. It is ordered from newest first. This article is dedicated to this playlist because its videos contain so much more than just 'learning the song' and I wanted to make you aware of this because you're missing out on lots of content for your own progress!

I use songs as skeletons to apply philosophies, theories and techniques/exercises to. It is rare that I teach a song blandly, unless it was requested as such but even then, I will say specifically that this is a pure tutorial with score, a link to that score and that it's a note-for-note thing but these are very rare and even in such videos, I always try to drop in a philosophy or technical idea or two since spoon-feeding you is not the Water Pianism way.

It is important to understand that a song analysis video doesn't need to involve a song that you want to play; often, most viewers won't learn the song anyway but will learn many other things that I've talked about in other videos but which are now in context in a song. I can talk about 2-5-1 progressions, modal theory in improvisation or finding your natural fingering but when you see those notions in action, it's much more beneficial than dry technical exercise routines.

Often, you learn the most when wandering outside your comfort zone. Just because you don't want to learn a Chopin piece doesn't mean you won't learn a little about sight-reading which will benefit you with your own repertoire; just because you don't want to improvise doesn't mean that All My Tomorrows can't teach you about some useful chord type exercies which will assist you when working out the chords of your own repertoire. This idea applies to your Musical Personality, too: Listen to music you wouldn't normally listen to - look for music you've never even heard of by doing a bit of research into world music...! You are sure to find interesting chords, melodies and instruments which touch you in some way. For example, I discovered that I enjoy, and this may surprise you, the Medieval Lute music of 16-17th Century England! There's nothing complicated in it theoretically but the timbre, cute little melodies and interplay between the lute duo (usually) I find enchanting. It is unimpeding, almost polite. It also brings me a little closer to Shakespeare, which is a huge study area for me but that's by the by.

Here are three favourite videos from that playlist which I think will prove interesting and beneficial for you based on their hidden/sub-context ideas but of course, spend more time with it in your own time:

1. Ballad of the Sad Young Men

This tutorial not only teaches you the song but shares my progress/shows the results of getting a very unusual, complex song onto my internal jukebox over a few days, learning about its history and composer and listening to different versions to see how it has been interpreted (every version is totally, incomparably different, which is very telling). This enabled me to reinforce the structure and gave me the freedom to play it however I wanted without fear of rebuke from purists... because there isn't really a definitive version. This is something useful to do for any repertoire. So, you see? Before you even opened the video, you learnt some important wisdom!

Further, this piece is a perfect example in 'looking ahead'. It doesn't follow expected chord progressions and the structure isn't clear so it's best to get it totally on your internal piano before even going near the actual piano. When at it, observe your mind knowing the next chord way before your hands play it; it's like a bright torch pointing ahead of you and the lower you point it, the less you can see so the more hesitant you walk (less fluency).

2. Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)

Once you've got a song down (you know the melody and chord progression numerically), it's not enough to keep playing it the same way; that's boring and doesn't challenge you or get your creative juices flowing. Repetition is key! As I demonstrate herein, go over sections many, many times and do something different each time: change the tempo, key or fingering; enhance the chords, improvise or play in different registers (areas) of the piano. Why not use octaves in the right hand and apply a walking bass in the left instead of stride? Mix it up and try new things.

This is a very good way to discover new techniques and apply them in context: to the song. In this video, I also drop quite a lot of chord theory so you can practise new chords, too!

3. My Way

What would an article be without danthecomposer telling you to Play You! I used, cleverly if I may say so myself, My Way to give you inspiration to play Your way! A score, especially in jazz and pop repertoire, is for guidance only. It doesn't tell you how to play the chords or where to play the melody, even what fingers to use; it's all down to you so don't look for answers in this respect. Being a Water Pianist is very much about identifying Your nature and natural style so what better way to find it than using a new song and seeing what your Mind does with it in terms of interpretation and how your Body handles it in terms of fingering and technique!?

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In conclusion:

- Spend a little more of your time enjoying these tutorials not for the songs themselves but the lessons contained behind the song.

- Don't be afraid to discover your musical personality and natural tendencies; there's no need to compare with anyone else since not one musician is alike.

- Find lessons and discover new things outside your musical comfort zone.

- Become best friends with your internal piano and internal jukebox

and

- Don't forget to subscribe to my channel!

Oh, and you may enjoy this much -requested video.

Major Scale Tennis

2020-07-08T14:32:00.010+02:00

How long can you last?

It goes without saying that major scale mastery is absolutely paramount to the Water Pianist and it is for this reason that a lot of my content is geared towards or based on major scales, or references them distantly, so before we get into this article, be sure to go through the following videos to get you up to speed on major scales so that you can join me on court and play some major scale tennis (MST) in my special free podcast episode.

Useful links:

Absolute Major Scale Mastery Playlist

Three Major Scale Mastery Ideas

Major Scale Improvisation & Orientation

Major scale mastery does not mean that you can play them super fast; it refers to your ability to know the shapes immediately in your mind, to see the seven notes simultaneously and know each notes' value in the scale. It is also not about memorisation, only visualisation.

You may also find this article useful on the benefits of knowing the major scales.

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The purpose of the game is to prove to yourself that you can instantly switch between major scales and acknowledge note values. Being sure of this fact is very, very encouraging and will help you so much when learning new pieces, improvising, composing, finding chords, playing inversions, mastering progressions, etc, etc, etc. So by way of assisting you, I'm sharing this game I put together a few years back called MST which is best done with someone who can correct you and perhaps think a little quicker than you but it's also possible when someone just says numbers and you trust yourself or check yourself. It is obviously an away-from-the-piano mastery which then comes in handy when at the piano, especially for finding chords and being orientated all the time - a very important mindset to have.

It has a few versions and can be personalised to your needs, which I'll explain in a moment. You can even play it with yourself. The basic version goes like this:

Starting on C, someone/you/in my podcast says a number between 1 and 7, representing the notes of the major scale, with 1 obviously being the root. Let's say 5. You must as quickly as possible see the 5th of C major and say G. The fun part is that now, G is the new master key so you need to reorientate quickly, especially if you're playing a quicker version of the game (2 seconds per note instead of 5). The next number could be 3. This is B (because G is the new master key). Now, B is the new master key. Number? 7. A#. Now, I did this on purpose because: sometimes, the answer will be a # which is rarely used or a theoretical key for the next answer, such as A#. For these, invert it to Bb and that becomes the new key. The point is, you knew the correct answer and it's not your fault that that answer happens to be, within itself, a theoretical key.

Keeping this up for a while becomes quite tiring but of course, the more you do it and the better your MS shapes are drilled, the easier it becomes. Again, it's not memory, it's visualisation and instant recognition. I haven't 'remembered' that the 6th of Db is Bb, I just instantly see the result on my internal piano. Same goes for all the thousands of chord types, inversions in all keys, etc. No memory, just visualisation.

Now, I said there are some variations so do be sure to personalise!

The basic variation is to invert the numbers to letters and name the number instead of the letter. That would go something like this: Starting on C (as if that were the answer to a previous number), the person/you/my podcast says like, F. You then need to know the value of F in C: 4. F now becomes the new master key so the next letter should be in the major scae of F (so it's best to do this with someone who knows, or make your own test with loads of numbers and letters that you couldn't possibly memorise). I might say A... you'd say 3. A is now the master key. B. That's the second. B is the new master key. G# (but can be inverted to Ab for the next round). That's 6. So you're getting a very good workout on note values and MS shapes from two different angles.

A great modification of this is to name ANY note value to test all the possible 'in-octave' note values. So, on top of 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, you now have sus2, minor, sus4, b5, augmented (#5) and dominant 7th. So, starting in G, for example, I might say b5, you'll say Db. That's the new key. I might say dominant 7th, you'll say B... new key. I'll say minor, you'll say D... new key... I'll say augmented, you'll say A# (inverted to Bb)... new key. sus2.. C.. new key, sus4.. F... new key.. etc. The answer becomes the new key. Of course, do this game now with letters first instead of numbers so, starting on B, for example: F#.. answer: 5th. F# new key: A. Answer: minor. A is now the new key. Augmented? Answer: E# (inverted to F). Etc, etc.

You can also do this with extensions, especially if you're into jazz. So you'll need to think outside the octave. Starting on D: b9? Eb. That's the new key. #11. A. That's the new key. 13? F#, that's the new key. #9? A. New key. b13: F. That's the new key... etc. And again, this can be letter first and you must label the number as an extension. Here is a useful video on note values in terms of extensions and chord inversions. And of course, you can do this with any scales you want to reinforce, like the blues scale.

Now, finally, you can do this with chords but it's a little different but still fun. You have a starting key: C. You then name chord types but the top-most note becomes the new key for the next chord type. I love this game and it's very satisfying to be able to do it instantly. For this, your major scale mastery must be exceptional because you need to see the whole shape of the major scale, then know the templates for the main chord types (video here) and then say the note values of that chord, then what those notes are in the key you're in, again, with the top note being the root of the next chord for the next round. So, starting in Eb: mM7: root, minor, 5th, M7: Eb, Gb, Bb, D. D is the new master key. m6: root, minor, 5th, 6th: D, F, A, B. B is the new master key. whole diminished: root, minor, b5, 6th: B, D, F, Ab. Ab is the new key... etc, etc. You can also do this by answering in first, second or third inversion and of course, can add extensions and fancy jazz voicings if you'd like to practise those, too, but that's a little beyond the scope of this article.

So there you have it: Major Scale Tennis! Enjoy!

Personalising Your Journey

2020-05-23T12:42:00.002+02:00

and sticking to it!

To be a Water Pianist is to understand the importance of personalising your journey. This implies a few things: don't use method books (because not one has been written only for you), don't compare your musical personality or natural abilities to anybody else (because we're all on a different path) and don't worry about your speed of progress (because you're progressing at your best rate at all times based on your efforts and natural abilities).

Personalising your journey requires you to: stop spending time at the piano, get to know yourself more intimately and accept many truths which you will both like and dislike (small hands, poor memory) - but tough, that's the truth - the sooner it is accepted, the better.

So, where to begin? Allow me to expand upon all components in the hope you will adopt them for your own maximum growth. There are many external links but they all open in a new window.

You must first of all know your musical personality. If you don't play music you enjoy, you will abandon playing the piano for easily fixable reasons. Often, one is obliged by a teacher to play this or play that, or even discouraged from playing this or that because of nonsense reasons (too hard, too easy, not popular enough, etc.) You must be strong enough to stick to your guns and play You: what You enjoy for Your own reasons. Make efforts to identify the music you like listening to. This will involve trips down memory lane, various emotional memories to life events and general reactivity to sounds (melodies, chords and rhythm... even instruments). Doing this brings to the fore more about your subconscious which has been hidden away; now knowing more about yourself, you can better refine your future path and areas of theory and technique which apply to you (but not to someone else).

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Musical personality goes deeper than just knowing what music you like. There is a difference between what you enjoy listening to and what you may wish to play (or the style you'd like to compose in) on the piano. This will involve listening to new music to see if you like it. Try a Bill Evans album, or a Satie album, or a Debussy album. Which do you like? None of them? Try something older like Mozart or Clementi, or newer, like Ravel or Einaudi. After a while, you will start to recognise traits of the music you enjoy rather than just a general 'genre' or 'era'. Sure, I love jazz but there's a lot of jazz which is unlistenable to me. I enjoy Liszt, Chopin and Beethoven but some of the pieces bore me to death, despite my stratospheric admiration of the composers.

The point is that I, like you soon, have reached a level of detail about my musical personality that I can discuss musically. I am aware of chord types, intervals and time signatures which please me. I have emotional connections with certain instruments, types of improvisation of like and chord progressions which please me. Thus, aim for this level of detail in your own musical personality journey; for example, go from "I like Elton John" to "I like the Elton John pieces which are in 3/4 or 6/8 time, slower and which use minor chords more often", or, "I like Chopin's Etudes but I prefer the ones with more rapid notes because I like the flowy nature they provide whereas the slower pieces with more space are less exciting to me". This way, as I said earlier, you are more in a position to refine your path theoretically and technically... and this is a very powerful and important place to be, where so many, many other pianists are not.

Once you've spent time on this exercise (which is eternal, I must add; you will always discover new music and get bored of some other music), start to fill the theory holes. This will put you in excellent sted for when the time comes to either read sheet music, improvise in a jazz trio or compose your own ideas, watever you've decided. For me, I knew I loved jazz so my theory had to be based on modal theory, chord extensions, block chords, blues structures, as well as being familiar with the history of jazz right from the early 20th century to the modern era, while developing a knowledge of popular composers (Gershwin, Joplin, Ellignton, etc) and performers of various instruments, not just piano (Milt Jackson (vibes), Benny Goodman (clarinet), Joe Pass (guitar), etc). Within each roughly defined jazz era, I developed an ear for chord types, improvisation expectations and rhythm (think Joplin's syncopation to Keith Jarret's Koln concert). As for Liszt, I studied his life (I don't think there's a book on him I haven't read at least once in the last 12 years), his music and the requires for his music, i.e. a lot of finger precision and independence, not to mention endurance, which is a philosophy I learnt from him. He also taught me the importance of absolute major scale mastery.

So as you can see, a combination of musical awareness and theoretical hole-filling means I have a very refined musical personality which enables me to choose music I like, know why I don't react so well to other music, learn what is applicable to my path and compose in a style which is natural to me without being pushed off course by some nonsense rules and restrictions or opinions and excpetations. To hell with them.

So, you've got your musical personality down and you've spent some time learning the theoretical elements of the music you enjoy (sight reading efforts, notation, history, composers' lives, etc), so what next? Technical elements.

To play the piano, you obviously need to sit at the piano sometimes (but not always!) Whilst a lot takes place in your mind on your internal piano, jukebox and manuscript/lead sheet, it can't be denied that you need to have a certain digital expetise; a digital expertise suited to Your path and Your path only. This is why books and methods are futile: they weren't written for your path, they were written for the general player to achieve a usually less than mediocre ability but you being a Water Pianist are astronomically higher in desire and potential than that, aren't you!?

Whatever techniques your musical personality require, you master. For example, if you like Bach, it's lots of staccato individual finger movements in quite a restricted area so lots of digital interplay, let's call it. For an example, see here. Don't forget, he wrote for and on a harpsichord, not a piano in the way we have them today. Therefore, personalise or find some technical exercises which challenge rapid digital interplay between hands (for example, the Hanon exercises). If you like Elton John, learn about major 7th chords, slash chords and get used to inversions, because that's what his music is full of. A bit of Debussy? That's large hand stretches and long, flowy arpeggios which is yet another technique. Do you see? There is not one answer for everybody; you must personalise your jouney, no matter what people tell you you should do else just because their teacher said so or chapter 3 says so. No. No. No!

So, in conclusion: stop playing the piano for a while, develop and refine your musical personality, identify the theoretical then technical elements of it so that you can then go and spend time on them (reading or technical exercises at the piano). Only then should you be approaching repertoire, this time with a lot more confidence in the repertoire choices, your understanding of them and your ability to play them. How great is that!? Such is the path of a Water Pianist.

Enjoy!

Transposing Repertoire

2020-04-06T23:52:00.002+02:00

Any key, instantly?

Transposing chords and melodies could be considered a party trick since it's rarely something that you need to be able to do on the spot... even in advance, so you may wonder why I am dedicating an article to acquiring this ability? Two reasons: major scale mastery combined with away-from-the-piano, internal piano mastery. These two skills anyway, in other ways, are paramount to the Water Pianist and fluency in playing so being able to transpose, as you will hopefully try yourself and find out to be true, is not something you necessary practise directly in order to be able to do but something you can probably already do pretty well... and if you can't, well, it's a good exercise in benefiting your major scales and internal piano skills anyway! I hope that's good enough an introduction to encourage you to read on!?

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In the above video, I use the Charlie Chaplin song, 'Smile', to demonstrate how one might go about transposing a piece. As always, the song must be on your internal jukebox; if you don't know something in your mind, you can't play it at the piano and since most know this, or it's very easy to acquire if not, I thought it would be a good example: common, easy melody with a very common chord progression which doesn't necessarily need to be enhanced with fancy chords... and it isn't long: it's just a repeat of Section A. The perfect demo piece, I'd say!

Assuming you've got the song on your internal jukebox and assuming you can read music at least a little, look at the score to the left (or go to the piano and find the melody by ear in C major to start with), note how it starts on the root, goes up two more notes, comes back down over the C and goes down two more notes then repeats exactly the same melody starting on the B, the 7th note of the major scale, then two notes higher and back down to two notes lower, just as it did the first time. This, we would dissect as D1 (dissected part 1).

How about D2? Well, we'll discuss that in a moment but I'd like to highlight what we just did: We identified a pattern. Patterns are the key to dissecting compositions. Patterns often repeat (as happens here) and they are often the basis for small modifications which mean instead of learning a whole section, you can see it instead as a modified pattern that you already know. Patterns, patterns, patterns. Get this philosophy into your mind. Secondly, we identified not only a pattern but the note values. These are so important, I can't even express it in words. All melodies sound as they do, make you feel as they do because of note values. The composer knows that this note/these notes will make you feel happy, sad, scared, worried... that's how film music is composed! And this, ta-da! - is how you will master melodies and then transpose them: by knowing note values, combined with major scale mastery (because you know 1-7 in 12 keys so the key doesn't matter when it comes to playing the melody... or chords for that matter).

The chords to D2 are very easy: C / / / | CM7 / / / - so this is easy to apply to any key, is it not?

The melody, however, goes, numerically speaking: 6, 7, 8 / 6, 7, 8 | (next octave) 2, 3, 4 | b2, 2, 3 | - how easy is that thanks to the pattern? What about the chords with these two bars? Numerically: I / / / | b3dim / / / (or in the key of C: C / / / | Ebdim (Eb, Gb, A, C).

You can continue with the rest of the piece yourself or watch the video above but do you see? We've identified patterns in the melody, numerically, so can now understand a bit of how the composer came up with the melody and have see the chords. Now, this is a very, very simply piece but the same applies when dissecting complex pieces. Consider the four articles and video of my Chopin tutorial, for example.

Let's do the above in a random key... Ab. So, orientate yourself in this key (Ab, Bb, C, Db, Eb, F, G, Ab) and let's find the melody. Of course, this is all only possible if you've reinforced it away from the piano on your internal piano so please don't just wing it! It starts on the root: Ab, then goes two up and back down to two below the Ab: Ab, Bb, C, Bb, Ab, G, F... then it starts on the M7: G... and does the same pattern: G, Ab, Bb, Ab, G, F, Eb... can you do the next part?

Recently, at the time of writing, I enjoyed analysing Satie's Gnossiennes No 3. I encourage anybody to identify the patterns in this unusual yet enjoyable piece! We discovered the left hand always plays a bass then a minim/crotchet accompaniment, 99% of the time using a first inversion chord shape... nice to know. The pulse, despite no bar lines, is very clearly 1 and 2 and 1 and 2 and... also nice to know to help sew it together. The chord is often A to E, so a 5th interval which is very predominant throughout. Try it away from the piano; see what you find and try to play it in another key at the piano!

To conclude, don't see transposition as a burden or unnecessary ability but something you can inherently do, relatively on the spot or at least away from the piano on your internal piano thanks to a combination, as a Water Pianist, of major scale mastery and the dissection philosophy, plus a touch of internal jukebox and piano skill going on in there. Of course, by all means create your own melodies and chord progressions just to practise transposing but it's quite fun, and sometimes even useful, especially if singing or accompanying someone, to be able to play a piece in a different key.

In closing, please consider my Water Pianist's Progress Playlist, to which you can add your own videos of your progress, either in technical exercises or repertoire. Your post will receive a personalised comment from me and be seen by more and more people as it grows, inspiring and encouraging them on their own piano journey!