Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical "Play Piano In a Flash" book/DVD by Scott Houston?

Anybody have any experiece using the "Play Piano In A Flash" book/DVD series by Scott Houston? It was recently advertised on my local PBS station fund raiser.

I am a novice keyboard player, and want to be able to quickly learn how to do basic pop/jazz keyboard accompanyments/comping from lead sheets.

Learning classical piano is a different animal...

Thanks!

David

IMO .....this is better

www.pianoforall.com

Scott's approach is very realistic, and he gives a great reason to play and learn songs only you want to play. I find his playing style pretty simplistic, however striving towards a more ambient purpose. Music is what you make of it no matter what style/genre. I mean this in the best possible way.

I found the "Play Piano In A Flash" book to be well worth the purchase.

Dannac and sirch59,

Thanks for your feedback. Actually at this point, simple is very good! I will take a look at the website tonight, and have ordered the book from the library

He is a salesman when he claims everything is "so easy"... it is physically much harder to execute what he suggests than he leads potential customers to beleive it to be.

I have seen Scott The "Piano Guy" on PBS networks doing a lot of talking and interviewing professional pianists, but haven't really heard much playing or what Scott can do at the piano. Does he have CD's of his playing of standards?

If anyone has tried his method, what were your thoughts on it as compared to say The Sudnow Method? Just curious

katt

I saw some of his video snippets (roland sponsored) on youtube lately....some are ok, like someone said usually guest pianists. Some are better than others; no disrespect but i almost choked at the guy he had on showing how to do a doobie bros song (i forget which) but it was pretty lame. The Linus and Lucy demo was pretty good though.

I just saw him on my local PBS fundraising TV show yesterday for the first time. I think Jazz's assessment above is dead-on. What a cheesy salesman who makes everything sound so easy and not afraid to throw everybody else under the bus to achieve his goal. He spends more time crowing about how easy it is than getting to the meat of the instruction.

Chord-based playing and noodling around is not the best kept secret in piano playing like he leads people to believe. It is indeed an easy approach to playing. The irony in this is that his short cut approach to give you cheat sheets to learn to memorize the chords to bypass the proper approach of learning why and how chords are constructed the way they are is going to end up being the hardest part about learning his easy way.

He's a good marketer and sales guy but not much of an actual teacher. I've seen his PBS promo, wasn't much to talk about. Just checked out some of his youtube clips, his playing would be that of a guy who's had a few years of lessons. Couldn't find him playing any jazz.

I'm afraid I cannot say much about this Scott Houston's book, but I have another title you might be interested in taking a look at. I recently purchased "The Pop Piano Book" by Mark Harrison to learn pop comping styles, and it hasn't let me down yet. It is very thorough though, so you'd have to skip parts to grab just the basics of each style. Also, it only lists a few styles, no latin styles at all for example, but those few are analyzed very comprehensively.

You should check your library if they have a copy around. The book does have a rather weak binding and the midi files for the examples in the book have to be bought separately (which, for me, was worth every penny), so you may not get the full experience out of this book that way. But definitely worth taking a look at in my opinion.

Wow, tough crowd
It's OK. Being on TV certainly opens you up to a little criticism. Fair enough. However, I'm feeling a bit "piled on" by a very small sample size.

Just a few responses from my side of the table ...

Let's start with the truism that my goal is to get as many people off the sidelines and into the game as possible. I clearly have no long term goals of producing the next great concert pianist, or, for that matter the next great heavy jazzer. What I DO truly feel is my life's work is to open the magic of actually becoming a music maker (as opposed to a passive listener of music) to as many people as humanly possible.

What I've found along the way is that many serious musicians find that in some way unseemly or threatening, much to both my dismay and amusement.


This comment is always one that makes me smile. Let's consider an alternative opening to my weekly TV series: Hi, welcome to Playing Piano is Harder Than You Can Possibly Imagine. I'm Scott Houston and I'm going to prove to you that you have NO chance to ever learn how to have fun playing piano. So, let's bring out our first guest while you settle in for a little disappointment."

So as to me being a salesman - guilty as charged and I'm proud of it! I sense the word salesman was used with a distinctly negative connotation in that quote. But when you are "selling" something you believe in, you better believe I want to sell the heck out of the idea that I believe there is no better gift I could ever give someone than the gift of being able to sit down and have fun playing a piano. It may sound corny, but it's the truth...



In that pledge special (which is now 7 years old) we had one particular target that we unfortunately were forced to focus on due to the elephant in the room that no one (until that show) ever came out and admitted in public. That is the lack of success the great majority of piano students had taking traditional lessons. (That will probably anger a few of you, but don't shoot the messenger... I have over 20,000 attendees of my live workshops plus, literally, hundreds of thousands of TV show viewers and book buyers to back up that statement).

For that reason we very intentionally drilled right into the hot buttons of those adults who feel as though they failed at traditional lessons, when in my opinion, traditional lessons failed them. I've learned empirically that it is just as, if not more, important to get these people realizing that they are not failures and that they do in fact "have what it takes" to realize their life long dream of simply sitting down and having some fun at a piano. So yes, trying to "de-program" these poor souls from feeling like they are a failure takes a little time. The goal is to get them off the sideline and back into the game, and starting in on heavy piano instruction is a surefire way to send them running away again with their tails between their legs.

Check out some of these real life comments if you think I'm making this stuff up. They'll either make you laugh, or cry, or both ...



You obviously did not see much of that show, or of any of the over 160 episodes of my half-hour series. I have stated over and over and over ad infinitum, just so that people DON'T think that I have come up with anything new or trendy, that the huge irony in what I am teaching them is that no one ever taught them previously because it is the way all of us professional gigging players have played for over 100 years.




There is no type of music notation known as a "cheat sheet." Using that term pretty well exposes your lack of understanding or experience in this style. What we use are called Lead Sheets. Also, I usually get a little apprehensive when someone refers to the "proper" approach to anything. Proper to you maybe ... Not so proper to the vast majority of people not interested in theory and simply wanting to play some tunes from the get go.

The bigger irony I find is that by getting students playing tunes they love FIRST, while very admittedly glossing over what some would consider "proper," my students end up not only having a tremendously fun experience, but in the end are way, way ahead in theory knowledge vs. traditional students with the same length of instruction.

I guess I'm just all in favor of a little more carrot and a little less stick right at the beginning. I'll bypass just about anything in the beginning to get someone playing tunes they love, because once one experiences the joy of making music, they are hooked for life. There is plenty of time down the road to fill in the gaps. When done in reverse, the majority drop out because they aren't having any fun.



For a little bigger sample size, I would hope someone reading this would consider the opinions found here as well ...



First off, another thing that I admit freely and mention on the air VERY regularly is that I am a mediocre heavy duty jazzer - defense rests - guilty as charged. I don't say that to be modest - it's the truth.

However, that is EXACTLY why I think that the show (I'm talking about the 4 time Emmy Award winning Piano Guy series now in its 13 season on public television, not the pledge special seemingly focused on in this thread) works so well for so, so many people. I am genuinely thrilled to be sitting with my great playing guests and learning new things from them - it is not an act... My job as host of the show is to be the eyes and ears of the viewer, not to be a heavy player. I'm not out taping concert performances, I'm hosting a how-to show for goodness sakes.

Now having said that, to defend my playing just a bit , on the instructional clips (sometimes rotated in and out of our youtube.com/pianoguytv channel) of me showing the basics of a tune it is a VERY intentional effort we put forth to NOT play anything advanced so as to not blow a beginner out of the water. I guess I thought that was pretty obvious. If you'd ever seen the series you would realize that clip is the first segment which is then followed by a guest of mine working through the same tune in the same key giving away professional tips and tricks.

Although this means nothing to my students and viewers, nor should it, in case this helps my cred with this tough crowd I cut my teeth at the IU Jacobs School of Music in Dave Baker's jazz program for 3 years.

My final comment (I promise...) has to do with the idea that to teach well, one has to be a master performer of said topic of instruction. Because frankly, that insinuation is what really insulted me and got me to start this now long-winded reply to begin with. I never once saw Bela Karolyi on the balance beam or doing a back flip (with his giant belly, yikes!) yet he is considered the world's finest gymnastics instructor. You can find similar examples in every discipline. So, extrapolating my, or anyone else's, playing ability with my ability to teach is wrong headed.

I take great pride in the fact that today there are literally THOUSANDS of people out there having a ball making music at a piano that weren't before they saw my show or came to a live event. I sleep extremely well knowing that what I teach is pedagogically sound when applied to non-classical tunes (as I make abundantly clear in everything i do.) This isn't "snake oil" - it is the way working professional piano players have played for a long, long time. The fact that what I teach is different than the majority doesn't make it wrong - only different.

Where the rubber hits the road is what kind of success and influence you are having with your students, and I'll place the results and positive feedback from my students against anyone else's anytime...

OK, I'm now stepping down from my soap box

Scott .... I've always enjoyed watching your TV / PBS programs
(even though I plugged another product) for some reason I no longer catch it in my area.

great post .... you hit the nail squarely on the head.

Thanks

Scott, I appreciate you responding to the comments. I can clearly tell you are a musician at heart and loves to teach others how to play piano. I agree that many people who had traditional lessons didn't learn very well and quit early. The classical method is sorely lacking...your approach is how I teach my students as well, learn fun songs and enjoy making music.

The PBS show I saw was of students practicing on a paper keyboard. They were complete beginners and so you were going over the basics. I was expecting to see more application of scales/chords, fingering technique.

You are right in saying you teach using the "lead sheet" method. That's how pretty much all rock/pop and most jazz songs are notated. Perhaps due to TV time constraints you skip over the fundamentals.

We aren't separating your abilities as a piano player vs. a TV host. Very different skills and you definitely excel at the latter.

My apologies for saying you aren't a teacher... yes you clearly are! Just in a different realm and format.

Having a private 1 on 1 lesson is far opposite from explaining to a TV audience. I'm sure most people here couldn't do nearly as good a job as you. We are just thinking in the mindset of a sit-down lesson, and so things that can be covered over the course of 10 lessons would not be possible in a 1 hour show.

Do keep it up, as long as people are learning and taking up piano then you've done your job.

As a fellow jazzer, it'd be nice to hear you do some standards and post them up!!

Scott, I know what Lead Sheets are. I wasn't referring to Lead Sheets. If you had read my comment carefully to really understand what I'm trying to say instead of just trying to make a quick retort, I said "cheat sheets TO LEARN TO MEMORIZE THE CHORDS".

I don't mean to memorize what chords there are in a song. I mean to memorize what notes to play that make up the chords that are shown in a Lead Sheet. In that show you only went over 3 chords (C,F,G), and you said that your system provides a reference sheet (which I called "cheat sheet") for the rest of what all the chords look like so that people can learn to memorize them. For example, the student sees a C on a Lead Sheet, but he/she doesn't know what notes make up a C, so he/she'd look at your reference sheet and see that a chord C is made up of C,E and G. Then just memorize this without understanding why a chord C major is made up of C, E and G.

May be this is ok if you want to memorize a small handful of chords. But it's not so "easy" anymore when someone has to stare at your reference sheet of dozens of chords for hours and wrestle to learn to memorize every single configuration for every chord you have listed on that sheet.

OK, in reality, nobody would do that. The more likely scenario is that they will never remember them all. So every time they look at a lead sheet they'll have to pull out your little (or probably very big) reference sheet to figure out how to play those chords. And that's a big handicap you've given them, and all of a sudden "it's not so easy anymore like Scott says because I can't remember all these chords and I keep getting confused between them all the times and I must have Scott's chord reference sheet with me all the times".

My main issue with your approach is your eagerness to throw music theory under the bus in the name of exaggerated simplicity for the purpose of your salesmanship. You make music theory sound like the evil plague that has inevitably failed 99% of piano students. But guess what, you actually taught some music theory on that show yourself. You taught them what all the notes are and where they are on the treble clef. You taught them where the middle C is. You taught them FACE. You taught them Every Good Boy Does Fine.

I don't know if you teach people more theories in your books or DVD or not, but on the PBS show, you stopped short there and didn't mention about teaching them how to construct chords (but instead just use your cheat sheet to memorize them). I find it pretty lame that you don't want to teach chord construction and only promote chords memorization; but all the while the chord-based approach is the central thesis to your method. I can understand why, however, because you know that by doing so would have been an oxymoron to your "It's Easy" claim. So you prefer to hide that big elephant in the backstage.

Which is okay, too. If your claim is that you simply want to show people how they can play A FEW of their favorite tunes on the piano in a flash the quick and dirty way by only learning to memorize a few basic chords, then there's nothing wrong with your approach. But what I find distasteful is your implication over and over again in the infomercial on PBS to the point of stretching it that the traditional piano teaching approach makes the piano learning process too ridiculously hard and/or boring and has overwhelmingly failed most students and caused them to quit. How do you know that people learning the traditional way don't have fun? Or that most of them quit? I bet not all the thousands of your followers are those who tried the traditional methods and found it boring and quit. Maybe just a small fraction, but not the majority. I'm guessing most of your followers are people who never learn before but want a quick and dirty way of learning piano, which is the right target audience for you and that's great and all. But if you'd simply said "Hey, my method is simple and easy and fun to learn", it would have been fine. But by taking the approach of ditching other teaching methods (which not all are classical) to self-promote yours at their expense, I think you've sunk to an unnecessarily low level and no longer have class.

I'm not a piano teacher. I'm just an adult beginner player. I've gone through a traditional piano method (not classical, just basic fundamental) and I don't find it so hard to learn at all. I don't care to learn classical piano, and I also don't care to learn all the music theories there are to learn. But I want to learn just enough so I know how to build any chords I want without having to look up anything. And I have fun learning everything.

I started watching your show on the PBS program with great interest. I was excited because I thought I was going to learn something useful. I was ready to open my pocket book to buy if what I saw makes sense. But in the end, I was turned off because all I saw was more and more cheesy salesmanship and the constant harping of the "so easy you wouldn't believe it" claim.

And I won't even get into the "make/create your own music" claim because that's another can of worms we can saved for another discussion. I'll just simply say "noodling" or making your own random tunes is more like it. But I wonder how your students will know what chords to assign to the tunes they created to make it into a complete song, if they have no idea how/where/why/what chords and scales suitable to their tunes come from in the first place.

Scott,

Nice reply.

In many ways, I do like your "it's easy" appproach, but I do have a few bones to pick.

One of the biggest one is that you talk at length with your guests but often gloss over or even ignore just how they spice up an arrangement. I recognize that you speak to new players, so I see the need to keep things basic at least some of the time. But I would like to see at least a portion of the show (probably with the guest) go into greater musical detail. Not only would this help me, but it would give newbies an insight of what comes later, and that it is not magic but continuing development and learning. I would pitch this as a good thing: you never run out of new and exciting things to explore.

I suppose I would have to give you a B- instead of an A. But I'd gived you an A for initially getting people started, which you might feel is your main goal. Sadly, my local stations no longer seem to carry your program either.

Hop

I've recorded Scott's PBS Special and I watched it recently. I'm not sure what needs to generate the hoopla. Scott, your show does get a person excited about starting on piano. What could be wrong with that? In many ways, playing a few chords (I/IV/V's) and realizing that that could be applied to thousands of songs is truly simple enough and practical. I thought it was being "sold" accurately. Plus this was a PBS special to get PBS contributions.

Obviously anyone getting more serious about piano needs to learn a lot more to do advanced things. I don't think Scott said it ends with the video. Neither did I see him teach "jazz" in the full sense of Jazz anyway.

So keep on it Scott. I had a relative who swears by your TV shows so obviously it serves a purpose. He just likes accompanying himself with simple I/IV/V chords as he sings Beatles tunes. Why not?

What's the alternative, give them some Music notation and let them play "Let it Be" that way?

This is the most sane response to The Piano Guy yet.

For those that want the more indepth jazz theory that Jazzwee is talking about you should check out his thread which is now 86 pages long and can get a sense of where Scott may leave off and Jazzwee picks up:

http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1340459/1.html

ScepticalForumGuy, first of all you have quite a hilarious display name Love it!

Thanks for the nice comment. It's all about target marketing isn't it? Scott targets an appropriate group. When they're done with that level, maybe they move to something else like Jazz improvisation (for the few willing to make the committment). In guitar playing, that's how I got hooked long ago. A book of chords, and a basic understanding of I/IV/V. If you can say the alphabet sequentially to the letter 'G' you're ready. We all know that few people ever seek that 'higher level'.

At least it's a lot more organized than Gyro's "just dig in".

Hey Jazzwee,

Yes, and the organization is the thing. In Gyro's defense, what he suggests assumes that one has some innate ability to make things work given a short period of time. This will be true for some. Just improvise. Go. Good. Keep on doing it until you're happier with the results. But what the advice doesn't address is that along the way, even if you start with 'just go' you will need to develop some rules, or recognize the rules that actually govern what sounds good and what doesn't. If one stops before coming to a place of understanding of how music might work, then one may give up. Hence, the rules or methods from the beginning will always be more useful than the blank canvas approach.

For those interested, I've actually posted some 'rules for composing on the subforum under "Any Takers?" I'm really interested in seeing if anyone can benefit from them, but no one has offered up anything besides Wiz of Oz.

Ironically, Gyro's "just dig in" actually works for the masters who know everything about music.

Keith Jarrett has said he needs a completely empty mind before he does his solo improvised concerts. The ideas only start coming once he's at the piano, not before. And Herbie Hancock has shown he can take any piece of music and spin wonders, just listen to all his versions of Dolphin Dance or Cantaloupe Island.

However to get to that level, they needed to soak up and absorb all styles of music. That's why you can hear hints of classical, funk, R&B, rock in their playing. They've built up their musical "language".

If you are a beginner you need to put in the time to listen.