Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical Best way to learn pop piano?

Background : 2 years classical lessons. 5 year break. One year on my own. I'd rate myself late beginner.

I think I have the basics down and understand theory pretty well.

I know most say the best way to learn pop is by using chords and fake books. My issue is, I totally understand how to do this in theory, but in practice it seems impossible. So if I went this route, what would you suggest?

Start by single line melody and roots, then move to, triads in left, single note in right, then chord in the right and single notes in the left, then root five in the left and third seventh in the right? That's the impression I get from all the books I read. Sounds easy when I say it, but can hardly get anywhere doing this and feel I could never do it on the fly...unless I had proper instruction or a structured method book.

I have both, How to play from a fake book and The Pop Piano book, but both are more of a reference rather than a method.

I would get a teacher, but I would need one who specializes in pop..that is hard to find.

My other approach is to just play written sheet music. I can play some "easy piano" like the Beatles from Dan fox. And am looking to move into dan Coates, which is chanllenging, but achievable.

Any suggestions? I'd appreciate it greatly.

Well, here is one option .....


https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...sell_Popular_Piano_Cour.html#Post2628472


Here is another ...

http://www.poppianopro.com/




Here is another ...

http://www.playpianocatalog.com/1yecrco.html


Here is another ....

http://piano-by-chords.com/


Here is another .....

http://www.pianobychords.com/


Here is another ....

http://www.chordpianoisfun.com/



Or you can just fool around on YouTube.com and pick up something here and there. Ask a few questions on this forum and do the best you can.

Good Luck to you

Another online course to consider is Keyboard Improv.

(It doesn't only focus on jazz).

Wow! Thanks!

Pop piano pro seems to bring up a blank page.
I like play – piano – chords best of all those choices. I used to follow his YouTube channel, piano play it.

Actually the Pop Piano Pro should not even be on the list.

It is not what I thought it was. Sorry.

As far as PianoPlayIt .... He has pretty good stuff. However, I find his style a little annoying. But if you can get past that, it might work for you.



Actually, the most professional instruction is one called ...

The Professional Chord System by David Higginson.

You purchase the entire kit for $269 at this site ....

http://www.pianostar.com/index.php

That is exceptionally well done.

I have it and I would highly recommend it.

Good Luck To You

The Pop Piano Book author, Mark Harrison offers online lessons. He seems to have a lot of experience teaching adults and working musicians, that's a nice combo.

Website: Mark Harrison Online Lessons.

Thanks everyone.

DMD, The professional court system link that you posted has me intrigued. I have watched some YouTube videos, and of all of the above mentioned methods, this one seems the least gimmicky. My interest is in playing solo piano, not accompaniments or playing for another singer. I hear this course is more focused on accompaniment. Could you possibly tell me a little more about this course? Is it realistic? I am willing to put in whatever time it takes. In fact, One of the biggest turnoffs for me on an online piano course is when they say you will be playing like a pro in two weeks. Thanks.

Hi Frosty,

The Professional Chord System I described does spend considerable time for each song explaining how you would accompany another instrument or a singer on the tune.

What that does is get you totally familiar with the chords needed to play that song.

Then on some of the songs (maybe 6 of them) he explains, in detail (key by key), just how you would use those same chords that you just learned to play the song as a solo piano number.

It is very detailed and if you do each one as he suggests, you will end up with a few songs you can play very well and a good idea of how to work up your own arrangements for some other similar songs you may wish to work on.

There is a lot of material and it is presented in a very professional and effective manner.

You will learn how to do this if you do the work and it is absolutely doable. You just have to take it slow and do each step well before moving to the next step.

Good Luck to you

In case you guys are interested, there is a seminar on Youtube by the guy who teaches that course that DMD is so highly recommending (at least I think it is the same guy...), so you can see him in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkdWK9Lqgpg

This video is an hour and twenty minutes long!

If DMD is recommending it, after seeing some of his posts on this general subject of self-teaching and home study over the years, it must be pretty decent. I was certainly surprised to read about this course. It does sound good.

Tony

Here are a couple of old threads discussing the Professional Chord System coourse here on Pianoworld:

http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/1119910/1.html


http://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/1119072/1.html

Tony

TonyB:

Thanks for your "vote of confidence" in my opinion about the David Higginson course.

I looked through the 2 threads about that course that you provided.

I saw some that were pleased with the course and some not.

I can tell you (and others) this ...

It is a legitmate course teaching you real-life piano skills.

It is not the end-all teaching you everything.

It will help you with playing flowing accompaniments utilizing arpeggios.

If will help you play solo piano while accompanying yourself with arpeggios.

It will tell you exactly what to do and it will not be FAST.

He tends to treat you as though you know NOTHING about chord theory (i.e. he tells you how to form each chord or chord inversion).

Things will make much more sense and you will gain more from it if you know how chords are formed prior to beginning the course.

When you finish (who does that), you will be able to play the songs in the course very well and you MAY be able to translate that information to other songs.

It is not for the impatient. You have to enjoy taking your time and getting it right.

DMD, You have my interest because it is a different angle from what I have been doing. I looked at the site and it seems that there are really 3 things to get, the course itself and then there are two supplements for "patterns" and for "rhythms". It would seem to me that these would be valuable, since the description says that these enable you to play ANY tune, beyond what is taught in the course.

In other words, if the course teaches you 15 patterns and rhythms, and a song you are working on doesn't seem to fit any of these, then having a whole bunch more patterns and rhythms in your toolkit would give you a good chance that something in it would fit (or even a mix of something from the course and something from the supplemental material).

If the idea for solo piano is to stick a melody on top of the chord you are playing and keep the rhythm going while doing that, then I would think that a larger vocabulary of chord patterns and rhythms would give that flexibility.

The somewhat negative things I read in the threads that I linked, seem to me to not really be problems with the course. At least one person felt that this course and the Sudnow method together would be a good match. The Sudnow method has you playing by its chord "rules" as locked hands, or "block" chords, where the Professional Chord course seems to be oriented toward, as you say, flowing arpeggio playing. I think that account for the difference in left hand chording. The Sudnow method has you playing either root and 5 (or 8), or root and b7 (for dominant chords), with everything else in the right hand under the melody. Apparently, the Higginson course has you play 1,5,1 in the left hand, which is typically what new age players arpeggiate, so that makes sense for that arpeggiating style.

By sticking with locked hands playing, Sudnow eliminates all the issues the main guy in one of the referenced threads was having with trying to play cleanly and without errors because your hands are moving together from one chord cluster to another instead of flowing from one to another.

One thing that Sudnow does is go really deep into the how and why of good practice and how to deal with all of the issues the main guy in the referenced thread was struggling with.

I can see why a person with at least some familiarity with the territory before starting the course would fare better. With some knowledge, I would think that adding the melody would make more sense. The main guy in the referenced threads seemed to do fine. He had links to a couple of recordings of him playing, and I felt that he was being too hard on himself and actually talking himself out of enjoying the progress even though he seemed to be doing just fine to me. But the stuff he struggled to understand about adding the melody would be clear if he understood more about voicing. That seemed apparent to me. I would think that 12 lessons on playing solo after being firmly grounded in the patterns and rhythms would be sufficient if the student understands a bit about how chords are constructed and altered, and had a good handle on timing and counting.

Tony

From my perspective, a course such as this would use the songs it includes as vehicles for learning the process, so you can then apply the process to ANY tune. I would hope this course does that, so instead of learning just a few tunes, you are learning techniques that readily apply to any fakebook tune, as Sudnow does. Maybe that is where the two supplemental packages Higginson offers are necessary?

Tony

Well, from what I know about things, after having been at it for quite a few years ... is that every little bit helps.

That is really all I can say.

I know nothing about those "supplemental packages" but I would suggest this ...

Learning to play music utilizing arpeggiated chords as accompaniment for your solo playing is useful and it takes some time to become skilled at it. So, the course is useful.

Whether it translates to other tunes you wish to play depends a lot on what else you have done and how much you know.

As you know, also ... All you can do is try to find various quality products and/or teachers and keep working and you just keep getting better and better.

The best and quickest (and most expensive) way to progress is to get a teacher and stick with it week after week. That will work.

If that does not seem to be the path you wish to take then these various courses will help, a lot .... if you pick the right ones.

I happen to think this course is one of the "right ones".

In a recent thread there is a discussion about a Rod Russell " How to play popular piano" which looks like also a good way to learn different popular piano styles, more suitable for solo piano:

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthre...sell_Popular_Piano_Cour.html#Post2628472

It appears that way.

However, the downside of that one (for me) is that he indicates that he doles out the lessons at a rate of 2 per month along with a money-back guarantee of 30 days (I think, maybe more).

Usually, I do not know after 2 lessons if it is something I wish to pursue.

I like to see where I am going (the end game) before I decide to jump in there. His course keeps me in the dark about that.

Unless I am reading your posts wrong, it seems as if you are responding to me questioning the validity or usefulness of the course. I never played that game here, as many others do whenever somebody brings up some self-study course they are working on. So far, I have felt that whatever course somebody here took the time and effort to describe, has merit, at least to that person and is probably a good fit for others too. With enough real information about the course, we each can make that call for ourselves.

I watched the entire 1 hour and 20 minutes of the seminar on Youtube, the link that I posted earlier in this thread. To me, what he described for the chord patterns and rhythms made perfect sense, and seems very doable. It also makes sense to me that, with 12 of the 72 lessons devoted to solo piano, that should be enough if a person REALLY gets what he is teaching in the other 60 lessons (I got a fairly good idea of where his course goes just from the little he provided in the seminar).

My last comments were simply floating the idea of whether or not there is value to getting the supplemental material at the same time. Apparently, you don't have that information. If I decide to order this course (and most likely I will), I will just go ahead and get those. At $19.95 each for the two packages, that seems pretty inexpensive. From what the short descriptions indicated, these add a whole bunch more vocabulary to the basic course, rather than new techniques or new information. After watching the seminar (which is about as detailed a description of the course as he could give without giving away too much information), I am convinced that this course would be worthwhile.

Hearing folks play in the style he teaches helped me decide too. It doesn't matter to me if these folks learned overnight or over the course of months. All I care about is what the results sound like - is that a style I am interested in.

My question/statements about the tunes in the course being vehicles for learning the process were really more rhetorical than anything else. If the student understands what s/he is doing, then the student can apply the same techniques to any song. If the student is just wiggling his or her fingers to blindly make the arpeggios and get through the course hoping for some magic at the end, then probably not. That is true with any educational process. Memorizing to pass a final exam is not about understanding the material in school.

That seminar, along with your comments, are enough to convince me that it is definitely worth consideration. If that were not the case, I would not be wasting everybody's time in this thread. So, thanks for the information and I will post if and when I get the course, along with my observations about it. Until then, I won't take up any more time here.

Thanks,

Tony

Just watched the David Higginson Seminar, at least a part of it, learned some new things already!

His explanations do make a lot of sense. He has a basic form for spreading a chord across both hands, and then makes variations such as dominant, minor, 6th, etc. simply by moving a finger or two a fret or two over. Seems easy enough. The challenge will be to be able to do this on time and in context, and with the rhythms that he provides.

I orered the course, along with the two supplements. One supplement is another batch of chord "patterns", and the other is another batch of rhythms. From the description of these, it sounds as if these supplements give you all the patterns and rhythms so you can handle any song situation. The main course gives you 15 of each, and the song book gives you a means of using those. The supplemental material you work with on your own, since the course shows you the mechanics of doing so.

To me, this course is a bit like showing you how to play chordal guitar. I remember somebody telling once that if you approach the piano like one would the guitar, then you should be able to handle any pop music situation. On guitar, there is the CAGED system of being able to play a chord across the fretboard using these 5 interlocking shapes. For each shape, you can play any scale, so playing lead comes out of these shapes too. This piano course sounds like a similar sort of thing - a few shapes go a long way if you know how and when to use them, and how to modify them to get other chord types.

That makes perfect sense to me, so hopefully the course will show up in the next week or two.

Tony

I thought you were already working through the Shinn course, Tony? Well this will be interesting to see if you think this course adds anything to what you already have in your arsenal. Please keep us all updated.