5 things I wish I'd known when learning piano [IMPORTANT]

what's up my piano friends i've been playing and teaching piano for over 15 years now and there are five things i absolutely wish i would have known before i started learning mistakes that caused me years of pain and frustration that it actually could have solved very easily if i just knew what i was doing and i'm gonna work back from number five all the way to the most important thing number one so make sure you stick around to the end of the video for that otherwise you'll be so frustrated on piano you'll end up like this guy rule number one never smash your piano with a sledgehammer this is bad form it's much more efficient to use a baseball bat preferably a metal one you can get a lot more leverage that way i'm kidding i'm kidding all right on to the real rule number one and that's i wish i would have started learning piano learning to read chord shapes instead of sheet music see most people on youtube are trying to learn songs with outdated sheet music and this is a very slow way of learning because they force you to learn each individual note one at a time that's like trying to read a book one letter at a time it takes forever instead we can group letters together to form words and we can read words much faster than letters similarly instead of memorizing individual notes we can group notes together to form chord shapes to learn 10 times faster so let's say we're trying to learn all of me by john legend instead of learning all of these notes with the sheet music we can group them together into four chord shapes we can find these chord shapes using a simple google search and this simple cheat sheet alright so if we look at the cheat sheet and i'll show you where to get this in a sec let's just take four chords so first e minor it looks like this then c major looks like this then g major looks like this and finally d major looks like this and if we just repeat these same four chords over and over you can play hundreds of your favorite songs on piano let me show you what would i do without your smart mouth drawing me in and you kicking me out say something i'm giving up on you whoa listen to your heart [Music] [Music] like a melody in my head that i can't keep up got me singing like isn't that way cooler than learning like you know mary had a little lamb using sheet music and ironically it's just as easy to learn if you have the cheat sheet that shows you the chord shapes so if you want more info on this style of learning and the chord shapes cheat sheet i'll put a link to that video in the upper right and in the description all right on to tip number two and that's getting hands together coordination in other words how do i get my dang left and right hand to just work together now this is the biggest struggle almost every single beginner has because of one simple reason they're trying to focus on everything at the same time and that's what i did when i was first trying to learn piano now most beginners they try to learn hands coordination while they're learning songs so now they have to focus on the notes the rhythm the dynamics the sharps and flats of speed and they have to get hands together at the same time and so they end up super frustrated and start smashing their keyboard with a sledgehammer instead it's way easier to have a set of hand independence exercises where the notes and dynamics and everything else stay very very simple and you can focus on just getting hands together coordination and you can isolate and master that skill until it becomes automatic and then the exercises slowly and gradually get more difficult until you're playing song level exercises hands together no problem and then when you go back to your song it'll be very very easy to get your hands together coordination because you've already drilled it in separately doesn't that make way more sense than trying to learn everything at the same time anyway if you want to get the hands together exercises i'll put the link to that video in the upper right and in the description which brings me to tip number three i wish i would have started learning to play piano by ear right from the get-go and i know what you're thinking you're thinking zack i don't have musical ears i'm tone deaf get out of here with that nonsense we're gonna do a test right now and if you can pass this test it proves that you can play by ear okay so let's go to the keyboard let's just take three notes c d and e all right but we're just gonna call these to make it even simpler one two and three what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna cover up my hand and i'm gonna play a pattern and i want you to listen to the pattern and try to figure out which numbers i'm playing so for example if i play this [Music] that would just be the pattern one two one two three all right got it all right i'm gonna cover up my hand now and listen to the pattern [Music] all right i'm going to play it one more time comment below if you think you know what it is [Music] okay so that was just a pattern one two three two one did you get it right all right let's try one more you ready [Music] all right try to figure out the notes one more time put your answer in the comments ready [Music] all right so the answer is one two three two three all right let's try one more example this one is gonna be a bit more tricky so i'm gonna give you a clue we're going to start on the note 3 all right you ready i'm going to play it right now ready [Music] one more time let me know in the comments if you think you know what it is all right rewind the video if you have to and get your answer all right so the correct answer is three three two two two three two one well guess what that is that's actually part of the song all of me by john legend check this out all your curves and all your edges and then it repeats all your perfect so you literally just learned to play part of all of me by john legend by ear with zero formal training and i know you're thinking you're thinking okay zach that was only three notes what about the rest of them well the process to learning to play by ear is you take these three notes and you actually spend three or four days on the exercises the play by ear exercises with these three notes until they're absolutely rock solid and you know them like the back of your hand then after you do that you add two more notes these two notes and you learn these five notes and this is pretty easy because you already have the first three notes rock solid in your fingers and then eventually you add you know two more notes and eventually you learn the black notes so that you have 12 notes learned to play by ear these 12 notes and then it's very easy to kind of copy and paste these notes up octaves up the keyboard and you can literally play any song by ear it's a very gradual and systematic process and anybody can learn to play by ear in three to four months if you do the exercises every day anyway if you want more info on that i'll put a link in the upper right and in the description alright if you like what you're learning so far go ahead and smash that like button really helps boost my self-esteem and then all my friends will think i'm cool because i have a bunch of likes in my video just kidding but seriously smash the like button it really helps out the channel all right on to tip number four and that's using a song mapping chart and this is gonna help you learn songs 10 times faster see learning a song is actually pretty simple right we just break our song up into sections intro verse chorus etc we have to do four things for each section first we have to learn the notes then we have to speed it up from slow to fast then we have to memorize it and then we have to add expressiveness and emotion to that section of the song and if you do these four steps for every section of the song and you cross off all of these boxes boom you have your entire song learned does that make sense so when you sit down at the piano with this chart let's say on day one you sit down at the piano and you learn the notes of the intro so you just go ahead and you just cross off this box maybe you learn verse one of the notes as well you cross off this box and maybe for the first chorus you learn the right hand but you're not quite there with the left hand so you put in a little note that says right hand good here and now day two you sit down at the piano to practice and this is when it starts getting really powerful now if you're not using this chart what most beginners do is they just start back from the beginning and they relearn the intro which is a huge waste of time because you've already learned the intro and verse one but if you're using your song mapping chart you can look at your chart and say okay i'm good for the intro and verse one let me start with the chorus one i'm i'm good for the right hand already so let me just practice the left hand and then you can start working your left hand until your left hand is good and once it's good you can cross off this box and then maybe you cross off you know you work verse two you get this one good you get chorus too good on day two and maybe the intro you know you work on the speed and you get it to full speed and then day three you know you sit back down your piano you say hey the intro i heard it have it learned and i already have it sped up i'm not gonna work the intro but maybe i'll speed up verse one and maybe you do that first and then maybe you work on learning the bridge and you cross this off and then maybe you know course one you try to get it up to full speed but maybe it's not quite there yet so you don't cross off this box yet you leave it unchecked and as you do this day after day you'll have a complete overview of exactly which sections of your song you need to work on and which sections you don't have to and eventually of course you'll cross off all these boxes and once all these boxes are crossed off boom you'll have every section of your song learned sped up memorized and added expressiveness and emotion and boom you're done with your song and what i see all the time from beginners who don't use this kind of chart is they have their intro on their first verse really really good and it sounds awesome and then the rest of their song sucks because they never practice it they every day they sit down and they work on the stuff that they already know just because it's at the beginning so this chart gives you this kind of road map of exactly what you need to work on so that you can learn songs way way faster anyway this thing is an absolute game changer if you want to get the pdf of a blank chart that looks like this that way you can fill in your own sections and you can cross off the boxes i'll put the link to that in the top right and in the description if you want to use this to learn your next piece of music alright finally on to tip number five and that's working on your technique right from the get go now most students think technique is super boring because nobody showed them why it's so powerful and important to have rock solid technique because good technique can solve certain issues almost instantly on the keyboard let me show you an example now a lot of students struggle with what i call weak pinky syndrome where they can play their first four fingers just fine but their pinky always feels weak and uncoordinated maybe you have this problem right now most beginners try to solve this with brute force right and they think okay my pinky is weak i just need to do these you know finger exercises to make it strong and strengthen my pinky and they spend years trying to quote unquote strengthen their pinky and ironically they just end up drilling in bad habits they're an absolute nightmare to correct in the future instead let me show you how easy this is to solve with good technique now if you look at your hand you'll notice your middle three fingers are very long and this way when you curve your fingers and make them nice and strong when you're playing it's very easy to play these three nice and strong but your pinky if you curve it you can't reach the note right if your pinky is nice and strong and curved you're literally going to miss the note on the keyboard and that's because people play with a straight wrist now all we have to do to solve this is move our wrist down and out and now look at our pinky nice and curved and strong so all we got to do to fix weak pinky syndrome is rotate our wrists down and out when we're playing our pinky and if you practice this for three to four days you can solve weak pinky syndrome almost instantly without quote-unquote strengthening your pinky because you're actually playing with good technique how easy is that but guess what there are a ton of these little subtle movement patterns that make a huge difference in your playing if you're interested in learning those and getting the exercises to drill those in rock solid into your hands click this video to master your technique or if you're more interested in learning songs from the radio using the chord shades cheat sheet that we talked about earlier click this video and learn that happy practicing and i'll see in the next one

Channel: Become a Piano Superhuman

Views: 971,239

Keywords: piano, lesson, tutorial, how to play, piano lesson, lessons, tutorials, online, online piano lesson

Id: jg_Nf_26R7c

Length: 13min 29sec (809 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 30 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I hate him... "Trying to learn SONGS with OUTDATED SHEET MUSIC and this is a very slow way of learning..." JUST USE THE FOUR CHORD POP MUSIC CHEAT INSTEAD OVS 🙄 I absolutely hate that guy...

[u/cellogang420]

"turning letters into words, which means chords"

or (this is just my method), learn each phrase and then play that phrase when you see it. It is very easy.