Below is a transcript of this video. It is edited to flow like an article. I hope it's helpful
Welcome to the Piano Explorer Podcast and of this episode we are going to be showing our episodes on video as well. So you can check out the Piano Explorer Podcast in video format on our YouTube channel. I'll provide a link to that video. In the show description notes. All right, so today's episode we are gonna try something new.
In this article, we are discussing three reasons why you should learn the piano, especially if you're considering making music a part of your career. So any future music majors that are out there that are wondering, Hey, what should I do to get ready to be a professional musician? You should learn the piano.
So the first thing I wanna say before we get to the three things on our podcast episode today, I wanna say that we've all had piano teacher. and some of those piano teachers have been amazing. They've inspired us. They've challenged us. They've met us where we're at in terms of piano development, and others have been less so, less inspiring.
Maybe they've been a little cranky. Maybe they haven't given us the best kind of experience, and maybe it just wasn't a good. I want us to come at this episode with the possibility of learning this amazing instrument, the piano with fresh perspective and fresh eyes. And I know for some of us that might be really, really hard.
We've gotta come at it with a beginner's mind and really welcome. The possibility of learning the piano. The second thing I wanna say is this. Everyone can learn the piano. Everyone can learn the piano. I am a big believer in it. So much so that the Piano Explorer Podcast and the Piano Explorer platform is gonna be launching a course in January, 2023, an online course.
where it's gonna take beginners, whether you've had lessons or not, whether you read music or not, whether you're comfortable playing by ear or not, it's gonna take beginners to an intermediate level of piano playing both an improvisation. And in reading music. Okay, that's my guarantee for the piano explored.
Uh, course that's coming up in January, so stay tuned to this podcast. Stay tuned to this channel on YouTube, because we're gonna be making several announcements where you can get discounted rates and different things like that to learn how to play this amazing instrument, because again, I believe that anybody.
Can learn to play the piano and I think I can help you. I know I can help you to go from a beginner learning about the piano and interested about it in in, in the instrument and it's music, whether that's in. A jazz idiom, a classical idiom, a pop idiom, a worship idiom. I can help you to go from beginner to an intermediate level, and we're gonna do that in the piano Explored Academy on Teachable, On Teachable in January.
It's gonna be launched in just a little bit here for registration. All right, onto today's episode. Here are the three. Why you should learn the piano. I've already said you can learn the piano. Now I'm saying you should learn the piano. Okay, here's number one. Number one, it opens up creativity. It opens up creativity.
For the piano, we've got buttons that we push and they're called keys. They're called keys. And in an immediate way, anybody can come up and put their fingers and hands on the keyboard and play anything, and it might sound diss. And it might sound consonant. It might sound terrifying. It might sound exuberant, it might sound something, but it's instant creativity.
I just made that up. I just made it up by pushing down some buttons. Some of those chords and chords are notes that are put together. Some of them sounded really good and some of them sounded not so good, but you have to live and learn, right? You have to live and learn, so push some buttons and get some music.
and you can be an instant piano player, an instant piano player. Some of my method that I'm gonna be introducing again in this course that's coming up in January is by only playing on the white keys and making music on the white keys, and then playing music only on the black keys. You can do this. You could do this at home.
Right now. You put down the pedal on the right. You put down the pedal that's on the right and you just hold it down and you just start playing the black keys.
Instant creativity. Instant creativity. It's so much. Now, if I were get to give you some parameters about, uh, how to play and what kind of mood to create, I know you could do it and you can do it, uh, on your piano at home. If you've got a piano at home, let's make a flowy. If I said, can you make it flowy just by playing flowy, is that an adjective or an ad?
Or even a word. Is it a word? Anyway, let's make it flowy. You get it? All right, here we go. Let's make it flowy. I'm gonna put down again my right put pedal, and I'm just gonna make something up on the Black keys.
Notice I'm only playing on the black keys, No white keys, just the black keys. And you don't have to be as complex as I've made it out to be. Um, maybe you can be a little bit more simple and make it flowy. Maybe OneNote at a. Let's try that one note at a time. Just put the pedal down. I love putting the pedal down because it just opens up the piano.
A very famous pianist by the name of Arter Ruben Sign said that this P pedal is the soul of the piano. I could not agree more.
Isn't that fun? It's so fun and you can be instantly creative. In creating different kinds of moods and feelings and ideas by just putting down the pedal on the right and playing your keyboard at home. Just as an aside, does it matter if you have a piano or a keyboard? No, not at the beginning stages.
Okay. Not at the creative stages either. Where you can play. , anything on a digital keyboard that you could play on a piano. Okay? So just go and start making your own music. Making your own music by playing any of the black keys in combination. That's called a pentatonic scale. Penta meaning five. So you got five tones in the scale, and you'll notice that there are five.
Black keys that are available on the keyboard. They have different iterations depending upon the octave that you're in, but they're the same, So they're the same kinds of pitches. All right, so you've got five notes, five tones, pentatonic scale that you can make music instantly with. So the number one reason why you should learn the piano is that.
Can be instantly creative. All right, number two. Number two, you can get used to reading the grand staff. What is that? My goodness. The grand staff. I'll show it on the video, uh, for you. Is the treble and base clef. The treble and base clef. And the treble and base clef are basically the most popular clefts that you use in all of music.
Okay. So there are some instruments that just use the base cle. Like a trombone or a tuba or a cello, they primarily focus in on the bass clef, the trouble clef. So for ladies' voices, oftentimes you'll sing in the trouble clef in the guitar, you'll play in the Trouble Clef violin, you'll play in the Trouble Clef flute, you'll play in the trouble.
And so as a pianist and as a piano learner, you get to learn about the base and trouble clef all at once. Now with my method of learning the notes on the staff, We don't memorize acronyms. We do a little bit, but basically if the note goes up, it goes ahead in the alphabet. So repeat after me. A, B, C, D, E, F, G.
And then let's say it backwards. G F E D C B A. So if a note goes up, you go abc, D e F G, you go right in the alphabet and if it goes down, you go down in the alphabet, G, F, E, D, C, B A. So I get my students to say the alphabet forwards and backwards a lot. There are only seven letters that we have to learn.
Seven, right? B, C, D, E, F. A, B, C, D, E, F, G. That's seven. Okay. Seven notes that you have to learn to say forwards and you know how to do that. Say the alphabet and then to say it backwards. G F E, D C, B A. And practice that so that you can identify notes on the page that correspond with the buttons or the keys that you push on the piano.
Cool. So you get to learn the, the, the grand staff. And this is linked. This is linked for you potential music majors out there. This is linked to the next point why you should learn the piano, and that's. , you should learn the piano because it's an analog for music theory. All right? It's music theory. Music theory time.
Music theory is a way that we can talk to people about what's happening in the music. Okay. And what I focus in on, uh, both at the school that I teach at, and in my private studio, I focus on a term called functional harmony. Functional harmony. What in the world is that? Well, every chord has a meaning. It certainly has a meaning in and of itself, but.
Even more fun when that chord goes into another chord. And when we study those kinds of relationships, chord between chord, I'll show you in just a little bit about what I mean, chord to court. We call that functional harmony. This is the building blocks for a deep understanding of music, music. And as a piano teacher, I incorporate music theory, piano technique, reading, music all into one because as pianists we get to participate in the music theory discussion while learning how to play the piano.
So, for example, I'm gonna play a chord. Into another chord, and I think you'll hear it moving in that direction, a chord moving into another chord.
Or maybe in a complicated show pan piece.
Now, of course I played that a little bit out of rhythm. That's chopan beads, CHOP's bead number three in a flat major. I played it a little outta rhythms so that you could hear sort of these lingering harmonies that begin to pour and cascade into one another and out of one another. It's really spectacular.
But that's one of the reasons why you should learn how to play the piano because you can dive into this amazing world of functional harmony, and you really need to do that. If you want to be a musician and a music teacher. It's another analog, It's another, uh, side path, parallel path to you learning theory and learning how music is construc.
Thank you so much for joining us today on the Piano Explorer Podcast and we'll talk to you soon.