“I just want to play some of my favorite songs without spending years in training!” Wouldn’t it be great if you could learn to play keyboard in months instead of years? The good news: now there is a way to do exactly that.
You want to learn to play keyboard with skill fairly quickly. You do not want to get bogged down in exercise after exercise before those great sounds come rolling off your fingers. Who wants to spend years learning scales and doing drills before you play music that makes you happy?
Okay, how do you get started, and what’s the secret? It’s really very simple: Do the opposite of what is taught in traditional piano / keyboard lessons. This approach is brilliant once you understand how it works.
Traditional piano / keyboard instruction starts with sight reading. Here the student learns how to read musical notation and play exactly what’s written on the page. It is an extremely laborious process. Plus, the student ends up with little or no understanding of how music is constructed, or what makes songs have a unique sound or “feel.” Students do not learn to play by ear or how to get creative with the way they play.
Let’s turn things around. Learn to play keyboard by starting with “patterns” of chords and rhythms. Learning chord and rhythm patterns is like learning the alphabet. Once learned, you can spell out a wide variety of songs with skill and speed. You will have a solid foundation to play and create music of all kinds, from classical to rock.
Here’s a practical example of what I mean. Did you know that the Elvis’ classic “Love Me Tender” uses exactly the same chords that the even older classic “Aura Lee” uses? Learn those exact chords once, and you can play many other songs and variations based on them. How? Here is where it gets interesting. After you learn that exact chord pattern (which is really easy), go ahead and learn a few rhythm patterns (like Straight Beat Gospel, Split Chord or Half Beat Bounce). Then you can play a ton of other songs that sound very unique, but which use the same chords you already know.
Once you have a few simple chord patterns and rhythm patterns under your fingers, you are able to play a wide variety of songs. You’ve learned the alphabet. Now you can easily spell out a lot of very interesting and unique sounding songs. You will learn to play keyboard with confidence, with speed, and while having a lot of fun at the same time.
