Excerpt: 'Play Piano in a Flash'

March 22, 2004 -- In Play Piano in a Flash musician Scott Houston says it does not have to take years to learn how to play the piano like a pro, in a style that is much simpler than traditional classic piano.

Excerpt 1

Here is some good, and equally true, news. If you want to learn how to play non-classical popular style piano, you simply need to learn a basic set of rules and techniques and you can start sounding fairly hip right away (as in hours or days, not years). Will you want to keep learning and playing and otherwise keep getting better for the next 5 to 10 years? YES! But, you'll be having the time of your life on the way there. Why? Because you'll be playing instead of practicing.

Now I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "Sounds great, Scott, but how can it be that easy to teach?" Well, the reason playing non-classical piano is so much easier to teach someone is that it removes the "A-Number-1 Top-of-the-List" reason that most people never learn to play classical piano at any level of proficiency. That, my friends, is notation reading.

You know, getting your hands around a piano is a relatively simple thing to do compared to most other instruments. It's all target practice! Seriously, as long as you get your finger over the right note at the right time, you are good to go. You can't control if the piano is in or out of tune. You don't have to worry about taking a deep enough breath. Pianists don't have to worry about getting their mouths in some correctly contorted position (known as an embouchure) like horn players. Think about poor brass players who's lips get all swollen and puffy and hurt like crazy when they play high notes. Or how about oboe players who must be (at least I know I would be) concerned about their brains squeezing out their ears when they play. Or how about any of you who have had sons or daughters start out on a reed instrument like a clarinet or saxophone. I mean, a better goose call has yet to be invented than the first week of a reed players musical life. In exchange for the extremely difficult task of dealing with a tough instrument, everyone else gets totally bailed out when it comes to note reading. With just a few exceptions (like string players every now and then) all they ever have to read is one note at a time and only in one clef! Must be nice! Think about traditional piano music; multiple notes at one time, in two clefs (which are different), with two hands. It's a brain buster for sure!

The thing that makes playing piano such a killer is not the playing, it's the note reading. Piano players (or wannabe players) are strange in this way; I bet if I had 100 piano students look at traditional sheet music (that I knew had notation in it tougher than they could read), 95 percent of them would say "Scott, I can't play that." That is in contrast with the truth of the matter, which is that they should have said "Scott, I can't read that." Those students wouldn't have any idea whether or not they could physically get their hands over the keyboards in such a way as to play what that notation was recording. I'm sure they never got remotely close to testing their physical abilities on a keyboard. That is because they (like the overwhelming majority of failed "lesson takers") never got to be good enough notation readers to even come close to testing their mechanical abilities.

It may seem like a hair splitting distinction, but it is really a huge issue that you must come to grip with, that being: READING NOTATION DOES NOT EQUAL GOOD PIANO PLAYING. Can both coincide (good reading and good playing)? Sure, and I applaud those who have toiled to a position where that is the case! But two other possibilities are found in abundance as well. One being, great notation readers who can't play their way out of a paper bag. The other being, those that can't read worth a hoot, who are GREAT players. It is that last description that is of major intrigue to us in this book. I hope you are all quietly thinking to yourself, "You mean I can learn how to play piano without becoming a great note reader?" The answer is a resounding YES!!! We will have to acquire a very basic amount of notation reading skill. But the extremely difficult task of honing your note reading skills that classical students are required to endure for years and years is totally nonexistent as a requirement to playing non-classical piano.

In summary, I reiterate that what you will learn in this book is NOT appropriate for use in playing classical style piano. But, always keep in mind the other side of the coin. If you use the rules of classical piano to play non-classical music, you too will be playing incorrectly. Worse yet, you will be doomed to sound like a corny sheet music player, not like a pro. I'll show you how to sound like a pro.

Excerpt 2

I can not express how strongly I have found this strategy to be superior for people I have taught to play. For the umpteenth time, it comes down to the fact that unless you are having some fun and getting some immediate gratification playing piano, history proves to me that you are exceedingly likely to bail out and quit the effort (which has very likely happened to many of you previous to reading this book.) Is there some crime in having fun right away? You're just doing this for personal enrichment; so get that old mistaken notion out of your noggin that says "no pain, no gain." It might be right for building muscles but not for building piano playing skills. To summarize, the way to work on chords is to learn ONLY those chords you need to learn to get through the tune on which you are currently working. And you also better make sure that the tune you are working on is one that really gets your juices flowing. Why waste time working an a tune you don't enjoy? Life is too short to play dumb tunes!

Excerpt 3

It all gets down to what the "end game" is for any activity. For this activity, playing non-classical piano, the end game is to sound good and have fun. Period. All of the minutiae that piano players tend to go through when taking classical lessons like fingerings, or figuring out key signatures, or counting out rhythms (remember 1-ee-and-ah, 2-ee-and-ah and all of that jeez) are just roadblocks in our path toward sounding good as soon as possible and having fun immediately.

All of those things will come to you through playing, not practicing. If you never get to playing something you want to play and enjoy playing, all of that won't matter anyway because you'll quit!

You must start playing immediately so that you'll have the desire to keep on with your efforts. Then your playing will naturally lead you to all those other things in fair time as your desire to improve continues to grow.

On the other hand, if you never get off the ground to begin with, all of the other is for naught. So don't waste your time or effort on that stuff now. Just go play and have fun.

Excerpted from Play Piano in a Flash , by Scott Houston, Copyright 2004, Hyperion BooksGo to http://www.scottthepianoguy.com/ for more tips from Houston.