How to Play Songs on the Piano

I know this for sure because I used to be a piano tuner. I tuned 4 or 5 pianos a day, 5 or 6 days a week, for over 20 years. I tuned for private owners, institutions, music teachers, piano dealers, and concert artists. The photo on the right is me about 1986, right after I bought my piano dealership.

I've had thousands of people tell me why they succeeded or failed at learning how to play songs on the piano.

Most of my clientele consisted of new piano owners who had purchased or rented a piano so that their children could take lessons. After I tuned each piano, I would sit and play bits and pieces of songs, play some chords and run a few arpeggios, just to check the tuning. Invariably, the piano owner would say something like "I'd love to be able to play piano like that. I took lessons when I was a kid, but I quit".

I'd ask them why they didn't start lessons again, and most would say that they were too busy. When pressed, though, it would always come down to one thing: taking piano lessons just wasn't any fun. It was too much work, not enough pleasure. They'd say: "I'd love to be able to sit down and play songs on the piano, but I don't want to have to go through years of playing scales and learning to read music just to be able to do that".

Traditional piano lessons are boring, and they are the #1 reason why students of all ages quit studying piano. There are two reasons why you should avoid taking traditional piano lessons.

To begin with, traditional piano method books teach piano by teaching students to read notes so that they can play sheet music. This is an absolutely BACKWARDS way to teach music.

Learning to play piano by learning to read notes is like learning to touch-type. You might know some adults who learned to play this way: ask them to play a song and they say "I can't play without my sheeet music". You see, they never really learned to understand music; they just learned to touch-type on the piano.

The other reason to avoid traditional piano lessos is that more than 9 out of 10 piano teachers were never trained to teach piano (I know this for certain: my piano shop had a 900 student music school, and I was constantly interviewing teachers). Untrained teachers rely on published piano methods to structure their lessons. Published piano methods are written to teach note reading and scales.

Want to know an interesting fact? When I had my piano shop, I sold almost 7 Level One method books for every Level Two or above method book. Lots of students started piano, but most dropped out within the first 6 months. Few students kept up lessons past a year or two.

The part of the brain that enabled you to learn to speak English is the same part of the brain that enables you to learn how to play songs on the piano. Both learning music and learning a language are achieved by listening, observing, and imitating. Children learn words, then learn to arrange the words into sentences. They first learn language "by ear", then they learn how to read & write.

Music should be learned the same way: hear the notes played individually and in phrases, see the song being played, and imitate what you see and hear. Just like a child learning to speak, you will build a musical "vocabulary" of musical phrases and chords. Then, you will be able to play the songs that you hear just easily as you can repeat a sentence. Once you can "speak" the musical language, then you can learn how to read and write it. This isn't a new concept: it's been taught in Europe and Japan for over 100 years, and is the basis for the famous Suzuki Violin Method.

Anyone can learn how to play songs on the piano or keyboard - given the right instruction - and it doesn't matter what age you are. What's needed are the right building blocks laid out in sequential order: learn notes, learn chord shapes, learn phrases. Then, you will be amazed at how quickly you will be able to learn to play songs on the piano.

I promised I'd share with you the best way to learn how to play songs on the piano. No kidding, this course will get you playing piano and loving it. Have a look...