Ninja Piano skills.
Alright, so the first thing I’m gonna say to you is, and this goes for any instrument I have to say as well, is approaching the piano with confidence,  really, because  ninjas are not afraid. Â
And, and the thing is about, uh, being a songwriter is that for me, in my journey of noticing these things, it’s been about facility versus proficiency. Â So one thing I love about songs really is the fact that you don’t have to be that amazing a player to write an amazing song, okay?
And the best songs that were ever written were not necessarily written by, uh, uh, the best players.  Dylan is the person that springs to mind a little bit, as in, you know, it’s, it’s not the most amazing guitar playing along with many, many other people. But we often see very, very simple ways of playing. uh, but we have the most beautiful songs. so  having a degree of proficiency on an instrument, a familiarity to give you a sense of freedom, I think is really important.
But you don’t really have to worry about being the most amazing player because, uh, for me, uh, uh, I found that, actually there’s so many things I could tell you about, but  I could basically say that I was a very, very good piano player, which meant that I could play songs in any kind of ways that I wanted to.  And I didn’t concentrate on how good the song was because it was all about the chords and the piano and everything. And then I had a girlfriend  who came to the piano completely from scratch and basically started writing better songs than me.
And I was a bit like, huh, Â what’s happening here? Â And so, that brings me on to this issue of being a creative versus a muso. She wrote great songs with really simple piano parts because the focus, ’cause she couldn’t play, uh, hugely well, the focus had to be on the melody and the words, whereas I was writing these very sort of complex songs, Â but my focus wasn’t on the melody and the lyrics.
It was all, Hey, listen to these cool chords,  you know? and so I, I,  now with everything I’ve learned, I’d say that being a creative  on an instrument is probably, especially nowadays, where it’s all about sound rather than musical ability. In, in, in music, in writing,  being creative is more important than being a mu  The other thing about it is that there’s these two words, which I often talk about, uh, to TSA members, songwriters versus composers.
 And as a songwriter, we’re quite used to things just coming out.  We sing something, we play something, it comes out and we’re like, ah, it exists.  But as a composer, you have to refine a lot more because you’re ultimately making something for somebody else to perform a lot of the time. So you have to refine those ideas and stick to them.  And actually, that’s one thing, which I think that if you don’t have tremendous facility on an instrument,  what happens is you have to compose.
Because you can’t just do anything. You have to come and you have to play the same thing every time, because that’s what you’ve learned how to play. ’cause that’s the only thing in a song or a piece that you can play, which basically means make, makes you a composer. Â So I’m saying that being a com songwriters can learn a lot from composers in terms of the refinement of their skills. Â Okie-doke. What’s next? Â Now then, Â don’t be afraid.
 We’re gonna talk about a few super, super basic concepts.  I mean, it’s quite tricky  to take the whole of  harmony  if you like,  and condense it into, choice tidbits.  But remember, there are lots and lots of things if you want to go and learn form, and you can go online, but coming to the piano  as a, if you like, if you dunno what you’re doing.
 So I’m just gonna give you a super simple concept to get you started.  Basic chords,  right? Try this,  pick a note  so we can see on the keyboard here. Just give you a VA vague, uh, a brief overview. You can look it up, but you can see we’ve got patterns in the black keys. Can you see that? I’ve got a group of two black keys here, A  group of three black keys,  two black keys, three black keys.  Take a group of two black keys, play the white note just to the left.
And that’s what we call C, which is the note we kind of start on in terms of, uh, learning the piano. C Â as we go out the notes, they go, C, D, E, F, G, Â G, F, E, D, C, which would make that what comes before C in the alphabet. B, A, Â A, Â B, C, D, E, F, G. And then we start again, A, Â B, C, D, E, F, g, we start again, et cetera.
Okay?  Alright. So, you can delve way into that  in music theory, books and beginner’s, piano books and online and all that kind of business. But let’s just start with this concept, really. pick a note.  Any note,  I’m gonna pick that one. It’s a d but it doesn’t matter what it is.  What I want you to do is I want you to make a shape.
This is quite important, actually  hold your hand like this as if you’re holding a small orange  and you don’t wanna hold it too tightly that you squash it and you don’t wanna hold it too loosely so that it would fall out of your hand. So hold it like that, keep that position and then turn it over and place it on the piano  with your thumb on your chosen note. And then spread each finger out  over one note each. So just sit like that,  okay?
One finger over each note,  okay?  Now to start to play your first chord, which you can then start to write your first song with  exciting. This is exciting. I want you to  play your first,  oh, by the way, sorry, each finger has a number. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So when refer to 1, 2, 3, 4,  and five, we’re talking about the number of fingers which relates to the notes in the sequence.
 Of course, there are notes either side, but we’re not gonna worry about those for the moment. Let’s go to play, therefore number one, number three, and number five at the same time. Okay? And as soon as I play that, you should pretty much go, Hey, I know, I recognize that as the sound of a chord. Okay,  here’s a little slightly more advanced concept, flattening the third, it’s called  flattening or sharpening for that matter.
So this note in the middle three,  if you take it up one  onto the black note or down  onto the white note,  essentially, uh, with one note in between leaving the two on its own, that will make it major or minor,  happy or sad, happy chord,  sad chord.  Okay?
 So this will come in useful later because as you, as you’re playing more chords, you might, they might sound better as major or minor chords  within your chord sequence of your set of chords you’re trying to create.  So let’s leave that just as I played it for the moment, which is It’s D minor that is actually right now I’m gonna pick another note  and do exactly the same process. But in that, in that particular case, you know,  you can take a screenshot or a snapshot on your phone or on the computer.
I want you to look at the keyboard. Â In a perfect world, you’re following along with me, or you’re going back and following along. take a snapshot in your mind of what that looks like and also really what it feels like. You know, play that. This goes back to the first note, the first, my first point, which is play confidently. Â Yeah, Â play, play like a sort of bit wimpy like that.
No play like that. Feel the strength in the hand. Feel the strength in the sound, you know?  So let’s pick another note.  We’re gonna do. I’ll, we’re gonna speed up a bit. We’re gonna do the same thing. I’m gonna play spread my fingers out over, I’m gonna go 1, 3, 5,  okay? Then I’m gonna practice going between the two. Now  I’m gonna pick another note.  Cover every note.
1, 3, 5. All  right.  So three chords.  Ah,  See now you can start to uh, to, to sort of hear, ah, that’s starting to be a, what we call a chord sequence. You know,  Go back to the first chord. What was the note we picked? It was that note.  They can either think of it as a D  or you can think of it as the white note that lives in between the two black keys.
Really wanna strike a balance between  you knowing what the chords are, but actually also it doesn’t matter if you don’t, okay? Because I know loads of people who don’t really know what the notes are on the instrument,  but still play really well,  you know, I want you to take that note there and I want you to play the same thing. In the other hand, it  can be any finger really, but let’s just say the thumb for the moment. I want you to play it in the left hand here  together,  quickening up a bit.
We should then go to that confidently.  Alright?  If you wanted to, I have to, I’ve just missed that a bit. I’ve just, that’s called what we call a base note,  alright?  So a left hand note that goes with the chord  Like that,  alright?
 If you play both hands together or  you could play them independently  and then spend a bit of time getting to know those chords  and go between them,  Alright?
 And that  played confidently  can get you pretty darn far. Okay? Notice how I’ve said play confidently again, because you can see that is a really, really key part to making everything sound cohesive and sound good,
