A beautiful piano-ballad which perfectly illustrates and exemplifies how the relationship to the harmony (and thereby sound and atmosphere) of playing the exact same note supported by different chords / bass notes completely changes.
Coen
Sweater Weather - The Neighborhood.
Those of you that have been following me for a longer time know that I just love to play these guitar-riff based songs on the piano.
No piano in the original? Well let's just listen to what the other instruments do and use Chords and Patterns to translate those parts to our much beloved keyboard, creating a piano part ourselves!
Burn - Ellie Goulding.
An (overly?) produced super-hit that in fact turned out to hold a really (really!) nice piano-part.
When I started to listen what chords this song was built of and make my own piano version out of them by copying some of the synths from the original, I was happily surprised with the beauty of the actual song that came out. Of course, it had already occurred to me that this song had something special when I heard it one of the million-and-some times on the radio wherever I go lately, but translating such a heavily electronic song into an acoustic piano part always does something special to reveal the bare-naked niceness (when it's there) of a tune, doesn't it?
Have a little faith in me - John Hiatt.
Pop-Piano at it's finest.
Apart from the stunning and heartfelt vocal performance of mister Hiatt on this track, this is one of the greatest examples of just how simple a piano-riff can be to create an atmosphere to melt even the coldest of ices.
In this lesson of course I'll also explain it's 'origin' - the chords and pattern that the riff are built of - in detail so you'll both understand- and be able to reproduce it in many other ways, just like -as you'll also see later in the tutorial- John does himself later on in the song.
Timber - Pitbull ft. Ke$ha
Chart-topping, four chord songs. Haven't we already seen quite a few of those...
This is yet another one of those (melody) riff-based tunes that oh so many of you seem to love (request for this one were off the charts).
Dear darlin' - Olly Murs
Dear darlin',
I just wanted to say,
in the exciting spirit of an upcoming day,
another nice Pop-Piano song for you to learn and play.
How to play Eminem's 'The Monster' ft. Rihanna.
A super-easy to play song, yet again grooving steadily on the hip-hop mantra:
Formidable - Stromae
The title of this song describes my current situation and that of Piano Couture as a whole quite well, actually.
Happy - Pharrell Williams.
This one is all about the good fortune, smiles, laughter, joy and super-exciting new Pop-Piano skills to be learnt along with it.
You all know this mega-hit that makes your booty shake like there is no tomorrow and as most of you indicated you'd like to know how to play it too, so here it is, tutorialized all for you: 'Happy' by Pharrell Williams.
What now - Rihanna.
Our beloved pop-diva Rihanna is on the menu again, with yet another killer Pop-Piano-riff based hit of hers: the awesome 'What Now'.
The intro and verse are obviously very piano oriented. In the first part of the tutorial (up now) I'll explain exactly what's going on and how to play it.
For the second part (coming up Jan. 11), which has a less obvious piano version lurking inside, I created a very own and unique translation-to-the-piano out of all those monstrous synths and beats. (stay tuned).
What a song. Awesome lessons to be learnt here.
