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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.
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.
'Counting stars' is yet another example of what magic a nice arrangement, -production and - different vocal melodies can do to yet another, mere four chord progression.
In this tutorial I'll show you some various ways of playing them, using some Pop-Piano techniques to both copy the original piano from the record, as to simulate a different instrumental parts and create a unique piano version.
Let’s keep it real..
..that ‘cup-beat’ is definitely awesome, but try and do that with a cup, not a piano ;).
What I WILL teach you in this tutorial is how to play that awesome intro which, on the record, is played by multiple ukulele’s (“what the heck is that?” you ask? A tiny guitar.) by showing a cool pattern over the ruling harmony at that moment in the song: the extension-chord C6add9.
This guy just keeps pumpin' out hits.
In this lesson I'll show you once more how to use Pop-Piano skills to translate guitar parts to piano and create your own unique piano versions.
Add some vocals (optional) and you're good to shine.
This two part tutorial for 'Hey Brother' features:
Talk about a classic.
Michael Jackson... yeah.. I'd really like to write a million words, but nothing that I'd jot down would come even close to doing this man the right he deserves.
He touched, moved, brightened, enlightened, brought joy, tears, moved hips and stirred souls, all through his ground-breaking music.
King of pop. Well, let's just say that sounds like someone that might be fun and educational to learn from! Right?
Yes. This is what being in control of chords and patterns, bringing it back to a fairly basic, but really wonderful piano arrangement means. John Legend is of course a master of the pop-meets-soul-piano-song, and uses the exact methods of playing Pop/Chord/Pattern piano from ‘Hack the Piano‘ to build his beautiful piano songs with. So, for ... Read more
And what an absolute magical track this is. As we've seen quite a few times already, Chris Martin (singer and pianist of Coldplay) really knows how to put his chords and patterns to good use. He is a truly marvellous example of a Pop-Pianist.
This new song of theirs, yet again holds a wonderful (and quite extensive, 14 different chords/voicings for just the verse) chord progression using really nice voicings and inversions and a hauntingly beautiful broken-chord pattern.
5 easy chords (just triads with a few inversions used, nothing too advanced here), a killer guitar-strum transformed into a piano pattern and a melodic hook + left hand 'comping' that will seriously challenge and improve your technical skills and voicing-knowledge.
This week I have a very nice one for all you up-tempo lovers, blues-piano style lovers, Motown-feel lovers and Northern-soul fans out there.
John Newman, the up and coming rising star (his first hit "Love me again", has already topped the English charts at peak position no. 1, click here for my lesson featuring that song if you missed it earlier), is about to officially release his second single: 'Cheating' in the first week of October 2013.
However, the official music video on youtube has already reached an outrageous 2 million views in just over three weeks time.
Want to be the first to play this song, even before it is officially released? Well, I got just the thing for you right here! :).
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