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All About That Bass – Meghan Trainor
As the title of this track suggests, practicing this monster-hit is indeed an excellent exercise for developing those left-hand bassline skills.
I'm Not The Only One – Sam Smith.
Some serious Pop-Piano riffin’ going on in Sam’s new tune.
Pretty easy to grasp (I hope) whilst VERY illustrative to show how to turn a few simple (but nice ‘eh?) chords into an actual piano part. In other words: how to play Pop-Piano: using chords and patterns, sound cool without limitations and play with heart, soul and ears. Easy does it, as this song shows once again.
Shake it off – Taylor Swift
It’s been six weeks.
Six weeks of silence.
The longest period of silence in the history of Piano Couture.
Why? Where have I been?
A Sky Full of Stars – Coldplay
Dance-style tracks often revolve around a fairly simple repetition of a riff and / or the same synth-pumping chord progression over and over, but when the main part of a tune – like with this weeks tutorial featuring mega-hit – is derived from a chord-style driven, organic Pop-Piano part like this… wow. Chris Martin, you’re the man.
Stay With Me - Sam Smith
Ease comes in many forms. Personally I like the ones that sound good best, but that's just me 😉 . Sometimes the difficulty lays in finding that which is in the end turns out to be easy. Strip the whole shebang down to what's actually essential. Effective. And sometimes that leaves you with just 4 different notes for an entire verse.
Their (changing) mutual harmonic relationship is what is important though. That is what counts. That is what's valuable. Keeping that in mind, this weeks tutorial, however easy it may be, teaches us many chord-skill refining lessons actually, amongst which:
Walking in Memphis - Marc Cohn
Timeless piano-riffs are those that just ‘ring’. That sound brilliant and get stuck in your mind the very moment you hear 'em. Good old, true Pop-Piano music: music that is driven by one of those masterly crafted riffs, played on our beloved instrument. This is one of ‘em. And guess what I’m gonna show you today? How it’s built (out of chords and patterns of course!) and how to play it.
I Stand Alone - Robert Glasper ft. Common.
I don't think you'd really have to be 'into' hiphop to appreciate both the inspiring lyrics and the out-of-this-world, coolness-oozing piano riff that carries the track by this awesome pianist. Let me take you by the hand here and introduce you to the amazing Robert Glasper.
Love The Way You Lie - Eminem ft. Rihanna
Concept learning. That is what this lesson is all about and that is exactly what I love about- and what for me defines Pop-Piano vs. conventional piano-learning.
Clocks - Coldplay
Some tunes just have that quality of instantly becoming a true Pop-Piano classic. Driven by one of those killer Piano-riffs (you guessed it, created and played all by- and with Pop-Piano techniques), that are so signature for this awesome band, one might call this song the summum of Pop-Piano music.
