Recently, my friend and fellow freelancing private music instructor Henry decided to hand me one of his piano students due to complications with his schedule (a common way I have gotten some of my gigs). Unlike my other piano students though, this guy wants to play rock piano, improvising at the keyboard by reading chord charts. Naturally, this is right up my alley, as this is the form of piano playing I excel at, so I was really excited to have our first lesson last night.
Sure enough, I had a great time teaching him. This kid basically was starting from point blank, knowing only a little about musical instruments, so I had my work cut out for me. That said, I was surprised to find that teaching someone how to play piano by using basic triadic theory and their ear produced MUCH quicker results than trying to teach them the traditional notation-based way. By the end of the lesson, my student was already playing (albeit slowly) the chord progression to Hotel California, even though he essentially didn't know anything about piano beforehand.
In the end, I'm really excited to see where this all leads and am even considering changing my approach with other students to a more popular music-based method, just like I would naturally do with guitar.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment