Play Piano in a Flash! Play Your Favorite Songs Like a Pro--Whether You've Had Lessons or Not!

Play Piano in a Flash! is the winner of our 2002 Pinnacle Award in the category of "how-to" books. -- National Association of Bookdealers Exchange (NABE) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Scott "The Piano Guy" Houston Scott Houston's background combines a degree from Indiana University with over 15 years experience in the music industry. From teaching, to playing professionally, to managing a music publishing company, he has experienced a well-rounded view of the music world. Realizing that most students do not aspire to become concert pianists, but rather want to enjoy being able to sit down at a keyboard and play their favorite music, he has taught thousands of students successfully at universities and colleges nationwide. Scott truly believes that anyone can learn to play well enough to have fun and sound good at a piano or keyboard. Just ask one of his students! --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Book Excerpt #1 Here is some good, and equally true, news. If you want to learn how to play non-classical popular style piano, you simply need to learn a basic set of rules and techniques and you can start sounding fairly hip right away (as in hours or days, not years). Will you want to keep learning and playing and otherwise keep getting better for the next 5 to 10 years? YES! But, you'll be having the time of your life on the way there. Why? Because you'll be playing instead of practicing. Now I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "Sounds great, Scott, but how can it be that easy to teach?" Well, the reason playing non-classical piano is so much easier to teach someone is that it removes the "A-Number-1 Top-of-the-List" reason that most people never learn to play classical piano at any level of proficiency. That, my friends, is notation reading. You know, getting your hands around a piano is a relatively simple thing to do compared to most other instruments. It's all target practice! Seriously, as long as you get your finger over the right note at the right time, you are good to go. You can't control if the piano is in or out of tune. You don't have to worry about taking a deep enough breath. Pianists don't have to worry about getting their mouths in some correctly contorted position (known as an embouchure) like horn players. Think about poor brass players who's lips get all swollen and puffy and hurt like crazy when they play high notes. Or how about oboe players who must be (at least I know I would be·) concerned about their brains squeezing out their ears when they play. Or how about any of you who have had sons or daughters start out on a reed instrument like a clarinet or saxophone. I mean, a better goose call has yet to be invented than the first week of a reed players musical life. In exchange for the extremely difficult task of dealing with a tough instrument, everyone else gets totally bailed out when it comes to note reading. With just a few exceptions (like string players every now and then) all they ever have to read is one note at a time and only in one clef! Must be nice! Think about traditional piano music; multiple notes at one time, in two clefs (which are different), with two hands. It's a brain buster for sure! The thing that makes playing piano such a killer is not the playing, it's the note reading. Piano players (or wannabe players) are strange in this way; I bet if I had 100 piano students look at traditional sheet music (that I knew had notation in it tougher than they could read), 95% of them would say "Scott, I can't play that." That is in contrast with the truth of the matter, which is that they should have said "Scott, I can't read that." Those students wouldn't have any idea whether or not they could physically get their hands over the keyboards in such a way as to play what that notation was recording. I'm sure they never got remotely close to testing their physical abilities on a keyboard. That is because they (like the overwhelming majority of failed "lesson takers") never got to be good enough notation readers to even come close to testing their mechanical abilities. It may seem like a hair splitting distinction, but it is really a huge issue that you must come to grip with, that being: READING NOTATION DOES NOT EQUAL GOOD PIANO PLAYING. Can both coincide (good reading and good playing)? Sure, and I applaud those who have toiled to a position where that is the case! But two other possibilities are found in abundance as well. One being, great notation readers who can't play their way out of a paper bag. The other being, those that can't read worth a hoot, who are GREAT players. It is that last description that is of major intrigue to us in this book. I hope you are all quietly thinking to yourself, "You mean I can learn how to play piano without becoming a great note reader?" The answer is a resounding YES!!! We will have to acquire a very basic amount of notation reading skill. But the extremely difficult task of honing your note reading skills that classical students are required to endure for years and years is totally nonexistent as a requirement to playing non-classical piano. In summary, I reiterate that what you will learn in this book is NOT appropriate for use in playing classical style piano. But, always keep in mind the other side of the coin. If you use the rules of classical piano to play non-classical music, you too will be playing incorrectly. Worse yet, you will be doomed to sound like a corny sheet music player, not like a pro. I'll show you how to sound like a pro... --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Read more