Playing music without reading it (peeahpeeahpeeahno mainly)

[BeardFaceMan]

I've played guitar for a number of years, I'm shit, obviously, and the thing that saved me with learning the guitar was not having to read sheet music. God bless tab and chord boxes. So now I'd quite like to be shit at the piano and I'm facing the same dilemma - I don't want to learn how to read sheet music. I'd rather take the approach I did with the guitar, learn some chords and scales and then try and develop an ear. So is there a similar system for piano as there is for guitar, is there piano tab? Something that easily shows you how to play chords, what fingers go where, basic scales,  that sort of thing, I'm not looking to be a virtuoso. Or are there sites that have piano style tab for songs as there are for guitar tab?

[NoSleep]

Depends on what you want to do. If you just want to do the equivalent of strumming, it should be quite easy to find some chord shapes to follow with the right hand and bash out a bass with the left. A good trick with the left is to play octaves for a stronger bass. Also, stick mainly to playing notes from the chord in the bass, preferring to play the main note of the chord, but sometimes stepping to notes that aren't in the chord where a bit of melody from that end is appropriate (like that bit in River Deep Mountain High after each line in the chorus) The right hand can play the chord in different inversions to sit higher or lower in pitch, dependent on what's going on over the top (singing?).

[NoSleep]

It's a lot easier to learn chords on a piano than a guitar because it laid out so logically, so once you learn one chord (say C major) it's easy to extrapolate that to find all the others.

[NoSleep]

Also, learning notation is probably the easiest way for playing the piano (again because of the logical layout). You don't have to learn how to sight read but being able to pick through the notes of a piece before you play it by ear can help a lot.

All the above is based on how I was taught how to play electronic organ; we'd just get a single melody line with chord symbols above it for the changes and we would have to work out what the left hand (chords) and the foot pedals (bass) would do for ourselves from those symbols; basically make up our own arrangement (starting from "oompah oompah" and working upward).

[famethrowa]

I would say don't read anything. Go to the piano, put your right thumb on a white note, then add fingers 3 and 5 to it on the corresponding white notes. Push them all down together and hey now you have a triad, the shape on which most "pop" piano is done. Move the shape to different notes and listen to the different chords, some are major, some minor but hey that's for next lesson. Now locate middle C on the keyboard, stick your thumb on that and try out the triad. C major chord! Play a single C down low with your left hand at the same time, even better! This is how Lennon and Elton started out, you know.

[Darles Chickens]

It's a lot easier to learn chords on a piano than a guitar because it laid out so logically, so once you learn one chord (say C major) it's easy to extrapolate that to find all the others.

I wouldn't say so, because the non-uniformity of intervals between the white notes change the chord shape, e.g. from C major to E major, unlike a guitar where you can move the same chord shape up and down the fretboard.  Well, assuming bar chords.

I taught myself piano from a very young age, and can still kind of remember the process.  Starting in C major (because there are no black notes), I got used to how intervals sounded between the notes, i.e. just concentrating on melody line.  Then I remember putting a simple bassline below, essentially just a single note representing the bottom note of the chord.  When I was ready, I got to understand the difference between minor and major, and added a second note in the right hand to form the right chord with the melody and bass.  From there, it was just an incremental process, learning about inversions and more exotic chords.

I play entirely by ear, but can't read music (at least, not at any useful speed).  When hearing a song in my head, I automatically break it into melody, chords and bassline, simply because that's how I learnt (I think there's a term for this - might be "figured bass")  My approach is pretty much always to pick out a bassline with the left hand, and everything else with the right hand, just because that's what sounds better on a piano.  If I have to do anything more elaborate with my left hand, it all goes to hell.

[NoSleep]

I really meant it's a lot easier to find chords on a piano, having learnt one; if you know Cmajor is C E G, then moving each note up a semitone guarantees you a C#major. Fingering is a whole other discussion.

[BeardFaceMan]

Thanks for the help chaps. I got an Arturia Minilab so I'm mostly going to be playing simple stuff over stuff, playimg synth riffs etc rather than playing and singing, thats why I just thought learning a few chords and messing about that way would be the way to go to find out if I like it/am good enough at it to get a bigger keyboard.

[kngen]

As a guitarist, I found that playing chords on the piano with my left hand while picking out melodies with my right came pretty naturally. (I would have thought it would have been the other way round, but I can kinda sorta see why that would be the case.)

Then I printed out a couple of chord charts (in the keys I was using most), and if using two hands got too tricky, I just tracked the chords, looped them, then worked out a melody/bassline/colour over the top at my leisure. Almost criminally easy. No spralling into madness for me - take that, Glenn Gould!

[gilbertharding]

I took a few years at school to try to learn the trombone. I thought it was a cool instrument, and my brother had already 'bagsied' the violin (years before he became a teenager - and he's good enough at music now to make his living at it).

As well as the lessons, and the practice, I had to go once a week to be in a 'Concert Band' with a load of kids from other schools. So I had to read music a bit.

My problem was, I knew what the notes on the page looked like and how they related to what my lips and arm should be doing. I even knew what one of them was called, but never managed to remember what any of the other ones were called.

After about a year of this and managing perfectly well using 'my' system and playing by ear, something happened which revealed my ignorance and allowed the actual worst little arsehole in the world (he played the Euphonium of all things) to laugh at me. I found a new hobby shortly afterwards.

[NoSleep]

I can imagine that it would be quite useful to have a piano handy if you're learning an instrument like the trombone (or even a guitar) just to connect what you're doing to some musical understanding. The piano's quite handy as a reference for almost any other instrument without a keyboard.

[popcorn]

I taught myself to play guitar and then piano as a teen. I tried to learn to read sheet music but I found it incredibly boring so gave up immediately. (I'm a great believer in following the fun.)

As others have said, a great initial strategy is just to learn to play what are basically barre chords on piano. Left hand plays the root notes (in octaves or as a power chord). Right hand fills in the other stuff. Learn all the chord shapes with this formula and you'll be able to bash out anything really.

One more tip: there are millions of YouTube tutorials that show you the notes in a nice visual way. For example, here's Clocks by Coldplay. Remember you can change the playback speed of the video to slow things down if you need to.