Piano Lessons for Beginners

Many piano players struggle to perform anything other than what they see on a sheet of paper and even then they don’t really have the expressiveness the original writer intended. Why, do you ask? Maybe because they’re just not good. Or maybe they need the skill of playing be ear. Many people will tell you that you absolutely must learn music theory to become a great piano player. While it is true that the more knowledge you have about anything the have a better understanding. Ultimately having a lot of head knowledge will not necessarily mean you are going to be good. What you need to learn is how to apply the knowledge you learn. The better you learn to apply that knowledge, the more increased your skills will become.

Many People just haven’t developed the skill to play piano by ear. When I say play by ear, I don’t mean just sitting on the piano hopelessly pushing keys on a piano until you don’t want to see another piano ever again in your life. I’m talking about a system or format that you can systematically use to get the results you want. So many people overlook playing playing by ear, and even look down on people that do. That’s because they don’t understand there is a skill involved. True some people are just amazingly gifted and can just pull chords out of the air, seemingly flowing from them like water. But then there the other type of piano player. The one who doesn’t have so much talent and doesn’t even know his/her potential. They haven’t really been given any down to earth information they can use and apply to the piano.

Its just a lot of disconnected pieces of data. Believe me I’ve been there. Playing piano by ear is just knowing, based on sounds, what chords are the logical ones to play in what situation. That in a nutshell is it. Now naturally, you can always build on what you know but they key is knowing in the first place. It is really easier than you think and once you have learned how to do this, there will be no end to what you can play. This skill just keeps on growing and growing.

Hallelujah is a song written by Leonard Cohen which has become well known. The song has been played in Shrek and was released on the first single album of the x-factor winner Alexandra Burke. In next lines I’ll explain how to play a very simple version of this song which still sounds fabulous.

The chords you will need to play with your left hand are C major, A minor, F major, G major and E minor. One of the ways to make it sound nice is simply to individually play the tones of the chord. For example you should play C major like C, E, G, C (an octave higher), G, E and back to C. At the beginning the lyrics go like I heard there was a secret chord, if you sing along you should press C at the moment you start saying the word heard at the word there you already play G and for “was” C (an octave higher). But instead of returning back to C return to A and begin playing A minor. You can play it as A, C, E, A but playing it A, E, A, C will sound much better. A minor goes with lyrics “a secret chord” and then you go back to C chord for “that David played and it pleased the lord” and again A minor for the following: “and it pleased the lord”.

After this comes a bit different sequence “but you don’t really” where you should play F (F, A, C, F) and “care for music” where G (G, B, D, G) should be played. You should be back to C chord when you play ” do you” you continue playing it when singing “it goes like this”. And now before the hallelujah part you go down to F but only play it as F, A, C (”the forth”), when you sing “the fifth” you already play G (G, B, D), up to A minor (which you play as usual) for “the minor fall and the”, down to F for “major lift, the” and up to G for “the baffled king com-”, and now for the first time down to E (E, G, B, E, B, G, E) minor “-posing”, and up to A-minor for hallelujah. Now comes a little pause before the main part and then the chords you play throughout the whole refrain are F, A minor, F, C, G and back to C.

With your right hand you play the melody. You start on G (”I”) and continue pressing the keys octave higher on G (”Heard there was a”) and A for “secret wish”. Same goes for “that David played and it pleased the Lord” and then you stay on A playing “but you don’t really” go back to G for “for mu-” and to F”-sic” and up again “do you”. There are many different ways to continue so I’ll show you just the way I play, but try to play it by ear you will learn it a lot faster. G(octave lower), G G G A A B B G C C C C C C D D C D D D D D E E D C. And for the refrain you go back down to E(ha), G(le), A A(lu-jah)… And repeat it.

Remember that this is just my suggestion on how to play Hallelujah the important thing is that you know the chords for your left hand which you can play the way I described it or in any other way, once you master your left hand you can add the melody playing by ear.