PlayPianoFluently

A radical approach to learning piano & keyboard skills

Practice and learning materials to develop fluent musicianship with genuinely useful piano and keyboard skills such as improvisation, playing by ear and fluent sight-reading

Conventional piano methods are more performance-based, with a top-down approach. Piano technique, aural training, practising scales and arpeggios, studying music theory and practical musicianship… all these things can help you acquire skills for performing well on the keys. But they fail to generate real fluency in the language of music.

In reality, for most people to play music well, they need a clear and conscious understanding of the natural principles and elements of musical language – rhythm and tonality. Learning piano this way connects you to the core or essence of music.

We all learn music initially using our natural sense of rhythm and tonality and by copying songs and pieces. Conventional piano training takes this basic “karaoke” ability and enhances it through repetitive rehearsal practice to develop muscle memory. However, this passive way of playing is not the same as the fluent expression of musical vocabulary and syntax that you learn in PlayPianoFluently.

Because it is such a radically different way of learning to play the piano, people sometimes struggle to abandon deep habits that come from the conventional culture of music education. Letting go and removing psychological blockages is therefore an important aspect of this approach.

The willingness to challenge yourself and play purely for self-expression is essential. The desire to execute music, to reproduce it correctly, to achieve external results always gets in the way. Instead, you need to play with these principles and elements of musical language entirely for yourself, be like a curious, pre-school child. This way, you will find the deep familiarity with this model of music that is necessary.

Express yourself, don’t impress yourself
or anyone else

Fluent musicianship training will build on your natural musical skill. You don’t need any musical superpowers like perfect pitch. You can simply discover how to map the piano keyboard into your brain as an embodied structure, to develop a powerful awareness of how rhythmic meter or musical groove works in a nonlinear way, and to internalise elements of rhythmic and tonal vocabulary – rhythm cells and tonal blocks.

All this is a very practical, embodied learning style that turns the piano keyboard into an extension of your body. You learn to move your arms, fingers and hands around the keys with natural, effortless ease, making the exact sounds that you intend to communicate.

This musical skill – genuine fluency – is extraordinarily empowering. You might be an experienced musician willing to take on a radical challenge, or a beginner who senses that music should function fluently like spoken and written language. Your level of experience doesn’t matter: you just need to have the right mindset, and an adventurous spirit.