Adults Only Piano! Not X-Rated, But Excellent-Rated! Good morning, this is Duane. Today, I’d like to talk about a question that a lot of people have asked me over the years.

People know that I’m a piano teacher of course, and often they come up to me on the street or wherever I am and say, how can I get a start? How can I start playing the piano? I’m an adult. If they were kids they would take lessons. As an adult they don’t really have time to go in and take a weekly lesson. Some do, but not many. They asked me how I could get started playing the piano. I’d like to address that a little bit today. Then at the end of this video I’d like to take you over to a couple websites where it might help you get started. Sometimes I call the program “Adults Only Piano”, simply because busy adults need a different approach than children.

But, first of all when you get started remember to sit at the middle of the piano. You want your belly button pointing at middle C. You don’t want to be over here or over here. You want to be in the middle of the keyboard, so your hands can reach both ways. Roughly your right hand will take care of everything above middle C. Middle C is the C closest to the trademark on the piano. Mine says Yamaha, so it’s right below the Y. Yours may say Baldwin or whatever. The next step is to get your fingers on the keyboard in kind of a parachute position. I tell my students, pretend you’re jumping out of an airplane in a parachute and you land on the keys like that. That’s a smooth landing, isn’t it? If you land like that it doesn’t work. Your fingers have to be comfortably curved to play the piano. Just like you can’t run with straight knees, with locked knees can you, so you have to have curved fingers.

Make sure you’re high enough so that you’re not reaching up at the piano. Some students play like that and that’s terribly awkward. Make sure you’re high enough on the piano bench. If you’re short sit on a telephone book or something. The great Earl Garner who wrote Misty and many other things, a great jazz pianist carried a telephone book with him; because, he was so short. He made sure he was sitting high up. In any case make sure that you play like this with curved fingers and then as you get started make sure you use the correct fingering. By correct, I don’t mean in a legalistic sort of way, but there’s eight notes in an octave, so most melodies are pretty well within the confines of those eight notes, but you only have five fingers, right?

What you do is you generally pass your third finger under your thumb, is you’re in a passage that goes like that. Whatever, the key is and you’ll learn all about keys in a song. Generally your thumb passes under your third finger to make it up; because, five and three make eight, right? One, two, three and then thumb under, so you have a new start right them. What you don’t want to do is that sort of thing and wander around. You want to use all the fingers you have and same is true of the left hand of course. Then the next thing is try to begin learning chords, right from the onset. A lot of people take piano lessons and they learn how to read music, but they don’t learn what chords are. They don’t learn enough music theory to know what chords are. They’re real leery of playing chords in a song.

Right from the start, right from the get-go see if you can get ahold of some material that teaches you chords. A chord is a three note or more animal. The basic chord is major, like that. It’s made out of the root, third and fifth of whatever the major scale is. Then often you add sixth, or seventh, that sort of thing, but you start out with a basic try. With that in mind let’s go over to one of my websites here and take a look at coming through the backdoor of piano playing. This is just for adults, not for kids. I don’t recommend this for kids; because, kids need a warm body. They need a teacher sitting right alongside them to help them with their fingering, attention and so on.

If you are a self-motivated adult then this is exactly what you need. Okay, so let’s go on over there right now. Okay, here we are again at Duane’s Crash Course. URL is piano lessons by video and I’ll provide that below this video so you can click through to there. Here’s what it looks like. It’s a 52 week course, week by week on learning piano. It’s for adults only. It starts right at the beginning but progresses rapidly; because, it’s based on understanding. I call it learning to play the piano using chords and understanding what you’re doing coming through the backdoor to piano playing or to music.

Here it explains what in the world is the backdoor to piano playing. When you have a chance read that. I had taken piano lessons as a kid, but I didn’t know chords or anything, so I came through the backdoor into piano playing in the sense that once I learned chords then it freed me up, I can create my own music and play music much, much, much, much, much fuller than I did before. Here’s an example of how understanding helps you.

If you know what the C chord is and we’ll learn that first thing right off the bat. Then this passage makes sense; because, this first measure is nothing but the C chord. By the way this is a passage from Bach, a passage from Bach, a beautiful composition. I’m just taking the first two measures, but this applies to all music. The first measure is nothing but the C chord. Once you learn the C chord it’s just three notes, C, E and G. If you look at all these notes in the treble clef there’s E, G, C, E. E, G, C, E. G, C, E, G. G, C, E, G. The left hand C and E. In other words, it’s nothing but the C chord.

Once you understand the C chord you can understand that measure and learn to play it quickly. The next measure is nothing but the G chord. Once you learn the G chord, which is G, B and D. You’ll know that all of that is nothing but the G chord, so you see what I mean by coming in the back door. You understand what you’re doing and what you’re playing and that’s why it’s the way for adults to go. Rather than playing by rote and practicing endless scales and exercises and so on, here you actually come in the back door and get playing right away and understanding what you’re doing.

When you go to that page be sure and read these testimonials. They’re wonderful. I won’t read them to you, but this lady says the instruction will last a lifetime and it does. You keep all the DVDs of course and you can review it from time to time the rest of your life. This person says that I only have limited time to practice. He’s a vet and he had limited time to practice. That’s true of most adults. I teach a lot of doctors and so on and so forth and professional people; because, they don’t have time to practice, but when they get home they can relax by playing chords and learning all the stuff that we learn on this course. The course is very thorough by the way. You’ll learn to read music as well as play chords.

You’ll read music with an understanding of the truth that most music is simply broken into chords. That’s what the course looks like. There’s the bonuses and so. You can order the whole thing all at once of 52 weeks. There are all kinds of bonuses here or you can order just a month at a time. This is lessons one through four. You get the first four lessons. I’m sorry, I’m not controlling the mouse very well here. You get the first four lessons and then you can come back the next month and order the next four or whatever, okay? Let me click here at the students’ only order form. If you order the first month, then you can come back and order five through eight, that’s the second month. This is 9-12, 13-16. You see you can order month by month. In a year you can still complete the course.

Here’s the last course, 49-52. Of course, you can’t skip around. You have to start from square one. You’d miss everything if you skipped around, I know a lot of that. I encourage you to either consider the whole crash course all at once or week by week and that’s up to you, but it’s a great way for adults. It’s the best way for adults to get started playing. Thank you for being with me and I’ll see you there. Bye, bye for now. Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwLMoBVju28&feature=youtu.be Again, here is the link to the “back door to piano playing” site: http://www.pianolessonsbyvideo.com/ _

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