Can You REALLY Improve Your Piano Playing Without Practice? Yep.

Good morning, this is Duane and today I would like to show you five easy ways to make your piano playing sound better immediately without practice. Now, you probably think I am pulling your leg and that’s not possible, but just stick with me now. You’ll find out that it’s really true.

There are five ways that you can improve your piano playing right now without any practice. I’m not talking about classical music here, although some of this applies to classical music, but I’m basically applying it to any kind of pop music, gospel music, anything like that. Anything that’s non-classical in other words.

There are 88 Keys on the Piano…Use Them!

The first way to make it sound better is to use the entire keyboard. Most people play in the middle of the keyboard. They play in this range somewhere. That’s fine but there’s 88 keys from low E to the top C there. While you don’t want to use it all the time, you can certainly use it to make things more interesting.

For example, let’s say you’re playing Moon River. Then the second time through instead of playing here, I’ll add up here. Okay, you don’t have to play fancy to play higher or lower. In other words, you can play one phrase or one verse here, then one verse up here. Just give it some contrast and don’t be afraid to play low either. It gives it a nice strong sound when you play down there sometimes.

Turn the volume both up and down!

Use the whole keyboard, that’s tip number one. The second thing you can do to make your playing sound better immediately is use more dynamics. Most people talk just all one level. They don’t get louder or softer for the most part. Great speakers though you’ll notice they get loud and they get soft and they keep your interest that way. The same way in piano playing or any kind of music, if you use a lot of contrast, it’s a lot more interesting.

Let’s say you’re playing Satin Doll. The second time through you might want to go or … You see, contrast between louds and the soft. You should always be getting a little louder and getting a little softer. Try not to play at the same level. That’s two things you can do right away. It doesn’t take any practice at all, just do it like Nike says just do it. Use the whole keyboard and use more dynamics.

Use Your Sustain Pedal More!

The third thing you can do to make your playing more interesting is use the pedal more. Most people again don’t use the pedal enough. They either keep the pedal down too long so it sounds like this or they don’t use it at all. It’s a shame because just by using the damper pedal, the pedal on the right, the sustain pedal, you can … By letting it up on every beat, every time you change chords, it makes it smooth.

See that? What you do is you play a chord, you push the pedal on as you play the chord and as you play the next chord, you let it up and brush it down again. Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. No matter what the chord is, you let your pedal up and down often, okay?

Add an Embellishment Here and There!

That’s the third thing. The fourth thing you can do is add embellishments. An embellishment is any kind of little figure you can add to it. Let me go back to Moon River. If I go like this, it sounds nice, but listen. That’s an embellishment, I slid off that D flat to D. Now, you don’t want to use it too much but it’s a nice touch if you use it.

That’s an embellishment too, it’s called a turn. Instead of playing one note, it goes like this one, but if I go one, two, three, four, five, it’s called a turn. There’s different kinds of embellishments and I won’t get into that. That’s a whole subject of its own but there’s more and there’s turns and thrills and so on, but you can just start out by sliding off a black note or two and not too much, but if you do a little bit, it adds a lot to your piano playing.

Use Echoes!

The fifth thing you can do is add echoes. Add echoes to your playing. Let’s say you’re playing … An echo could be just … When you play the melody and you have time, you can go up in octave and just play the same note like that I just did. Or you can play the whole chord. If you know how to break up chords, then you can break them up and run them up the keyboard like this.

You start out very simply, just making an echo of what you did last. Whatever you did last, just echo it. Remember that an echo is always softer than the thing you’re echoing. In other words, if you yield on the Grand Canyon, “Hello there,” well the echo is going to come back like it sounds in a distance, it’s not going to be louder than your voice. Echo softly when you echo.

There’s five things you can do right now without learning anything more about the piano, without practice. Just use the whole keyboard, use dynamics, use your pedal oftener, start using embellishments and do echoes. That’s it. Thanks for being with me and we’ll see you tomorrow with another idea. Bye, bye for now.

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpsDk-DiVUg&feature=youtu.be

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