Music Laziness: Piano Lesson Part 5 - Conclusion, Play Just the way you are by Bruno Mars on Piano

The End, and the Beginning:

Well future readers;

We’ve finally reached the end of this hasty not teacher approved play piano fast lessons.  Now that you have basic knowledge, and that you can play chords and even know how to form some of them, I encourage you to find more information.

Here’s the list of Links that were used presented throughout the Posts:

Piano Encyclopedia

yokewong.net

Aldo Pianito Studio

Forum Post about Piano Music Theory

Tension and Release relations in music here.

e-chords.com

Read those, and practice practice practice;

But first, you should know by now that you can play ANY song you want with the basic knowledge you possess.

I told you to practice, but really… who can practice music without some actual music?

In order for you to practice correctly you'll need some chorded lyrics, from sites like e-chords.com

E-chords.com has a very awesome feature that’s handy for keyboard players; this tab:

After you search for a song, click on it; and once in the lyrics page you should see the keyboard tab up there.  That will show you diagrams of every chord used on the song.  Pretty handy no?

I know you'll say something like 

"oh loth then why did you make me learn the chords if I could just look at them from there?" 

The reason I made you practice with chord formation was to get your fingers moving; you need to know how to play a chord before you jump ship and start playing them from sites like these.  Plus, most of these sites use Guitar chords, and sometimes they use “capos” to alter the root position of the notes (that means, that even if you play the chords like they are shown, some songs that use that alteration wont sound right) so it was a good thing you learned how to count half tones since guitar frets are exactly that.. half notes.

Now that you know where to find chorded songs, lets finally play "Just the way you are" by Bruno Mars; Why this song? well, considering it only has 3 chords, and that the original song has a piano melody it'll be easy on you guys (and if you're a guy you can work on it and play it for someone on valentine's day, ah? ah? not bad huh?)

Without further ado, let’s play “Just the way you are”

Here are the chords used all the way along the song:

F, D, and Bb
Three chords all the time, following the same sequence.

The scale is F major, so get your right hand fingers ready and sing(play) the song first by dancing on the scale, and then accompany the “song” with the chords on your left hand. 

Your left hand will give you the rhythm, the faster you hit the chords the faster the song will be played; so hit those chords carefully and sing the song on your head while playing it if you can.

I’ll give you a basic follow up for the notes in case you missed the scale practice:

F

Oh her eyes, her eyes
Make the stars look like they're not shining

Dm
Her hair, her hair
Falls perfectly without her trying
Bb
She's so beautiful

                                 F
And I tell her every day
F
Yeah I know, I know
When I compliment her
She won’t believe me

Dm
And its so, it’s so
Sad to think she don't see what I see
Bb
But every time she asks me do I look okay

F
I say....

~listen to the song for the rest~

The tempo (the speed) changes from semi-fast to slow in some parts, listen carefully and remember what we learned about the Arpeggios.

Ok, there are some videos on youtube that teach you how to play this song, but some of them are confusing if you don't understand how to play chords.

Look at this one by musictomake.com

Its confusing right? the left hand there is playing 3 notes (the first 3 notes on the left) and the right hand starts playing a bit strangely at the 0:17 mark.  The lefthand is doing some strange alterations aswell right? we don't need that; you play music by ear now, you can define what sounds good and not so you don't need tutorials to play chords - you just need a root to start dancing in a scale.

So...
Avoid trying to sound "JUST" like the video, listen to your own playing and YOU decide how the song plays.  These videos help, but they shouldn't be taken as rules to play songs.

Instead of looking for tutorials follow this progression:

1. find the root 
2. identify the scale, 
3. find the chords
4. play the original song and "sing" it with your scale.
5. Then play the chords.

That should be the order to play any song; so try it.

Take it easy and have fun ^^

Note: I know I said “we’re going to play it” but I’m too lazy to record myself :/

The song’s not complicated, just feel the beat and hit those keys, also you might have to stretch your right hand so that the thumb plays “F” and your little finger plays “F” at some point, a whole octave at the same time when you enter the next part of the song.  Remember that every note in the F major Scale can be used to accompany the song, but only a handful of notes actually sing it.  Use combined notes to create sounds freely and don't forget about the Arpeggios.

Well, this is the end for these “learn piano fast” posts; you should be able to play any song now; your next step is getting some proper classes of music theory or proper “piano” playing if you want to play professionally.

I’m too lazy to get technical, so this is all I can do for now; in the future i'll provide more tips and tricks, but don't expect super crazy long lessons soon xD

~Lothmak

Too much cuteness >.<

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Abdiel Rodz

Hi. I’m a social researcher, developer and consultant. Bringing you news that would probably make your head hurt and some others that will make you want to hug a puppy.

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