In this video from LessonRating.com we are going to try and do a quick and dirty tutorial on a very famous piano song and piano lick: "Walking in Memphis." That's the one that sounds like this with the intro. Let's first just take apart that intro. What is it? It's really just a series of chords with fifths. The first one is F, but there's no third in it. Basically, you're just going F to the five, so root to fifth, root to fif...view full lesson
In this video, I'm going to play through parts of one of my favorite jazz standards "Misty." Just going to show you a few ideas of what you can do and hopefully it helps you. This song starts if E flat major 7. I'll just play it for a minute and then show you what I'm doing. One of the things I was doing there, one of them, so this is going down the E flat major 7. Now we're going to do it 2, 5, 1 to A flat major 7. So we're g...view full lesson
This short lesson lays out the basics of Bruce Hornsby's famous song "The Way it Is". The set of chords for the verses of the song are:
|Ami Emi7 | G D | G D | Csus2
The set of chords for the chorus (not shown on this video, see The Way it Is with S...view full lesson
This short lesson lays out the basics of Bruce Hornsby's famous song "The Way it Is". The set of chords for the verses of the song are:
|Ami Emi7 | G D | G D | Csus2
The first thoughts that come to my mind when listening to this tune are slow, scary, and mysterious. The version that I listened to was a trio recording with Bill Evans on piano playing the melody off of his album Explorations. The form of the piece is AABA. I find the A sections to have more of a mysterious quality whereas the bridge, or the B section...view full lesson
Per the request of one of our site visitors, we have put together a 4 part tutorial on how to play this wonderful song on the piano. We are presenting it in the key of Bb for ease of singing. We hope you enjoy this free piano lesson and please contact us if you are interested in a personalized piano lesson of your own from LessonRating.
We have put together a three part piano lesson video series on how to play this song. Use the link below to go to the first part of the lesson
...view full lessonOkay. So this last section of the lesson, I just kind of want to talk about certain things that you can do to the song to make it your own. Obviously it's good to learn it as it's supposed to be played, but my philosophy is always once you've kind of learned that or attempted to learn that, try and make it your own. So what are some things that you could do to make it your own? First of all, like I said, make sure you really understand the...view full lesson
Okay. So the next part, the chorus, bridge, landing on this G. So you're playing off. What it usually does is kind of this run up this G pentatonic scale. So the notes to that-- actually guess I leave out the A, but we'll put the A in. So the notes to this scale are G, A, B, D, E, G. Pentatonic scale because it's five unique notes. Pent, five. So what I do is take each within an octave and kind of practice going up and down. And then o...view full lesson
In this lesson we're going to learn how to play Billy Joel's "She's Got a Way," so let's get right into it. At the beginning it just starts out on a G. On the left hand that G, and I usually put D, the fifth, and G, and then the right hand you're just playing inversions of a G triad. So, what's a G triad? You've got G, B and D. And what you want to do is really work on-- and I say this a lot in the video-- work on the inversions of each of the...view full lesson
The final part of this piano lesson video reviews what Billy Joel plays to end the song. Luckily, this section will be easier to learn because it is derived from the intro that you already learned in part 1. Before going to the intro chord progression, you'll want to play the C7(9) chord and arpeggiate it. Next, play the second chord from the intro section which ...view full lesson
The third part of this piano lesson video series slowly reviews the chord progression learned and discussed in part 2. The key to becoming comfortable with the part 2 progression is to learn all the chords and learn the chords in all of their inversions. If you are comfortable with the notes that make up each chord, you will have an easier time improvising throug...view full lesson
The second part of this piano lesson digs into what is behind the chords that make up the main versus of the song. When Billy Joel plays it, he starts by essentially playing the melody on the piano first before actually singing it. To help you to figure out how to play the melody, we must first understand what chords are serving as the harmony underneath the melo...view full lesson
The first part of this piano lesson reviews the intro to Billy Joel's great song New York State of Mind. Remember that in this lesson, the song is performed in the key of Bb (the original key of the song is C). The song is played down a whole step for ease of singing.
The first chord of the intro is a C minor 7chord with the 11 (F) and the 9 (D) added. The ...view full lesson
After he plays the first chorus modulated, he lands on a C# minor 7 chord instead of the regular D major chord. This is when he sings "You're everything..." This chord is:
LH: C#, RH: G#-B-C#-E
Then this chord moves to a B major type chord but all you really have to do is lower your left hand note ...view full lesson
The hardest part of this part of the song in my opinion is getting all the parts to line up properly. Essentially you'll have three things going on at once:
Let's start by spelling out the La-La melody since th...view full lesson
You'll notice when listening to the verses that the ending of some of the verses is slightly different (just as the ending on the intro lick). In fact, in the verse, the ending follows the same harmony as in the intro so it makes it easier on you.
Just as in the intro, there is a part toward the middle of the verses (where he sings "...view full lesson
Per the request of one of our site visitors, we have put together a 4 part tutorial on how to play Everything by Michael Buble on the piano.
The video starts by explaining the introduction to the song which is very cool rhymically but pretty simple melodically. Let's start with the bass notes on the left hand. Th...view full lesson
This video was posted to contribute to the thread at pianoworld.com about Joe who is working on When the Saints Go Marching In. The thread is here:
http://www.pianoworld.com/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/32/8075.html
Great job so far Joe (he's only been playing for one week)
...view full lesson