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Personal Piano Professor, Issue#043 -White Christmas piano tutorial
December 05, 2014
Seasons Greetings Keyboard fans!

Learn this EZ Christmas classic "White Christmas"

Greetings to all my friends and Keyboard fans!

This holiday season is a great time to entertain family and friends with some traditional Christmas favorites.

Over the next few issues of Personal Piano Professor I will be bringing you tutorials on some of the most popular secular Christmas Classics

Play "White Christmas"

"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.

I challenge and recommend that you work on training you ears to pick out the melodies so I always include a recording of some sort as well as a video tutorial to let you know how I might play the song.

This is a great lesson for beginners as well as intermediate students. Just click the link below>

White Christmas piano tutorial

Pentatonic Scale Patterns on Piano

While playing piano and keyboards professionally over the years I was often asked to take a piano solo.

No matter what style of music I was asked to play I needed to be able to comfortably improvise an appropriate and interesting piano or keyboard solo over the chord progression of a song.

Whether it was jazz, blues,rock, country or top 40 pop, the basic starting point for me was the pentatonic scale.

I made a living for a long while with a few pentatonic scale patterns that were comfortable to play and versatile enough to get me through just about any style of music.

It is my intention in this lesson to share these simple pentatonic scale patterns with you in the hopes that you will be able to use them in your playing.

Put upside down or in the opposite position, order, or arrangement.

That is the dictionary definition and it fits well because when we invert a piano chord we simply take the bottom of the chord ( lowest note) and make it the top (highest note).

Pentatonic scale patterns
Musical intervals on piano

The two types of musical intervals.

A melodic interval is created whenever you play two notes in succession or one after another.

A harmonic interval happens when two notes are played at the same time or simultaneously.

Why do we learn about intervals?

There are several different reasons.

One reason we learn to recognize musical intervals is so that when we hear a melody we will be able to distinguish between its melodic intervals which greatly helps our ability to play by ear.

With a little knowledge of intervals we can build the different music scales and then take that knowledge to understand the basics of harmony and the logic in a melodic line.

Using our knowledge of musical intervals we can stack two or three or more intervals upon one another to build the different piano chords we will use in learning to play by ear.

Musical Intervals

Learn the 12 bar blues progression on piano."

Learning the 12 bar blues progression is basic to understanding the roots of American popular music.

When you see a group of musicians getting together to play everyone seems to know what to do almost magically.

This is because at one time or another they learned the 12 bar blues progression.

While there are lots of variations of this timeless progression the most common is a three chord 12 measure version explained in this lesson.

The 12 bar Blues for piano

4 Steps to Learning How to Play Any Song on the Piano

1. Determining the melody - Melodies determine what chords will be played. If you can use your ear to figure out what notes are being played in the melody, you are 1/4 on your way to learning a song! More resources on learning how to determine melodies

2.Harmonizing the melody - Once you have figured out the melody (using some of my techniques on the resource page), it is time to harmonize it. This is simply choosing various chords to accompany the melody. There are several techniques and tricks to doing this. More resources on learning how to harmonize melodies

3. Altering Chords - This is the best part! Now that you have strategically figured out the melody to a song and have harmonized it, altering your chords to produce certain sounds is the next step. If you were playing gospel music, you would alter your chords differently than if you were playing classical or country music. More resources on altering chords

4. Listening - After you have determined the melody, harmonized the melody, and altered some of your chords, there are various techniques you can use to make sure that your song sounds right. More resources on listening techniques

I personally recommend "The Secrets to Playing Piano By Ear" 300-pg Course and through my relationship with Jermaine (the author of this course), I've been able to get him to throw in a few bonus items (3 additional piano software programs). He has taught literally thousands of musicians how to play the piano by ear. If you understood just half of what he discussed above, you'll definitely benefit from his 300-pg course. Click here to learn the secrets to playing absolutely any song on the piano in virtually minutes! I highly recommend it.
Learn Jazz Here!!

Best Gospel Course for Ear players

Introducing GospelKeys 101...

Now In Less Than 2 Hours, You Can Jump Start Your Piano Playing With These 3 Easy Steps!

Dear Friend,

Jermaine Griggs, the pioneer of the award-winning GospelKeys learning system, has come up with 3 simple steps so that you won't waste any time at all. In fact, it'll virtually cut your learning time in half! I copied and pasted the most important parts below so you can get a general idea.

HERE IT GOES...

Step One: Determining the Melody

Step Two: Harmonizing the Melody

Step Three: Adding the Bass


These three steps are not super complicated theories that require several years of experience. In fact, they were designed for the total beginner with absolutely no musical experience.

What most people don't understand is that most songs follow patterns. If you've been mistakenly learning songs, one by one, you're only exercising your ability to MEMORIZE chords --- and
that's exactly why it takes SO LONG to learn just one song.

BUT...

If you concentrate on LEARNING PATTERNS, you'll never go wrong because songs are built on repeating patterns. You should NEVER EVER have to memorize dozens of songs when they all share the same exact CHORDS, PROGRESSIONS, AND PATTERNS.

So head over to their site and let me know what you think

If you have any questions, feel free to reply.

Talk soon,




P.S. - You might find more interesting information, techniques, or resources just by clicking around on their website..
I want to remind you that many of the ideas for lessons come from those of you who contact me with questions. I encourage you to let me know what you need.

Also you can find a contact form on the site and suggest a song for a future lesson. Don't be shy. Let me know how i can help!!

I am grateful for all of you, and wish you the best success in your playing!!

Thanks, Greg

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