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https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-prepare-for-the-big-audition-part-1/
Audition season is right around the corner! 😖 Not to worry, here at Musical U we have explored how you need to prepare for the big day. Learn more in part 1 of this journey to audition day! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/how-to-prepare-for-the-big-audition-part-1/

Without the 12-bar blues, we wouldn’t have rock ‘n’ roll… or, come to think of it, much of the Western music we have today! In this episode of the Musicality Podcast, we’ll look at the simple chord progression that comprises the 12-bar blues, how to play it in any key, and how the 12-bar blues can be used as a powerful songwriting tool (and not just by blues musicians!).

Listen to the episode:

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Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• Interview with Bill Hilton
• About the I, IV, V, and vi Chords
• Finding Chords in Scales
• Playlist of songs that use the 12-bar blues
• Introduction to Blues

Transcript

Today we’re going to be talking about the “12-bar blues”. This was mentioned in our recent interview with Bill Hilton, author of How to Really Play the Piano – but what we’ll discuss today matters whether or not you play piano – or blues!

You may have heard of the “12 bar blues” before and have a vague idea of what it is. In this episode I’m going to talk about what exactly it is, where you’ll hear it, and why it’s worth knowing about, even if you don’t like the blues.

What it is

The “12-bar blues” is a simply a particular chord progression which is 12 bars long.

It’s helpful to think of it as being arranged into 3 lines, each of 4 bars.

It uses just the I, IV and V chords – and if you don’t know what I mean by that please check out episode 33 about the “one, four, five and six” chords. It actually tends to use the V7 chord instead of the plain V, which just means that it adds a fourth note to the chord, which is note seven above the root. For simplicity I’m going to be saying just “five” as I continue, but keep in mind it’s normally actually a 7th chord, not a regular major chord like the I and the IV.

For example, if we’re in C Major, then our three chords for the 12-bar blues are going to be:
– C Major: C, E and G
– F Major: F, A and C
– G7: G, B, D and F

The 12-bar blues is just a progression which uses these chords in a particular order.

If we think in terms of those three lines of four bars I mentioned, then:
– Our first line is just four bars of the I chord.
– Our second line is two bars of the IV chord followed by two bars of the I chord.
– And our third line is the V chord, the IV chord, then two bars of the I chord

In fact that last chord is often changed to a V because it creates a nice turnaround for the repeat, so that last line becomes V, IV, I, V.

Let’s listen to an example of that. As you listen, think through: I I I I, IV IV I I, V IV I V

[ AUDIO EXAMPLE ]

That was a simple piano arrangement. Let’s listen to something with a bit more instrumentation.

[ AUDIO EXAMPLE ]

As you’ll remember from episode 27 on “finding chords in scales”, thinking in terms of numbers means you can easily think about and recognise this same progression in any key.

So our C Major example would be:

C, C, C, C
F, F, C, C
G7, F, C, G7

If we wanted a 12-bar in A Major that would instead become:

A, A, A, A
D, D, A, A
E7, D, A, E7

So that’s what the 12-bar blues is. And it probably sounded familiar to you when I played an example a moment ago, because it crops up all over the place.

So where will you hear it?

Well, from the name you’ve probably guessed, there’s a strong association with blues music. If you listen to old-school blues like Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, you’ll hear a lot of songs that simply follow this 12-bar progression. Songs like Sweet Home Chicago, Hoochie Coochie Man, and Messin’ with the Kid.

But as one of the many ways blues influenced early rock music, the 12-bar progression also made its way into rock. You hear it in rock-and-roll classics like Great Balls of Fire, Johnny B. Goode, Rock around the Clock, Blue Suede Shoes – and also tracks by blues-influenced rockers like Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.

I’ll put a link in the shownotes to a playlist with all these examples and more.

Once you get to know the 12-bar blues it’s easy to spot it in music and it becomes a great case study for tuning your ear in to recognising chords by ear in the music you hear each day.

Why it’s worth knowing about, even if you don’t like blues

So I touched there on one reason it’s worth getting familiar with the 12-bar blues, even if you’re not a blues fan and even if you never play blues music. And that’s because it’s a really elegant example of a I-IV-V progression, and one you can easily practice recognising in real music.

I love the 12-bar because it’s about as simple as you can get with a chord progression while still being interesting. It tells a little musical story:

• We start out with four bars of the I chord. This is the home chord and it feels relaxed and stable and there’s not much going on
• Then in the second line we move to the IV chord. That still sounds pretty comfortable but it’s a definite move and we can feel it return to the I after two bars. We’re back home – that could be the end of it – but instead…
• In line three we move to the V7 chord, the epitome of tension. This is the peak of the story, and it feels good to move to the IV chord which relaxes things a little, and then back home safe to the I chord. If we throw in the V7 as the last chord too we reintroduce that tension and it builds excitement to repeat the whole thing again

When you get familiar with this it gives you a way to start getting to know those three chords and their roles, and helps you spot them and those transitions from one to another, even if they occur outside of the 12-bar structure. For example you get to know what it sounds like to go from I to V7, creating that tension – and what it’s like to go from V7 to IV to I, gradually releasing the tension.

The 12-bar blues is also a great playground for learning to improvise. In episode 21 we talked about chord tones and how choosing your improvised notes based on the current chord can help you create tension and release, making your solos more musical. The 12-bar blues is a great progression for practicing that with, as you get a chance to see which notes from the major or pentatonic scale fit well with each chord in the progression. And that story we talked about, where the V or V7 is the peak of tension and interest – that gives you a natural structure to base your own solo’s musical story around.

The last thing I’d say about the 12-bar blues is that it’s also a good playground for exploring writing lyrics and melodies. A lot of 12-bar blues songs will use a fixed AAB pattern for the lyrics, meaning that if we think about that division of the 12 bar into 3 4-bar sections, there are three lines to the lyrics, and the first two are just the same. You’ll immediately know what I mean if I give you an example like:

I woke up this morning, and went and played my guitar
I woke up this morning, and went and played my guitar
But when I played it this morning, I could only play the 12-bar.

That lyric structure may seem over-used and formulaic, but as we’ve talked about on this show before and as we teach inside Musical U, when it comes to creative tasks like improvising and songwriting, having constraints can actually make it far *easier* to be creative and find new ideas.

So if you’re working on writing songs, challenging yourself to write a new and interesting 12-bar blues can be a great way to stretch yourself in a new direction.

So that’s the 12-bar blues. Now you know what it is, what it sounds like, and a few reasons you might want to get to know it better, whether you’re a blues fan or not. Check out the shownotes for this episode at musicalitypodcast.com to listen to more examples of songs in different genres using a 12-bar blues progression and try including some 12-bar blues in your own musical life too!

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Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

The post About the 12-Bar Blues appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/rhythm-training-101-study-syncopation/
Have you ever noticed that your favorite music seems to jump all around the beat? 🤔 They are using syncopation to create rhythmic variety and interest in the song. Learn all about this valuable skill from Musical U! 😃 https://www.musical-u.com/learn/rhythm-training-101-study-syncopation/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/playing-piano-success/
There is no one-size-fits-all model for success on the piano 🎹 Here are 5 tips from the Musical U team to help you improve! https://www.musical-u.com/learn/playing-piano-success/

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/learning-to-listen-lyrics-and-melodies/
When you listen to a song, what exactly are you listening to? The part that everyone hears and tends to focus on is the melody. Learn more about melodies and lyrics in this article from Musical U. https://www.musical-u.com/learn/learning-to-listen-lyrics-and-melodies/

For Diane Mozzone, her introduction to the world of music came from her upbringing in New York City, where she was exposed to the music scene in downtown Manhattan as a teenager. From there, it was a wild ride: having formed connections to the music industry through her modelling career, Diane began to write music, formed a band, learned the art of promoting herself, and began writing in a variety of styles solo. Many career and music industry-related revelations later, Diane is still writing prolifically today, now in the genre of nu metal.

All the while, her style has been informed by dance sensibilities, lyrical honesty, and a punk rock spirit.

Musical U talked with Diane about her experiences making music both solo and as part of a band in the New York scene of the 1980s, her songwriting process, the unique charm of CBGB, her love of metal, and how she found Musical U and is using it to evolve further as a songwriter.

When I attended Our Savior Lutheran School, in Queens, NY, I joined the Lutheran choir as an alto, and was placed in the boys section. It was from the hymnal that I learned a lot about ascending and descending notes on a staff, as well as harmonizing. Also, the dark melodies were to become a big influence later in my choice of musical genres.

The first time I got recognition from the public was while attending a benefit concert for patients at Elmhurst General Hospital in Queens in 1963. My mother was in the hospital for a long period, and on one of our family visits, a singer failed to show up.

The announcer asked the large audience if someone could perform a song for the band to fill in the spot. As I was always a lead singer to front my two soprano sisters on cover songs we sang in the house, they eagerly screamed out (pointing at me) “My sister can!” I looked at them and the audience, shocked! As I slowly approached the stage, looking around at the audience, the band leader asked me what I would like to sing. I replied, “Johnny Angel”, by Shelly Fabares:

The band knew the score well, so singing it was easy – it was just like my sisters and I rehearsed to the record at home! The applause was so great, and I was only 12 years old. I tell you, I got such satisfaction from the ordeal that I could have sung a hundred more songs. My early influences were the Everly Brothers, Dion, Paul Anka, and, most of all, Motown.

At 13 years of age, I went to the city every night and saw many concerts at the Village Theater, Fillmore East, Cafe au Go Go, Cafe Wha, Night Owl Cafe, and CBGB in Greenwich Village and the East Village. However, I didn’t sing again until I was 17, when my boyfriend heard me wailing to Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane in the car. He asked me to front his Beatles cover band, but I really didn’t like the material. Still, I must say, the band was very good.

As a matter of record, my favorite influence in the 60’s was The Who. I loved the melodies, performance, and the loudness – these also became a large influence on my own musical sensibilities.

I am privileged to say that I’ve been a clubgoer since I was 14 years old. Nothing could keep me away from going out to Long Island to see bands like the Rascals and the Vagrants perform.

By the time the mid 70’s came, I was living in Gramercy Park testing to be a high fashion model. I quickly found my way to the punk scene, through my boyfriend Bruce Rey, who was a downtown photographer and cameraman. The music was exciting, and I saw weirdly dressed groups like Blondie, the New York Dolls, and others walking proudly through the streets. My mode of dressing was quite different from theirs, so this made a huge impression on me.

Every night, after seeing photographers, taking pictures, and visiting modeling agencies, my boyfriend and I would go out to the underground clubs. CBGB and Max’s Kansas City were two of the hottest.

At CBGB in particular, you could see any of the cool bands play, and even meet the members. Once, in that particular club, an enthusiastic slam dancer picked up a chair, flung it hard over his head backwards, and sent it crashing on my head.

Never a dull moment on the downtown music scene. It was partying every night. My biggest thoughts at that time were how to get creative with makeup and find original clothes to wear. After all, that’s how one got noticed.

In 1978, I landed a modeling contract at Foster-Fell Agency, N.Y.C. Within weeks, I was subcontracted to Miyami International in Tokyo, and then Universal Agency in Paris.

It was in those places that I met many famous bands including Van Halen, Elvis Costello, Peter Frampton, and even Bob Marley and his wife Rita. My modeling portfolio and luggage were covered with backstage passes. It’s amazing how models and musicians gravitate to each other.

While I was overseas, Bruce Rey had started hanging out with Rosanna Ramone (Johnny Ramone’s first wife), and Tony Machine, who was the drummer for David Johansen of the New York Dolls. We decided when I stopped modeling, Bruce and I would form a band together, with him playing rhythm, accordion, and piano.

In 1980, Bruce and myself heard a sound that changed our lives: the Yamaha DX7! I bought one immediately, along with a new ebony Kawai piano, TEAC reel-to-reel, and countless effects boxes and pedals for vocals and guitar. The sky was the limit for melodies, sounds, and chord progressions. We really had it going on in that loft, writing punk and new wave music and lyrics, and entertaining fellow musicians. And, of course, hanging out in the downtown clubs to dance and meet people in the industry!

Having obtained a G.E.D. while working in engineering at New York Telephone Co., I decided to go back to school, and received a dance degree at Marymount Manhattan College. Along with the major courses, it was there that I honed my musical skills, taking classes in classical voice, piano, and music history to learn theory. I learned a lot about song structure.

Writing songs came easy for me, after learning about theory and structure. In the 80’s, I looked at my favorite bands’ music, such as Duran Duran and New Order, and studied their structure: for example, how many bars in the intro, verse, bridge and chorus?

In New York, the competition to get a record deal was unimaginable. You have to be original! That’s why I first think: how can I be original? Originality means new sounds, chord progressions, and melodies, and especially being careful not to plagiarize!

Currently, I do metal and nu metal music, and am influenced by bands such as The Offspring, System of a Down, Rage Against the Machine, Arch Enemy, Rob Zombie, Drowning Pool, and Metallica – these bands fire me up.

I write the lyrics first, picking a theme, whether it be society, or anger, or something else. I’m a hyper person, and they satisfy my need to let off steam. Then, I find chord progressions to set the mood of the lyrics. I can write in this genre all day, because as Joe Strummer (co-founder of The Clash) advised me to do… look in the news! I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, so I change the news to abstract lyrics. This way people can interpret them in any way they want. I also delve into ancient mythology to find original topics.

Dance has influenced my whole music career. As a modern dancer and teacher, I know how important discipline and hard work is to an artist. Also, knowing how to count beats is extremely important. Imagine singing for a band and not knowing the rhythm and the count! Band members would give up on you. You better know when to come in.

My intentions on doing music right from the beginning were to make sure it was dance music!  That’s why I blend easily into goth, punk, Latin disco, house, and now metal. I like to use all styles of dance when I listen to music to be original. And if you can’t move to it, forget it!

I auditioned and got a gig at The Ritz doing backup vocals for a big band – 14 pieces in the style of Kool and the Gang. Notable here is the fact that everyone had a solo. Tony Machine (drummer, New York Dolls) brought his friends down, and a lot of A&R people came. The crowd was immense, and when the show was over, many people told me I was the best part of the act.

This led to a very pivotal point. I decided to be the leader of my own band, doing the music I wanted do.

I wrote four songs quickly, and Bruce picked them up on the rhythm guitar, so we started auditioning people immediately. Our first band, FOTO, was a mixture of a jazz-fusion rhythm section with punk guitar sounds and melodic vocals. Over a year, we recorded at least a hundred rehearsals on cassette, and before long, were ready to play CBGB, our old hangout!

I kept FOTO for 2 years. Then, Bruce and I started auditioning for other members, as I was losing my voice keeping on top of wailing guitars and fusion rhythms. We soon got a classical synth player, David Tannenbaum, and funky new wave bass player Brian Anderson. Our band became known as Miss Young. The sound was melodic synth pop, also known as Europop, New Wave, or Alternative. Our influences included Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Cars, The Smiths, Simple Minds, and especially New Order. We played A7, The Pyramid Club and other cool, downtown clubs offering live music at the time.

Finally, this was what I wanted. At this time, Bruce and I got a friend of ours, Sandy Fagin, who was a veteran DJ and band manager, to manage our band.

Then, on a trip to Sam Ash for equipment, I met Mark Kamins – Madonna’s ex and go-to guy. He was a very sincere, respectful guy, and gave me a lot of records he produced. He started developing me as an individual, not as a band. I started getting the idea to meet A&R people, which I became instantly good at. I promptly went up to record companies with demos. I visited Island, Electra, and Geffen.

The A&R guys loved my voice and songs, but they said my band members should stay out of the mix, explaining they were way overplaying me. Then, I got a sold out gig in 1984 at Magiques, a huge venue uptown, which was the old Chippendales. My last recording with Miss Young came at Secret Society studio. Sandy came and brought Glen Kolotkin, the famed sound engineer, to produce us. Tony Machine played the drum machine. The music sounded a bit like Annie Lennox and The Eurythmics. Working with so many professionals gave me the opportunity to realize I might have to do it myself.

I never really got a chance to shop that tape around, because I decided to break up the band and leave Bruce, my boyfriend of nine years. They stayed together for only a short time, as they had no singer-songwriter. I had been the one doing that, along with the PR, going up to record companies, getting gigs, and paying for everything. In fact, I was the band, and the leaders in the music industry made sure I was aware of that.

It wasn’t long before I met a drummer, who was a barback at The Palladium, who would later become my husband. The dance music I was listening to prompted me to do electronic music with no blaring guitars. In 1985, we moved to London with all of our musical equipment: ten heavy aluminum instrument cases carrying drums, synthesizers, and a sampler. We stayed in South West London with friends, and I worked at Harrods Department store.

My now-husband Artie got depressed because of the rain, and because of an incident where he had rented out his equipment and had it stolen – the band never brought the gear back or paid the rental fee! Then, more bad news: we lost more of our prized equipment due to its improper use by others.

We returned to New York City and our old jobs, and tied the knot. Once again, we earned enough to purchase equipment to try to find a producer to record my music. I decided to buy my own studio with my husband, and I wrote the song “Call On Me” in 10 minutes. I had met Juan Cano, who was working at Sam Ash on 47th Street. When he heard the song, he decided to produce it on an 8-track in his basement apartment in Jersey City.  What a great song! I knew it could be a hit.

I promptly went to the A&R people who signed artists to that genre like Sleeping Bag Records, and happened upon Eddie O’Loughlin at Next Plateau Records (Salt n’ Pepa) who along with the other companies went nuts over the song. I got signed with Next Plateau and Eddie chose Mickey Garcia and Elvin Molina (Mic Mac Records) to do the production. I continued writing while waiting for the record to come out.

However, by now, Chicago House music was the new thing. I wrote great songs in that genre, and found a great producer, D. Guillaume, who knew House well, but Eddie wanted that hit song of mine that never left his head, even while he slept. I refused. I guess you could say that I moved on with the dance scene.

The last collection of songs I wrote and got produced were in a studio in Forest Hills, Queens in 1989. You couldn’t believe what this guy, David T., from Soviet Georgia could produce on my 4-track! My heart poured out in those songs. In the same year, I got a great uptown producer named Jeff to do another four songs I wrote which were so utterly depressing, I admittedly couldn’t bear to shop them around. But boy, the production was killer, with a kind of The Motels sound.

I see myself copyrighting my material after production. Then, I can find the people necessary to play and perform the best of them. I may not use all of the songs, depending on what the band likes. I know that each member has to feel comfortable and like the lyrics and style. That’s why I like to write a lot of songs. More to pick and choose from.

I decided to do heavy metal and nu metal music as a result of my husband Artie’s influence. He is a real heavy metal and mosh pit person. I had actually never listened to this music before I met him – in fact, I barely listened to music at all in the 90’s. Going through a master’s and doctoral program were enough.

However, when the millennium came, I got into Seether, Breaking Benjamin, Papa Roach, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, and every other alternative band. I started attending concerts again to catch up. Boy, I had missed a lot!

I can’t believe the state of current society, and metal allows me to act out my rage. I find it funny how friends and family react to such an older woman outrageously singing and performing. I’m a real friendly, happy person, and metal lovers who know me can’t believe my other side. Moreover, singing in such a manner affords me a lot of fun. My vocals have power and I get to use it!

I came across the website recently, when I broke my foot and had to sit all day. I have a strong work ethic, even though I’m retired. I decided to use my time wisely and get ear training, so I typed that into a search engine and up came your site!

I figured with this skill, I can get fellow musicians to play my songs in the future, even if they don’t know theory. I now live in San Antonio – this is not NYC, where excellent session musicians or anybody at the music building can play a song immediately.

The site instantly helped me, and I have started practicing to discern intervals by ear. By playing and noticing the chords on the synth, the repetition leads me to identify chords and actually be able to play them quickly.

My best advice to singers is to keep yourself in full voice. I do it easily by singing all day. Also, have melodies in your head as much as possible. I don’t mean to be neurotic, but if one wants to sing on pitch and be ready, you have to practice your skill. Singing only during rehearsal three times a week will not help you, just as dancers cannot expect to do four pirouettes whenever they feel like it. But – be careful not to strain your voice. Don’t overuse it.

For songwriters, my first piece of advice is to pick your genre and sound. Write a collection in that specific style. Do not hand over a demo with one reggae song, one metal, and one alternative. Know your market!

Then, audition players. Find themes you have passion about and write, write, write! Bring a recorder wherever you go, so you don’t forget the lyrics and melodies. Research other bands’ success stories. Define what success means to you. Then, decide which route you want to take. Do you want to play out and get a following? Do you want to promote and sell yourself online? Do you want to tour? Do you want to sign to a record company to promote your band?

Document everything. Get four songs for a demo to shop around. Anything is possible, so do what Nastassja Kinski (the model/actress) once told me: “Just Do It!” Keep your eye on band members. Are they dedicated like you, or along for the ride? Everybody must play their part.

Most importantly, remember to get feedback from professionals! And remember… no two stories are the same.

I hope this advice and Musical U get you motivated. I want to wish you all the best of luck, and thank you, Musical U for giving me this opportunity to share my experience!

Writing Your Own Success Story

Phew! Diane’s story was an incredible whirlwind – from her time as a teenager going to shows in downtown New York City, to honing her musicality, to starting a band, to writing music solo and learning to promote herself.

Now, having found an outlet for her music and lyrics in the form of the energetic nu metal genre, exciting things are in the works for Diane – who knows where her musical journey will take her next?

The post Carving Out a Career in Music, with Diane Mozzone appeared first on Musical U.

https://www.musical-u.com/learn/perfect-pitch/
Can you develop perfect pitch? Today we explore this common buzzword in the music world and how you can learn a skill that is just as valuable ➡️ https://www.musical-u.com/learn/perfect-pitch/

As always when we have a guest who specialises in teaching a particular instrument, this episode is packed with tips and insights not just for that instrument, but for your musicality in general. In particular, Bill has great wisdom when it comes to the mindset that adult learners need.

In this conversation we talk about:

• The missing pieces that hold pianists back from feeling creative and expressive on piano, and how to really learn to play
• How becoming an amateur singer made him a better piano teacher
• What defines “cocktail piano” and why this style is so popular and useful to learn
• The surprising advantages that can actually make it easier for adults and retirees to learn an instrument than children

Bill’s attitude and his teaching really cut right to the heart of what really matters in making music. We know you’re going to enjoy this conversation.

Listen to the episode:

Subscribe For Future Episodes!

Apple Podcasts | Android | Google Play (US only) | Stitcher | RSS

Enjoying the show? Please consider rating and reviewing it!

Links and Resources

• Bill’s YouTube channel
• Bill’s personal website
• How to write a classic jazz song
• Book: How to Really Play the Piano
• Book: Cocktail Piano

Transcript

Christopher: Welcome to the show, Bill. Thank you for joining us today.

Bill: Thanks for having me, Christopher.

Christopher: I’d love to hear a bit about your musical background. We know that now you’re the host of a very popular YouTube channel, all about how to play the piano, but what did your early music education look like? Was piano your first instrument?

Bill: It was, and my early education was very traditional on the piano. I started piano lessons when I was eight years old. I had already actually learned a little how to read music. Like a lot of kids in the UK, I had learned recorder at primary school, so I went into my piano lessons at age eight knowing, you know, this Every Green Bus Drives Faster stuff, how to read treble clef, and that was it, and I kind of had the journey that kids, and boys especially, typically have when they start learning to play the piano, which was I sort of dived into it and then kind of got bored and after the first year, I was sort of slipping. I was — I had the arguments with my mum and dad about wanting to carry on, or whatever. But then I kind of hit lucky, because when I was twelve, purely by chance, purely on the back of a piece of a piece that I played in school concert, I was invited to join my school jazz band, and that kind of dragged me into the world of jazz piano, of thinking about, you know, chords and chord notation and all that kind of stuff that you don’t learn in classical piano lessons. So it was kind of a journey between two parallel paths, if you like. Does that make sense?

Christopher: Mm-hm. So did you continue with the classical then, once the interest in jazz picked up?

Bill: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I continued on my classical lessons I think until I was sixteen or seventeen. I had a break. Then I went — when I when to university I did music as a minor subject at the university. My main subject was English Literature, but I carried on music as a minor subject so although — and then actually qualified as an English and music teacher so I’ve done quite a lot of the formal route of music education, if you like, but as I say, at the same time have always had, since I was eleven, twelve, thirteen, had this kind of the informal site going on, the jazz, and then later on the rock and the pop and the blues and so on.

So at a very early stage, for example, I was learning about things like improvisation and also I was getting — I think this is really important — I was getting experience of playing in front of people, you know, playing at gigs, because, you know, our band would go out and play gigs. So yeah, it was quite an unusual journey, one that really has continued throughout my life because I still do classical stuff every now and then. If you like, the two sides kind of — sometimes they fight with each other and sometimes they feed off each other.

Christopher: And through this were your teachers and your parents supportive of you juggling these two? Because I think a lot of the kids, they would switch from one to the other rather than try and maintain the interest in both.

Bill: I was extremely lucky in that my parents who were not musicians themselves have always been very good at saying, “Look, do whatever — as long as you’re working, as long as you’re doing your best we don’t care,” and I was lucky to have an excellent set of music teachers, both my piano teachers, my childhood piano teacher, my university piano teachers, my school music teacher and then the teachers who ran my various bands at school and the older students that, you know, obviously I associated with a lot I learned a lot of stuff from and everyone was very supportive and I didn’t get — I know some people do get this, but I didn’t get, “Oh, no, you shouldn’t be doing that. That’s a waste of time,” from, kind of, either end, if you like. In particular, I was, I could name any number of teachers who’ve been really really influential but in particular my school music teacher who was a guy called David Wright who’s still very much alive. He was also the organist of Boston Stump in Boston, Lincolnshire, where I’m from, and he inculcated in me from a very early age this idea that kind of, you know, all music is equal, you know, obviously some individual pieces are better than other individual pieces, but, you know, you can’t look down your nose at one style and venerate another style. You have to listen to a piece of music and judge it on its own terms and that attitude kind of rubbed off on me quite early because obviously when you’re a kid you develop your own loyalties to, you know, whichever band or whichever style of music you’re interested in, but having that kind of attitude drilled into me, you know, it doesn’t matter who’s done it, judge it as music, kind of smeared across the divide, if you like, between the two traditions that I was working in. So, really I was lucky. I was incredibly lucky in that.

Christopher: I think that’s such a valuable lesson and I have to confess it was probably only in my twenties that I came to that realization myself, you know, that it’s not that some genres are cooler or better than others and I, like yourself, I was lucky to have a bit of classical in my music education growing up so I’d never kind of felt like that was off limits or that that was the only option, but it certainly took me a lot of time and actually a lot of exploring my musicality to realize that there’s value in very genre, you know, and if you’re a good listener you can find value in almost any piece of music.

Bill: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Christopher: So how did you find those two strands developed you as a musician and how you thought about musicianship?

Bill: It was — I think it was quite a long while maturing. The kind of two, you know, mixed together at an early stage but it was quite a long time before they bore fruit in that I was kind of — I kind of had this musical split personality through my teens in that sometimes I would be doing the classical stuff and sometimes I would be doing the jazz stuff and very often never the twain would meet and what particularly, kind of started to bring them together was when I was sixteen or seventeen and I became interested in songwriting and composition because I thought it was cool, you know, it was a good way of, you know, sort of impressing the girls at parties, you know, “Listen to this song I’ve written, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah,” yeah, and so I think it was in the creativity when I was using my sort of harmonic knowledge, my kind of informal harmonic knowledge from jazz band and the pop groups and the rock bands I was in of bringing that to meet my ideas about classical structure and form and phrasing and melody and all of that stuff I was learning in piano and theory lessons. That’s kind of what brought them together, I think. So creativity was the spark, if you like.

Christopher: Hm. And apart from your piano focus, were you up to anything else in music that was helping you to explore that creativity?

Bill: Yeah, one or two things. So in my teens I learned a variety of other instruments and never became that great, so I played, you know, I had guitar lessons. I was okay. I have a funny — if you’ve ever seen me play the piano, you’ll notice it, but I have a funny bone structure in my arm which actually makes it quite difficult to play the guitar, but I did okay and I learned a few brass instruments and yeah, they kind of informed my understanding but it was all about piano. Later on, and actually, towards the end of my time at university and then as an adult, really, I also got into choral singing which has been another big strand of my musical life and which has really had quite a strong influence on me. Not that I’m very good, in fact, I’m a fairly ropey singer, actually, but I always get into choirs because I’m a tenor and tenors, as you may know, are in pretty short supply but that has had, hugely beyond what I would expect, had an influence on my musicianship and has, for example, helped me to improve my sight reading, helped me to improve my piano skills, purely through ear training.
One of the big things I — one of the things I make a big deal about in my tutorials on YouTube is this idea about using your ear, you know, people think there’s a split between playing the piano by ear or playing through music and actually there is not, because your ear informs everything you do. And a classic mistake of piano learners in particular is not to listen to the sound they’re making, which sounds ridiculous, because, you know, how can you not hear what you’re doing, but on the piano, the instrument makes the sound for us, so all you have to do is press the key and out the sound comes so it’s almost easy to focus so hard on what keys you’re pressing and in what order you’re in and whether you’ve got the right finger on them but you lose focus of the overall musical effect and that’s not a problem that affects singers, for example, because they have to listen to themselves, it’s not a problem that affects string players or brass players. Everyone who makes their own note generally isn’t affected by that but pianists in particular can really benefit from singing because it teaches you to kind of listen to music while you make it. Am I making sense there?

Christopher: Absolutely.

Bill: Does that ring bells with you?

Christopher: It does, and I think you’ve described the trap that a lot of pianists fall into, which is, kind of, becoming a piano playing robot, as it were.

Bill: Yes. Absolutely.

Christopher: I think that’s what brings them to Musical U is that they feel like they’ve got very good at the technique and they can play the right notes at the right time but they’re very conscious that something is missing and they don’t quite feel like they are expressing themselves in music.

Bill: Yes. Yeah. And I think an important part of that is that people are very hung up on the idea — and you maybe come across this with people coming to Musical U — people get very hung up on the idea that being a good musician is all about being able to do really flashy stuff on your instrument whereas what it is fundamentally about is having a musical idea or something you want to express and expressing it and you might express that in a really really simple way and you can have brilliantly performed wonderfully musical pieces of music that are dead simple and you can have things that don’t really work that are really complicated, you know, so purely being able to play all the notes really quickly or, you know, lots of complicated chords or, you know, loads of fancy scales, that’s great, but only in — it’s only great insofar as it serves your kind of overall aim, which is to, you know, have a musical impact on somebody, you know, your listener and again, it’s all about getting past the process.

And this is something that adult learners in particular do tend to focus on. There’s very much this idea of process and if I do this, this, this, this, and this, I will become a good piano player or a good guitar player or whatever, and, learning a musical instrument, yes, it’s about a process or whatever route you take through the process, but it’s also so much about developing yourself and developing your musicality, your understanding, your feeling for music because if you don’t have that, and you can have the best technique in the world and, kind of nothing will come out, you know. In some ways, that’s why I think it’s one of the reasons, apart from what are sort of, um, neuroscience reasons is one of the reasons why people who start learning as kids do have an advantage in that children, if you’ve ever taught them tend to be very open-minded. They don’t look at the process ahead and say, “What will that do for me?” They just accept it, you know providing you can get them to practice. So I think one of the things that adults can usefully learn, I think one of the essential skills almost is to look at things as if they were a child again and to discover that kind of childhood sense of wonder, that childhood sense of acceptance of things you don’t understand. You know, I have quite a few comments on the YouTube channel from saying, “Oh,” you know, “should you — is that chord G minor or is it a G at It’s like, well…

Christopher: You might have missed the point, there.

Bill: Yeah. You might have missed the point. Does it really matter, you know? Chord notation isn’t designed for that level of granularity. Often chords can be ambiguous. Is it a major seventh? Is it a sixth? And getting obsessed with those kind of details kind of misses the point of the end result. It’s a bit like getting too obsessed with gear. We’ve all come across the phenomenon of, you know, all the gear, no idea. You know, somebody’s got all the plug-ins on all the keyboards and all the kit but…

Christopher: Can’t do anything with it.

Bill: …can’t do anything with it, you know, to be brutal, and it’s the same sort of thing. So as I say, kind of rediscovering that inner child, if you like, I think is particularly — whatever age you are as an adult learner, you know, that kind of acceptance of, you know, this is the process. It kind of works — that sounds like a teacher making an argument for, you know, just listen to me, do what you’re told, and it isn’t. It’s very much about — it’s kind of a bit zen in some ways. Don’t worry about the process. Focus on what’s in front of you. Focus on your end goal and you’ll get there.

Christopher: I love the way you described that. I think a lot of adults have that strict dichotomy in mind where there are musicians who can just play anything by ear and they were born with it, and that’s that and there are musicians who don’t have talent and they have to just learn like a robot and what I love about your channel and the way you approach teaching is you’re filling in that middle ground where you’re showing actually, you know, you can be methodical and follow a thoughtful process but get to that kind of creative freedom in music making and it’s a spectrum. It’s not either/or.

Bill: Yeah. Absolutely. You do — you have to achieve a balance. Yes, a certain music theory of technical knowledge is needed but if you spend all of your time thinking, you know, when you’re playing, just for an example, “Oh, I’m playing this chord, now what scale can I play over it?” then you kind of overload your brain. Everything becomes so mechanical with the music, you know, either your faults are on the keyboard, or musically it doesn’t work whereas if you use your ear, as well, if you’re sort of, you know, aware of what notes are available to you, but then kind of have that internal melody going on, if you’d like, that you can follow and that you can pick out and that kind of sense of musical shaping and musical phrasing and as I keep saying, a musical end result that’s when you’re gonna achieve very very good stuff, even if your technical skills are not that advanced, you know, even — I come back to this again and again and again, but you don’t need to be — it’s kind of a paradox — you don’t need to be a great musician to be a great musician. You don’t need all that technical skill — it’s great if you can get it because that widens the stuff you can do, but you can have really profound, really moving, you know, creative experiences just with a few basic skills.

Christopher: Gotcha. Yeah. We’re working on our improvisation roadmap in Musical U at the moment. We’ve just published the first couple of modules, but it’s very much that spirit because I think improvisation is a great case in point where people either think it’s a gift or you need to be very intellectual and music theory-oriented about it and I love the way you’ve just described that, you know, actually it’s about, you know, using whatever technique you have but starting from your musical idea and can you bring what’s in your head out through the instrument.

Bill: Yeah. Absolutely. It’s just like painting, it’s, you know, if you’re Picasso or whatever, you have a vision and the technical skill, which is important, obviously, involves taking that vision from out of your head and putting it on the canvas but it’s no good having the technical skill without the vision, you know. And in music we do tend to have this — it’s kind of like, you know, the two cultures, in facilitate. It’s almost like science versus art in academia and stuff like that but it’s, you know, there’s classical culture and there’s the pop, jazz, rock, blues, folk culture and people do get stuck in them.

So I have a very good friend who’s head of music in secondary school who is an absolutely first-rate sight reader. You can put anything in front of him and he will sight read it and I will watch him do it and say, you know, “How on earth do you do that?” It seems like magic. I know it’s not magic, but it seems like magic and he will say to me, “Well, how do you do all that improvisation stuff? That seems like magic to me,” but, you know he knows it’s not magic and it’s different views of the instrument, different approaches, but you can kind of marry them together and it’s actually when you marry them that you achieve some of the most interesting stuff.

So you know, some of the great jazz pianists, Soska Peterson is a fine example, was J.S. Bach obsessive, you know, Peterson would play, you know, things like Bach’s French Suites and the big old baroque variations and stuff and there were interviews out there with Peterson talking about his relationship with J.S. Bach, who he saw as a sort of kindred spirit, a fellow improviser, just in a slightly different mold and that’s true, because in his day, that’s what Bach was best known for, for being an improviser but because he’s old and he’s dead and he wore a wig and he’s in a musical textbooks it’s like, you know, enormous formality, enormous respect, you know, because Peterson was kind of hanging out in jazz clubs and stuff. It’s almost like a different, you know, culturally we view those two people differently whereas in terms of the musical things they were doing, they were very much the same, yeah? So again, it’s kind of about bridging that divide, not just in the world of music but kind of in our own heads, especially if we are people who have had both the classical education and the, you know, the kind of, the experience in the world of pop and jazz and so on.

Christopher: So it sounds like from your background this combination of the classical, formal piano technique and the more free pop or jazz-inspired playing has really been a big influence on the pianist and the teacher you’ve become and it sounds like — I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you weren’t, you know, the born gifted musician who came out of the womb playing Bach chorales in perfect…

Bill: Absolutely.

Christopher: …perfect time.

Bill: Absolutely.

Christopher: Do you think that’s influenced who you’ve become as a teacher, now?

Bill: Yes, totally. I am a reasonable piano player. Being — you’re probably, this’ll probably strike a chord with you, but being a musician is a bit like climbing a slope that slopes away from you, okay? So can stand at the bottom of the slope and see the guy above you who looks he’s at the top, but he can see the rest of the slope and he can see how far it is in front of him. So, you know, people who don’t play or are trying to play listen to me and say, “Oh, that’s amazing.” Now, I know it’s not amazing, because I can see the difference between me and the all those guys who are so much further on.
So, but as you say, it’s had a certain influence on my teaching and in some ways because what I do is educate, it’s been an advantage because I know what it’s like to struggle. I know what it’s like to find things difficult. This is, again, one of the reasons I like chorale singing because I’m not very good at it the kind of concept of pressure is that you know what it’s like to be a beginner. You know what it’s like to, you know, not quite have the music shaking your hands but, “Oh my word,” you know, “I’m two bars away from my entry. I don’t even know the note.” So you kind of get a sense, and when you can do that it’s so much easier, I think, to express to a learner how to view the problem.

Whereas, I think, I know, a lot of very, very naturally brilliant musicians — and they do exist — struggle to teach, and, you know, to go out and take a sporting matter for what, you know, John McEnroe doesn’t coach tennis and wouldn’t coach tennis. He has a tennis coach and his tennis coach himself is not a world-class piano player, you know — piano player? (Laughs) He’s not a world-class tennis player, but rather he’s someone who can look at a tennis player and say, “This is what you need to do,” and that’s kind of the difference, if you like. Often people who are really brilliant can’t imagine what it’s like to be in the situation of the learner and as a good teacher, you’ve got to put yourself in your student’s position and try to — I know it’s very difficult sometimes, but you’ve got to see, try to see the world from their point of view.

Christopher: That’s so important and I love that for you chorale singing was a way to kind of revisit that beginner’s mind and put yourself in that position, because I think it comes back a little bit to what you were talking about before where adult learners in particular can get very process-focused and very intellectual about it and I think that comes a bit from a defense mechanism that if I just follow the rules I won’t have to be exposed as incompetent, you know, because we don’t like to do things we’re not good at, you know, we’re comfortable in the stuff we know we can do and it takes guts to put yourself back in that position of, okay, I don’t know what I’m doing; it’s gonna take me some mistakes to figure out my way there.

Bill: Yeah. Defense mechanism is exactly the word I was gonna use, actually, exactly the expression I was gonna use. I think another way that kind of defense mechanism manifests itself is when adults start, you know, are confronted with the prospect of learning to read sheet music and you come across a lot of people who are learning pop or jazz or blues or whatever who are dismissive about sheet music and say, “You know, great musicians don’t, didn’t, you know, there are people out there, wonderfully talented musicians, who never read music,” and the example of Paul McCartney always comes up for some reason and I think probably he can read at least some, but that’s by the by, but what — you see, you only have to scratch the surface a little bit to see that what’s actually going on is really they’re a little bit nervous of it, yeah, and because it’s new and it’s like learning to read all over again, they think, you know, “I don’t want to put myself in the position of a five-year-old having to learn to read so therefore I will dismiss this skill as irrelevant,” whereas, you know, I think it’s an immensely important skill. It’s the most efficient way there is, you know, I mean, you know, if you’ve got that paper in front of you just jotting something down far more efficient. Then people talk about capturing metadata and recording ideas and stuff but believe me, you know, the manuscript, paper and a pencil and you can write things down much more easily.

So it’s about — if you can, overcoming the — again, it comes back to thinking like a child, not having the prejudices, not having the fears, not having the worries about, you know, what will people think of me, how I will I perform? Obviously, kids do have those, but when kids are in the moment, especially those nine-year-old beginners, they do just take things on trust. I haven’t talked — it’s been years and years and years, probably 20 years since I’ve taught a nine-year-old, but they’re much more open to experience and that is the sort of mindset you need to try and cultivate if you can, if you’re an adult beginner and even if you’re like, in your eighties, and, you know, I have people on the YouTube channel that watch my video who will say to me, you know, “Thanks so much for these, Bill. I’m just starting out to learn now when I’m 86,” and you think, “Good on, you,” because, you know, what you can learn. You might not, you know, maybe get the twenty-odd years of becoming a brilliant technician on the piano keyboard, but you can certainly learn enough to have meaningful musical experiences that deliver a meaningful musical performance.

So yeah, it’s all about for those guys in particular but for adults of all ages having that childlike attitude but also having the faith in yourself to carry on. You know, pretty regular problem, in fact, among older listeners, in particular. Older viewers are much more likely to say, “You know, I find it slower. It’s much harder work, blah-blah-blah. It’s gonna take me this long. How fast should I be going?” and they’re all legitimate worries because, as you may know, as an adult you learn more slowly than if you’re a child and to use a technical term, your brain is less plastic you have less neural plasticity, but people forget the second half of that which is yes, your brain is less plastic than a child’s but you can learn just as effectively as a child can. It just takes longer, yeah?

So the advantage you have as an adult is that, yes, things take you longer to learn but you should also be able to apply greater diligence to your learning process because you have more experience, more life experience of, you know, being rewarded as a result of being diligent in a task, if you can see what I mean. You have trained yourself to be diligent far more than an eight-year-old has, you know, eight-year-olds need more, kind of, external motivators. They need their mum to shout at them to do their piano practice or whatever.

So older learners should not underrate themselves, you know. I don’t think it, and so many do, you know, so many learners, adult learners, have this terrible inferiority complex about music and really, you know, they should — hats off to them even for trying to learn, really, you know, even thinking the decision to do it is a praiseworthy act, I think. So, you know, nobody should feel holed up about trying to learn a musical instrument.

Christopher: I 100% agree. Yeah. I think we’ve seen the same at Musical U. It’s predominantly attitude that matters, you know, they come in worrying, “Oh I don’t have a gift for music,” or “Oh, I’m — it’s too late. I can’t learn the physical skills,” or “My brain isn’t as quick as it was,” but the bottom line is you’ll go so much further faster with that, those drawbacks and the right attitude than a twenty-year-old who’s just kind of dilettanting their way through it and, you know, has the physical advantages of being young but actually doesn’t have the drive or the desire or the dedication to actually succeed in their music.

Bill: And those are the people who don’t succeed, typically and people who come in with that kind of dilettantish attitude of — yeah, and they don’t get fast progress or what they think is fast progress so they give up and I know those people exist because I’m one of them in kind of all of those spheres. (Laughs) You know what I mean.

So yeah, trying to learn about — I’ve been doing a lot of recording and stuff, like, and trying to improve my sound engineering skills and yeah, it’s — this is kind of fun. I like playing around with Logic and GarageBand and stuff and then actually, this is quite hard work — I’ll send it off to a sound engineer, you know, because I’m not getting the quick results and I know that if I stuck with it I would get quick results but there’s a kind of “Oh, you know, I haven’t got the time,” or “I’ve got to cook the dinner, got to do this, that, and the other.” The secret to success as an adult learner is just to make time every day to put your head down to be committed to that goal and it’s not — it’s not easy, because humans are not well-adapted, we’re not evolved to commit to really long-term goals so, you know, you have to keep — that’s why you have to enjoy what you’re doing, enjoy the journey, you know, don’t see it as a journey with a fixed goal because I’m sure you would agree when we hear as a musician or as a musical learner, “I’m still a learner, I’m still on a journey,” okay, the journey never ends basically. There’s always a way of learning something new or getting better so while you’re on that journey you might as well jolly well enjoy it and don’t worry if the milestones you’re expecting to reach don’t come when you think they will, because another thing that you see in all learners is that progress typically isn’t steady, yeah, it’s not linear. It comes in fits and starts and you can plug and plug and plug away at some of it for what feels like weeks or months and make no progress and then suddenly one day it will be, bang! There it is. And that’s how the human brain works. Eventually the circuit is built that you need and it goes into action, but, you know, so all practice will be rewarded if it is sufficiently rigorous, because that’s another, something else we can talk about, another failing. People don’t practice properly. If it’s sufficiently rigorous, it won’t just necessarily be rewarded in a gradual way.

Christopher: I think there were several important points that I would love to dig into and unpack and we might have to do a part two interview in the future to touch on some of these topics, but I think that message of daily practice is so important and I think that’s another secret superpower that the older learners have and, you know, I was surprised, at first, how many retirees were joining us at Musical U and coming to music for the first time in retirement and what I gradually realized was they have a huge advantage because they have the freedom of time and energy to do that daily practice and they’re not in a rush. They’re not, you know, cramming it in fifteen minutes after dropping the kids to school. They can, you know, really relax into it and enjoy the journey, like you said.

Bill: Absolutely, and they’ve learned how to be diligent over their lives. They’ve learned to endure frustration, if you like. Because, I mean, just building on what I was saying about practice, an important thing I often say in my YouTube tutorials, about practice is that it should be kind of frustrating. You know, if you just sat there playing through a piece and, you know, it’s all jolly good fun, then you’re not practicing. You’re performing, yeah? Practice is at its best when you’re really kind of all “All right, you know, this is difficult. Does this finger go there?” and, you know, if it really hurts it’s like lifting weights, or whatever. If it really really hurts, but if it’s painful, if it’s a struggle, that’s when your brain is being forced to adapt. If you find it easy your brain is just taking on autopilot, yeah?

So again, older learners, I think, have a greater capacity for mental suffering, if you like. You know.

Christopher: Mental effort, we could say.

Bill: Yeah. Mental effort, yeah. This is what puts off so many kids in particular, but they — it’s very hard work to start with, especially on the piano and stringed instrument, orchestral stringed instrument, and you seem not to get very many rewards quickly. Personally, I would — and, you know, I have many very good friends who are music teachers and I love them all to bits, but personally I would kind of redesign the whole childhood music education syllabus to accommodate some of the more rewarding stuff. Now, that’s not to say that I would make, I would put, sort of rock and roll on the ABRSM piano grade syllabus but I would encourage kids to learn more about improvisation and composition.

I think, you know, the day you learn being a, start being a musician is the day you start learning being a composer, or you should. Anyone can compose. And all of those things should be part of your musical education. One of the difficulties I have at the the minute is, kind of, breaking the cycle of education, if you like, because most of our music teachers are qualified in not a narrow, that’s unfair, but in one particular way of teaching music, yeah, that read the score, do the exams, do the aural tests and all the rest of it. But it would be good to educate kids, you know, to give them the kind of education that I got by accident, really, across a number of skills and genres that would enable them to — this sounds really kind of hippie-ish, and it’s not — enable them to kind of express their musicality at a much earlier age. Yes, the discipline is good, yes, the hard work is necessary, but you need, as a child, as an adult, to be able to be creative as well as doing the, the learning of scales and all the rest of it because it, you know, if you’re not being creative then what’s the point? You know?

Christopher: Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I think an eight-year-old is gonna have a lot more fun doing a simple improvisation than perfectly playing the G major scale over two octaves for the umpteenth time.

Bill: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. There is benefit in learning to play the G major scale really smoothly and evenly and, you know, that child will reap those benefits further on but it’s not satisfying right there and then. It’s not gonna get them addicted to playing a musical instrument. So, you know, we kind of have to sugar the pill a little bit more, especially with kids, but as I say, with adults as well.

Christopher: Mm-hm. So on that note, then, you know, I think at this point in the conversation our listeners are gonna be clear that you come from a slightly different perspective on teaching music and you have a lot of insights and wisdom on how to do it differently and in a more enjoyable and rewarding way. You’ve written a how to learn piano book and I think in the beginning of this interview people might have wondered whether the world really needs another how to learn piano book but I think maybe the title of the book captures it well, which is How to Really Play the Piano. Can you tell us about that book, where it came from and what makes it different from your standard beginner piano book?

Bill: Sure, and I mean, the first thing to say is it’s not a book for absolute beginners. It — you need to read the arbitrary right-hand and left hand treble and bass clef to use it, but, you know, someone who’s done, you know, formal lessons, someone who’s done grade 2 or something will be fine. Or I’ve recently done a series of beginner’s videos on — it’s going on my YouTube channel to get people to the standard where they can use the book, but where it came from, I had the idea years and years and years and years ago, probably — hold on, what am I now? I’m 43. I probably had the idea when I was university 20 years ago but back in 2009 I was working in the advertising business and most of my — I was a freelancer — most of my clients were banks, financial institutions, and, of course, we had the banking crash and lots and lots of my work disappeared overnight.

So I had a bit of free time on my hands where I kind of rebuilt that business and thought, “You know, why don’t I try writing that book that I’ve been meaning to write for ages?” almost just to kind of get it off my chest and, you know, I self-published it and all that, as I do to this day. And what I wanted to do — it was kind of an itch that I had to scratch — was to — the subtitle of the book is The Stuff Your Teacher Never Taught You — is to pass on the stuff that I was lucky to learn in my break times and lunch times and whatever at school at jazz practice to those people initially who had had formal lessons and they were my target audience, all the people had never had a piano lesson in their life, buy it and enjoy it, but those are the people I’m thinking of and I was kind of annoyed at that stage that, you know, people were going through piano lessons and, yes, learning brilliant stuff but not learning some, you know, just basic things about chords and improvisation, how to read the lead sheet, how to read chord symbols, all of that sort of thing.

So I think what I say in the introduction is, you know, one of the things that would have helped me when I was a kid set in school jazz practices trying to work out chords and things would have been, you know, kind of a simple book of wisdom, if you like, just kind of told me, had written down all of the things that I needed to learn. So that was the book that I tried to write with How to Really Play the Piano and I never expected it to do very well and the YouTube channel came off the back of it, actually because I was, you know, I thought “Oh, yeah, I’ll put it on Amazon and a few people might buy it.” It was more about getting the thing off my chest and when I was writing it, especially some of the more technical stuff, some of the ideas about intervals, for example I thought, actually, you know, “Blimey, this sounds complicated, doesn’t it?” because that’s a feature of music theory. When you read it it sounds like absolutely insane rocket science, but when you actually put it to work on the keyboard it’s actually quite simple, you know, when you let your ears do the thinking.

So I thought, “Oh, I know, this YouTube thing has just come along. I think I’ve got an account. I’ll make a couple of videos. I can suspend my phone above the piano somehow just to explain it and then I can put the links in the book to the videos,” and that was that.

And what happened is the — and I — it was pure luck that this happened — I thought that people would buy the book and then go to the videos, but it was happening the other way around. People were finding the videos on YouTube and saying, “This book sounds cool. Where can I buy it?” So I thought, “Cool, make more videos strictly related to the book, promote the book a bit more,” but then the YouTube channel became the main event, as it were.

So the book sells very well. It’s the big income earner from the channel. It gets very good reviews, I’m pleased to say but it’s kind of an adjunct to the YouTube channel, which is the main thing. And yeah, so it keeps going.

I’m actually gradually working on a second edition because I — the first edition I wrote not exactly in a hurry but not expecting it to be quite as successful as it was and things were, kind of, life was a little bit stressful at the time as obviously the business had collapsed, and, you know, I was living in a small rainy house in the middle of Wales and stuff like that so I wrote quite a lot of it in the dark, actually because there was an electric problem in the house. I could plug my laptop in but I would have no light. Anyway, that’s another story.

And so there are not major mistakes in it but just things that, you know, little errors I want to correct and one or two other things I want to drop in, one or two examples I want to change a little bit so there’s gonna be a second edition coming out, I hope, in 2018. That might slip, so if you’re thinking about buying it don’t hold on for the second edition because I’ve got to get it done yet, but there will be a second edition at some point.

Christopher: And before that second edition can you give us some examples of what’s in that first edition? What can people learn in this book that they maybe would be missing out on in their lessons with a teacher?

Bill: So it’s — the very first thing it tries to inculcate, actually, throughout the whole book is a set of attitudes, you know, obviously there’s all this technical stuff in there, but the attitude, experiment, play around, don’t judge yourself, you know, there are no wrong notes, there are just some notes that sound better than others in certain contexts.

So it’s understanding those attitudes then straight on to begin with understands the — it explains the concept of chords and harmony as they apply in particular to jazz, pop, blues, all those kind of pop genres, which, as you all know, the technical reasons we won’t go into are harmonically slightly different from classical music, you know, it’s the difference between, you know, harmophony and polyphony and so on to stuff like that. So it explains the concept of chords, how chords work in a song, goes through all of the most important chords, the kind of chord workup charts and stuff. And then it kind of expands into learning improvisation and the root that the book takes into improvisation is teaching people twelve bar blues, yeah, because even if you don’t like twelve bar, it’s, I think, the easiest format to learn to get over the initial kind of mental barriers, if you like, because those are what they are. They’re mental barriers to start with.

So it takes you through learning improvisation through twelve bar blues and then there’s quite a lot of stuff about using lead sheets because a very common problem pianists in particular have — you go to a music shop and you buy a book of, like, pop songs or Broadway show tunes or whatever and what you get is a vocal line of chords over the top and a piano arrangement underneath which is almost always useless because it’s simplified, it’s not usually well written. Some are, but most aren’t and it just carries the tune rather than being an accompaniment. Yeah, so it’s for people who don’t want to sing, they just want to play the tune. So generally what professionals do and what capable amateurs do who understand it is get this kind of material and ignore the piano part and improvise their own from the lead sheet over the top of what is in effect the lead sheet, the melody and the chords. So again, it’s getting people to read piano vocal scores and learn how to read them as lead sheets, if you like.

Then there are kind of a lot of resources and stuff. So what you need updating now, what, again, one of the reasons for the second edition coming out hopefully this next year, but loads and loads of different things and to kind of — not necessarily to tell people everything that they need to know, because that would need a book about a thousand pages long, but more to kind of point them in the right direction, give them a little shove, if you see what I mean.

Christopher: I do, and, you know, I mentioned before my early music education was very much on the classical side. I was lucky enough to at least do jazz piano for a couple of years, which opened my mind a little bit but you’ve mentioned a few really meaty subjects there that I wish I had learned earlier in piano, particularly the idea of thinking in chords or looking at sheet music and realizing you can just pick out the important parts and ditch the rest, you know, and you can learn to have the musical understanding to do that in a sensible way. It’s not a superpower, it’s not a cheat, it’s not a cop-out it’s what real musicians do and it’s easy or not easy but it’s methodical and possible for you to learn.

Bill: I mean, if people were taught to play the piano as I think it should be played, there wouldn’t be a market for popular song sheet music, because no one would need it. Everyone would just work out the tune and work out the chords and apply it themselves according to, you know, fairly straightforward structures, you know, and that’s something about really playing — having played piano, really, after reading it maybe after watching some of my YouTube tutorials, but you shouldn’t really need to go out and buy sheet music. You know, if you want to play Beethoven, yeah, you need the sheet music, okay, but if you want to play, like, you know, Brittney Spears or whatever or quite a lot of the jazz tunes, then it will put you on the path to figuring out the melody, figuring out the chords, putting them together and seeing things as a musical whole with, kind of, again, with musical goals in mind rather than just which key to press when. Process-driven stuff.

Christopher: So you mentioned jazz there and one of your other books is Cocktail Piano, particularly, which I think is a style that listeners might have heard of by that name but they’ve certainly heard and I loved this book because you take what can seem like a very fuzzy and ill-defined kind of genre or style of playing and you break it down in a very clear way. How can you actually, you know, pick up a piece of sheet music or hear a melody and recreate that yourself and build a cocktail piano style arrangement of it? Can you tell us more about that, how it works?

Bill: Yeah so, I was quite, kind of, amazed actually. So just to define terms, I’ve got the piano here, I’ll play it, but cocktail piano is that very, kind of — Oh, and I might need to turn my volume up (plays) — there we go — cocktail is that very kind of chilled out, mellow kind of lounge music kind of style that you might have heard in pubs or at parties or at, kind of, weddings, things like that, lots of very, kind of jazzy chords, lots of major seventh and major ninth type of sounds, those kind of jazzy sounds but also very free and easy.

There isn’t usually a very strict tempo to cocktail and for many years when I was working, doing a lot of work as a piano player I would play this stuff at weddings, basically, and cocktail is great for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s very easy to listen to. That doesn’t mean it’s musicality unsophisticated because it is musically sophisticated, typically, but from performing pianist’s point of view you can string it out, yeah?

It’s very forgiving. You’re not gonna make many mistakes once you’ve got the hang of it and you can take a song and make it last for seven or eight minutes if you want to. So really the style has evolved as a way of, you know, this poor piano player sat in the corner of the cocktail party with a sore backside desperately thinking of what to play next, yeah? It sort of takes some of the language of jazz and strings it out and also does some really interesting stuff to fit in its environment.
So a lot of cocktail uses the high notes of the piano because they will cut through, cut background conversation much more effectively. So anyway I was kind of interested in cocktail and a lot of people think it’s Muzak or elevator music or whatever and it’s not really because some of it’s really lovely and so I did some YouTube videos on it. I’ve just done one fairly recently, actually, because it’s perennially popular and loads of people were into it. I, you know, I was amazed. I thought people would laugh me off of YouTube, you know, “What is this horrible cheesy rubbish you’re playing, Bill?” People absolutely love it, as I do. And so I thought, “I know. I’ll write a book,” and at the moment it’s only an ebook, An Introduction to Cocktail Piano. It’s just a PDF download, although I’m gonna adapt it to be a print book, as well. Slightly less easy because I did it in — well, for various reasons. I did it in landscape format and stuff like that but it is just an ebook at the moment and it goes through, as you say, the various techniques that you use to learn songs in the cocktail style and kind of adapt them and play them on the piano. And it’s kind of — I think the cocktail is kind of cool because as well as being fun in itself it’s a good way of developing your understanding of harmony and improvisation and stuff because it’s a very, very forgiving style to play because it’s so, kind of, you know, (plays) relaxed and chilled out and you can just kind of noodle around, yeah? If you make a mistake you can just stop and then, “Oh yeah, now what am I going to do? Oh yeah, I’ll do this.” Yeah? Because it’s so forgiving it can sound quite impressive quite quickly, you know, you can do lots of cool arpeggios and stuff. Look difficult, aren’t difficult once you, you know, kind of understood how they work and so you can use it as, kind of, you can use cocktail as a kind of sandbox, if you like, for learning about harmony, about improvisation but without the pressure of this (snaps) metronome beat going on behind you, you know and people really like it. It’s been a very popular book.

Christopher: Fantastic. So we’ve been talking about how you can be more creative and I love that cocktail piano sandbox as a way to kind of explore the options available to you and you touched on something earlier when we were talking about your own musical background which was that you got into songwriting. I believe you have a new project underway which is very exciting based around this songwriting extension of creativity, you know, it’s kind of one step further than learning to improvise creatively is to actually think in terms of a song structure and putting a final product together. Can you tell us about that?

Bill: Yeah so, I mean, as we were saying earlier, by the time this podcast goes live, probably these videos will be up on YouTube so people can go look at them right away but I’ve always been interested in songwriting. The — and I’ve written lots of different types of songs. I’ve written kind of pop style songs, I’ve written sort of jazz style songs. I’ve written songs for a lot of things like school shows, university shows, stuff like that and the song style that’s particularly deeply buried in my head is the kind of great American songbook style, you know, the verse instruction followed by the A-A-B-A structure, songs like “The Lady is a Tramp” and things like that, your classic Broadway melodies and I’ve wanted to talk about songwriting on my channel for awhile because it’s related to an idea from another book I have, a book of songs and maybe even a book about songwriting down the line.

So I thought what I would do on the channel was write a song from scratch rather than go and dig one out of the attic because I’ve got loads up there. Rather than dig one out of the attic, I thought write one. Keep all the scratty old bits of paper that I’ve written it on and then make a video about the creative process.

I’ve recorded the song with a brilliant singer I know called Mogana Mullin-Jones who’s actually sort of an opera singer. She’s a mezzo-soprano but we recorded the song. The song’s included in the video and then kind of take apart the creative process because even if you don’t want to be a songwriter you can learn an awful lot just from going through that process and make one or two other points on the way as well, so when you’re writing it’s really easy to go online and spend thousands of dollars, thousands of pounds on a kit, yeah? But when you’re writing a song, you know, the most sophisticated piece of technology that you need, really, is a pencil. That said, you can have all the plug-ins and all the fancy bits of software in the world but it comes back to that creativity.

What you need is the creativity and if you’ve got that then you don’t need anything much more sophisticated than a pen and pencil and various bits of free software, you know, to help you out. So that tutorial did that pretty well. There was a follow-up tutorial that was basically — I have to put together a piano accompaniment to the song so I included, I am going to include, get my tenses right here — the, you know, version of the song with the piano part stripped out so people can play along if they want to and color (phonetic) chords on the screen and stuff and it’s just one of the ways I want to, kind of, expand the channel. I want to see if there’s a hunger for this kind of thing because, again, it comes back to something I was saying earlier. I think the day you start being a musician is also the day that if you want you start being a composer or a songwriter because you don’t need to be a genius, you know, if you can hum a tune in the shower and just develop the very basic skills to pick out the piano and maybe jot it down you’re a composer just as much as Beethoven was, you know? You know, maybe not to the same level of complexity but you’re still doing that fundamental creative process, and that’s kind of the, just a new kind of trajectory I want to kind of send my viewers off on if I can and kind of see if they like it.

Christopher: Terrific. I’m so excited to see those tutorials and I definitely echo what you say about what, you know, being a songwriter or a composer doesn’t have to be this big intimidating thing that you’re taking on. It can be a very natural part of who you are as a musician just for the enjoyment of it and, you know, that concept of sandbox you mentioned before, I think it’s another great sandbox for exploring your musicality. Whether or not you ever record it and let other people hear it, just the process of songwriting is so valuable.

Bill: Yeah, absolutely, and again, it’s about, yes, understanding the process, understanding the technical skills but with a musical, with an artistic end result in mind. We’re often a bit scared of that word, artistic, but that’s what we’re doing. We’re creating art, you know, whether we are, you know, Justin Bieber or, you know, the London Symphony Orchestra, we are creating pieces of art and we should not be scared of thinking in terms of that artistic goal.

All the technical stuff, all the physical skills, all of the knowledge are just tools to get us to that goal, you know, they’re not ends in themselves. All the kits, you know, you can pay as much as you want for as much kit in the world, you know, you can spend thousands, but the end result must be that goal and I think, you know, because people do say, you know, “Should I buy this? Should I buy that?” I think one of the — and it sounds like I’m bigging you up here, but I am — one of the best things that you can buy is education, you know, music education, whether that is from, naturally for me, but whether that’s from me or from you guys or from a music teacher or whatever, you know, if you’re gonna spend money on learning how to play a musical instrument, learning the piano, then get a cheap old, you know, beaten up old piano and invest that money, if you can, in learning, whether that’s online, whether that’s with a teacher, you know, whatever.

A really interesting phenomenon in the past three years — I’m going slightly off topic here so feel free to cut me, is because pianos, now, especially, are so cheap that has driven the demand for the stuff you do and the stuff I do because people often can afford to and are happy to pay three, four hundred dollars for a playable piano but don’t want to commit to three thousand per year for the lessons, you know? But as far as you can, you know, if you have resources that you want to expend on music, focus on developing the most important resource of all, which is your own skill.

Christopher: Wonderful. I think this conversation has just been packed with really valuable and insightful messages for our listeners and I hope everyone listening has been paying careful attention because I think whether you’re a young learner or an adult, whether you play piano or not so many of Bill’s ideas here can have a huge impact on how much you enjoy and succeed in the process of learning music. Thank you again so much Bill for joining us today.

Bill: No problem at all. Pleasure. Really enjoyed it.

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