Learning more than music

What happens in the early stages of the wonderful PianoEasy program?

• PianoEasy become familiar with the mechanics of the piano and how the keys, strings, pedal and dampers work;
• PianoEasy players learn how to work best with their bodies in order to make the most beautiful music on this instrument (that isn’t very easy to adjust to your body);
• PianoEasy players become thoroughly familiar with that wonderful “2 blacks 3 blacks” pattern and soon learn all the twelve note names around those two groups.
• PianoEasy players learn songs of different genres, first doing the same in each hand and soon doing completely different things in both hands;
• PianoEasy players work with whole and from early on;
• PianoEasy players learn all of the chords that go with each note. Chords are a bit like “mini scales”, but much more fun, because you can soon use them to accompany yourself with any pop song you like to sing.

PianoEasy players learn these chords by playing cool songs;

• PianoEasy players learn to use the whole of the piano keyboard; loud, soft, fast, slow, played briefly, lingering etc;
• PianoEasy players learn to change their songs around and to create their own from early on;
• PianoEasy players learn the basis for the playing the blues and writing their own;
• PianoEasy players learn “seconds” and “Thirds” and IV and V and other mathematical concepts that soon help make sense of those 12 notes and how to go together in Western music. This helps them become awesome readers, writers, composers, arrangers, performers and improvisers;
• PianoEasy always learn theoretic concepts as an explanation of what they are playing; never as a prerequisite for their playing;
• PianoEasy players learn how to use many different rhythms with both hands on the piano;
• PianoEasy players get to play in front of people, with other people and learn from each other’s different styles and learning strategies, which makes it way more fun;
• PianoEasy players learn some cool scales to improvise with, like the pentatonic scale, the whole tone scale, the blues scale and more.

And that is only just the beginning…