Somewhere Over the Rainbow

The end of Youtube (ads ruin it)

The Youtube has destroyed itself. Ads did it. I can't take it. I won't use Youtube anymore and I can't direct anyone to a youtube until everyone has a browser that turns youtube ads. That might be a few years. Goodbye youtbube.

How to Learn "Sunny"(Hebb)-- using Kareoke, then portable keyboard.

Piano lessons can be a lot more than piano lessons these days. With the increasing library of music on the net, getting more familiar with songs is a click away. Here's a kareoke version of Sunny. Sing along if you know it... if you don't just move down to the original song, then come back to the kareoke version and try it.



Here's the original version.

Here's an amateur singing and playing on an out of tune piano. Most of the piano work is chording. He doesn't actually do a piano solo which is common with a lot of amateur singers who have done more kareoke than piano.

I couldn't find a youtube video of anyone using a portable keyboard to do this song so I'll try to do my version here soon on a such a machine to show you how it can work for you. For now, here's a youtube demo of such a keyboard. If you're going to learn to play piano and sing to accompany yourself, you can't go wrong with a keyboard-- prices start at $100, although you can spend a lot more than than for the better ones. You don't need a better one to start however. An inexpensive keyboard should challange or satisfy you for at least 2 years.

Golden Buddha Restaurant.

[google] [pics] [Golden Buddha Menu]

Yellow Brick Road played and sung by Elton & Rick: Compare

With piano lessons today, you can compare and contrast yourself with your favorite artists. Below are two videos, the first is Elton doing Yellow Brick Road, then below that is me. You can start and stop a few bars of the first, then start and stop the same bars on the second. There's nothing to compare to monkey see monkey do techniques of learning. It's how the neanderthal got by for 200,000 years until Cromagnon came along. It should still work today. Here's my attempt... Piano lessons should now now include public performance to the best of your ability. It gets you over the fear of stage fright and you can compare your work to others, and allow others to compare the quality of your work. It's a good motivator. When you take lessons from me, I throw roman numeral chords at you early as well as youtube performance. The only problem I have with Elton John is that he's gay and I'm not. I hope he's not singing about a guy because if that's the case, I'm going to have to NOT sing this song. I'll examine the lyrics to see if it can apply to a girl. Anyway, that's what I get for not paying attention to lyrics for years. You never know quite what you're saying.

Moon River played and sung by Rick Potvin in Phoenix AZ

Keywords are placed in the title line above so that I'm visible to the google blog search engines on updates of searchs on "moon river" and "rick potvin". The future is transparent.



The most famous version of Moon River was done by singer Andy Williams who did not play the piano and sing at the same time. I'll let Andy appear here anyway.[+]. Not bad, but again, it doesn't overly impress me because he's not playing an instrument.

Here's Elton John playing piano AND singing... Moon river. [+] Elton has too much echo on and I don't really understand the point of the sunglasses. He tries to phrase it in his style but I don't think he should have tried. It's not right. He doesn't really hit the high notes too well anymore either. Oh Well.

Audrey Hepburn is given FEMINIST lines in the movie that made the song famous, Breakfast at Tiffany's. Here's 6 minutes of the movie. [+]. The song is most effective in a movie, where good songs used to be effective. Not anymore however (in the 2000's). Piano lessons should always create context for the song being tried.

Here's a guy who playes an out of tune piano and installed lyrics on his video so that YOU can sing along. It's amateur stuff but it's different and worth a try-- if you already know the tune. [+]

Here's a sophisticated jazz chord version on the piano that's interesting because you can follow the score as it's being played. Even if you can't read music well, I recommend watching and listening. It will "acclimate" you to the senses required to play and perform. It's a bit thin and overuses altered chords. Still, I like it. This would be MY piano lesson-- at my level. [+] It demonstrates how much can be done with a simple tune with basic chords if it "works". Mancini's songs "work".

Sealed With A Kiss

[+] Chords with lyrics. Examine the chords in this. It's in Em. Normally, we would consider Em to be "the key" but it's easier, I find, to think of the key of E Major and treat the Em as an "altered I" chord... altered to Em. Similarly, we'll look at the other chords that way too.

[Discussion Notes] Join in the discussion of this song by looking at the roman numeral analysis of it. The most interesting chord change is when it moves out of minor mode into major for 3 chords and then back into the minor. The bIII is the I of the major.

Best way to handle Rachmaninov is medley of themes.

Rachmaninov is overrated in my opinion but since we get a lot of requests to do Rachmaninov, we've had to come up with a strategy. First, listen to this playlist of Rachmaniov for a few days.

[+] Required listening.

More... later today.

Lowrey Organ demonstration.

I spent many years demonstrating organs like the one below-- in shopping mall piano/organ stores.

Billy Joel's "Pianoman" played by Rick at GB... on a Saturday night.

For the past 7 years, I've played Pianoman on Saturday night, as we approached 9:00 just like Billy Joel sang it. Here I am at Golden Buddha somewhere around that time, recently.
If you're going to take lessons, you're going to have to a version of this song. I often play a short version as above... and I'm not singing it yet because the restaurant environment doesn't call for it. I can sing it, however... and that's tough in the key of C in which it's written. There are tricks to doing vocals on this that I'll discuss another time.

Here's another Youtuber who uploaded a piano/vocal of himself that I'll have you listen to until I do my version. [+] I think Billy Joel does Billy Joel the best, however. Amazingly, there's an official video that I never actually saw until recently, that takes those of us who grew up with this, back. [+] I can't say there's anything wrong with the way Billy Joel did this. And he got lifetime royalties to boot. Pretty good.

Here's a guy who risks going to that octave higher and does a pretty good job. You can see he's having trouble however. The vocal is a bit overdone. . [+]

This next guy MidnightFalcon even put the harmonica part in. His playing is a bit harsh and stiff. Without a mic, the vocal is a bit thin. Overall, however, it pretty good as an attempt. It's more than I've done online. [+] Note that he doesn't go up an octave. It's really hard to to do.

Mike Caprolla does a better harmonica... again with no mic, vocals are overwhelmed by the piano. He DOES go up an octave where required, and does a good job! [+] It's a bit too fast. He's hitting all the keys too hard, too. With a few more years, he could be much better. Great start.
,br> Eric Rooney performs in front of is high school classmates. There's something wrong with the piano playing-- too much of a pounding quality somehow. I'm not sure what's wrong. Again with a few more years, he could be good. [+] Top end vocals are being yelled, which is understandable since it's really tough.

Here's one more where the guy's vocal is too loudn compared to the piano but he's got a good crowd and he reaches the high notes. The audience sings along which is nice. I think his high notes are the best of all of the above other than Bill Joel himself. His harmonic is right on. Overall, the piano actaully the weakest link in this... which is typical of guys who speciallize in kereoke singing or chord piano playing. [+] He hits the high notes but makes painful facial gestures. If you watch Billy Joel you'll note the high notes are effortless.

As for me, I'm still working on it.

There is a Tavern in the Town

There are a number of older Americana tunes in many fake books that I think make good piano lesson material. This tune, There is a Tavern in the town, is a favorite sing along from decades gone by. I think it can still be used in today's piano environments at clubs, restaurants, cruise ships and rock and roll duelling piano bars as well as at home. It's a great goodbye song. The narrator on this Four Aces version is annoying but the recording is vintage and original. 3 minutes. [+]

When you take lessons from me, you'll be assigned this blog entry to listen to to get yourself acclimatized for the process of "learning to play it" and quite possibly learning to sing along too. I encourage all piano students to sing many songs they play and eventually to write sings, sing and play them and a "singer songwriter"-- the higher form of the musical arts, in my opinion. You only have to go back to J.S. Bach to witness the father of singer/songwriter skills. Anyway, here's my attempt to do "Tavern".

I'm not sure why the perspective or frame is smaller than it should be. It's a glitch I don't understand yet but will correct in coming videos. Recording and uploading is an entire piano lesson series by itself as is the entire technical art of amps, mixing, keyboards and rhythm.



Just to provide some amusing contrast, take a look at one the artists I encountered in the 1970's-- Rick Wakeman, a keyboardist-- likely classically trained on the piano-- who was one of the first rock musicians to make full use of the newly invented "synthesizer" keyboards. Here's "Arthur". Wakeman himself didn't sing but his band members did.+]

Here's a piano hobbyist who was able to memorize the piano "cover" version. [+] There are a lot of youtubers who are able to do great covers like this but who lack the vocals.

This One's For You (Manilow), played by Rick at restaurant.

Note the background "din" of conversation of diners... and how the piano music supplements the background sound to mask the clanging of dishes and other noise. It works out that the live piano music actually provides a sort of "white noise" that's better than ordinary "white noise" since the diners, when taking a break from conversation, actually have content to listen to. Many customers have told me that they play "Name That Tune" at their tables. To eliminate the ads from the beginning of the Youtube videos, you'll have to change your browser and click on some options. I'll be doing that in coming days. Youtube has essentially destroyed itself with interference ads. It's amazing that they be that dumb... apparently they are that dumb. Here's a video of Manilow doing the tune above recorded on a cell phone in Toronto a short time ago. [+] I think he's likely lip synching this. I think lip synching is more common that we ever believed.

When I try to sing, I keep Jimmy Durante in mind.

Here, Jimmy Durante-- not a good singer really by any standard you would normally judge singing-- but he does get the high notes somehow-- and he's got the right attitude in "young at heart". He sits at the piano but doesn't play it.... which is puzzling but at least he does get close to the piano and nobody can say he's not "sitting at the piano while singing". I would think being young at heart involves having a pretty good sense of humor... and that's where Durante gets his highest honors. It's amazing we get to see these old clips on Youtube 60 years after they're made, isn't it? Simply amazing. And this is why I think PianoLessonEtc.com is unique in it's offer of piano lessons-- I'm the only online piano lesson instructor who offers the Etcetera part! What other piano instructor requires you to watch Jimmy Durante? You won't find another one.

Unchained Melody played and sung by Rick-- in triplet 4/4

This is a very tricky song to play and sing because the quarter note gets 3 beats! How can that be, you might ask? You might ask it, however, only if you yourself attempted to play and sing it. When you take lessons from me, you're required to view certain videos here at PianolessonsEtc.com first to be certain that what you will be instructed to do is what you think you want to do. In this case, watch me do it first, then sing along-- if you can. Hum if you don't have the words, or go to google and get the lyrics.


 

Ray Charles describes his first piano lessons.

You're not going to find my type of content at other piano lesson websites on the internet. And yet the material is out there, now, on Youtube-- that can transform piano lessons into so much more than "just" piano lessons. We can now generate context and culture much more easily. Check this interview with Ray Charles out about his first piano lesson. 3 minutes.

Ray Charles gives Clint Eastwood a piano lesson.

Watching a piano player do his thing, as I'm telling my students to do -- either here at pianolessonsetc.com or live at Golden Buddha where I play-- is essential. You can't play if you're not going to observe. You'll pick up unknown amounts and qualities of information up simply by watching. Here you'll see Clint Eastwood sitting on the bench with Ray Charles, watching-- closely. I don't know if Clint is taking lessons, but this certainly would be the first step. I think it's funny to see this... but's it's exactly right.

Ta ra ra Boom Deeay

Here's a little tune that goes way back into Americana musical history that you'll find in all the old fake books... Ta Ra Ra Boom Deeay. I'm not certain of it's origins but with the internet we can look it up easily enough.  When you take lessons from me, you'll encounter this tune. Before you decide to take lessons, just be sure you're not going to try to avoid this song. It's actually fun and has been done by many people on Youtube under various interesting circumstances.

Spooky

I liked this song back there in the 1970's and now I know why from a chord change point of view. It's a minor 1 to a IV7-- back and forth-- and so there is plenty of opportunity to focus on improvising or doing different rhythms with it.
 
 I'm not sure how the Youtube automatic playlist works-- but this link seems to general all my videos in a row... [+]. You'll note that the video above is a box in box-- apparently I got the perspective ratio wrong. Not sure what I did to deserve that but I'll try to fix it in coming videos. Maybe it'll fix itself if I reboot the computer and camera.

Red Red Wine

A student of mine wanted to learn Red Red Wine originally by Neil Diamond, made more famous by a singer I hadn't heard of in the 1990's calling himself UB 40. What kind of a name is that? My upload is a mere 30 s. since I'm merely toying with this right now to see what my voice sounds like and how long it takes to create the compressed video file. My interest is purely technical at this point. Below is UB40's version so you can get the full effect.

The ads on Youtube, lately, are 100% annoying and I'm working on a plan to get rid of them using a new browser. Here's the UB version.
[+]

Once  you've gone through those videos, join me in the discussion notes to get the sheet music and talk about the elements of the song that will help us recreate it on the piano ourselves.[+]

Compressing files too labour intense even on Mac G5

I won't be compressing anymore files. Compressing movie files is just rediculously horrible to have to do. I won't do it anymore, or at least I can do it faster. I can't believe my more advanced mac is still not doing it quickly enough. Update May 3, 2012. I think I figured out a few things to compress and upload faster. Will try again.

Chim Chim Cheree played and sung by Rick

 Playlist Book 7 Jan 2012 - Speak Softly Love - with defective wiring; Chim chim cheree May 2012,[2 songs run about 6 minutes] Both have interesting chord changes that should be looked at from the Roman numeral point of view to gain a total familiarity with how the harmony moves, leading to improvisation. Both start from a minor mode but I use a major scale 'overlay' on the minor mode making it easier to "see" the chords we're using. So in Speak Softly Love, we're in C minor, but think of it as C major. Similarly in Chim Chim. I have the charts for both. Discussion available in the forum. No log in needed. Take advantage of this free online lesson and discussion. Find examples of these songs on youtube that you like, and post them. I'll take a look. Or perform them yourself and do a better job than me! Let's see what you can do.

Bass clef for beginners.