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"Chord piano" or "chord style" piano playing may be the best approach to learning and playing piano/keyboard for pop songwriting. Chord piano playing is fast and efficient for songwriting and frankly can be a lot of fun which of course makes learning easier. Plus you can learn it quickly. Typically, if you plan on having lyrics sung in your songs and your main interest is in having a nice sounding accompaniment that you can play yourself then chord style playing is a faster and easier way to go. No offense to the classical piano approach but if you want to learn to play piano for your songwriting compositions and even song performing, need to learn it quickly and not have to learn to read music then again chord style is the way to go. You Don't
Need To Learn With chord piano you learn to read chord symbols, essentially musical shorthand.
With this method you'll learn much faster how to play songs, literally you can start playing songs the first day you try this approach, and you don't need to learn music notation, unless you want to.
A big part of the advantage or chord style playing is that you learn to understand what is happening musically and how to apply it and play it without having to learn typical music notation. Just Play
Chords As The Melody Because the melody part of your song will typically be sung that leaves just the chords to be played on your piano or keyboard. (more on this below under playing chords primarily with your right hand). Accordingly there's no need to learn how to play the melody with one of your hands as in traditional methods..
You still can play the melody in chord style playing and that is typically taught in chord piano methods so if you want to write and or play an instrumental only song or just to play the chords and melody instrumentally you still can do so.
However, from a pop songwriting view relative to chord piano playing both hands can be used to construct and play chords which gives them an even richer sound as you accompany yourself singing the melodic part of your song. And because you learn chord symbol shorthand you learn how to write and or follow lead sheets for yourself and other musicians you may have play along with you. Lead sheets are standard written musical renditions of typical pop songs that will have such chord symbols and may include a written melody line or not. Quite often they're chords and lyrics only. Get
Playing Now And Learn Bite Sized Bits Even if you've taken traditional piano lessons and feel like piano playing is just too difficult you'll likely find chord piano playing a refreshing and very doable alternative and you can start playing songs the first day you begin this approach. As for music theory there are many items that when applied will definitely help your songwriting but you'll employ them faster if you can play the ideas. Learning to play first with chord style technique and then learning bite sized bits of theory as you go may be most practical because if you're not enjoying the fun of playing then learning theory may not go very far because you won't as readily put it to use. Overall, it's nice to be able to play what you're learning and the nice thing about music theory that you can easily apply is that it enhances your ability to write better musically for your songs. Why It's
Good To Learn To Play Bear in mind that most chord piano courses teach you to play chord style piano such that you play the chords with your left hand and play the melody with your right hand because they're not necessarily assuming that you're a pop songwriter. However, some courses recognize that when you accompany a singer, likely yourself as a songwriter while writing and or presenting or performing your song, you'll want to play the chords with your right hand and the bass notes with your left. The reason for playing the chords with the right hand is that they frankly sound better to sing to especially when they're played in the vicinity of middle C to the first E up from middle C, often referred to as the "sweet spot" Indeed as a songwriter you can learn and hone your right hand technique as your primary or only method as it may well serve your playing needs for the rest of your songwriting career. Famed songwriting coach and songwriter Jai Josefs, author of today's definitive text on writing music for contemporary pop music, Writing Music For Hit Songs, advocates and teaches right handed chord playing for these very reasons. Of course it can be good to learn more and other varied methods as time goes by but establishing a right handed chord playing approach from the beginning should serve your songwriting well throughout your songwriting career. It is important to note that chords can be split further between the two hands verses just playing base notes with the left hand - so that option is there especially if you want to get more jazz oriented composition using 9ths, 11ths and 13ths - chords that though more jazz oriented do appear in pop compisition for added variety none the less. Courseware For Learning Chord Piano There are many programs available to teach you chord style playing and three of the most popular programs are noted below. Each takes a slightly different approach but they all have value depending on your current level of playing or needs - and all can be learned in your own home by yourself. New School Of American Music - Traditional Chord Playing Approach Robert Laughlin started the New School Of American Music and his one day piano workshops over twenty years ago and they're still going strong. Having taken his course I can say that this is a very good program - for the absolute beginner to the classically trained pianist who has no real chord knowledge. His introductory course starts with all the basics and then takes you through a methodical process of playing more and more elaborate chords and song arrangements. You leave with a good foundation and from there you can develop on your own. As most chord piano courses do Piano Fun's material teaches left hand technique as noted above but recognizes and advises right hand chord playing when accompanying yourself or others. That's right on the money for songwriters. If you can't avail yourself of actually attending a workshop his materials are designed for home study as well with booklets available - the main one with a dvd and all of them with cds. Check it all out at pianofun.com. PianoForAll.com - Home Study With A Contemporary Edge Piano For All is a multistyled system that has a contemporary focus on styles attributable to such contemporaries as Elton John. Robin Hall is the proprietor and has created a series of ebooks that smartly include not only audio samples of the material being presented but video snippets as well - and they appear along side the written material as it is presented page for page in each ebook - this makes it so much more understandable and immediate. His site is fairly descriptive and he has a video demonstration program on his site that gives a nice taste of how that part of his program works. The ebooks are all reasonably priced and incredibly under $80 US if you buy them all together. Take a closer look at pianoforall.com. And for more on contemporary styles check out the works by Mark Harrison - a principal author for the music publisher giant Hal Leonard - at his site harrisonmusic.com. The Sudnow Method - For The Novice Seeking Sophistication Back in the '80's a Ph.D. from Berkeley, David Sudnow, figured out a way to make playing sophisticated sounding song arrangements easy to grasp and play by coming up with a dot system of music writing. I'm over simplifying it a bit as his dot system is merely a stepping stone to help you paint by number, so to speak, until you can use his shorthand system that follows it more readily. Anyway, as simplistic as his system is, it is best for a novice player but a complete beginner could start with it too - it will just take a lot longer to learn it and to be able to play it. I've been experimenting with this system lately - to expand my own playing and writing abilities and have fun too - and I really appreciate its cut to the chase, jump into the deep end, approach to being able to write and play very sophisticated sounding arrangements - rather jazz like one might say. However, although the method taught leads to rich voicings of chords, you can scale back the notes to lighten the sound and make it more pop like. Find out more at Sudnow.com. Putting It All Together Playing chord style is one thing but applying it to your songwriting is another. To get the scoop on just how to best use chords to construct your songs a few great resources are any of the Ricky Rooksby books of which his keyboard one is linked here, Jai Josefs' book Writing Music For Hit Songs and Roedy Black's CompleteChords.com and his site's books How Songwriting Really Works (volume 1) - and be sure to check out volume 2 for lyrical insight if you need to - and also for more on music their How Music Realy Works too. All of these sources get to the idea of how to put chords together to write the best songs you can.
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