Piano Roadmap
Something I desperately wanted when I started to learn the piano was a map that I could blindly follow. I had all the drive and the desire to learn the piano, I just didn’t know where to start. Now that I have played for 10 years, I believe that I have started to identify key parts of my education that have helped me become the pianist I am today. While I believe that we all have our own path and way of learning things, I am hopeful that sharing some of these milestones with you will help you to make progress in a similar fashion. Here's a brief overview, followed by a more in-depth walkthrough:
Learn the musical alphabet
A little story about my past: when I decided to “seriously learn the piano” I had already been in college pursuing my Undergraduate Business degree for about 7 years. On the side, I had started to DJ at local parties and college events. Before that I had played some bass guitar and messed around with Garageband and other musical tools and gadgets. But, up to that point, I had really only learned songs by ear, which I was decent at: on more simple songs I figured out what the patterns were and I could follow along once I understood the song. But, I had no clue about what notes I was playing. I remember my Dad saying that I needed to learn the notes and it would be good for me. Even though I had a year or two of piano lessons as a kid and a year or two of experience playing trumpet in middle school band, I hardly knew anything about how to read music.
But, what drew me to the piano was the fact that you could write a song on it; you had everything you needed: melody & harmony. So, when I finally decided to pursue the piano I had my work cut out for me. I remember on lunch breaks I would go out to my car with a coffee (or two!) and practice just learning the notes on the piano. I had a small (probably 3 octave) midi controller that didn’t work anymore. So, for 30-60 minutes I would close my eyes and pick any random note and then quickly look down and try to identify what note it was. This was my first real first step towards musical literacy…
Learn LOTS of chords
After I learned the notes I eventually moved on to learning chords. What convinced me to finally start learning chords was the program “Cthulu” which generated random midi chords in my DAW (Ableton) with any note I pressed. At that point I was trying to write music for 4 hours every day. I had recently read Malcom Gladwell’s famous book “Outliers” and learned about the 10,000 rule and decided that music was going to be my path. My goal was to be the next Skrillex or Stevie Wonder. After writing one song that I was particularly proud of, I had the realization that if I knew more about chords I could write music better. This is what started me down the path of learning chords on the piano…
The process I used to learn chords was pretty simple: I made flashcards and then I randomized the order that they were displayed to me. When first learning them, it would take me quite a long time to get through each round, but as time went on I got faster and faster and I would be able to recognize and play them quickly. After learning the 12 Major chords I then learned the 12 Minor chords followed by other triads and eventually Seventh chords and Slash chords. This was all WAY before I had heard about or used Piano Marvel. Since starting to work at Piano Marvel some 7 years ago, I have wanted to make a similar exercise in the app. What always prohibited me was how much time it took to make randomized exercises in a notation software. But, about a year ago, I had the great fortune of meeting a gentleman who helped make it much more manageable. I also was fortunate to come across a very determined individual who was wanting to learn the piano and be my guinea pig. About a year later and we are now almost complete with a series that takes you through learning to play any Triad, Seventh chord, or Slash chord.
Learning how to play chords is something that has paid for itself time and time again. When I finally switched my major from Business to Music Technology I had already been playing piano seriously for about a year. So when it came to college level Music Theory and Aural Theory (“Ear Training”) I had quite a leg up. I knew how Major 7th chords sounded. When I would get stumped on a Music Theory test, I would try to envision the piano keyboard to help me find the answers. I felt like my time spent learning on a harmonic instrument gave me a significant leg up amongst other students.
Another great advantage to learning chords was the ability to quickly make music with others. My middle brother is pretty proficient on the guitar and that led to us being able to sit down and play music with each other using apps like “Ultimate Guitar” which shows the chords and lyrics. I distinctly remember one year around Christmas where both him, my dad, and I played random Christmas songs. Knowing how to quickly play chords that were called upon was a skill that I was able to use here. In a way it was sort of an “instant gratification”. Obviously I had to pay my dues and invest the time in learning the notes and chords, but once I did that I was able to rock out and have fun with others!
Today I still am thankful for the work I put into learning chords as I have recently started learning Jazz after many years of Classical piano. Jazz is pretty different, but chords (and fancy chords at that!) are a pretty large part. To quote the famous Barry Harris “Jazz is the continuation of Classical theory”...
Scales (and arpeggios) are your bread and butter
After some time had passed I was given some advice that I should find a piano teacher. Up until then, I was fortunate to have a roommate who was studying the Saxophone and Clarinet at my college. He had given me some tips on what to learn and study. In addition, I also had a family friend named Carol Stivers who had been a college piano professor in Las Vegas. One day I had the idea to reach out and ask her about how important scales were. Here’s what she said:
Notice her comment on how scales are important for theory. I can attest that after almost 10 years this really is the case. If you ever hear others say that theory isn’t important I urge you not to listen! This is something I had heard online and even while in college and it couldn’t be farther from the truth. I recently was talking with Dr. Geoffrey Haydon about this topic. He said something along the lines of, “Music is a language. Can you learn a language by immersion? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that learning it in school is bad”. There is a reason there are classes to learn languages in school and music classes aren't any different. They teach you a systematic way of learning how to speak, read, and understand music. They are also the ticket to becoming a better sight-reader…
Sight-Reading (DO IT!)
Ok, so I was very slow to admit to myself that I needed to learn this skill. In all honesty, I didn’t think I needed it because I thought I was the best piano player in the world and that I was just now realizing my potential in my mid-to-late twenties. As I have said many times before: piano (and music) has been a very humbling experience for me. I continue to learn that there is so much more than what meets the eye and that I’m not nearly as good as I sometimes like to think!
Regardless, sight-reading was something that I really needed to see the value of in order to put in the necessary time in to learn this skill. Back then, I had some classes with Piano majors which presented opportunities to sight-read. What always held me back (and in some instances actually embarrassed me) was my lack of reading skills. It makes sense if you think about it: I was relatively new to the piano. Reading two staves of music at the same time is quite the challenge. Ask any serious pianist and I bet most of them would agree that sight-reading on the piano is harder than sight-reading pretty much any other instrument. You have to know so many different things in order to make it all come together. That being said, I want to share some of my inspirations and motivations that helped me learn to sight-read.
The first was a book called “Becoming a Great Sight-Reader – or Not!!” by Al Macy. For years I have wanted to reach out to Al and see if he has tried Piano Marvel because I believe that I have taught myself to become a good sight-reader. It’s been a while since I read the book, but I think the premise was that some people are either born sight-readers and some memorizers (although I would like to add that some are “ear” people). Really, I have been all three at some point in my life and they all have their benefits. That being said, I think that learning to read is something that any serious musician should consider investing the time in. Even recently with my Jazz studies I can see how important music literacy is. If I couldn’t read music, then learning the tunes would be very difficult. The fact that I can read pretty well means that I can focus more of my attention on musicality and some of the other important aspects that I am trying to learn like how to swing. Before I was a good sight-reader, I used to have to learn music by memorizing each note and trying to force it into my muscle memory. While that’s doable, it’s by far the slow way. Even though I had teachers and peers urging me to invest time into this skill, I was resistant. Thankfully, after hearing it many times I finally took the leap…
So what did I do first? Well, this was before ChatGPT so I Googled it. Google showed me PDF’s that I could stumble through or just flat out not read so that was mildly helpful. At the time, I am pretty sure that my girlfriend (and now wife) could have read better than I could from her six years of piano as a kid. Honestly, if I would have known that it would have crushed me! Here I was able to play some pretty advanced music but I couldn’t read Mary Had A Little Lamb. Then, I found this amazing video by Margaret Fabrizio on YouTube:
That video above was one of my “life changing” videos for the piano. The way she carried herself and talked seemed like she was speaking directly to me. It might well have been the catalyst that actually made me start learning to sight-read and, looking back, I am so glad that it did!
I remember first trying to read easy children's music. I distinctly remember being in the music tech lab at my school reading some pretty embarrassing music (very slowly, mind you) but I didn’t care anymore! I wasn’t embarrassed. I accepted where I was at and knew that all I could do was go up from here like Margaret said. That was the real start of me trying to figure out how to read. Of course, I did lots of research online and looked for videos and forums where people would give their sight-reading tips. You would always hear some recurring ones like: “read something new every time or else it’s not sight-reading”. While I don’t necessarily agree with that (more on this later!) that helped me start trying to find apps that would help with this skill. I tried a couple apps but nothing really stuck until I found Piano Marvel. Funnily enough, I didn’t stick with the Piano Marvel (abbreviated “PM”) at first. I am not sure if it just wasn’t the time for me or if I wasn’t really ready to learn to sight-read yet, but after a year or so I came back to give Piano Marvel a try after seeing a video from Dr. Josh Wright talking about the SASR on Piano Marvel. This is where I really believe I started making noticeable improvements with sight-reading.
Now I work for Piano Marvel. I have for 6 or 7 years. But, back then, I was just a college student looking to not practice a Haydn Sonata for my upcoming piano recital. Instead of using my time to practice, I was using Piano Marvel to help me get better at sight-reading. It felt really great to be finally putting in the time and making some progress. I think that is what most people struggle with in learning to sight-read (and really anything). If we don't see results we think “It’s not working. I am going to give up on this.”
In the Jazz book I am following now by Jeremy Siskind, he says something similar about learning to improvise. To loosely quote him: “you’re probably not going to be that good at first, but that’s ok. Practice, do the work, don’t get discouraged. The most important thing you can do with new skills is to JUST KEEP GOING.” For me, I have a performance coming up in a few months and the thought of being able to show off some of my new jazz/improvisation skills is what helps to keep me going when I have those thoughts. Will I sound like Oscar Peterson or Bill Evans, definitely not. I will probably get embarrassed and probably even mess up, but that’s ok! Mistakes are part of the process and something that we ALL make. What matters is not the mistake, but what you can learn from it.
All that being said, the time I spent in Piano Marvel learning to read proved to be invaluable. At first, I would do the SASR every day as part of the “30 Day Challenge”. But, shortly after completing that, I realized that many of the songs I’d played were repeats of things I had had already played before and I wasn’t doing any better on them. This is when I decided to go through the Method and Technique. Was I “truly sight- reading” like everyone talks about on the internet? No. But, I was learning patterns that were being used in the sight-reading examples in the SASR. So the more I learned, the better my SASR score got. Within a few months I was able to take my score from around 300 to 600+.
Now, reading at a 600-700 is no small feat. It’s actually quite good! But this is where I reached my first plateau in Sight-Reading. Whenever I would get to four-part reading I would pretty much always fail. Now, if you aren’t familiar with four-part writing, please let me explain. Four part reading is pretty much synonymous with reading hymns. As you may or may not know, many composers have written music for church throughout history. Bach is one of the best examples with his advanced “Chorales”. Those were, if I am not mistaken, written for a choir at the church that he was choirmaster of. I have heard these described by my college theory professor as "Hymns on steroids”. The reason I bring any of this up is because these are actually part of how I learned to read four part harmony…
Now that being said, I don’t want you to just go and download the Chorales from IMSLP and start reading them. That would be a pretty frustrating experience.. You have to be a very advanced sight-reader in order to play these. Even I, who recently got to the “Masters Student - Advanced Teacher” level in the SASR, have a pretty hard time playing these. But, what taught me to get better at this skill was the genius book written by Dr. Cory Hall (AKA: “BachScholar” on YouTube) called “Sight-Reading and Harmony”. Funnily enough, Dr. Josh Wright made an unsponsored video supporting this book because he was so impressed by it:
As you hopefully can see, this is a wonderful book and - to my knowledge - is really the only methodical way to learn this important skill of reading four part harmony. For those of you that do try this (which I hope all of you do!) please know a couple of things: We have a book from Dr. Cory Hall in PM called “Sample Exams”. These are great for either (a) placing you into an initial level to start off on the “Sight-Reading and Harmony” (“SR&H”) book, or (b) serving as an “exam” to take after you complete each full level in the SR&H book. If you want even more of a ramble/explanation/deep dive on this curriculum please feel free to watch this video: https://youtu.be/9ZLs9Az3T-k.
The last Sight-Reading resource I would like to cover for now is “Sight-Reading Samurai”. This is something that I am still not done with as I hit a roadblock and will hopefully come back to it at some point. But, I do think it was pivotal in my education so I would like to mention it. In Piano Marvel, we have a “Sight Reading Samurai” course for all levels: Easy, Intermediate, Advanced, and Professional.
The ones I have primarily used are the "Intermediate” and “Advanced”. Intermediate was something that I used and was an idea from Aaron Garner (CEO of Piano Marvel) about 5 years ago. He told me that if I was having a hard time in the SASR just make a bundle of all those songs and play them. At first, I didn’t like this idea because it is the opposite of what everyone says about how to get better at sight-reading. You aren’t reading new music; you play the same song over and over again until you get above an 80%. However after trying it out I am happy to say that it actually works! If you ask me, I think it’s a pretty big breakthrough for sight-reading and, to me, it actually makes sense. Let me explain:
If we think back to how I initially got my sight-reading better it was by going through the Method and Technique in PM which taught me patterns that I learned by getting 100’s in PM. When I got to places in the SASR that used parts of those, it became much easier. To illustrate this point better, I think that we should think about this in a different syntax. If you didn’t know how to read, picking up a book that has a high lexile score would be a bad choice. You are not going to comprehend anything that is being said (think about that Margaret Fabrizio video and her sounding out each word). However if you have been educated and have been a fluent English speaker for years then this would be significantly easier. It’s the same with music. This directly goes back to my quote from Dr. Geoffrey Haydon and learning music in school systematically.
Advanced Technique (and getting a teacher!)
I want to end this article by talking about some of my recent endeavors. As I have already said, Jazz is something I have started pursuing. But before that, I took a deep dive on an amazing series by Alexander Peskanov called “The Russian Technical Regimen” that was recommended to me by Dr. Tracy Xian. Before starting that series I believed that my technique was already pretty solid. But after doing these exercises for a couple years I am pleased to say that I have seen enormous benefits especially with chords and being more relaxed/musical at the piano. Tension is something I have long struggled with. As I learned and practiced these exercises I started to shift my focus from the notes and rhythm to the sound. Dr. Xian gave me ideas to think about such as placing an emphasis on certain beats/notes and this is just one of the many reasons that getting a teacher can be immensely helpful! A good teacher can see where you are and give you what you need at that moment. I know that there have been many times over my piano journey that a teacher has been proved to be immensely helpful, so my suggestion would be to find a teacher.
I sincerely hope that some of these main points of my musical education prove to be useful for you. If you ever have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to write to me at my email: [email protected].
Thanks, and happy practicing!
