The fact that you’ve clicked on this post means one of two things. You’re either trying to figure out how you can learn piano fast, OR you think it can’t be done. Well guess what, with my approach to piano playing, you really can learn to play your favorite songs – simply and quickly! I’ll show you everything you need to know, including my example of learning how to play All of Me on piano by John Legend.
A quick disclaimer: This way of learning isn’t for people who want to play Beethoven’s 5th Symphony or become a professional pianist. I’m simply offering a clear and uncomplicated way to get you playing songs you love, quickly. Check this. So whether you want to be able to play your own All of Me piano cover or popular song from yesteryear, I’ve got you covered. Let’s do this!
What You Need to Know if You Want to Learn Piano Fast
To learn piano fast, you need to maximize your efforts so that no time is wasted. The first thing you need to know is the set of 12 white keys that repeats itself across your keyboard.
The best use of your time by far is to memorize those keys. They run from A to G just like the letters of the alphabet. Putting in the effort to really learn each of the 12 keys will save you lots of time later!
Once you know the names of all the white keys, black keys are next! Each black key has two names. That may sound confusing, but what you need to know is simple: Black keys to the right of white keys are “sharp”, and black keys to the left of white keys are “flat”. That’s true no matter where you are on the keyboard!
Putting Notes Together into Chords
So far, so good. Now we need to look at chords and how you can form them from all those notes we just talked about. The good news is that most chords fall into two categories, and they are easy to learn. What’s the bad news? I can’t think of any!
For the first category, we have major chords. Just like I showed you in my video, you form these chords with a 4-3 formula. That means you place your first finger on the note the chord is named after. Then you count upwards first by 4 and then by 3 to find the correct place for your next two fingers.
You can do the exact same thing to play a minor chord – the only difference is that you reverse the formula to 3-4. So again, you’ll place your first finger on the note the chord is named after. Then you’ll count upwards to find where to put your other fingers, this time counting first by 3 and then by 4.
Are you still with me? Good! You can always watch my video again to see some more examples of how to formulate the major and minor chords. Let’s take a look at what else you’ll need if you want to learn piano fast.
Find All the Chords You Need – Just Like I Did for My All of Me Piano Cover
Maybe you’ve been wondering how you’ll know which chords to play when you’re learning your favorite songs. But the answer is right in front of you! Just like you probably found me through a Google search, you can find chords for almost any song – just by searching for the song name followed by “chords”.
In my example in the video, I searched for a classic John Legend song so that I could play my All of Me piano cover. The first search results are often the best. And when you’re doing a search for chords you’ll probably see results from ultimate-guitar.com right near the top. That’s the site I recommend if you want to find free crowd-sourced chord notations for all your favorite songs.
So take a moment and do a quick search for your favorite song’s chords. I’m willing to bet they popped right up, so go ahead and click on one of the top results. Do you see the chord names that show up right above different parts of the song? That’s how you’ll know which chords to play, and when. It’s as simple as that.
My Example – All of Me Piano Cover
As you saw, in my video I played through my All of Me piano cover. John Legend’s ballad was a nice, easy exercise for me to demonstrate to you how I start simply and then add in more complexity after practice.
Just like I did in my video, you should start learning how to play All of Me on the piano by just finding each chord as they appear in the song and getting comfortable playing them with a basic rhythm. Once that is coming more easily to you, you can begin to add in more advanced techniques. Don’t worry! It’s not as hard as it sounds.
I go over a lot of great tips and techniques in my full 21-day course, all so that you can easily start implementing inversions, improvisation and more. Eventually, you’ll be playing your favorite songs smoothly and with enjoyment – just like I did in my All of Me piano cover.
Free Resources to Help You Learn Piano Fast
Starting out with my approach to learning piano fast is free! That’s because I offer five full lessons in a workbook that you can download and begin anytime. I’ll even send you several videos and audio exercises to walk you through those first few days step by step.
So what are you waiting for? It’s time to get started – and I think you’ll be surprised at how much you can accomplish with these free resources and a little practice. Get your copy of my 5-day workbook now, and leave me a comment to tell me how it goes!
-Jacques
Video Transcript – Learn Piano In 4 Minutes
Hey everyone, Jacques Hopkins here. I teach the fastest piano lessons on the internet over at Pianoin21Days.com. And in this video, I’m breaking all the barriers when it comes to learning how to play the piano.
I’m going to show you how you can be playing your favorite songs on the piano in just 4 minutes – even if you’ve never touched one before.
If you don’t know how to play the piano, just looking at one maybe intimidating and overwhelming. And that’s because we’ve got these white keys and we’ve got these black keys, and what’s the difference between them? Well, I’m here to tell you there’s no difference between black and white keys.
We literally could have 88 identical-looking purple keys, but then how would you know where you are on the keyboard in a given time? So that’s the reason why we have black keys and white keys – is so that you know where you are at in a given time.
The Keys You Need to Know if You Want to Learn Piano Fast
The next thing we need to do is learn the names of the keys. You don’t need to memorize all 88 keys, because we have these sections of 12 keys. They just repeat themselves over and over again across the entire keyboard.
So let’s focus in on one of these sections and learn the names of the keys. The white key to the left of any two black notes is a C key. Then from there we continue down the alphabet and go the right on our keyboard so we have C, D, E, F, G. Now, the alphabet starts over after G in music, so we’re going to go ahead to A, and B. Next!
There’s our seven white keys. Let’s learn the five black keys. Black keys are named by the white key they are next to, and they also have the word “flat” and “sharp” in them. The way this works is that a sharp is a black key just to the right of any white key, and a flat is the black key to the left of any white key.
So for example, right here we’ve got C sharp, and then this is also called D flat. So every black key does have two names.
The Chords and How to Find Them
Now we’ve learned the names of every key on the entire piano. The next thing we need to do is learn how to play some chords. Chords are just multiple notes played at the same time. They’re the foundation for the songs we want to play on the piano.
The majority of chords fall into one of two categories. We’ve got major chords and minor chords, and you don’t need to memorize all of them. You just need to know the simple formulas, and once you know the formulas you instantly know how to play all the chords.
So for example, the formula for major chords is simply 4-3. What does that look like? Let’s say we want to play a D major chord. We’ll start at D, go up the very next 4 notes (1, 2, 3, 4), and then the very next 3 notes (1, 2, 3). That’s a D major chord. Let’s say we want to play a D minor chord. The formula for minor chords is reverse: it’s 3-4. So we’ll start at D and go up three (1, 2, 3) and then 1, 2, 3,4 and there’s D minor.
Accessing Chords for My All of Me Piano Cover and More
How do you know what chords make up the songs you want to play? For that we just turn over to Google. And in this case I want to play “All of Me” by John Legend. So I’ll jump on Google and I’ll type in “all of me chords”. The first result is almost always a good one.
In this case it looks like the beginning of this song is A minor, C major, G major, and D major. … So hopefully you can hear that this sounds like “All of Me” by John Legend.
There are more techniques that you can add in there to make the song sound better and better over time and with practice. Eventually, the chorus can sound something like this.
…
If you want to continue down this path of learning piano quickly and easily, I’ve got a free workbook waiting for you! Just click on the image of the workbook in this video, or click the link in the description below.
