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How I Learnt To Play Piano and Sing

2021-02-07 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 25:49 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Learning and studying · mode: Explanation and tutorial

Ali teaches ten levels of playing the piano while singing, using chords from Ultimate Guitar transposed to C major: single notes, octaves, right-hand triads, rhythm, both hands, arpeggios, the left-hand fifth, spamming chord notes and inversions, shown on Ed Sheeran's Perfect.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Ten levels of playing the piano and singing at the same time

  • ★★★ Ali says playing the piano while singing looks far more intimidating and difficult than it is: with a few formulae, a good chords website and a little practice, people will think you have played for years. — 00:00:33
  • ★★ Ali says that when he plays and sings on the piano he does not really know how to play, and is just following a series of mathematical formulae across ten levels. — 00:00:33

00:01:18 — Level one: chords from Ultimate Guitar tabs in C major, playing just the note

  • ★★ To get a song's chords, Ali types its name into Ultimate Guitar Tabs and picks a chord sheet with a decent rating. — 00:01:18
  • ★★ Ali transposes every song to C major with the Ultimate Guitar transpose button, so the first chord is C and only the white notes are needed. — 00:01:47
  • ★ Ali says he might make videos on music theory, such as keys, majors and minors, if viewers are interested. (hedged) — 00:01:47
  • ★ Ali points viewers who care about music theory to a Skillshare class by his friend John. — 00:01:47
  • ★★ Level one of playing the piano while singing, Ali says, is to sing the song while playing just the single note of each chord that Ultimate Guitar Tabs gives. — 00:02:33

00:03:22 — Level two: playing the octave

  • ★★ Level two is to play the octave instead of one note; Ali prefers the left hand, with pinky and thumb. — 00:03:43

00:04:09 — Level three: right-hand triads in a claw position

  • ★★ Level three is to play each chord from Ultimate Guitar as a right-hand triad; in C major it is always the same shape: play a note, skip a note, play a note, skip a note, play a note. — 00:04:09
  • ★ Ali explains that a major triad is called major because it sounds happy and triad because it has three notes. — 00:04:58
  • ★★ In C major the triads of C, A minor, F and G use the same claw-like hand position, which does not change between chords. — 00:05:54

00:07:08 — Level four: triads on the beat of the song

  • ★★ Level four adds rhythm: play the right-hand triads on the beat of the song. — 00:07:08

00:09:27 — Level five: left-hand octave with right-hand triad

  • ★★ Level five puts the hands together: the octave in the left hand with the triad in the right hand. — 00:09:27
  • ★★ At level five Ali keeps the rhythm in the right hand only and holds the left-hand octave, because rhythm in both hands is a bit much. — 00:11:18

00:11:45 — Level six: arpeggio with the right hand

  • ★★ Level six plays the right-hand triad as an arpeggio, its notes one at a time instead of together. — 00:11:45
  • ★★ When learning to arpeggiate while singing, Ali suggests doing the right hand alone first, then adding the left-hand octave. — 00:12:44

00:13:52 — Level seven: adding the fifth in the left hand

  • ★★ By level five or six, Ali says, someone watching you play the piano while singing would think you are reasonably okay at it. — 00:13:52
  • ★★ Level seven adds the fifth to the left-hand octave: the note where the index finger naturally lands, such as G in a C octave. — 00:14:23
  • ★★ Adding the fifth seems hard to someone new to music, Ali says, but with a little practice it becomes second nature because it is where the index finger lands. — 00:15:20

00:16:21 — Level eight: spamming the notes of the left hand

  • ★★ Level eight arpeggiates, alternates and spams the left-hand notes of each chord: the root, the fifth and the octave. — 00:16:21

00:17:51 — Level nine: spamming the notes with both hands

  • ★★ Level nine spams the allowed chord notes in both hands, in a way that sounds good and goes with the rhythm of the song. — 00:17:51
  • ★★ To make spamming the chord notes sound more reasonable, Ali says not to go super ham on it; he saves the most for the higher-energy chorus. — 00:19:16

00:20:23 — Level ten: inversions

  • ★★ Level ten uses inversions: a chord need not start on its official note, so C, G, E is still a C major chord. — 00:21:10
  • ★★ Ali uses inversions to cut hand movement between chords, because playing generally sounds better when the fingers move around less. — 00:22:03

00:24:26 — Putting it all together on Perfect by Ed Sheeran

  • ★★★ With these ten levels, a bit of practice and no lessons, only tutorials, YouTube videos and Google Images, Ali says you can sing any song you want once you have its chords from Ultimate Guitar. — 00:24:26
  • ★★ Music is a really fun part of Ali's life; he has not talked about it much on the channel and wants to talk about it a lot more. — 00:25:22

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Mentioned

Central: Perfect · Ultimate Guitar

Also: Ed Sheeran

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