Ballad Style

Many people ask me about how I started teaching piano. My lesson plans don't come from reading books but from a result of piano students asking me how I play my songs.

They tell me, "We want to play like you, can you teach us?"

I will be playing a song for them as shown in the following video:






They say, "Oh, we like that sound, what did you do?"

I then ask them, "Which part did you like?"

They say, "Everything."

I then say, "Oh....let me play this again."


So then I will be playing for them a second time as shown in the following video:




They say, "How come it's different from the first one?"

I say, "I don't know how to play it exactly the same, but some of the accompaniment is about the same."

They say, "Teach us."

I scratch my head....and I say, "I'll play slower, you stop me exactly at the point where you like to hear."

Then they stopped me every 5 seconds or so.


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From all this, I soon discover that I put in a lot of different variety into my playing without knowing it myself.

The students say they want SPECIFIC demonstration of what goes on in the accompaniment when I play a song.


For eg. in this ballad style, they stopped me a few times. And then I came to realize that I was playing the ballad in different ways. They want to know how to vary the ballad style. I found myself showing them each one so that they can see the basic structure first and then show them what they can do to vary one from the other. It is just a slight movement of the hand.



The following is a video that I will do for them so that they can see exactly what I do in slower motion in each ballad pattern throughout the song. I discover that they need to hear the same pattern throughout the whole song for their learning and that's why I had to stick to the same pattern in one demo. I didn't learn it that way because I have been playing all my life by exploring and experimenting on my own. But for adult piano learners at the beginning stage, they tell me they need everything shown in its specific structure.

The following video shows 6 different styles of a basic ballad 9. I played each pattern throughout the song. I don't ever play one pattern throughout the song but they say they need to learn it in that way, so that's why I did it for them.







As you can see from the above video, the patterns are slightly different and they give a slightly different mood or effect. Try to listen to the mood and effect rather than counting your beats. Just a slightly delayed note also makes a difference to the mood of the music. As for the fingerings, find the finger shape that is most natural for you. I seldom change my handshape because they feel good just as they are.




The following is another video showing a hypnotic ballad 9 where the 5th is alternated and repeated on all the off-beat. More variations for them to choose.





For me to stick with one pattern and play that throughout the song is more difficult. I have to really think to stay in the pattern. But I also understand why beginners want it this way because they do not have enough patterns in their hands to mix and match easily. Once you are fluent with each pattern, then mixing and matching is as easy as breathing.

I purposely captioned on the video the pattern and the numbers for beginners to see clearly which notes the fingers are hitting. They find these caption labels very very helpful. But it also requires me to spend hours and hours of work editing the videos. Can you believe it -- a 10 minute video requires 10 hours of work? No kidding. But if 100 students benefit from it then 10 hours is only 1 minute work.

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After watching these videos, my students will come back to me and say they need to practice the LH accompaniment and ask if I can give them some exercise on chords.


I say, "Just follow the video."

They say, "The LH moves very quickly from one chord to another, so it is not easy for us to practise."


I say, "Oh..... what do you want me to show you?"


They say, "Can you show us a demo of each pattern chord by chord?"


As a result, I ended up doing the following video to show them the technique pattern of each chord. I use mainly C F G chord to give them an idea. Once they know how to apply to these basic chords, they can do them on the others. Each chord is repeated about 4 times so that they can take the video to their piano to play along:











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In my books, I actually put these videos in reverse order. I show the techniques chord by chord first, and then I show how they can be put into the song. People learning from books do not have the advantage of a live teacher-student interaction so everything is done from basic to more complex in the books.


So I thought I'll explain to you how the videos came about in my teaching and why the books lessons and the video lessons are formatted in this way.


The theory part is explained in detail in the books. The ballad 9 is explained in Lesson 9 in Book 2 where I start talking about extension chords. There, I explain the numbers that you see on the videos.

As we learn to play the piano, it is good to train ourselves to think in numbers rather than in letter names because the numbers show us distinct patterns, whereas letter names such as "A B C" don't show distinct patterns. Once you learn a number system, you can apply them to different chords easily. This is all explained in my books.