The BEST Way to Learn Piano as a Music Producer Subtitles

00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,Let me know if this sounds familiar at all.

00:00:01,480 --> 00:00:03,You've been learning piano for a few months

00:00:03,320 --> 00:00:05,and you've kinda kept it separate from your music making

00:00:05,880 --> 00:00:07,until you get good enough at piano

00:00:07,160 --> 00:00:09,to be able to use it to make music.

00:00:09,160 --> 00:00:10,Then one day you're making music

00:00:10,520 --> 00:00:11,and you've made a sick drum track

00:00:11,800 --> 00:00:13,and you're like, f***k, I need some chords

00:00:13,560 --> 00:00:15,but I don't really wanna sample anymore

00:00:15,200 --> 00:00:16,because I've been practicing piano.

00:00:16,680 --> 00:00:18,How hard could this beat?

00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:19,You see the keyboard in the corner of your eye,

00:00:19,640 --> 00:00:22,you move towards it, your hands descend upon the keys

00:00:22,720 --> 00:00:24,and bullshit.

00:00:24,840 --> 00:00:27,Hang on, chords were a little bit ambitious

00:00:27,320 --> 00:00:28,for the first time.

00:00:28,160 --> 00:00:30,Let's just try a quick melody in the right hand.

00:00:30,880 --> 00:00:32,Bullshit.

00:00:32,220 --> 00:00:34,Everything you do sounds terrible.

00:00:34,520 --> 00:00:36,You have no idea where to start,

00:00:36,000 --> 00:00:37,and you end up deciding, f***k it,

00:00:37,200 --> 00:00:39,this whole piano thing, it's gonna take years,

00:00:39,120 --> 00:00:40,and you quit.

00:00:40,600 --> 00:00:44,That was me every three months for like three or four years.

00:00:44,280 --> 00:00:46,And one of my favorite producer YouTubers

00:00:46,080 --> 00:00:47,just committed to learning the piano,

00:00:47,640 --> 00:00:50,and I can see this becoming him if he's not careful.

00:00:50,120 --> 00:00:52,And it's not because we just need to work a bit harder.

00:00:52,560 --> 00:00:53,Merry f***g Christmas.

00:00:53,920 --> 00:00:56,It's simply because the traditional techniques

00:00:56,020 --> 00:00:57,used to learn piano

00:00:57,380 --> 00:01:01,great for people who want to learn to play other people's songs but absolutely

00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:05,terrible for people who want to learn to make their own. For that we need something

00:01:05,000 --> 00:01:10,different and I think I found it. This is Bob. He's been playing piano for
00:01:10,760 --> 00:01:17,years and he sounds like this. Now by contrast about the most impressive thing

00:01:17,010 --> 00:01:23,that I can play is this. Now to be fair to myself I've only been learning piano

00:01:23,530 --> 00:01:26,on and off for a few years but I don't think that's the biggest difference

00:01:26,410 --> 00:01:30,between us. If you asked Bob to write a song on the piano, he'd probably s***t himself,

00:01:30,250 --> 00:01:34,but if you instead asked him to learn this, he could probably do that in a couple hours.

00:01:34,330 --> 00:01:37,Now if you gave me a week to learn that, I don't even think I'd be able to do it, but

00:01:37,890 --> 00:01:54,it only took me a few hours to write this. And this. And this. And this.

00:01:54,980 --> 00:02:00,but look at all the time you wasted riding your ride in your

00:02:06,260 --> 00:02:10,and that's just down to exactly how we learned to play the piano. bobs classically trained which

00:02:10,340 --> 00:02:15,means that every bit of effort he put in every week for like 10 plus years was all going towards

00:02:15,780 --> 00:02:20,the goal of playing really difficult pieces written by great composers really really well

00:02:20,180 --> 00:02:25,And I did the exact same thing. I learned violin for 10 years, but despite 10 years of practice,

00:02:25,780 --> 00:02:30,I can't write a melody on my violin for s***t. When I want a string part, I literally write it

00:02:30,580 --> 00:02:35,on piano, then I'll go get my violin and record it in later. Now, since 90% of people just want

00:02:35,220 --> 00:02:39,to learn how to play their favorite songs, 90% of tutorials are just going to teach that skill

00:02:39,220 --> 00:02:44,set. It explains why it's so easy for people like us to get lost in the sea of tutorials,

00:02:44,260 --> 00:02:48,learning things that we don't even need. It explains why it's so easy for people like us

00:02:48,980 --> 00:02:52,to quit after a few months because we're just not getting what we need out of these tutorials.

00:02:52,740 --> 00:02:58,I've tried learning keys in the past, you know, I went and g***t a little course online, followed it

00:02:58,020 --> 00:03:03,for a week or two, and then I gave up. Now I would love to be able to play as well as Bobcann.

00:03:03,140 --> 00:03:07,I really would, but if I could only choose one, I know what's more important to me.

00:03:07,540 --> 00:03:12,What's more important to me is being able to sit down and write the chords which fit perfectly

00:03:12,340 --> 00:03:16,with that drum loop that I've made, or to sit down and capture a feeling of nostalgia that I have,

00:03:16,660 --> 00:03:22,or to sit down and listen to a Frank Ocean song, hear the chords, understand why they work,

00:03:22,100 --> 00:03:26,and then transplant it into my music. In my opinion, most of the battle as an artist is

00:03:26,420 --> 00:03:30,knowing what to play, and if we never develop the skill, we're gonna sit down at the piano

00:03:30,260 --> 00:03:34,with all the piano chops in the world and have no idea what to play. And somehow, we still expect

00:03:34,660 --> 00:03:38,to, even though all we've ever done is listen to someone else who tells us what notes to play.

00:03:38,500 --> 00:03:42,And to do that, we need a methodology that's gonna teach us the language of music,

00:03:42,580 --> 00:03:48,not just how to read out something someone else has written but f***k me a methodology that teaches

00:03:48,020 --> 00:03:53,language and syntax and all the technical s***t that's gotta sound technical and super soul crushing

00:03:53,380 --> 00:04:06,right? Actually no. No it doesn't. It's jazz. Now I know what you're thinking oh my god I've heard

00:04:06,280 --> 00:04:11,jazz is super difficult I'm never gonna be able to play that relax I'm not a jazz musician. What

00:04:11,240 --> 00:04:15,I'm gonna talk about is the absolute basics it's all I've needed to make the best music I've ever

00:04:15,320 --> 00:04:18,made. If you weren't thinking that you're probably thinking,

00:04:18,680 --> 00:04:23,Sir, I like pop music, I f***g hate jazz. Relax. In the same way you can divide

00:04:23,000 --> 00:04:26,classical music and classical training as like a method for learning an

00:04:26,120 --> 00:04:29,instrument, we're going to divide the sound of jazz and the jazz methodology

00:04:29,960 --> 00:04:33,and way of learning an instrument into two separate things. The method is what

00:04:33,880 --> 00:04:37,we are going to focus on. Now why is the jazz method the solution to all my

00:04:37,400 --> 00:04:40,problems? Well, before jazz was invented in the late

00:04:40,280 --> 00:04:43,19th century, pretty much the only way to learn an instrument was through classical

00:04:43,880 --> 00:04:47,training which had one clear goal. Get good enough to be able to read and play the stuff

00:04:47,880 --> 00:04:52,that all dead white guys had written hundreds of years ago. The musician was just the vessel

00:04:52,600 --> 00:04:56,through which the composer was heard. And it kind of mirrored the times, like this was

00:04:56,120 --> 00:05:00,the time of kings and queens and s***t. Like you were just an atom in the world of a monarch

00:05:00,120 --> 00:05:04,and as a musician an atom in the world of a composer. Fast forward to when jazz came out

00:05:04,480 --> 00:05:08,and it wasn't just the sound of it that caused riots, it was the fact that the musicians

00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:13,were literally making s***t up as they went and not relying on what composers had written.

00:05:13,200 --> 00:05:16,to mention that it was black people making this also music.

00:05:16,080 --> 00:05:19,Since the musicians understood the language of what they were playing, they didn't have

00:05:19,040 --> 00:05:23,to rely on the composers, and for the first time in western music history, the musicians

00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:24,were the composers.

00:05:24,360 --> 00:05:27,Now this is perfect for us producers and artists because it means that we don't need to reinvent

00:05:27,840 --> 00:05:29,the wheel when we're trying to learn the piano.

00:05:29,440 --> 00:05:33,We can just take the basic foundations of the jazz method and apply it to any type of music

00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:34,that we like.

00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:39,It can help us understand why the chords and melodies in a specific genre or from a specific

00:05:39,160 --> 00:05:43,to sound the way they do and then help us to write stuff like that. There's an

00:05:43,600 --> 00:05:46,entire side of YouTube with musicians who talk about this s***t all the time but

00:05:46,800 --> 00:05:49,I think one of the reasons that the producers have a lot of the time never

00:05:49,960 --> 00:05:54,heard of this is because everyone's so petrified of music theory and spoilers

00:05:54,320 --> 00:05:57,if you want to make it to the promised land you're gonna have to learn some

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