Learn to play Pop Piano, play your favorite hit songs now

Learn How to Play Pop Piano and play your favorite songs with added style and flair. Pop piano playing techniques can be used for almost any song (in any language)Whether you want to improve your general piano skills, or wish to learn improvisation, or want to write your own pop, rock, or ballad-style piano songs, these tips and techniques will surely help you.

Pop music is usually written and structured in an easy flowing way, using simple “rules”, features several repeating sections and uses simple harmonies.

So its comparatively easier to play on the piano (or any other instrument).

Having said that, you can play a pop song in different ways (for example, “Your Song” played by Elton John, Ellie Goulding and many others on YouTube).

Even if you pick two pop keyboard parts (at random), you’ll notice that they use different techniques. One might use long chords of synth strings, another might have boogie-woogie-like piano rhythm.

Piano Students Love to Play the Top Hits (Chartbusters)

When someone talks about playing “pop music” on the piano, s/he basically means playing popular “songs” on the piano.

Beginner students who are learning to play a musical instrument are always eager to play pop songs, the ones that are ruling the charts.

So if you’re a music teacher, make sure you include few songs from the radio in your piano teaching curriculum.

Here are some more characteristics of a pop song.

Top Pop Piano Books:

• The Amadeus Anthems: Classical Pop Piano Solos
• Seven Studies in Pop Piano
• The Pop Piano Book
• Pop Hits for Kids

Prerequisites: Know the notes and few chords

In order to begin playing pop piano, you need to be clear with the basics – you must know the names of the notes on the piano, know how to play a few chords and even know a few scales.

In order to play pop piano, you need to know how to play a few chords (both major as well as minor). Major chords sound “happy” and the minor chords are more of “sad” or “emotional” sounding.

Most songs can be played using only a few chords. So for example if a song is based on the key of C (scale), then you just need to know how to play C major, G major, F major.

That’s it!

“Stay With Me” by Sam Smith. Sam has repeated only three chords (Amin, F, C) with the same rhythm for this entire song. The video shows how to add some cool fills to make the song more interesting.

• Piano Chart explains Notes on Piano Keyboard
• Play hundreds of songs using just a few chords

Besides this, there are some additional things, as mentioned below, which you will need to learn in order to make your playing more interesting and soothing.

To get the most out of the books suggested below, you will need to be able to read piano sheet music (know the basics) and understand basic music theory concepts like key and time signatures.

Characteristics of Pop Piano

The following are the characteristics of Pop Piano. It should not be very difficult to start using these in your playing!

• Right Hand Intervals – You need to know intervals such as thirds and sixths. Use them with the melody notes.
• Rhythmic – You need to learn some interesting rhythmic patterns for your left hand.
• Arpeggios – Use them as fill-ins or as accompaniment for your left hand.
• Broken Chords – Learn how to play broken chords with your left hand.

An important aspect of playing Pop Piano is to be able to play intervals with your right hand, especially the sixth interval. The reason being, the sixth interval (where the melody note is on the top) gives a romantic touch to the melody.

Most of these are simple stuff, nothing very complex. Like any other new thing that needs to be learnt, learning to play these will also require some practice.

“Someone Like You” by Adele topped the charts in almost 10 countries. This song uses four repeated chords: A, E, F#min, D (it’s in the scale of A). Play arepeggios with the left hand, add melody with the right.

Pop Piano Accompaniment Patterns

Here are some easy-to-play, yet effective left-hand accompaniment patterns that you can use to play some of your favorite pop tunes on the piano.

Actually, the easiest left-hand accompaniment that you can use is chords; you can play them as straight chords or arpeggios. When moving from one chord to another, feel free to use inversions so that you do not have to move around a lot on the keyboard.

So, if you have to play the C chord, you can play it as follows:

Play C chord as block chord on the first and the third beat.
Play C chord as arpeggio: C-G-C-G (very easy to play left-hand accompaniment)

When playing block chords as accompaniments, you can use different rhythmic patterns to play simple chord progressions.

Chord Progressions

In pop music, it’s common to see both three and four-chord progressions being used. In four-chord progressions, you usually start and finish on the same chord.

Simpler three-chord progressions that are commonly used:

• I-IV-V (C, F, G)
• I-V-IV (C, G, F)
• I-II-V (C, Dm, G)
• I-VI-V (C, Am, G)

Common four-chord progressions include:

• I-IV-V-I (C, F, G, C) “Basket Case” by Green Day, “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt.
• I-V-IV-I (C, G, F, C) “All the Small Things” by Blink-182, “Born This Way” by Lady Gaga.
• I-V-VI-IV (C, G, Am, F). “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper, “Someone Like You” by Adele.
• VI-IV-I-V (Am, F, C, G) “Complicated” by Avril Lavigne, “What If God Was One of Us?” by Joan Osbourne.
• VI-V-IV-V (F, G, F, G) Linkin Park – “In The End” intro and verse. (sounds dark)

Fee free to use any of the chord progressions listed above when playing in the pop piano style.

More Pop Piano Techniques

Here are some more techniques that you can use to improve your piano playing.

• Listen to music of pop pianists and pay close attention to how they voice chords, how they use fill-ins, and how the bass moves in the song. Many of the patterns may look very similar to classical ones, but pop uses different rhythm and accent patterns. A good ear training exercise is to listen to a piece of pop music, and see how many parts you can pick out and play.
• For most band situations, you require the ability to create accompaniments based on the chord sheet. So learn how to use fill-ins, you can even use bars from classical pieces.
• For soloing, in addition to major and minor scales, you also need to learn blues and jazz scales. Checkout these jazz piano resources that will introduce you to these scales.
• Also, a great place to start learning about African-American groove music works is boogie-woogie piano music, a lot of which exists in detailed transcription.

Recommended Books!

Really want to learn to play pop piano? You can approach an instructor who teaches pop styles.

Then there are some good books out there that explain the theory behind pop music, the common chord progressions, etc. Most of these books come along with a CD so you can listen and / or play along.

The Amadeus Anthems: Classical Pop Piano Solos: Pop music with bits of Mozart themes mixed in, for intermediate-higher piano players. Classical crossover pieces capture the attention of teens who are often not too interested in classical music (which would benefit them).

The Pop Piano Book: by Mark Harrison (Composer) – Perfect for intermediate/ advanced players who aspire to improve their playing in contemporary styles – for pop, ballad, rock, funk, new age, country and gospel styles.

Seven Studies in Pop Piano: For the intermediate pianist, and great for anyone who wants to improve his/her playing. Seven Studies in Pop Piano: Collection of short piano pieces that helps you to learn how to play pop piano. The piano pieces depict the style of piano playing associated with names like Ben Folds, Elton John, Sara Bareilles, Lady Gaga and many more.

Pop Hits for Kids: Good book with a variety of easy songs for the beginning piano player. 25 easy piano arrangements of popular hits kids will love to play as their piano playing skills blossom. Includes: City of Stars, Feel It Still, Happy, Havana, Look What You Made Me Do, The Middle, Perfect, Rewrite the Stars, Scars to Your Beautiful, A Thousand Miles, What About Us, and more.

Pop/Rock Piano Hits for Dummies: A Reference for the Rest of Us: by Hal Leonard Corp – Great collection of Songs… All in one book

The Pop Piano Book by Mark Harrison: Complete Contemporary Piano Book

Eager to play your favorite songs on the piano? Here’s a book that provides several useful tips and suggestions for your left hand to accompany the melody. This cutting-edge keyboard method is a total step-by-step approach to creating keyboard parts spontaneously.

Rhythmic and harmonic concepts are applied in all keys, and are then used as a basis for developing specific solutions in rock, pop, ballad, funk, new age, country and gospel styles.

Endorsed by Grammy winners, top educators, and Keyboard magazine. This is a great piano book to help you improve your technique and start playing your favorite songs.

Its a great book, although not for absolute beginners.

This could be a very good technique book as well if you want to learn popular piano, you just need to read and use it carefully. A great resource if you want to improve your playing style in pop ballad, gospel, new age music. If you’re a self-taught piano player, you’re really going to like this book.

This book provides a step-by-step approach to creating keyboard parts spontaneously. Rhythmic and harmonic concepts are clarified in all the keys, and are then used as a basis for developing specific solutions/styles in rock, pop, ballad, funk, new age, country and gospel styles.

Why Classical Musicians Struggle

Most classically trained pianists / musicians have been groomed to play from written music and as such they struggle when it comes to improvisations.

Just put them in a jam session and they will most likely be clueless (with due respect) because they find it difficult to get off the page. Having said that, a classically trained musician in not really a beginner and also have a huge advantage because of their classical training (ability to read).

So if you’re classically trained musician, you will need to unlearn (buzzword in the corporate sector where you unlearn things that no longer works)

So if you want to become good at playing pop/rock, start of by listening to great pop players, and critically analyse their playing. Studying different pop/rock bands, and focus on learning to play by ear which will make you more comfortable to get off the page.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Keep the same tempo throughout a song, in every bar, even if there’s only one note in the whole bar.
• Feel free to pedal down after the note (in pop music, not many care about overtones)
• Accentuation on beats 2, 4, and not on 1, 3 (it’s not a march).
• In Pop/Rock: Eights have accents on the beat (in Jazz its mostly off the beat).
• There are syncopation in pop music.
• Avoid playing too many notes while improvising, provide enough rests in your improvisation.

Get Started and Learn a Few Songs

Now that you know how to play pop piano, why not learn a few songs and play in this style?

You just need to apply the techniques mentioned here and apply it to your favorite pop songs.

• Navigating the keyboard
• Reading a fake sheet
• Finger technique
• Playing simple melodies
• Reading basic chords
• Play triads and broken chords

That’s all to it really! And these are actually the basics of piano playing.

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