There was a big lightbulb moment in a house in Sligo on Sunday.
A student of mine showed her sister that if she used the chords from one of the only songs she could still play on the piano (Shakira’s Waka Waka) and sang the melody of the chorus of Dermot Kennedy’s Rome (check out Rory Maitland’s cover here), it worked!
In other words – the same chords were used in each song, and if you played those same four chords, you could sing the melody of either song over those chords and it would sound correct.
But more importantly, it sparked something in this young lady, and apparently she hasn’t stopped playing piano since.
Which leads me to the rather interesting title of this blog. I’m not sure why the author gave the chord progression in question this particular title, but this blog contains an insane amount of songs which use one particular four chord progression (the same four chords as the songs above in fact, but in a slightly different order). Learn the chords once, and you can play any of these songs.
Guitar players know this, but depending on how you were taught the piano, you may not, and hence it sometimes astounds people who are used to learning in a more traditional way to discover they can start thinking about piano in this way. It’s the basis of the way I teach, and it’s always lovely to hear of moments such as the one described above.
On a related note, it was great to get a copy of my new workbook delivered during the week. It will hopefully help students already learning this way to do it in a more organised manner.
If it sounds interesting, you can find more out about this method and my online tuition platform here.
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