How to Practice Piano for Composers

In language learning, there is a well known hack or trick to pushing through early stages much quicker than the 'average' learner and it’s to find the top 300 most used words or patterns in the language and to learn those first.

THIS is what we’re doing in this course. The aim of this course is to help composers arrange more fluently at the piano by focusing on practicing the fundamental patterns of arrangement. By taking this course you will enhance your composing and arranging skills, as well as becoming a better piano player.

When you have this skill & knowledge of arranging patterns under your belt you can:

1. Start combining and manipulating them in many different ways.

2. You start hearing these patterns everywhere! Which shows you music isn’t as hard as you thought!

3. You can deconstruct your favorite music and emulate it with ease

4. You can develop musical ideas with ease and finally start finishing that pile of sketches that you have been building up! : )

My name’s Jack Vaughan. I’m a composer and online educator and founder of Lean Musician My courses have been taken by thousands of students in nearly 100 countries and my main thing is helping musicians write and practice music more effectively.

This is not a beginners course. This course follows on from my previous course, Music Composition at the Piano. The aim of that course was to give beginner musicians an amazing foundation in music theory and composition - or to give intermediate musicians a catchup on all the things they often miss. If you haven’t taken that course, or don’t feel totally confident with your level of music theory as it currently stands - then check it out before taking this one.

About the course | In Depth

Performing musicians practice - all the time. That’s how they get better. But how do you practice if you’re a composer? After you’ve mastered a good level of music theory, and some basic keyboard skills - how do you really start absorbing new techniques & material and move from being an intermediate to professional?

In my experience, there’s two conventional bits of wisdom that professional composers usually say in answer to this: write lots of music on the job and listen to new music all the time.

Both of these are absolutely true and probably the best bits of advice you can get. If you’re not already doing them, stop watching this video and do that solidly for a week and see what happens.

However, my guess is that you’re already doing this, and it’s not answering all your questions. The thing is, most early stage composers get stuck when writing - quite a lot. And it’s really an issue of vocabulary.

Imagine I’m trying to write in French but my level of vocabulary is limited - my writing is not going to be so good - no matter how much I write. Obviously I need to learn more words or standard patterns in the language and then try them out in my writing.

I could also try and read or listen to as much French as possible - but how much do I actually recognize and therefore absorb for my own writing?

This is a perfect analogy for music. How can we write without a basic vocabulary of patterns and how can we emulate what we’re listening to if we can’t understand it?

My hope is that at the end of this course you’ll have built up and continue to be building a powerful skillset at the piano and have a wealth of arranging principles on which to draw from. And my hope is that these two pillars will allow you to express your compositional ideas more fluently and more reliably.

I hope to see you on the inside!

Course outline

Part 1: Harmony

1. Introduction
2. How to use this section
3. Keystones
4. 1564
5. Einaudi
6. Blues
7. Time
8. Step Down
9. The Sequence
10. Lord Chords
11. Minor 4 Soul
12. 36251
13. Secondary Dominants
14. Jazz Blues
15. Chord Relationships & Bitonality

Part 2: Repertoire

16. Outlines & Repertoire List
17. Jamming
18. Transcription
19. Pattern Library
20. Example Tunes

Part 3: Voicings

21. Introduction
22. Inversions
23.Closed & Open
24. Doubling, Dropping, Adding
25. 3rds, 6ths, 10ths
26. Grace Notes
27. Harmonizing Melody
28. Rootless
29. Voice Leading

Part 4: Accompaniment Patterns

30. Introduction
31. Block
32. Broken Chords & Arpeggiation | Pt 1
33. Broken Chords & Arpeggiation | Pt 2
34. Alternating Chords
35. Comping
36. Stride
37. Bass Line

Part 5: Rhythm

38. Groove & Loops
39. Introduction to Groove
40. Tempo & Time
41. Strong & Weak
42. Subdivision
43. Swing
44. Imperfection
45. Accents & Dynamics
46. Grace Notes & Ghost Notes
47. Cross Rhythms
48. One Chords Genres

Part 6: Melodic Patterns

49. Flowing
50. Sequences
51. Pentatonics
52. Paired Pentatonics
53. Multi Scales

Part 7: Putting it all together

54. Putting it all together
55. Practice & Composing Tips | Pt 1
56. Practice & Composing Tips | Pt 2
57. Practice & Composing Tips | Pt 3
58. Conclusion