It appears I have a “problem student” on my hands.
She has been asking a lot of questions.
Hence, the problem.
Her words:
“Bought your program….check!
Working through it and LOVING it….check!
Taught myself a few songs with your method….check!
Got the chord chart for Leon Russell’s “A Song For You”….check!
Ummmm…uh oh!
Doggone song has SO many chords and it appears too difficult to pare down so that I can easily learn it. I know you’re busy, Tim, so I don’t expect a personal response. But I’m wondering if you will do a blog post sometime soon on how to break down difficult looking chord charts to something a student of yours could do. You don’t have to break down this particular one for me but I’m sending it along with this email so you can see what I’m talking about. What does a student do about a difficult song? Also…there are three different keys in various chord charts to this song. ALL of them look this hard! And, worse, when I try to break down the chords it doesn’t sound anything like the original song.
Thanks and I’ll be looking for your blog post about this in the future. I’m sure others might want to know the answer as well. Have a great rest of the day and weekend….:-) Rhonda Markham
Aright let’s get to work.
First off the chord chart Rhonda sent me was wrong and the chords were all messed up.
You will find this from time to time with internet sites that put out bad chord charts.
So I have find a couple that I use that seem to be right 80ish% of the time.
The one I use the most is www.ultimate-guitar.com
Guitar you say?
Guitar or piano, it doesn’t matter. A chord is a chord is a chord.
Another feature on this site is the ability to transpose the chord chart.
So for instance…
…If the song is written in a really challenging key for you, then you can just transpose it to a more comfortable key.
Now hold on the traditionalist scream!!!!
You can’t do that!
Well… yes you can.
AND when you know how to use the transpose button on your keyboard…
…you can then play it with easy chords and have it sound like the original chords (you know the hard ones).
Second:
There is still a pattern in this song. Instead of 3 or 4 chord patterns its like 5-6 chord patterns.
It’s not more difficult. It’s just more chords. Same process. No harder.
And guess what?
We learn all about how to do these things in the Layer Method of Piano Program.
So stop doing it the hard way.
Come over to easy street.
Its more fun on this block anyway. 🙂
Accepting students here:
Here to Serve,
Tim (PianoFool)
