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  • Dr. Guy Whatley

Piano Players Have all the Fun

Piano players have a huge musical advantage. Some instruments only play one aspect of music. They might only play the melody line, or the bass line, or only the harmony. But piano players get to do it all. We can be like an orchestra or a band playing bass, rhythms, tunes, chords and much more.


Moreover, piano players have a huge advantage when it comes to music theory because we get to play all these various aspects of music all at once and develop a sophisticated understanding of all of them. But piano players have one really big disadvantage. The piano is a percussion instrument. When we depress a key a hammer hits a string. This sound is very percussive in nature, and the sound of any given note dies away quickly. This makes playing smooth melodic tunes very difficult on the piano.

Also on the piano we never have to breath, in the way that a singer or a flute player has to. This can lead us to really unmusical playing where our melodies can have no shape or breath.


There is an easy fix. You can listen to singers and other instruments and imitate how they play. Even better, you can sing, or join a choir, learn an instrument like the violin or flute, and these things will make your piano playing exponentially better.

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