The ‘Four chord song’ is a medley performed by an Australian comedy group where snippets from a whole host of famous songs are sung over the top of the exact same chord progression. Here’s the chords they used: The 4 chords used by Axis of awesome in ‘the four chord song’ are D, A, B…

There’s many different types of scale and each one needs to be learnt in 12 keys. It can be very confusing for a beginner to know which scales to learn first on piano and then which order to learn the rest. There’s a few scales it makes most sense to start with but then the…

Scales are an important part of learning and although this is a piano based site, most of this post will be applicable to many other musicians too. I’m sometimes asked by students whether you should completely memorize scales on your instrument or perhaps just learn to read them, learn how they’re built or even just…

C major is a very popular key to learn things in on piano. Many pianists on the beginner end of the spectrum learn songs and pieces in C, chords and exercises too and of course the C major scale. So why is C major so popular? C major is a popular key for beginners because…

Although by no means the loudest of instruments, learning piano can still be a noisy affair whether you’re using real or digital piano. Many players choose to spend some of their practice time using headphones. Restrictions on your schedule can hinder progress so the main advantage of practicing piano with headphones is that you can…

Fur Elise is one of the most popular and well known piano pieces to learn. Even the opening 2 notes are highly recognizable to most people. It sounds quite impressive to the masses and many budding pianists and hobbyists would like to learn to play it, but aren’t sure whether it is too difficult for…

Many piano students will begin learning on a keyboard. So to go a long with that, they have a stool, a stand, maybe some headphones and a sustain pedal. It’s all too common that people purchase a sustain people to then find out it’s doing the opposite of what it’s meant to and sustaining the…

The phrase ‘in the key of’ is something that most people have likely heard at some point whether they’re a musician or not. In the key of C or in the key of E minor for example. When I start with a new beginner student, they’re quite often unsure though what that really means. In…

The beginning phase of learning the piano can be a daunting task and at times certainly feels like there are many difficult obstacles to overcome before you get anywhere. As well is my own learning experience, as a piano teacher, I have travelled down this road many times with my students. So does learning piano…

To learn piano, the first step you need to take is to get familiar with the keyboard and understand how we label the different notes, starting with the white keys. Although there’s many white keys, there’s actually only 7 different white notes, and then we have multiple higher and lower versions of them. Here’s how…