Friday, April 01, 2005

Chording Secrets of Exciting Piano Playing!

Chording Secrets of Exciting Piano Playing!: "

Can you see yourself at the piano...
-- Chording like a pro...
-- Being the life of the party...
-- Entertaining your family and friends...
Dear Friend:
How would you like to master -- really master -- the art of playing the piano using a 'chording' style?
When I was a kid, my Mom played the piano by reading the notes in a piece of music -- like most everyone does. It was fine, but not near as exciting as what my Dad did. He didn't read music like my Mom, but he played those wonderful, fun 'chording things' that everybody loves. We sang along as he played, and it was great fun.
During those years I took piano lesson from a little old lady teacher named Mrs. Graham. Looking back, I feel sorry for her, because I was interested in everything EXCEPT piano playing. I even took my baseball glove with me to a lesson one day...
And I basically got nowhere. Oh -- I could play a few pieces: I remember 'Swans On The Lake', and 'Indian War Dance', and 'Santa Lucia'. Hardly the stuff that excites a young boy.
I wish you could have seen me play the piano when I was just learning. I was the nearest thing to �hopeless� that you could imagine. I was into baseball, not music � and my heroes were Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, and Ted Williams. (And by the way, I still have a picture of those 3 guys on my wall.) My dream was to hit baseballs like them, not to play the piano.
But an opportunity to play with a combo presented itself to me when I was a freshman in high school. Seems the piano player of the group had graduated the previous year, and nobody else played piano well enough to play in the school jazz combo. I didn�t know zilch about playing in a group, and I didn�t know chords. But I was excited to have the oppo"