Please no bragging from some of you people, I want real honest answers.

Because of the price, I would have to get a 61 key stage piano (like a keyboard sized digital piano). Would this be good for learning piano? I am mostly playing songs from youtube tutorials on pianos, so I want it to sound as close to a real piano as possible.

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’ – jazz piano lesson – it is best to watch in high quality au.youtube.com Another favourite standard of jazz piano players with lots of different possibilities in the harmony. As with all these instructional videos, you can download an much higher quality copy from my website at www.bushgrafts.com There is also a pdf printable copy of the transcription on my instructional DVD (details on website) A good tip to slow down and study these DVD videos is to play them in Windows Media Player and press ‘Ctrl to slow down without altering pitch. ‘Ctrl/Shift/N’ returns to normal speed. This of course does not work for the Youtube version or while streaming from my website.

‘Some Other Time’ (Leonard Bernstein) solo jazz piano lesson. This could be a companion piece to one of my other instructional annotated videos – ‘Peace Piece’ (Bill Evans) au.youtube.com It has been claimed that the Bill Evans piece originated from his ‘noodling’ in the studio before he recorded ‘Some Other Time’ Others have suggested that Chopin’s ‘Berceuse’ was the inspiration for his ‘Peace Piece’. au.youtube.com This is another piece to give to slightly more advanced students – it has the same repeating I/V pattern but in two keys, and parts that can accept more blues or gospel oriented improvisation. My favourite version is by Richie Beirach on his Maybeck Hall CD. It is also a good song for singers with words by Betty Comden and Adolph Green – from the Bernstein Musical ‘On the Town’. I am having that same problem that Youtube does to (especially) solo piano sound. I think they try to level out the wide dynamic range of a solo piano, and in boosting the quieter passages they cause digital clipping of the louder parts of the recording. In the past this has not been a problem – it has became a lot worse more recently. As always, there is a very high quality video to download free(very clear to read, and excellent audio) at www.bushgrafts.com

‘Girl Talk’ – jazz piano lesson (advanced). Recorded as a midi file some time ago, I am converting quite a few midi files that I have recorded over the years to video format – I had spent quite a time annotating these, and I thought it would be worthwhile to convert them to video lessons. The annotations on this are a little to small to read if played as lower quality video. Try au.youtube.com for better quality video – but for even better quality, you can download a much clearer version of this in stereo at www.bushgrafts.com along with the original midi file and also a backing track of just bass and drums. With this video, I have added a scrolling leadsheet at the bottom so that it could be played along with on your instrument.

www.fastpianolessons.com DMinor9 = D, F, A, C, E CMajor9 = C, E, G, B, D This is an advanced piano lesson, you should attempt this pattern after you’ve been playing piano for at least a year or more! If you sped this up enough, it could be a samba groove I think. But this bossa nova groove covers the left hand bass line two chords in the rh Dm9 & Cma9 Slower examples Latin Music rhythms are difficult, don’t be discouraged, just practice a little bit each day. Hands separately.

‘You’ve Changed’ Jazz piano lesson (advanced). This was improvised in free time. To make it readable as a transcription, I had to create a ‘click’ track (using the ‘Sonar’ program and its ‘fit improvisation’ option), to align the notes to their correct places in the measures. I tried to use lots of slash chords – probably a little over the top! However, I wanted to give some examples of using this way of visualizing chord structures and in what situations that they may be used. Most are simple triads with a different and unusual bass note. Pianists usually find the basic triad shape easy to play with – invert, arpeggiate, and manipulate in other ways. Keeping the triad notes separate in the RH, I find, helps me to create melodies often just with these 3 notes. I have added lots of comments again to this one – probably only readable in high quality mode (click youtube.com ). There is a much clearer version at my website at www.bushgrafts.com I have done another midi file of this great song – quite a few years ago – it is on my midi site at http

In this free jazz piano lesson, San Francisco Bay Area-based jazz pianist Debbie Poryes and teacher shows how improvising with jazz scales can produce some great results. For more information about Debbie and her music and teaching, visit her website at www.debbieporyes.com where you can also hear samples and buy her CDs and DVDs.