‘Playing Popular Piano’: Interview with the author

Q.  What is this book about?

A. Quite simply, if you want to play popular rather than classical music on the piano or keyboards, then this book will show you how.

Q. What is the inspiration behind the book?

A. I wanted to put in it everything that I wished I’d been shown when I was first interested in playing the music I most enjoyed listening to.

After quite a few years of playing other instruments, I realised that there was an approach to learning how to play the piano/keyboards that would make them much more accessible to me. That’s how I got into playing the piano and entertaining myself and then other people.

In the years before I wrote the book, people I met would say to me that they wished they could play the piano or hadn’t given it up. I used to tell them that there was a way they could learn and, in the end, even I got fed up of hearing myself saying that, and so I decided to do something about it by writing the book. As part of that process, I went back over how I had learnt about chords and then I put that into lesson form for the book.

Over the years, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or read – particularly lately with the COVID-19 restrictions – about this or that person who would like to learn to play the piano. 

I’d like this book to help more people get the fun out of playing the piano/keyboards that I do, for, without doubt, it has been, for me, one of the best things to do over the years for enjoyment and relaxation.

Q. What are the main elements of the book?

It shows how chords are formed and how they can be used to play the piano and keyboards. I give easy-to-follow examples of various different chord types and their application.

Chords are actually the basis of all music and grasping that is fundamentally important in any quest to make music for yourself or with others.

People, whether they’re beginners, or ‘returners’, or players of other instruments can all use the book and get into understanding chords on the piano/keyboards and how best to use them to play from music in printed/online form, or ‘by ear’, or to improvise, for example in jazz.

I also cover 12 bar blues and regularly used chord patterns in popular music.

Q. How do you know the system or method works?

A. Well, for a start I actually play the piano myself using the methodology I set out and, more importantly, it is how I taught myself to play in the first place.

Better still, I did trial the method with a few willing ‘guinea pig’ pupils and used that experience to further refine the approach. I even did a series of classes at RADA, many years ago, to see how well a wider variety of people would respond to the system I advocate.

Encouraged by the results, I honed the lessons into publishable form and the fact that this latest edition is the third indicates that the book has stood the test of time.

Q. How did you choose the title?

A. With great difficulty, but in the end, I went for one that says what it does on the tin.