In my endeavors to produce this blog, I often look at what is available online. Much of what I have seen is geared towards people learning how to play modern music on the piano. There is not a lot of instruction on how to play the piano via a classical method.
In some ways it makes a lot of sense – there are many people who would love to be able to play the piano and probably the vast majority are wanting to pay modern music, simply because that is what they listen to and that is what they enjoy. This makes a lot of sense. So of course online creators are going to produce material that appeals to the greater number of people.
The other reason why online content creators focus on modern music for the majority of their content is that modern music is easier to learn. Both classical and jazz music have much more technical elements that make both genres much more complex and therefore much harder to learn. This doesn’t mean that modern music is not real music, it just means that it is simpler and therefore easier to learn.
I am very much of the mindset that you should learn to play the type or types of music that you really want to play and by extension of this thought, that all forms of music are perfectly reasonable and valid to learn to play. I’ve always thought that this debate that classical or whatever, is the best. They are all equally valid and should be equally valued. However, classical and jazz piano is actually harder than modern or pop music.
As a result of modern music being easier to learn, than jazz or classical music, online creators feel they are going to have a wider appeal and get a larger following if they make content for modern piano. I don’t have a problem with this as such – they have knowledge and goals they wish to achieve and if catering for modern piano is the best way for them to achieve success, then good for them.
As I said earlier, I have seen very little ‘how to learn to play the piano’ material made for those who want to play either classical piano or jazz piano. Just because I haven’t seen much, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist – maybe we have to do a bit more digging…