As I frequently do, I was scrolling through YouTube and I came across a very interesting video that I would like to respond to. The name of the video is ‘Playing Any Song By Ear in 3 Steps’which was produced by a YouTube channel called Mark’s Piano – PGN Piano.
I can only presume that the presenter was someone called Mark, who spoke with what I believe is a South African accent, which made me misunderstand some of his words like ther word ‘scale’ sounded like the word ‘skill’ to me. This could easily be my fault rather than him being a little difficult to understand.
I thought that the video was well presented and well explained. Mark clearly has a thorough understanding of music theory and he explains things simply yet thoroughly enough, providing excellent explanations.
As stated in the title of his video, he has come up with a three step plan to be able to work out for yourself how to play a piece of music, without having any sheet music at all. The 3 steps he covered was firstly to work out what scale the piece of music is based on. The second step is to work out what the chord progressions are and the final step is to work out what the melody is.
With each step he explains himself thoroughly. You are not left wondering if you are missing something at all. He not only explains what he means but he also gives an example – he uses Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. Some of you would be aware that this is quite a complex piece of music, which I think is an excellent choice, because demonstrating his method with something simple would not necessarily show the value in the system he has created.
The presenter states towards the beginning of the video that he has made a series of videos so you can learn to play the piano, presumably with printed music, at a cost. Even though his learn to play the piano series available for purchase, is not something that I have seen at all and considering the quality of information that is presented on YouTube, I have absolutely no doubts that the videos would be excellent, with everything explained in a reasonable sequence, with thorough explanations along the way. I am confident that they would be value for money and they can be found at pgnpiano.com.