Guitar players should pick up the piano!

[telestratosonic]

Good question. I know a great saxophonist, Randy Hunter, who has talked to me about his approach to improvisation. He taught my son for several years and I always went to his lessons. Here's one of his videos:



He is always aware of the chord changes and knows all the sharps and flats of the key he's playing in. He resolves phrases to chord tones as he's playing. He knows all the arpeggios for all the chords in all the keys. He's like Guitar George of the saxophone!

Watched the YT video before replying. Impressive!

One absolutely has to know scales inside out and be able to play them at the drop of a hat to aspire to being a 'real' sax player. I was always satisfied to just get a jazz standard down in one or two keys. I had hopes of getting a band together to play jazz standards but it never happened.

As I tell my guitar-playing friends: "Dude, there ain't no fretboard on a sax; you can't just move up or down to change keys." Lol.

 

[omahaaudio]

You'd have to be a hernia specialist in need of business to recommend that.

 

[SRHmusic]

Piano is really good for understanding linear bass lines and how using different inversions just makes sense. It's so easy to just move the bass note over one key and grab the closest set of notes in the next chord. Somehow it's much easier to see/feel/grok than on guitar.

For example, I learned a lot working out the piano part to Clapton's Running On Faith. It has a nice secondary dominant leading into the bridge, too. Very satisfying to play.

 

[teletina]

Piano was my first instrument, and sometimes I used to combine those two on my gigs, especially at hotels where I could left my instruments stocked, it's not easy to carry them both, keyboard being a big one, like that Korg PA588 !

 

[trancedental]

I've recently been messing about on a old Kurzweil K2000 keyboard I repaired I bought & repaired a few years back. Although my Stepmum was a piano teacher & my sister is nowadays, I never bothered playing the piano.

When I bought my first guitar, I got a detailed introduction, to notes, chords & music theory, plus reading notation from my Stepmum, all shown on the piano. After that I could play basic chords & play in key, but not so much using both hands together like a proper keyboard player!.

I've never met another guitarist that can read music notation, but knowing it was handy as many music song books didn't even have TAB until the mid '80's. I often just changed the music book arrangements for piano to guitar learning songs that way.

I would say it's a great idea to understand where the notes are located on piano, & related keys plus some music theory.

Playing keyboards properly, with both hands in sync is not easy, I've only recently been able to play some '50's Rock & Roll piano styles. My hands, particularly the left, which has a broken pinky for 30 years have had a problem adjusting to playing keys at anything approaching intermediate level.

My piano teaching sister did a Music Degree a few years back, so she had to learn a second instrument, she chose a Harp guitar. I didn't even know what that was.

She said she had real problems learning that, although she could play violin when younger.

I guess playing a second instrument (apart from bass for a guitar player) to a decent standard will always take a lot of practice, even if you have a music degree & years of experience on your primary instrument.

I wonder if we could have a piano & keyboards forum section on TDPI, it could be useful for those want to play & improve to get advice from other guitar players who are advanced keys players?

 

[String Tree]

I say this about once a month over on the theory forum. We guitarists love to work three times harder to understand concepts that leap off the page to piano players. Just look at these beautiful triads... no CAGED required View attachment 1068340 View attachment 1068342

For the Win!!!

Theroy is one thing, Composition is quite another.
In my Experience, people get the two mixed up and become frustrated.

 

[Chester P Squier]

This thread title reminds me of when I was in college, majoring in education. There was a class required of education majors called "The curriculum." The professor didn't like it when people used the expressions "take up" and "cover." As in, "We're going to cover Shakespeare's Julius Caesar this week," or "we're going to take up sewing." I think his point was that students should really get into the subjects they're studying and own them, as opposed to just checking off the boxes.

 

[beep.click]

The company I worked for in the 80s went out of business in 1993, and I found myself with some time on my hands. But very little dough. But I made a bargain with myself: you can buy a piano and take advantage of this "extended vacation," but you HAVE to teach yourself bass clef -- I already understood the treble clef, from playing violin.

So I did this. And my method was, get easy piano books and just muscle through them. And I won't lie, it was a slog.

But it all turned out to be one of the most rewarding musical experiences EVER. It changed my songwriting and my whole approach to guitar, because those books were based on radically different musical ideas than I was used to. OMG -- HALF STEPS!!!

 

[billy logan]

If there's a moment where life can be fun...I'm thinkin' "Go on ahead, HAVE fun!"
uptempo La Vie En Rose


Playing the piano is the Emmett Cohen I mentioned a few pages back.

 

[Tonetele]

Agreed - many musicians would benefit from playing some piano, mostly about chord foundation.

 

[Maguchi]

Or a keyboard nowadays... I said to myself a few days ago - timer to learn the piano. And honestly, it kinda feels like cheating, as it seems to be so easy and intuitive. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean synchronizing hands or any advanced passages, but music theory, chords, movements. It feels to me like music theory was made on the piano!

If you need examples:
Harmonizing a C major scale on guitar, means you need to learn all the major, minor7, dominant chords on your way. On the piano? You keep the same fingering and just move up a notch. What???

Building chords..try to remember all the fingerings and string jumping.. u less you stick to bar cords, or other repetitive shapes, it is a lot of memory work, specially in the Spanish tuning. On the piano? Pretty much same regularity up and down.

My first week of learning the piano connected a lot of dots in my head as a guitar player. And made music theory so much easier! I recommend to everyone, to have a try

I was a piano player what picked up the guitar.

 

[HoodieMcFoodie]

I studied piano for a few years in my twenties. I wish I'd kept it up.

 

[HoodieMcFoodie]

I don't know, I haven't seen a single guitar player that could pick up a piano. Even the small upright pianos are too heavy to pick up. Keyboards, yes. Piano, no.

Yeah that's a 2 man lift at best...