Why the Piano Is Amazing
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Imagine a game where you are in complete control. You don't need any software, any special graphics specifications, you don't even need a computer. All you need is your mind.
Now imagine a language that you speak with your hands while still having a voice. Take those two ideas, smash them together, and that's the piano.
Now, I'm not a professional pianist or a virtuoso in any sense of the word, and a lot of what I say here might sound primitive to a lot of musicians. I just
1:02 like playing the piano like any game it has an object but unlike any other game where you're limited to what the developer wanted you to do you define the object you could be creating an emotion expressing yourself for translating sheet music whatever you'd like to do for now let's define our object as creating emotion because that's what I like to do maybe you want to make something happy something sad something that sounds like this where who the hell knows maybe you want to sound like you're playing in a speakeasy from the 1920s hell maybe you want to sound like you're in Anatomy you can do that whenever and however you want but like any good game there are rules a lot of them rules that make things sound happy sad somewhere in the middle to the side above below and even in an amputee
2:02 if's really what you do. But before I can get into any of that, remember: the piano is a language, so you need the most basic rules that tell you how to speak it. If you're a Spanish speaker, you know there's a difference between N and N. 1 will give you "sin nor", which isn't a word, and the other will give you "sin Y", which is. On the piano, you need to know that all the keys have letters, and also that they have numbers, too, but also that the A here has a completely different sound from the A flat. And on the piano, once you strike both, you immediately know that difference. The lower one's spatially: the flat has a lower pitch, a sharp has a higher pitch and it's higher spatially. And then sometimes there's really weird rules where you need to call a B a C flat because you're working in the key of C flat major, which is the key of B major, but it's not, because it is C flat major, but it really just is B.
But also, like Spanish, there are rules that you'll be equivalent happy and sad sounds. You can't conjugate the verb practicar to
3:03 the you stead form without knowing the car gar ZAR rules knowing them you get busted' practic a without them you have loose Ted practice and that's not Spanish there's a completely different sound pronunciation and spelling because of a single rule and it ain't any different on the piano in fact it's spelled out for you in the key of C major the default simplest key on the piano all you have to do is look at the white keys and then push them down but say you want to play in D b-flat or maybe G sharp the rule is right there in C you just have to look for it no memorizing of key signature is no weeks of practice just one simple rule and if you're interested enough about the piano you didn't need me to explain that to you it was already there in the architecture of the instrument for you to discover the rule for minor is also there right in the architecture and it's something that you can discover for yourself too nobody needs to show it to you now that you know all the letters and the rules you can make any basic words you want play one note at a time two notes three six ten if you want you
4:06 can use all your fingers if it really fits the bill it's up to you when making words in a language there really aren't any rules I mean there's some if it's English there's like a [ __ ] ton of exceptions to but the piano isn't like that there's rules for how you make your Barnes there's never gonna be a case where you have something like geese vs. goose but cars versus cars or moose and moose no it's its uniform there's one rule for making these chords on the piano there's many many many different types of chords many different types of words but the most basic is the tribe if you want to make it and you're in a major key pick a note skip one play another skip one and play another if the resulting triad happens to be major which you'll know because it sounds happy flat the middle note and it becomes minor if the Triad happens to be minor when you first make it just sharp the middle note and it'll become major that is unless you do this on the seventh note of the key in which case you'll have two sharp two of those you can now play any triad you want and invoke almost any emotion you want just
5:06 like that now we have some words but in Spanish one word say el Senor isn't a complete silence but el Senor s me papi that's a complete sentence but to make it you need to know a lot of rules rules for conjugation syntax tense mood etc etc etc on the piano there's really just one major rule for that and it skaters or the finality of the musical sentence the simplest cadence in music is found in the one six four five progression which I've talked about before but even though it's the simplest it uses the most perfect cadence and music the perfect cadence when repeating this series of chords you go from a five to a and well that's a rule it sounds complete of course there's a harmonic explanation for why it works but this isn't about musical harmonics it's about the piano and on the piano there's a visual explanation you could play the notes of a chord in any order be light as spread out as you'd like with as many hands as you'd like playing one note per hand you really really want to but for
6:07 the most part, we'll play a chord in one hand, and we'll be playing every other note. So if we have a G major chord, we could play it like this, this, or this, and they'd all be the exact same chord. Well, not quite, but close enough for our purposes. This form of the chord, though, resolves right up to the C chord, and that's what makes for the perfect finality in this progression: strong tension and release. And right here on the piano, you can see that tension and release. Not only is it obvious, but you could transpose this rule into any key you want. If you want it minor, you could transpose this with minor chords. You could do with it whatever the hell you want.
But maybe you don't want things to feel so soft, because dammit, it's 1969 and you just ate a dishes squid and you don't want perfection to describe you. So like Ringo Starr, you could use the deceptive cadence.
7:16 or maybe it's the 1970s and you don't want either of those because you want to describe a crazy little thing called love well then like Freddie Mercury you could use the play goal cadence you but maybe you just want to keep things simple stick to the perfect cadence and the one six four five you've still got a lot of options because like I said you can rearrange the notes any way you want and end up with completely different sounds different moods and different feelings of course keeping with the basics you could play everything that's ordinary form say heart and soul or we could flourish things up drop that
8:17 middle note down every now and then and we get some suspended two cords or we could raise it up every now and then and get some suspended four cords now we could spread everything out hold down the sustain pedal and end up with something more like this now you've got way more than heart and soul to work with because it turns out the one six four five and its variants are the most popular chord progressions in use in the past hundred years if you want to throwback to just ten years ago you could play Justin Bieber's baby maybe you want to go back to 2007 Sean Kingston's beautiful girls 1986 a light
9:18 That Never Goes Out. Also 1986: Don't Dream It's Over. 1971: Take Me Home, Country Roads. With some adjustments, you can play everything from Bach to Beethoven to The White Stripes to Lead [ __ ] Zeppelin.
Now, besides the relationship between the G and the C we talked about before, Evan C are also connected, and so are AMC. Every chord in the progression is linked, and on the piano, you can clearly see that. On the guitar or even in sheet music, not so much.
But we're not done yet. If you're speaking Spanish, you could leave things at "el senor esta me papi" and you'd be okay. In fact, there's a lot
10:19 you could say but if you want to be a fluent professional you're gonna need to beef [ __ ] up a classic ASEAN para said me pop es muy complicado en este momento no I in fact if you're in minecraft you could just build a house but you want to build a whole [ __ ] company but to do that and especially in language you need more rules the simplest thing to do would be to learn more progressions there's the two five one the seven three six two five one the one four seven three six two five one and the one five three four one four five plus a lot more but they're all variants of the same sentence that we came up with before yeah they're longer but on the piano as in real life sizes and everything it's how you use it that matters case in point the simple two five one versus the seven three six two five one I could play the seven three six like this simply and yeah it's pretty long or I could play the regular 251 like this
11:27 that's the jazz standard autumn leaves and even though it's shorter there's a lot more going on but that's a story for another time because even without all that complexity you can play just about any song you want if you want to play happy play happy if you want to play sad place at poppy one six four five jazzy two five one anime sustain pedal and broad broad chords the piano is amazing give it a shot this is mr. amazing thanks for watching I taught myself more about the piano by solving problems when I wanted to do something I figured it out and developed a rule it's a method of learning that can be applied to just about anything you'd like to learn and I wouldn't have been able to speak so fluently about the piano without it it's a time-consuming process to perform on your own and brilliant Org who sponsored this video can make it a lot easier for those of you who want to learn about science technology and mathematics well I had to come up with my own learning curriculum
12:27 to play on the piano brilliant offers that curriculum to you through hands-on problems and explanations that help you determine where you went wrong so you can gradually build an intuitive skill set in a lot of different fields speaking the languages of logic classical mechanics or even special relativity if you want to know why the piano is amazing from a theoretical standpoint mechanics and the harmonic progression are definitely that so to learn more about them brilliant itself and help support the channel to go to brilliant org forward slash mr. amazing and sign up for free the first 200 people to do so using that link will get 20% off the site's annual premium subscription something you might want to get sooner or later since I already talked about some of these topics and you might see some more of them in some videos to come if this video taught you something shoot me an email if you playing the piano and maybe you'll get featured in the next video I make on this [Music]
13:38 [Applause]
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