songs you learned on the piano

(That said, I did have piano lessons for years, but I was fortunate that my book used either simplified versions of real songs like "When The Saints Go Marching In" or unlistenable hand-clenching classical exercises that didn't bother to have words, ugh, I will hate Bartok to my grave because of his...)

*still have the sheet music for these somewhere

The first proper song I ever learned to play was I'll Never Fall In Love Again, which was in one of those books the teacher used to play from in assemblies.

This is because you are cool. You should be drunk all the time.

http://www.musicroom.com/images/catalogue/100/wmr000198.jpg

were there different colors, too? i think i might have made it to the orange one

also, if you took lessons in the early 80's, you learned "Music Box Dancer".

Also, various Minuets & Mussettes...

http://www.ymonline.com/shopping/products/BST-BE.gif

older person trying to re-learn piano here... played it from age ~5-12 before joining school bands (dropping piano for FUCKING TRUMPET was a poor move. alas). then started guitar in college which i still play. so despite being 36 i think my brain is fairly calibrated to start again without it being a huge reach

still recall many scales and major/minor chords but i need basic fingering guides/exercises. i suspect i'm already forming some bad habits. especially feel lost when i have to determine which hand to use for certain notes as thinking "left hand = bass clef and right hand = treble" breaks down pretty quickly. i've got PDF of the 'czerny 100' but that might be too advanced for right now

anybody know of a decent learning platform/app/service? i've been eyeing something called 'skoove'. don't need to start from scratch with theory/note reading (although my bass clef is rough)/old king wenceslas or whatever. but not intermediate yet either

oooh, also, i need to keep having fun, so recs for straightforward easy/pretty tunes appreciated too. in the 'repertoire' right now, and actually coming along well:

- gymnopedie 1 (i hope this is 'smoke on the water' for piano stores)
- john cage 'in a landscape'
- some fahey (sunflower river blues, sligo river blues... great to build independence btwn left and right hands)

thought i could pick up linus and lucy and the entertainer again, but i must have been playing the 'for kids' versions way back when because those key signatures have waaaaay too many flats for me right now. any easy-ish bill evans? what bach is good for rudiments?

am playing a roland fp10, been very impressed with it. weighted keys were important to me

The other two Gymnopédies and the first five Gnossiennes are not too difficult (I've never taken piano lessons but I can make it through), but similar enough that each one helps build skills that help with the others. Eight pieces of music feels a little like an actual repertoire rather than a series of exercises.

Our piano has a cracked sound board now, so I'm curious about the Roland FP10 recommendation.

some easy classical pieces:
- rondo alla turca, pretty technical but very easy, at least the first two sections in e minor and a major.
- chopin's preludes no. 4 and no. 20. no. 20 is nice and dramatic, and very slow. no. 4 is a classic piece with small movements in both hands, but some tricky timing to keep things interesting.
- moonlight sonata
- bach prelude in c major is pretty and keeps the same pattern in both hands for basically the whole song
- gymnopedies are a good shout

for pop and jazz
- "some other time" is relatively easy for evans
- "blue in green" - try to find an easy jazz version without the upper extensions, but it is pretty intuitive
- "martha my dear" is jaunty, but not as difficult as it might sound
- "hard times" by ray charles is good for figuring out blues licks
- "riders on the storm" is maybe higher in difficulty level, but def practice that main riff for left-hand independence

I just taught myself an easy version of mercy, mercy, mercy

Eno - By This River

- "martha my dear" is jaunty, but not as difficult as it might sound

This sounds good once you get the octave bassline down. A similar piece is Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things".

also, not jazz per se but "resurrection" by common is a relatively easy, jazzy piece that sounds nice (and only 3 chords)

The "Classics to Moderns" series offers a nice range of pieces iirc. I worked through much of "Easy Classics to Moderns" but there are several editions. Good for a graded difficulty of pieces that are still "real" music and not made up exercises.

My repertoire hasn't expanded much beyond "Sea Diver" by Mott the Hoople, "Perfect Day" (and various other Lou Reed compositions not actually designed for piano), some John Cale and the occasional Bowie. I can play "How Sweet to Be an Idiot" by Neil Innes but about 2/3 the speed it's supposed to be played at.

NB I studied piano in the 80s and 90s. Re Bach: Start with two-part inventions, I guess?

To be honest just playing "Sea Diver" by Mott the Hoople is enough to keep me happy for a while.

first thing I learned on the keyboard was the theme to Knightmare.

Oh and "Can't Get It Out Of My Head" by ELO. Sweet.

I learned a whole lot of Nilsson songs too, which I've now forgotten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gk7iZoMLvw

thanks everybody! these suggestions are perfect

love the idea of treating the gymnopedies as a repertoire. and yes, having some "real music" that can supplement made up exercises is ideal. i have to stay interested, you know? think i gotta do some bach next

many xxxps and while i don't know much about this, the weighting on the fp10 is very realistic feeling and as i understand it the sound engine has some fancier capabilites (recognizing sympathetic strings, better resonance) built into it which is cool. only 64 polyphony but i haven't run into that as a huge issue yet. the built-in speakers are known to be not great but i've hooked it up to some cheap monitors and it sounds great

gram parsons' $1000 Wedding is a good, fairly easy piano song to learn but the recording is annoyingly a half-step off from the obvious (easier) key of C major... (that's because it was played by actual session musicians who could change the key on a dime without even thinking of it)

'Christmastime Is Here' from the Charlie Brown Xmas soundtrack is fairly easy to play and sounds great with those extended chords.

This sounds good once you get the octave bassline down. A similar piece is Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things".

― Halfway there but for you, Wednesday, December 4, 2024 1:45 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

on the hunky dory tip, "changes" is easy enough even if i can never remember what order to play the chords in the "time may change me" section lol. "life on mars" is a bit harder, especially if you try to play it like it wakeman plays on the record, but the chord progression is worth learning because it is so cool

"Lady Stardust" is one I can play.

... though not as well as Mick Ronson obviously.

awww yea xxxp charlie brown christmas soundtrack is what got me interested in music as a kid. great idea. i def wanted to be schroeder

Some recs: all of tom waits' closing time
I don't believe in the sun - magnetic fields
Perfect day - Lou Reed
Cosign all of hunky dory. Pretty things and life on Mars in particular are an absolute ball to play once you've got them downpat.
Surfs up (have tissues ready)
Avril 14th is fun
Je Te Veux - Erik Satie. Beats the mud outa gymnopedie any day. Prefer gnossienne 1 as well.
The daily growl - lambchop
The daily mail - radiohead
Etc.

I just moved away from my grand piano last week. Missing it dearly

There's some fun destroyer songs as well if it's you're thing. Your blood + European oil (killer piano riff). Side A of streethawk. If you want to develop your ear you can try it on something like the riff from "your blues". Bejar's riffs are so.... obvious (positive trait) that i think if you're familiar with his repertoire he's not a bad place to go to train your ear. Know your keys and scales first.... a safer rec would be the beatles or something; but how boring?

Your Blues is really such a fantastic pop piano record

the riff from "european oils" is basically "the weight"

"the end of the world is bigger than love" by jens lekman is a fun one, if you're into his kind of thing

Good shout on both ends. Would play piano to the wee hours with you v-chil

European oils easier to play than the weight if you really wanna play it true to the record. The consistently changing riffs every run through the chorus (especially if you're going for the octaves) can test my confidence as an amateur. + the cascading waterfall piano riff of oils' post-chorus is one of those tricks that looks real hard to the uninitiated, but is a piece of cake once you break it down

The last year - Jessica Pratt. Absolutely beautiful if you've got the ear to pick up the vocal melody. My new standard run-through when I get around a piano these days

coming along alright!

- gymnopedie 1 i *can* play all the way through without a mistake, but that doesn't mean i do frequently
- one single measure in chopin prelude 4 to fully work out but that's otherwise gravy
- couple charlie brown tunes "my little drum" and "christmas time is here" i can do convincing versions of, at least i know the verses/choruses and a few variations/diff voicings of each
- bill evans "piece peace", i found a little one-page worksheet online with the head and some scale patterns to practice over the LH chord progression which has been nice
- starting philip glass "opening", that's been wonderful. very moving piece. getting the 3v2 triplet/eighth note pattern down pretty much unlocked the whole thing, but i still have a lot of practice to do on it

i'm V into the easier classics like satie and chopin etc, but as far as eventually using what i'm learning here for my own music i'm leaning more modern. any other easier philip glass pieces? i printed out 'wichita vortex sutra' but that's too much right now. i'm also eyeing arvo part, ryuchi sakamoto, and john adams. mostly unfamiliar with all of them but they seem in the ballpark of what i want to do piano-wise

some of the arvo part tunes i found are in completely free time, which is great but not what i'm looking for right now, gotta improve my rhythm reading. suggestions for part, sakamoto, john adams?

the pieces you folks suggested have been wonderful, this thread is a far more helpful piano resource than most any piano 'community' i have found. those people are prickly fucking assholes

When I was learning, I really enjoyed Auld Lang Syne b/c it could be depressing or pensive or fun depending on my mood. You could probably pick it up in time.

great idea- melancholic with a little hope mixed in is a sweet spot for my taste, and it's one of those tunes you could play as simply or as flashily as you want

also got used copy of "library of easy piano classics" and picked a random one that looked achievable and that i've never heard before to practice my reading- i've since decided that this is also a new year's song, cuz i say so (and it kinda does sound like auld lang syne at times)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4gxeefOR18

it was hard to find clip of the exact version of this that i'm playing, i should probably look into the grade levels for public domain stuff like this to situate myself more. start lessons on monday!