Bill Hilton

Over on my Patreon page I do a regular feature called Monday Music, where I write about a piece or a song I like, often pulling out useful thoughts about creativity, music making and piano technique. Today I've written about ‪@grace.yurchuk‬'s "Mixed Messages", which I think there's a lot to learn from. Here's the composer herself, performing it live. Have a listen and give her a like and subscribe — her music is very much worth it!

3 days ago | [YT] | 3

Bill Hilton

Got a little less than 10 minutes to spare and a piano or keyboard to hand? This little progression and improvisation will teach you a load of stuff about harmony.

1 week ago | [YT] | 10

Bill Hilton

Have you seen my Train Your Piano Brain tutorial series here on YouTube? You'll find it useful if you're looking to improve your hand independence and control on the piano keyboard. Here's the first video, and you can find the full four-part series here: www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

1 month ago | [YT] | 15

Bill Hilton

I've just written a long post over on my Patreon about some of the technical ins and outs of Sara Bareilles' hit "She Used To Be Mine". I knew Bareilles' own version pretty well, but searching around I also found this, which I think is probably the best version I've heard (no disrespect, Sara!). Anyhow, I thought you might like it: it really is a gem.

1 month ago | [YT] | 11

Bill Hilton

I've been making YouTube videos since 2009 (when the road outside was still a glacier, woolly mammoths roamed the tundra etc). Some of the older ones are a bit primitive by current standards, but I reckon there's still a lot of value in them.

I'm still running my Patreon, by the way, and it's a really lively community with lots of freebies and exclusive content. Check it out at www.patreon.com/billhilton

1 month ago | [YT] | 18

Bill Hilton

What can you do on the piano (or in your DAW...) with this 4-bar loop? Expand the text for details ⬇️⬇️⬇️

This is a straightforward 4-bar loop in the key of F major. For each chord, play the single bass note in the left hand and the cluster of four notes in the right. I’d play it so that middle C is the C in that upper cluster each time.

Bar/measure 1 is 4 beats of Fmaj9
Bar 2 is 4 beats of Gm7
Bar 3 is 4 beats of Am11
Bar 4 is split between Bbm7 (2 beats) and Bbm6/C (2 beats)

The whole thing will loop round as many times as you want.

You could also try it a little quicker, maybe in 2/2 time (2 beats per bar/measure).

Try playing around with it on the piano, seeing what rhythms, additional chord extensions and (maybe) melodic bits and pieces you can come up with.

If you want any more tips on how to play it, ask me in the comments! ⬇️

P.S. My current discount code expires on 1 August 2024! Enter CURVE24 at the checkout to get 25% off all of my piano products:

www.billspianopages.com/bundle (Classic Piano Ebook Bundle)
www.billspianopages.com/pianopacks (Bill’s Piano Packs)
www.bettermusicianbook.com/ (My latest ebook)

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 32

Bill Hilton

Looking for a piano project this weekend? This improv exercise I posted a couple of weeks ago is getting really good feedback — it's fun, good for your practical piano skills and chord knowledge and (as long as you basically know where the notes are on the piano keyboard) beginner-friendly. Let me know what you think!

1 month ago | [YT] | 12

Bill Hilton

Piano players! Does this look familiar? It’s a progress curve.

It shows the way most pianists learn a new song or piece. At the top there’s a plateau — a point at which progress levels off and your practice starts to deliver diminishing returns. You feel like you're working as hard as ever... but improvements just don't seem to come.

Every piano player runs into plateaus. What are your experiences with them? Tell me in the comments!

⬇️ P.S. I have a summer discount code for you — enter CURVE24 at the checkout to get 25% off all my piano- and music-learning products, including my latest book, How To Be A Better Musician, which has a whole chapter dedicated to beating plateaus. Hurry: offer ends July 31st 2024! ⬇️

www.bettermusicianbook.com/
www.billspianopages.com/bundle (Classic Piano Ebook Bundle)
www.billspianopages.com/pianopacks (Bill’s Piano Packs)

1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 26

Bill Hilton

I’ve been making piano practice lists for years. This is a photo of my list from yesterday.

It’s a mix of jazz tunes and classical material from Bach and Chopin. I like to work on improvisational styles side-by-side with classics because I find they feed into each other.

Five of the six tasks on the list have numbers after them. For example, after “YMMFSY” (the Sinatra hit “You Make Me Feel So Young”) I’ve written “x6”, which means I’m aiming to improvise through the song’s chord progression six times.

Some of the tasks are shorter. The second one (“Chop leaps”) is 10 repetitions of just a single, awkward bar from a Chopin nocturne.

The number of reps I choose for each task is roughly based on:

→My priorities
→How much time I have
→How long each task takes to practise through.

But the actual numbers don’t really matter – what matters is that they give me clear targets.

If I didn’t have those targets, I might play through a task a few times and ask myself “is that enough?” — and then waste time and mental energy trying to figure out whether it was or not.

Setting objective targets gets that thinking done in advance. Each target gives me a clear pass/fail measure of whether I’ve finished a particular task for that day. Whether the task is ACTUALLY finished (i.e. I can play it to a good standard) is less important, because I can easily come back to it the next day.

Three important things to note:

→ Not every task has a rep target. For example, in the third task from the top – “Bach prelude twiddle work” — no reps are needed because rather than trying to improve the way I play something I’m trying to figure out _how_ to play it (in this case some trills and mordents, which I habitually refer to as “twiddles”…)

→ I don’t use a rep target on every task, every day, and I certainly don’t think that repetition is the only important practice technique. In fact, too much brute force repetition can be a problem, because you wind up spending too much practice time on sections you can play well when you could be homing in on smaller, problematic sections.

→ Quality matters as much as quantity. I’m not grinding through repetitions mindlessly, but trying to practise as well as I can each time through.

Anyhow, this approach has worked for me over many years, and I thought I’d share it because it might work for you too.

→*P.S. I mentioned above that improv and classical styles feed into each other when you practise them together. This is an aspect of "interleaved practice" – a powerful technique that I recently wrote a long post about for my Patreon supporters. If you already support me on Patreon, you can read that post here:

www.patreon.com/posts/frank-meet-or-i-107508556

If you don’t currently support me on Patreon, please do take a look at what I have on offer over there: for a low monthly fee you get some great perks, and we’re a really friendly, welcoming community. Find out more at www.patreon.com/billhilton

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 25

Bill Hilton

A question I get asked pretty often is: “I have a busy couple of weeks coming up, what if I don’t have much time for piano practice?”

My usual answer is “just do what you can”, which, now I think about it, is annoyingly non-specific.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been short of time myself (on top of family stuff and running the YouTube channel we’ve been working on the next stage of our house renovations).

I’ve used the situation to develop some specific tactics for practising in time-limited conditions. I’ve come up with five:

— If I do nothing else on a given day, I practise my scales. Running through all the majors and harmonic minors takes around 7 minutes, which is enough to keep me flexible.

— I’ve isolated three or four difficult sections from pieces I’m learning. Typically these are just a bar or two long. I’ve saved a photo of each one to the camera roll on my phone, so when I have a few minutes I can sit at the piano, put my phone on the music stand, find a nugget of score and work on it.

— Sometimes I just sit down at the piano and play through a piece I know. This isn’t mindless, as I’m always looking for ways to improve, but it’s a quick and satisfying way of getting something done (and also good for stress…)

— Similarly, I sometimes sit down and play a couple of run-throughs of a short improvisation (the jazz rhythm changes, for example, or a I-V-vi-IV progression).

— I try to make it all as frictionless as possible. Any printed music I need stays there on the piano stand, and ideally open at the right page. Digital scores I’m working on live as open tabs on my iPad, so I don’t waste time hunting for them. I’ve chosen sections and pieces that don’t need a lot of warming up (no big stretches etc.) so if necessary I can just sit down and practise for two or three minutes — though I always warm up a little if I can.

You’ll have to manage your expectations when you use these tactics, because you’re not likely to make much progress with your playing if you’re only practising for a handful of minutes a day. But you might find them useful during busy times to keep your skills from getting rusty.

Perhaps the most useful thing they’ll do is keep you in the habit of practice, so that when your schedule returns to normal you can slide easily back into a good routine.

Do you have any tips on how to handle piano practice when time is short, maybe based on your own experiences?

3 months ago | [YT] | 46