Shake it off – Taylor Swift

It’s been six weeks. 
Six weeks of silence.
The longest period of silence in the history of Piano Couture.

Why? Where have I been?

Well, for starters, taking a nice and well deserved break kicked of this whole silence treatment. Too much on my plate, too many different balls to hold up in the air. I needed to step away for a moment. Take some distance and a good look from outside of the overwhelming wave of mind wrestles. Objectivity. Talk things through, re-structure, -plan and get everything back on steady track.

There is just so much that I’ve been pondering, planning, creating and molding. So much time has passed since first thinking it out, working it out and even since I first told you guys about it.

It isn’t taking this long because I’ve been lazy. Far from it, actually. It’s just a REALLY big pile of stuff to do, perfectionistic as I am, but more remarkably, because I took upon it inefficiently.
This is of course totally against any and every one of my beliefs, as you know I like to simplify and plan solidly (hence ‘Hack the Piano’) so that the work flow resulting is in fact the opposite of what I was accomplishing in the last couple of months: highly effective and efficient.

Side note: after three weeks of the ‘planned mini break’, right when I thought I could grab everything back up my Macbook, the heart of my whole entrepreneurial existence did crash down on me, staying in the repair shop for over 2,5 weeks. This didn’t exactly help too, as you can imagine.

Now, however, the structure is back. The plan is solid. The outcome beautiful and finally -yes really now- truly coming in sight.

So, what’s to expect? I’ll tell you all about that next week.
For now, let’s get practical and dive into some fine tutorialism again, FINALLY! (oh and… with the very first of those cool (did I say super-cool?) extra’s that can be expected for future tutorials too!).
It’s titel (and lyric) illustrates the breaking-free-of-obstacles feeling that’s in my veins at this moment. A good thing for many to take note of every once in a while I think. Shake it off. All will be good.

Shake it off – Taylor Swift. 

To get back in the game of weekly tutorials, I decided to go for the Billboard chart topper of last week (now on No 2): a grooving monster hit with no piano in it. WHA!? Yes guys, come on.
Everybody that has been following me for at least a very little while knows how I love to exemplify how to use chords and patterns to turn no-piano-songs into piano versions.

This lesson ranges from super easy (or is it… can you keep that single note groove from the intro steady with the beat?) to a bit more advanced as you’re used to. 

The first cool extra, making it’s the very first appearance for this tutorial: A beat to practice / play the song with, both in half- and in real-time. Super cool and very useful. Check it out here:

HALFtime beat (to practice slowly).

REALtime beat (to play along or practice in the actual tempo).

Have fun! Oh and let me know what you think, comments are always very much appreciated. 🙂

Cheers, Coen.

All skills, tricks, tips, techniques and knowledge from this- and all other lessons @ this website are taken and can be learnt from my book / course ‘Hack the Piano‘ – The unconventional shortcut method to truly understand music and the piano.

About Coen

Founder of Piano Couture and creator of the Hack the Piano method. Coen is a musician, reader, writer, web-designer, eater and traveler. Find him at CoenModder.com

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