Tutorials referenced in How To Really Play The Piano

Below is a full index of videos relevant to my book, How To Really Play The Piano. Some of these videos look very old-school these days (!) as I made them in 2009/2010 shortly after the book was published. Even so, the information they contain is still completely relevant.

The list below is divided into three sections: first, the video tutorials specific to each part of the book; second, some bonus videos that build on the material in the book and offer extra examples; and third, links to videos of some of the performances I reference in the book.

Videos marked with an asterisk (*) were created before the book was written, and don’t contain specific page refs.

Intro: Getting started and some thoughts about practice
Part 1: Really basic harmony 1
Part 1: Really basic harmony 2
Part 1: Really basic harmony 3
Part 1: Understanding the dominant seventh
Part 1: Chord resolution 1: dominant, subdominant and tonic
Part 2: Chord resolution 2: strong and weak resolution
Part 1: How chord progressions work
Part 1: More complex chords 1: 6 and m7
Part 1: More complex chords 2: maj7
Part 1: More complex chords 3: 9, maj9, m9
Part 1: More complex chords 4: sus/sus4
Part 1: More complex chords 5: augmenteds
Part 1: More complex chords 6: diminisheds
Part 1: Understanding bass voicings

Part 2: Playlist of blues tutorials

By the way, the blues tutorials got remade shortly after HTR… was published in 2009. The ‘new’ tutorials (they still look pretty old…) don’t exactly match the references in the book. In particular, if you’re looking at the footnote on p55 and wondering where the rolling bass pattern demo video is, your best option is to take a look at this tutorial, which is rather newer, clearer, and demonstrates the whole concept (from around 5:21 onwards, though it’s worth watching the whole thing!)

Part 3: Introduction to comping
Part 3: Comping early pop/jazz, part 1
Part 3: Comping early pop/jazz, part 2
Part 3: Comping more recent pop (parts 1 and 2)

Appendix: Intervals explained

Bonus videos

There are many extra videos on my YouTube channel page. They include extra tutorials, plus answers to questions people send me. Right now there are 300+ videos on there, and I add new ones often. Click here to visit the page.

Here are five of the most popular:

Easy Piano Improv: The 4 Minute Jazz Piano Tutorial
Piano chords basics – make your progressions flow
Pentatonic scales for improvisation – piano tutorial
A rhythm exercise for pop piano comps
Piano chords for beginners: learn four chords to play hundreds of songs