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Easy to Play Piano Songs
Coffee Break Piano 5: Waka Waka by Shakira (FIFA World Cup 2010)
Easy to play piano songs with Shakira this week. The 5th in the Coffee Break series – an easy online piano tutorial.
1 Start with the Basics: Learn the Notes and Play the Tune
2 Add an Easy to Play Left Hand Bass.
3 Develop your Ear Training Skills.
4 Try Reading Music with Treble and Bass Clefs
5 Experiment with Piano Improvisation
Do you want to learn how to play popular piano songs? It doesn’t have to be difficult! With this collection of easy-to-play piano songs and music, you can start making beautiful melodies with the keys in no time.
Start with the Basics: Learn the Notes and Play the Tune
To start learning the popular easy songs that you want to play, it’s important to learn the basics by exploring the geography of the piano. First, begin by familiarizing yourself with the black key notes – get comfortable identifying where each group of 3 and 2 are located. Once you’re comfortable with these patterns, you can follow the video and start putting them together to play the Waka Waka melody. In less than your coffee break, you’ll be hitting the different combinations of keys and will easily reproduce this Fifa World Cup 2010 tune on your piano!
Step 2: Add An Easy to Play Left Hand Bass
Once you have your easy to play right-handed melody, you can build the depth of tone by adding an even easier to play left hand part! Begin learning melodies with both hands at the same time as soon as you can in order to develop your coordination. This easy bass part needs 4 notes, F# (Do), C# (So), D# (La) and B (Fa).
In this video I use one of my most effective teaching techniques. I sing the left hand notes while I play the right hand notes. This develops your ability to consciously hear two different things at the same time (melody and bass). Sometimes I sing the solfège, sometimes I sing the actual note letter names.
Develop Your Ear Training Skills
Another way to learn popular piano songs is to develop your ear training skill. This skill helps you to recognise musical patterns by listening and interpreting them, as well as accurately reproducing them on the keys. I really like to use solfège, which is very popular with Kodaly technique enthusiasts (see my aural training pages if you want more details). With regular practice, it’s possible to quickly learn most popular tunes and even reproduce them without using a score and eventually many people even learn to play by ear.
I use a common Kodaly technique teaching technique in this video. I choose some solfège notes to “inner ear”. That means, I sing most of the notes, but choose one to hear in my head and not sing out loud. This improves my ability to hear notes accurately in my mind.
Try Reading Music with Treble and Bass Clefs
If you can identify the treble and bass clefs, you can use sheet music when learning new songs. There are two sections of sheet music: the top part is referred to as the treble clef which is used for higher-pitched notes like those needed in popular ballads or upbeat pop music. The bottom section of sheet music is called the bass clef and this includes lower-pitched notes used for musical elements like chords or rhythm. Once you understand these two sections, you’re on your way to learning easy-to-play piano songs quickly and effectively!
I’m not actively teaching you to read music yet, but if you do, these examples will be easy to follow. If not, it is worth playing the notation video and following along so that you recognise where the melody moves up and down – essentially, it’s just a graph of pitch (high/low notes) against time (note lengths).
Experiment with Piano Improvisation
Improvisation is a great way to give piano music your own spin, and you don’t need to be an experienced musician to try it. Once you know the basics of playing piano, you can start experimenting by adding chords or patterns whenever possible. Start by creating simple variations with minor changes and progress to more complex patterns that alter the existing melody significantly. As you become comfortable with this practice, improvisation will become second-nature, providing an exciting approach to performing any style of music on the keyboard.
The great advantage of all the melodies that I’ve used so far in the Coffee Break Piano Lessons is that they are pentatonic, meaning that they only require the black keys. The black keys will always ‘sound good’ so you can improvise with confidence!
Beginners Guide to Easy to Play Piano Songs
(in a Short Amount of Time)
New to playing the piano? It’s easy to learn the basics with The Maestro Online bite-size courses! Find out more about easy piano instruction today. You don’t have to be a virtuoso to learn the basics of playing the piano. With these easy-to-follow piano courses, you can have the basics down and start playing your favourite songs in just a few coffee breaks. Discover how easy it is to learn the piano today!
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