My Modification Week

This week, I began to play the start of the song to where I left off last week, ALL TOGETHER! I combined the intro, verse 1, verse 2 and even began playing some of the later parts into the song for fun!

After working really hard at perfecting the first two verses of the song this week, I decided to switch up the little riff that happens during the verses with an easier option. I searched and searched the internet for ideas or videos and I found a YouTube video that is an easy version of “Piano Man” by Billy Joel. I have embedded that video below!

At 44 seconds of the video, it does the little riff after each verse is done. This easier version of Piano Man only uses 3 notes and it is NOT played as a chord. Playing notes as chords is the part that I struggle with the most so I think that this modification will help me with playing the notes with the correct timing and limit mistakes on those notes. 

 

After watching the whole video, I felt confident enough to start learning another part of the song. At 2:21 of the video, I started practicing playing that little filler part. In the actual song by Billy Joel, this part is just an instrumental filler, but it is played super fast. I decided to use this video to learn how to play that part as well. Using this video, I was able to just play one note at a time instead of stretching my hands an octave using any other source. This modification will definitely help me in the future when I start playing the whole song. This easy tutorial YouTube video on how to play “Piano Man” by Billy Joel was such a great find. 

 

I was starting to feel very overwhelmed with learning this song. I felt like I had so much to learn in such little time and it all seemed so complicated. I am really happy that I found this video this week because it is helping me tweak the song to my skill level. I think that these modifications will really help me learn the rest of the song better and play it according to my skill level and where I am at with the piano so far!