Gospel Piano Lessons

I’ve gotten several questions since I stared the blog about how I learned to play the piano.  People especially have mentioned that they’ve been taking lessons for years and still haven’t really begun playing the music they like, mentioning that their piano teachers only teach classical music.  For those of you who are interested, I actually didn’t start out with gospel piano lessons. I started out using a course called Rocket Piano.

You can check out their website here.

They give you a choice of a computer-based course or physical books. I went with the actual books because I like to be able to put them on my music stand. I think it was the best way for me to get started because I could learn at my own pace and I could learn with the music that moves me.

That being said, once you’ve learned to play pretty well, you’ll need to start working with a teacher to improve. I started working with a local teacher after about two years of using Rocket Piano. If you have any questions about what’s the best way for you to learn, please send me an email. If you live in the Phoenix Area, I’d be happy to recommend somebody.

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What do you need to know when you first sit down at the piano keyboard:

First of all, these are the note names.  From collection of 12 notes (not including the repeated C), 7 are chosen to make a <b>scale</b>.  From here on out, we’ll be talking only about the scale of C major, which contains the notes C,D,E,F,G,A,B in that order.  We usually refer to them by their scale degree, where C is 1, D is 2, E is 3 etc.

From here we can make groups of three notes called a chord.   The major chord is made of scale degrees 1, 3, and 5, or in this case C, D, G.  The other two very important chords (in the Key of C major) are the subdominant F major (F, A, C) and the dominant G major (G, B, D).  You should locate these notes and practice playing those three chords in that order, it should sound very nice and familiar.

The next thing you’ll need to know about is rhythm.  Look to the beginning of the song and you’ll see two numbers stacked on top of one another like this:

This means that you’ll be playing in “four-four” time or “common time”.  The top number is the number of beats per measure and the bottom means that a quarter note counts for one beat.  This is the most common time signature that you’ll see in gospel piano music.

That’s the very basics, don’t worry, we’ll start to build up from here. Good luck, and remember that you’re playing for God, so your best effort is always good enough!

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Yes and No. You should definitely learn to play gospel piano. Learning to play gospel piano has really improved my spiritual and home life. However, I wouldn’t recommend that you take gospel piano lessons. At least that’s not the way that I learned.

I believe that you can learn piano just as well on your own. I found that focusing only on the skill that mattered to me helped me learn much quicker than I could have with a teacher. For example, in classical piano you have to learn how to do tricky runs up and down the keyboard at lightning pace. In gospel piano the focus is more on moderate playing, interesting chords, improvisation. You wouldn’t want to spend too much time doing scales when you could be working on more useful skills.

I’d advise that you consider learning on your own, when you’ve learned the basics, then you might benefit more from a teacher’s expertise. But in the long run, it’s up to, so like any decision, take your time to think and pray on it.

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