Hi everyone,

I've had an enquiry from a potential student who would like to learn some basic piano skills in order to create music in the studio with his hip-hop band. I would very much like to help this chap but do not really know where to begin. I'm thinking that a starting point could be showing him some hand shapes for chords that he might like to explore further. I would normally use something like Michael Aaron as a first tutor book but I think he'd run a mile if I presented him with this!! I know many newer tutor books have CDs with them and think something like this may be better for him. Any ideas would be appreciated - thanks in advance!

Since hip hop is normally built up on samples (and the best uses unexpected samples!), it's hard to know exactly what he wants to learn ... I'm guessing that piano parts from Blue Note jazz, and classic soul and funk (much sampled) would be a good place to start - and your idea of teaching chord shapes and progressions is a good one. The blues is always a good bet ...

Why not ask him to bring along his favourite CDs, so that you can listen to them together and he can tell you what sort of thing he wants to be able to do? And you can help him work out some of the parts? Or look out (e.g.) some of the Blue Note Breaks (think that's the name) series, to hear some of the classic jazz breaks used in old skool hip hop.. Any respectable hip hop CD will also list the sources of samples - it could be an interesting project for him to hunt some of those down...

good luck!
Nick

Chord sequences might be worth looking in to - the common ones. So instead of "piano" music, perhaps looking at those books with the guitar chords and seeing what they like?

Maybe try and think of it more as teaching keyboard skills rather than the piano?

Sorry if that's completely obvious.

Thanks everyone!