Ways to Become a Better Pop or Jazz Pianist

While pop and jazz are fairly different styles of music, most of the ways to become a better pop or jazz pianist are largely the same. Even though the final result sounds very different, the method used to play the piano is largely the same for almost any style of music.

The only major difference is in the actual composition of the songs themselves. This can be relevant to developing your abilities as a piano player, but even many of the techniques used for composition are similar between the two genres.

One of the most effective ways to become a better pop or jazz pianist is to practice. Set aside some time each day to work on developing and maintaining your abilities as a piano player and stick to it. A large amount of playing the piano involves muscle memory. If you repeat a task enough times, you eventually reach a point where you can do it without any conscious effort.

In addition, you are also going to be able to perform that task much more consistently as a result. You need to continuously practice to hone and maintain your piano playing skills regardless of the genre of music you want to play.

Learning music theory is also a good way to improve your abilities as a pianist. It is especially important for jazz pianists, since improvisation is a larger part of that genre than pop music. The more you understand how music works, the easier it is to play some of the more complex parts.

Even though improvisation is not a major part of pop music, it is still useful for that genre as well. Beyond improving your playing ability, it greatly increases your ability to compose new songs. It is a great help if you want to create more interesting and diverse melodies in either genre.

Another way to become a better pop or jazz pianist is to learn how to play a different style of music. Different genres of piano playing focus on different techniques and scales. These scales and techniques are still useful in pop or jazz piano, but most pianists in those genres would never think to use them.

The more you expand the range of your technique, such as by learning different styles of piano playing, the more options you have when playing pop or jazz piano parts. As a result, you can create more diverse music than you would have been able to do so before.

Becoming a better pianist, regardless of your style of music mostly involves perfecting your existing abilities and learning new skills. Perfecting your technique removes all the flaws that tend to make less skilled pianists sound poor, even when playing songs that are well composed.

The expansion to your existing techniques allows you to incorporate new ideas into your piano playing. Ultimately, the goal of a good pianist is to be able to convey exactly what they want to convey to the listener through music. Having more tools and using those tools more effectively plays a huge role in achieving that goal of teaching yourself to play piano.