5 Reasons For Guitar Players To Take Piano Lessons

GUEST POST - There is no denying it. A boxy and bulky piano simply does not have the same sex appeal as a sleek and slender Fender or Les Paul, and that may be enough to turn you away from the musical instrument altogether. However, you should not be as quick to disregard the piano as something reserved only for tuxedoed professionals at a concert hall.

Learning to play the keys can have a significant impact on your abilities as a guitarist, and as a musician in general.

Here are five reasons you should consider taking piano lessons as a guitarist:

It Helps Expand Your Musicality

Learning even the most basic piano skills greatly helps to expand your musicality and grow as a musician. The keys offer an incredibly simple and intuitive way to understand music theory and build a solid foundation of music comprehension. From notes to chords to harmonies, you get a firm grasp of how everything works by seeing it laid out in black and white (literally) in front of you.

The factor that makes music theory easy for the piano is the layout of the keys. While your fingers on the guitar go up and down on the strings and right and left on the frets to play a particular note, they only need to go left and right on the keyboard. The linear nature of the keys makes understanding the different notes much easier.

A piano (or keyboard) lays out all the notes in front of you in the form of 88 different keys. Thus, it is incredibly simple and easy to visualize each note on the keyboard than on the guitar and get a firm grasp on the subject. While there are a lot of ways to play a particular note on the guitar, there is only one way you can do this with a keyboard. This is especially helpful for newer guitarists to understand how each note works and can be combined to play a chord.

Through gaining a better understanding of the theory, you are able to apply it yourself and improvise and compose arrangements of your own, leading you to become a better musician as a result.

Eric Johnson Recommends It

When a talented and revered guitar virtuoso advises you to learn the piano, you better listen. If you are still not convinced that learning to play the keys can make you a better guitarist, take a look at what Eric Johnson had to say about the matter:

“I think understanding the piano really helps… And you don’t have to become a great pianist, that’s not really important. A lot of people play just enough piano to write a song or figure out chord changes.” [1]

He even mentions how easy it is to understand music theory on the piano:

“When you look at a piano, you can see every note. All 88 keys—the whole spectrum. It’s like laying out a long piece of paper that has all the architectural plans for a building. It’s a great center-point and home base to look at and study music.”

It Grants You Bragging Rights and Confidence as a Musician

Expanding your music portfolio from a guitar to a piano gives you the right to call yourself a multi-instrumentalist. You do not have to become a master pianist for this purpose, only learning the basics of how to play the keys is enough.

Furthermore, learning how to play the piano paves the way for you to learn more instruments in the future as well. With a solid understanding of how music works when you learn how to play both the keyboard and the guitar, you are able to pick up other musical instruments much more easily.

When you expand your horizons and learn how to play different musical instruments, it greatly boosts your confidence as a musician. You will be surprised to see how quickly your confidence in your musical abilities increases when you step out of your comfort zone to learn a new musical instrument.

You Can Write More Complex and Detailed Compositions

All of this confidence does not come out of nowhere. The reason behind your newfound courage is that you do actually become a better musician when you learn new instruments. For instance, you are able to create more complex and detailed compositions spanning different musical instruments when you know how to play those instruments. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for you as a musician.

Whether you choose to record music on your own or play in a band, you can greatly improve your composing skills by learning the piano. Those of us who have tried our hands at composing know exactly how hard the task actually is. You come up with a lot of different ideas that you think will work extremely well, but when you try to play it, it just does not sound right. However, once you learn how to play the keys, you are able to determine the exact problems in your arrangement and fix them easily.

This is because you play the melodies, bass lines, chords, and vocal harmonies all at the same time on the piano. This allows you to diagnose any potential problems that might arise during rehearsal and fix them before you are ready to perform.

Learning the Keys is Easy When You Know How to Play the Guitar

With all the benefits of learning how to play the keys that we discussed in this article, there really is no reason for you not to at least once try your own hand at the instrument. If you want to give it a go, we have one more good news for you. It is extremely easy for you to learn how to play the keys if you are already familiar with how the guitar works.

With the knowledge you have gained from playing the guitar, you are one step ahead of people who have no musical background and are learning how to play the piano from scratch. Essentially, you have done all of your homework. All you need now is to learn how to position your fingers at the piano and learn how to play the different notes. This is incredibly easy and convenient in the modern digital age, and you can learn how to play piano online for this purpose.

Final Word

With all the benefits you gain from learning how to play the piano, and how easy it actually is in this day and age, you should at least give the instrument a chance before dismissing it as a boring activity. If you are looking for a way to gain these benefits in an effective and convenient manner, check out Skoove.

Skoove is an online service and mobile app that allows you to learn how to play the piano at your own pace. With detailed and structured lessons, and an advanced AI giving you real-time feedback on your performance, Skoove is more like a digital tutor rather than any other boring learning app.

Try the Skoove service out for yourself.