This chapter shares also the basics with you, about how to get into piano playing step by step, which you may apply for yourself.

I just had some contact with playing the vibraphone and alike when I received my classical education in drums and persussion as a 8 year old. Here I had to learn each note for a melody by heart - reading the notes for drums was fine with me after a while, but for the vibraphone it was too complicated. Also I considered finding out all about harmonies was not for me. So I focussed on drums the first decades of my musicianship.

Then I moved to northern Sweden in late August 2020. And after the first day of staying at friends, I had the opportunity to rent a house in the 120-people village called Kristineberg (there is a second place with the same name in southern Sweden).

As this house had a piano in the hallway and a bass-guitar and snare-drum hanging on the wall - it seemed to be the place for me. I had not intended to go into playing the piano or guitars. They were just there to explore. Without intention or aiming at something at the start, I began playing around just for myself.

The piano was enough out of tune, so that I could not make it worse. I asked the owners if I could experiment with tuning it - they were fine with that. At least I knew how to safely tune a guitar, so it was fair to give it a chance with some tuning app and some tipps out of YouTube videos on this subject. I got it to the tuning of A=432 Hz, as I wanted to experiment with that and it is just a bit less tension for those old strings, making life maybe a bit easier for them.

It is 88 keys on a piano to tune. It was a lot of effort. I tuned it step by step, just starting with the white keys in the middle area. At the bass-section you just have one thick string to tune - easy. In the middle part, a piano has two strings to produce more volume - they have to be in tune together - that takes more time. And at the higher register, you have to tune three strings for each individual note. That's tough and hence time consuming for somebody like me.

But that was good practice. My ears also developed a lot through tuning the piano and I was able to notice different things after that when listening to my favourite music. And so, step by step, I opened up to the world of harmony.

That's how the story began.

I allowed myself to show my learning process by also publishing videos where there is some imperfection in playing and wonkiness, as long as the session is not interrupted in its flow too much.

Welcome to the diary of my 4 year long journey from the very first piano video up until my 38th released track.

First published song: Life

After many attempts, I could play my favourite melody and other parts that came up in the beginning of my piano journey into something like an actual song.

The audio recording is rather improvised here with the not too good camera mic and a simple USB podcast mic from a friend. But at least I could improve the sound with a matress around the piano - can recommend to take care about room acoustics when recording indoors, so you have less unwanted reflections and a bit of clearer sound.

It took me maybe 10 attempts to get it in one take as I had it in mind (I guess there is some ambition in me when it comes to recording). I deliberately detuned one note for the fun of it in the chaos part. Those parts tell some story about progressing and gaining experience in life.

You can see my hands really taking time to find the correct place between a change in the song part: Beginner at work.

I like to find a nice angle for the video and develop the visual step by step. For example I put a black blanket on the floor to not distract the eye from the piano. It is details like this that I like to care about. In this way, my hands are quite in focus, so I am not happy with the video when there was something under my nails .. those small things can add up.

1st instructional video: How to get into intuitive piano playing

In that house I was very happy to enable myself to play something that sounded like music on the piano. After all those years of drumming (giving music its structure), it was like I was integrating the other dimension of music (letting myself flow into melodies and harmonies). That felt really wholesome. And so I wanted to share with the world this pretty easy approach.

Find the basic excercises that I recommend in general, to build some vocabulary and a framework within which you can express yourself step by step more freely.

Give your fingers time to get used to the movements and let them gain more and more independence. Get creative for developing your own little games to keep it fun and build muscle memory.

Maybe I can assist your journey with some online lesson to accelerate your learning and solve questions. I can offer this to a handful of people occasionally. Text me.

2nd song: Reindeer piano melody

My second song is so much easier to play and yet I still struggle occasionally at this time to move all the fingers of my right hand from the first part of the melody to the second and back. It takes time to get accuracy. It needs a bit of patience and persistance here.

As I have to name things somehow and I like reindeers: Here we go. You will also see a typical wintertime-roadtrip in northern Sweden: The cars have spike tires to improve traction. And you need that in order to stop for reindeers which do not care about roads and cars at all. At least mooses understand cars and usually leave the road when you approach them. Reindeers walk into your car. While dangerous for traffic, they are otherwise a cute encounter.

This is the last video with my first piano in the rented house. I then moved into a different house that I called my own and got a better piano from a neighbour village. Time to improve audio recording.

For understanding my development as a musician, keep in mind, that from here onwards (Apr 2021) I get at the same time into handpan playing. Playing in nature with the handpan has a profound effect in connecting me with myself and my surroundings. Besides that I gain most experience in making videos with handpan at first.

2nd instructional video: Microphone comparison

As recording the piano was new to me, I put together the microphones I had. I bought a good microphone (Sennheiser MKE 440) to have a nice sound-quality when recording outdoors with my handpan, while not having to carry too much. Additionally, I bought myself those black large diaphragm microphones (Rode NT1) for indoor recording.

I could have gone for more expensive ones, but you hear every mistake even better in high resolution and I am not there yet, so it was intentional to have a bit of a cover up of mistakes with the NT1 and the MKE 440 (I have been recording drums with expensive mics where you here the smallest things). The silver ones (AKG C1000S) I bought back in the days for drums - they are a bit sharp in the heights I learned, but let's see how they compare here.

With my preferred set of mics for the piano (Rode NT1) I added another test at the end and recorded the piano with the wooden cover added: this enhances the bass a bit (find this in the last chapter and second last is the same mics without that cover).

Find my detailed opinion about each of the mics in the YouTube-description of the video if you feel nerdy.

Later I switched to a different recording position: At the back of the piano you hear less mechanical noise from the hammers hitting the strings. And there at the back of an upright piano is that resonating wooden plate, which is actually producing most of the sound.

It is those details that can make or break a recording. And it depends on the instrument too. On the drums, if a pedal makes a squeeky noise - you usually do not hear it yourself when you play, but the microphone will. And then you either have to edit that away or do the recording again. Same with piano: Some recordings had too much mechanical noise for my taste, depending on the piano - but so you learn, step by step.

3rd song: 2 Sets of "only CFG"-Session

Now I am exploring the idea to leave all my fingers in one place (around the notes of C as root and octaves, plus F and G for melody) to see what I can get out of it.

In the beginning I use a delay effect for the first time: Each note I play is repeated several times before it fades away.

The delay time here is quite short, but gives the sound more volume and energy. Some years later I prefer to have it repeated at a slower rate to create sound layers (14th song: Filadelfia Flow).

The 2nd session with regular piano sound starts at 2:36. Here is one of the first times that I enter a deeper flow in playing around 5 minutes into the video. And my fingers are mainly able to express what melody I feel.

So this video uses the key of C major, which is giving the usual happy mood of a major scale. The brother is A minor which you will hear in the next video. These videos therefore pair up as the two standard options for using only white keys on the piano in the usual (music theoretical) way.

4th song: restless insect

Same idea as the 3rd video: leaving my fingers in one place and experimenting around with A as a main note. This way it starts, that I can loose myself in these sessions as I barely need to think. Yet occasionally I play something that sounds unpleasant, so it took a few attempts to get a complete session to a level where I am good with releasing it. But after just one year of experimenting, I am pretty happy with what I can do with a piano.

As it is maybe visually boring to just see my pressing the same keys over and over again, I blended in a scene from a restless insect that I filmed at some beach in southern Sweden. I slowed it down in video speed, so it matches the vibe of the session more. I was impressed with the effort the insect made there.

Some music theory gold

A minor and C major (used in the two videos above) are just the most obvious scales (set of notes that sound well together) to start with from a basic musictheory perspective. These are regular scales with only white keys on the piano to keep it simple.

But what if I told you, that you can pick any key of the piano as a starting point (aka root note) hassle-free? Just stick to one color of keys (play only black or only white, do not mix).

This is what I just started to do at this stage and my ears liked it. Improvisation in this style gives different flavours and opens up so much more.

As a drummer with little knowledge in harmonics, I was wondering what music theory would say to that. But in between I just did not care and enjoyed playing around with it. Later I learned on the white keys it is called different diatonic modes of the scales:

And if you play only black keys, this gives you pentatonic scales (as there is just 5 (penta) different notes on the black keys repeating):

With this framework of scales, you can relax if the musictheory police is knocking on your door and interrogates you what you do on the piano.

If 12 scales are getting too limiting for you: Then it is time to learn some music theory to mix black and white keys and go pro. Or just go for it and call it free jazz or call it your unique art.

For me, in the first 4 years of my piano improvisation, I stuck to these 12 scales and barely mixed black and white keys during expressing something.

For improvisation, I enjoy the freedom of not thinking about scales this way. And for me this seems to be enough variety to express things on the piano.

In the next video you may get an idea of the different flavours each starting note provides.

3rd instructional video: Octaves long version

What is your favourite tone? On one hand, at this time I just really like playing only octaves: The same note, for example C, can be found several times repeating across the piano. Technically each time going up to the next same note (one octave) is giving twice the speed in vibrations per second (doubling frequency).

Especially when sitting in front of a piano, you can soak up all the frequencies with your ears and body - like a soundbath. Here you meet another acoustic phenomenom: Resonance. If you unmute all the strings (pressing down the sustain pedal), the strings tuned to the same note that you just hit will start vibrating and contribute to producing a rich sound. Good electronic instruments try to emulate that, yet the real experience is hard to beat here. And each note has a different quaracter. The long version is made to feel into this, if you do not have a piano at hand.

If you want to explore playing the piano intuitively yourself or want to develop your ears, I recommend doing this yourself (to be repeated on your piano, preferrably a tuned acoustic one).

4th instructional video: Octaves short version

If the sound of each set is shorter, for some it may be easier to feel the difference of the effect of each note played across all octaves on the piano.

Hearing the different notes may also help you with a task like choosing a scale of a handpan for yourself: If you feel a note resonating well or most with you: this may be a good indication of a nice root note for a handpan scale for you.

If you are curious why a piano has black and white keys (my version)

Somewhere back in time, people figured out this system of music (there is others as well, but this is the most common in modern/western music): They defined an octave as doubling or halving in frequency (frequency is defined as vibrations per second also called Hertz or Hz in short). For example: we take 400Hz as starting point (so a string of an instrument vibrates 400 times up and down per second which we can hear as a tone in this specific pitch). 200Hz would make a lower octave. 800Hz would be a higher octave. 1600Hz is two octaves up and so on.

Fun fact: If you have a string vibrating for example at 400Hz and you take away half of the length the string can vibrate (yet keeping the same tension), it will vibrate exactly twice as fast (800Hz, an octave!). Physics. And somehow we consider hearing octaves of the same note as pleasant. But what else can we do with the frequencies in between doubling or halving?

Then somebody divided one octave into 12 steps (semitones): On a guitar, you have 12 frets to press down to generate this 12 notes, until you arrive at the same note (completing the octave), going either up or down. But not all of these 12 steps sound well together. So you have to leave out this and that on a guitar if you want to create a specific scale.

So we leave out some of the 12 steps on the piano as well: this creates either a half step (which is literally the next step) or a whole step (which is literally two steps)). The mix of where a half step and where a whole step occours gives each scale its flavour and mood.

And after some time, the musicians in the past arrived at the layout of the piano we have today: arranging an octave into 7 white keys and 5 black keys (our 12 semitones!). The piano starts with the lowest note it can produce reasonably and ends with the highest note barely needed, which is usually 88 keys. That gives 7 octaves and 3 more semitones.

Yes.

5th song: Band-Version of Comptine d'un autre été by Yann-Tiersen

My first and so far only proper piano cover - even mixing black and white keys here, crazy!

I am not sure, but I think it took me about half a year to learn this song. It is one of a few piano songs for me, that I enjoy enough to put this much effort in it. I wanted to see how it is for me to learn and play a proper song.

I remember, in the beginning my left hand was barely able to spread the fingers apart in the way needed for this song. And week after week, month after month it got easier. I was happy to have a chance now to play songs like this and I really enjoyed playing this tune (I can play a real piano song now!). After some years of not playing it, today I am barely able to play this complex song without relearning the details again.

Because I can, I added all the other instruments. There is some quite nice description text to the video on YouTube going into the perspective of each of the "musicians" involved here. And also a list of the equipment used, appreciating the effort that went into producing all the parts across the world needed, to be able to produce such a thing.

To gain more audience on YouTube or as an artist in general, a common strategy is going for cover songs. After my two most piano videos which are instructional ("440 Hz vs 432 Hz" and "How to get into intuitive piano playing"), this is my second most viewed piano video in terms of a song. Me doing a solo piano-channeling on the grand piano at Filadelfia is first.

6th song: 369 kisses // Ode to Sorsele

My first own song on keyboard. It has some relaxing dance vibes.

The main idea for the song came at my new year session 01. Jan 2023, when I just met my new mentor at that stage - guiding me to the key of 369 which I also use for my mentoring now.

Took some time to develop the melody further into this song.

Meanwhile I started to work as a music teacher in a town 100km away from Kristineberg called Sorsele, giving mainly 1:1 lessons in drums, piano, guitar, bass, ukulele and singing. To celebrate my first year as a music teacher, I made a little expedition with friends to the nearby canyon named Gimegolts. We had perfect weather to enjoy the beautiful scenery.

This song became my first release on Streaming Services on 24th Jul 2023. Uh, I was lucky when I finally figured everything out how to release songs like this.

My research started by asking some friends about their experience towards distributors. I picked one, where I keep 100% of my royalties, but have to pay a bit of a fee each year. Apart from the technical distribution, here the music and everyhing else (especially artwork and track names) is checked if it complies to the guidelines of the receiving stores around the world.

And at signing up, there was this field: artist name. Good question. Took me a while to think about it. I asked in some online group where I was a participant for mentoring. Some nice ideas came up. And after I have seen those, it hit me and I had my artist name coming from somewhere else: Music for gods. That seemed a bit big at first (me??), but well. Here we go.

369 kisses on Streaming Services

5th instructional video: 432Hz vs 440Hz on piano by physically tuning

I wanted to know: Besides all the theory and practical implications around it: How is the actual acoustic sound affected and how does it feel listenening to both when comparing songs?

It was time to properly retune my piano anyway. I had it changed to 440Hz since a while, which was more convenient for practicing with my beloved Yousician App at that stage (the App contributed to learn instruments in a fun way and keep my motivation high as I was able to see fast improvements).

Now it was time to record proper stuff and I had a feeling, I preferred that to be in 432Hz.

So: This is a good chance to do a comparison between those tunings without too much extra effort.

There is different arguments and styles where to agree on for tuning all the instruments to the same frequencies (this is needed to be able to play together). While most popular music today has set middle A to 440Hz, we see a variety of tunings for example for classical orchestras going lower or higher than that.

432Hz seems to be a more natural frequency as for example it produces more harmonious patterns with water vibrating to it. There is enough debate about this on the internet - search maybe also "cymatics" or watch my favourite music video about all those different experiments in that field here. Some claim, that the heart rate is lower when listening to music with 432Hz compared to 440Hz - if this is true, this would maybe suggest, it is better for relaxing music.

This video is by the time of creating this page my most viewed piano video. In general, for musicians it is easier to find audience with knowledge and topics around music than own music. Fair. I also prefer to search for knowledge and only view music videos from artists I really like.