Four Pianists turned Politicians

Charles Dickens played the accordion, Neil Armstrong played the Baritone Horn, Thomas Jefferson played the violin, and Basketball great Wayman Tisdale played the bass guitar. These are only a few well known people who play a musical instrument. Although these are all worthy stories, let’s focus on the piano. As you might imagine, there are a lot of people you may have heard of who have played piano. (We’ll skip people like Elton John, Billie Joel, and Little Richard for obvious reasons) Today, we’re focused on people who have made a name for themselves as a political figure.

Condoleezza Rice

Condoleezza Rice was the first African American woman as well as the second woman to serve as the United States Secretary of State. She served in this position from 2005-2009 under President George W. Bush. She now serves as a faculty member of Stanford University.

Ms. Rice is a highly accomplished piano player. When she was 15, she played with the Denver Symphony Orchestra which was an award for a piano competition she had won. Today, Ms. Rice plays a few times a month with a string quartet in Washington with a group of lawyers in her apartment. Many of her quartet members, like her, are highly trained with one being a former college cello teacher. In addition she has performed with Yo-yo Ma as well as solo performances at embassies and for Queen Elizabeth II.

Bill Clinton

Most people who remember the Bill Clinton presidential era know that his Saxophone was an integral part of who he was. He didn’t have the virtuoso ability of Condoleezza Rice but he did have a talent that allowed him to play and enjoy the saxophone and music in general. He was even presented with a custom made presidential saxophone that was later donated to a museum.

Harry Truman

As a young boy Harry Truman woke up at 5am every day and practiced piano for two hours. He once said that if he was good enough, he would have never been president but instead a professional pianist. His mother was his first teacher and later, he had teachers in his town. At age 15 he quit taking piano lessons telling his mother that he would never be good enough to play full time.

According to the Truman library, in 1945 he played piano for a group of Methodist women, winked at them and said, “When I played this, Stalin signed the Potsdam Agreement.”

Richard Nixon

President Nixon is known for bigger things than his musical talent but most people don’t know that not only was Richard Nixon a pianist but he was also a composer. In fact, a concerto that he wrote was so good that he performed it on the Jack Parr show and five years later, he became President of the United States.

Although we mention only four American political figures, the world is filled with many more. Brittish Prime ministers and Indian peace movement leaders are just a few examples of the many around the world who have made the piano their instrument of choice.

People like this are proof that music is very accommodating. You don’t have to play music full time to enjoy the benefits of playing.

Why do I need to learn scales and chords and music theory? Well, if you have the talent of a Mozart or Bach or Erroll Garner or Oscar Peterson or Dave Brubeck, you probably don’t. But if you’re like the rest of us — and 99.9% of us are - the more you learn about music, the better. After all, chords are formed from scales, and scales are the building-blocks of melody. And of course there would be no rhythm without the juxtapostion of note values and chord lengths. If you are at all interested in increasing your knowledge of music in any of these areas, come on over to http://www.playpianocatalog.com and browse through our 300-plus courses.

Enharmonic notes are simply notes that have more than one name. Just as you might be known by not only your given name, but also by your nickname, so notes can have more than one name. The same is true for enharmonic chords — they can be known by multiple names as well. For example, the Db major chord sounds exactly the same as the C# major chord, but looks different on printed music, and has two different names: C# major and Db major.

This is a simple lesson for absolute beginners demonstrating how to create a “walk the stairs” boogie pattern in the left hand. Most boogies follow the 12-bar blues format, so we are walking the stairs on the I chord, the IV chord and the V chord in the key of C.

The Alberti bass is a style which simply breaks up any 3-note chord into a pattern consisting of bottom note, top note, middle note, top note, and repeat. Watch this short video and you’ll instantly understand how to apply it to most any song:

Playing the tune of a song in a “single-finger” style leaves much to be desired in terms of fullness. One way to make a stronger melody is to play it in octaves with an interval of a 3rds under the top octave note. Watch this short video:

To get a really full sound in your right hand, try putting in not only the notes of the chord under the melody, but also try to incorporate a color tone of some kind, such as a 6th, 7th, major 7th, or 9th. You can overdo it, of course, but this short video demonstates how it is done.

If I already play guitar, can I catch on to piano playing faster than if I didn’t?
Already knowing the guitar has it advantages when learning piano (although it depends on your training, experience, and abilities). If you learned to read music as part of your guitar studies, you’ll be able to apply that knowledge to learning the piano. For example, if you know the notes of a G chord are G, B, and D, or know that the notes of an A minor chord are A, C, and E, you simply have to find the corresponding keys on the piano to play the chord. Having knowledge of key and time signatures, and understanding the basic “road map” of music (it’s symbols and designations), puts you on a faster track when learning piano.
When it comes to the physical part of playing the piano, knowing how to form chords on guitar may not be of great help. The techniques are different as well as your relationship with the instrument (sitting in front of a piano rather than holding a guitar). Plus, on guitar, chords and melodies are formed with the left hand (if you are right-handed), whereas chords and melodies are played with both hands on piano. However, the strength and dexterity you developed in your hands playing guitar can make piano playing easier.
Many guitar techniques can be reproduced on piano. Playing an arpeggio (a series of notes of one of more chords) on piano is not unlike playing it on guitar. Instead of playing the piano keys to create the arpeggio, a guitarist holds a chord and plays its individual strings.
Once understood, chord inversions can be readily transferred from guitar to piano. An inversion is the same notes of a chord played in a different order (e.g., the notes C, E, and G being played as G, E, C). As a guitar player, you learned that chords can be played in many different ways. The same holds true for piano, though it can be argued that a piano is more versatile when it comes to forming chords.
Other aspects of playing such as tone and rhythm also transfer well. However, most would say creating a pure tone on guitar (for all strings played) is more difficult than on piano. A certain amount of strength is needed to press down the strings of a guitar, while the piano is more forgiving and requires sensitivity and touch more than strength. Having a good sense of rhythm is as important on piano as guitar. But as a piano player, rhythm and tempo comes from pressing the piano keys in a certain, consistent pattern. No longer will you be strumming to create the desired rhythm.
If you are used to playing sheet music (whether it be for guitar, piano, or both), you already have an idea how the two instruments work together. And you should be familiar with the guitar symbols that appear above a lot of music written for piano. Perhaps, without being aware of it, you’ve been forming a sense about how the piano is played.
Finally, you will be using different muscle groups and techniques when playing the piano. This can be a challenge at first but after a month or so, you’ll become comfortable with pressing keys instead of strings and you’ll begin to feel at home on the piano.

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