How can stevie wonder play piano

I had yet to learn to play anything of interest, my eyes were blurry, and my head was clogged with a thousand cryptic symbols. But my parents were paying good money for this unpleasant experience, and there was no way they were going to let me give up.

After several futile months of trying to memorize music notation — visually translating globs of hieroglyphics into actual notes — I still struggled to peck out the notes from my lesson book.

This is obviously not a pleasant memory for me, and I am not grateful nor respectful of my instructor, God rest his soul. However, I still very much enjoyed listening to music — but the the drudgery of these lessons held no interest for me. At the age of sixteen I experienced divine intervention. I was at a party when I heard the most beautiful sounds emanating from a nearby piano.

When I entered the room I witnessed a girl playing the most amazing music, by ear, and with no sheet music in front of her. I thought: how was this even possible?

As I look back I now realize that she was improvising! From that moment on things were very different for me. I now wanted more than anything to learn to play piano just as competently as that girl had played — and to produce the lush chords and haunting melodies that I had heard that memorable night.

I also craved to be able to spontaneously improvise like she had — by ear. It has been almost six decades since that evening. I now play the piano for hours and hours every day, wife permitting. My bookshelves contain not a single piano instruction book nor a single piece of sheet music. When I want to learn a new song, I grab the chords from the internet and memorize them there exist many songs that have only ONE chord, with many other songs having only two or three chords. Even I can memorize three chords.

Certainly you must have a melody sheet in front of you for every song that you want to play? You know, so that you can read the sheet music and visually translate the melody to notes on the piano! So much of the enjoyment of playing an instrument is the process of hearing a melody in your head and easily being able to reproduce that melody on your instrument, or simply hum or sing it.

We hum melodies all the time, often in the shower for that awesome reverberation effect. No sheet music required! This is when music is truly being enjoyed and appreciated. Every Beatles song can be instantly recognized and sung by billions of people — without sheet music.

And the stellar musicians take a simple music theme and improvise on that theme — using the techniques that they have practiced and committed to memory. I have only one disclaimer, and that disclaimer applies to orchestral performances.

So for you orchestral musicians, my apologies. A recent experience will serve to demonstrate just how quickly young students can learn to play the piano — when introduced to it in a logical manner.

These youth, some of whom speak only chichewa, were so eager to learn piano that a mere language barrier could not deter them. When I prepared for these lessons I packed nothing but my portable piano, some percussion instruments, and mental notes on how I planned to teach music to these eager students.

I just want them to hear and feel a tempo. Within the first ten minutes we had tempo and rhythm under our belts and it was time to move on to the piano. I began by playing some simple chords with my left hand and a simple melody in my right hand, just so they could hear what these sound like.

They appeared to be pleased, or perhaps just amused? The next step was to convince the students that there are only seven piano notes to learn. I took a permanent marker and wrote these seven letters on the corresponding seven keys on the piano keyboard. My friend Rocky Kaunda then asked each child to play the seven piano notes — which they did effortlessly. Ten minutes into the lesson and these kids knew more about the piano than I did after a month of lessons.

Ask me that question at the end of this true story. In Charles refused to perform at a concert that was segregated and was fined by an Atlanta court. Ray Charles was one of the first to reject Jim Crow laws in the south. On one notable occasion in Augusta, Georgia, in March , he learned the theater seating was to be segregated. Ray Charles refused to perform. Charles stood his ground, and was sued and fined for breach of contract.

In , Ray Charles died at the age of 74 in his home located in Beverly Hills, but who did he leave his money to? Did Stevie Wonder play the piano? In , the newly renamed Little Stevie Wonder, working with Motown songwriter Clarence Paul, among others, released his debut The Jazz Soul of Little Stevie Wonder , an instrumental album that showed off the youngster's remarkable musicianship.

The set's edited single "Fingertips, Pt. Rather than rest on his laurels, the hard-working Wonder, who would go on to study classical piano, pushed to improve his musicianship and songwriting capabilities. After dropping "Little" from his stage name in the mids, he churned out the top 5 pop single "Uptight Everything's Alright ," which reached No. Wonder scored two more No. Due in part to innate talent, but also because of his deep commitment to his craft, Wonder faced the difficulty of staying relevant as a musician as he grew from boy to man, and his voice matured into a shining tenor.

In , Wonder negotiated a new contract with Motown that gave him almost total control over his records and greatly increased his royalty rate. It was an unprecedented concession by Gordy, but, artistically, just what Wonder needed.

As the s unfolded, the musician went through an unrivaled period of production. His album Talking Book offered two No. Next up was Innervisions , a meditative concept album that was simultaneously introspective, political, critical and full of wit. The record featured two socially conscious No. All three singles fared well on the pop charts as well. Fulfillingness' First Finale , released after Wonder had survived a serious car accident that left him in a coma, displayed his trademark odes to romance and beauty while also looking squarely at spirituality and death.

The sexy "Boogie on Reggae Woman" went to No. Even with this array of accomplishments, it was the double album with EP set Songs in the Key of Life that many have hailed as Wonder's most legendary project and one of the greatest records of all time. Offering a rich span of songs with genre fusions aplenty, Songs covered everything from ethnic diversity in the U. Over the years, other artists struck gold with Wonder remakes, as seen with Aretha Franklin 's No.

By those incredible lofty standards, the s weren't nearly as successful for Wonder.