I’ve been listening to a lot of romantic piano recently, including stuff I performed like Holidium. It made me take pause and think about all the ingredients that go into such a yummy stew: the clichés, tropes, and archetypes of "romantic piano grammar", if you will. And then that planted a seed:
"Wouldn't it be fantastic if I could break down the parts and explain how each plays an important role?"
I decided to do exactly that, and here it is for your enjoyment. I love to demystify without removing the magic. In addition to being a fun lesson, it's also an experimental test, because I'm finding that YouTube surprisingly has better HD quality than Vimeo. That's exciting, because YouTube's currently free to embed in HD, whereas Vimeo charges. I plan to write some more about this later, but for now… enjoy!
Let me know your questions & suggestions in the comments and I shall reply to them attentively. (And pardon if I sound like a broken Victrola, but if you're reading this in your feed reader, you'll need to click through to my blog to watch the video above. Thanx!)
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Omg…I think I fell in love with you when you made the heroes reference <3<3<3
@Nikki: Big Heroes fan too, I take it? I'm looking forward to Volume 4!
Really nice
Thank you Torley - awesome tutorial. I can't play piano at all, but now I'm all excited by trying the tips you've shown here. I'm supposed to learn for the school - something completely different, but this is so much more fun.
I think I can handle the Ami-G-F sequence with both left and right hand now and do some simple improvisation stuff with it. Trying some more chords now. 
Greetins from Prague!
wow you make improvising look so simple :). i can play from music sheets but when i try to improvise, it comes out sounding really weird :P. i'll have to try what you did!
=D
Torley, Thank you so much - I'm slowly coming out of a depressive shell and trying to spread new wings and this video has come to aid this process so much. I thank you very much for this. One thing I would like to see, is how to practice techniques for the runs swirls - such as just knowing how to use the motion of like c-e-g-cde-gb and so on up and down the keyboard - does that make sense? Also, last night I spent an HOUR tweaking the sound on my synth to try to get a piano sound I liked and I am never happy with it - I really like a lot of those interface midi sounds I hear from you as well as native instruments- what do you suggest I use, because I think midi and using a high quality sample will be better than anything my workstation has to offer. Thank you so much again Torley- I'm excited about your new release and will download when I get home!
@Jamie: Thanks for your request! And you are SO welcome. I hope to do followups eventually. As for piano sounds, I like Native Instruments' Akoustik a lot, and this has so much character: http://torley.com/imperfect-samples-upright-piano-crysonic-spectraphy-le-amplified-awesome