The Florissimo Method
Learn to Play Music on the Piano in 15 Minutes!
It is a magic experience to watch people perform their own music after one short lesson. It’s not that they become masters, but they learn how to play enjoyable for themselves and anyone who passes by. I even saw a guy perform for a whole audience, who didn’t notice he just had his first lesson ever. And a girl perform after 15 minutes stunning everyone listening, even a professional musician who couldn’t do what she just did.
NOTE: It works of course best for Piano, because it doesn’t take training to even get a good note out of it. So the method only applies for other instruments, when you can already play them. Say classic musicians who want to learn improv. There’s definitely Jazz influences and approach in the method, but it’s not about Jazz.
Music lessons through the ages
Not even half a century ago you first had to learn notes, before you were allowed to start learning how to play a simple song. Later they developed a method, where to keep lessons interesting, one learned a few chords and as fast as possible a song. Many people who followed a few of such lessons can play often one awful little piece, thinking music is hitting the keys in the right order. Mostly they still ended up hating lessons.
So what if we approached learning to play even more directly or differently? What if we helped to play free improv music immediately? Welcome to the Florissimo method.
“Wow, if had been taught piano like this, I’d never started to hate the lessons.” Anthe DW
“As a professional musician I had a breakthrough, into new territory.” Guus de Ruiter
“I didn’t knew this was possible. I felt touched by my own music, after my first (mini)concert.” unknown
“I just played about the life and death of a butterfly. After one lesson. Crazy.” Bas Bakker
“Did that guy never had any lesson before? I thought he was playing nice music for the incoming crowd.” Audience member at the stEFFIE conference 2014
The best way to learn through this method is to apply each rule immediately and then expand when you feel ready for the next one. (I also coach people online or at the closest available piano, mostly in Amsterdam)
The rules of learning to play in 15 minutes:
- Repeat. Choose a few simple notes and repeat them. Once your choice sounds like a basic theme you’re ready to move on. The keys you choose don’t have to be neighbors.
(feeling ready for the next one?..)
- Vary on the repetition. Discover how speeding up, adding pauses or adding new notes can expand the basic theme. For starters, just try a bit playing music only with the few notes you chose as basis. Use silences, loudness, rhythm and what more you can think of to vary within this small scope. Then start to vary by adding new notes, new variations of what order you play notes. Everything you can think of. But don’t overdo (yet). You can always back to the basic repetition of your theme. Especially when you try to go to fast or start feeling a bit lost. And then slowly expand again.
(feeling ready for the next one?..)
- Listen!! Listen!! Listen!! Listen to what you do. This is the key to this method. Listening and enjoying what you actually do. Allowing yourself to be touched by your own music. Through listening varying on the basic theme opens up in sensitivity. How hard you strike the keys, the length of pauses you take between on note and adding suddenly chords can add immensely to the experience. If you get bored create more action. If you feel too safe create trouble. And never stop and start again when you play a wrong note. Rather read the next item..
(feeling ready for the next one?..)
- When you feel you made a mistake*, repeat the mistake. Thus a wrong note is not a mistake any more. It’s a new step into a new direction into the music. Integrate mistakes into the unfolding of your music. You can repeat the mistake directly as a new rhythm or vary on the mistake (#rule2) until it feels really part of the music. Or when your music is all safe and gets boring, try mistakes or create trouble! Then seek while playing on, a solution to make it part of the music/story.
(feeling ready for the next one?..)
- Let a story unfold. Perhaps your left and right hand have a dialogue. Perhaps the whole tone of your music becomes darker or lighter as it progresses. Your frustration of not being able to make certain things work, may even become the central theme of your music. Or you may have a fantasy what you play about. Then follow the fantasy and keep listening if the story surprises even you with a new direction.
(feeling ready for the next one?..)
- Your search for music is the music. Your story of learning to play is your music. Every new chord or possibility you explore while expanding your possibilities in playing is already your unfolding music. Wherever you are in your studies, you are already are a musician. Enjoy.
A few basic tricks for the next steps:
(only read this when you’ve applied the previous lessons)
- Your very first note, will often feel as the best very last note. It rounds it off somehow.
- Keys you play next may be anywhere on the piano. It helps build a motive. Consider for example playing once in a while a surprising high note amidst all others. Listen how that works.
- The right pedal on the piano will give your music a fuller feeling. Don’t overuse it. Let go of it when you’ve hit too many notes, while keeping at the least one key down, so you won’t have sudden nasty gaps, unless off course that’s the plan.
- Often one hand, mostly the left, does play a very simple basis, while the right hand explores variations.
- Feel free to develop music with math. Repeat through a systematic formula, like go with each strike of one hand one key down or up. Hit every third, fourth or seventh note louder or softer. Repeat a theme in different places. So build patterns and, at the same time, break them ever so slightly all the time, because that brings life to it.
- Create a dialogue between left and right hand. Have them have a love affair of attraction and repulsion. Make them repeat each other, be curious or fight. let them come real close, or one walk away. So much more is possible, when you think story in your play.
- When you only play black notes it always works, but gets boring fast too. Tension will be missing. It’s a bit like Anthroposophical art, no black or sharpness, only rounded forms in nice colors.
- Surprise yourself at times. Start differently, hit an unexpected note or chord and deal with it. Try doing new stuff often enough! Some musicians and composers always sound the same. If you love that, fine. If not leave your beaten tracks. Shift from intuition to mathematical, or start with a theme you never tried before. Once again: dare to get into trouble. Then listen while the solution evolves through your seeking it.
- More lessons from an official piano teacher can help you grow further. This is essential stuff. Technical skills can be trained too.
Life Lesson
* We often feel mistakes are bad. Most music lessons frustrate because after each mistake, you have to start over. Same at school. Making mistakes blocks your stream. In real life we never start our day again, when we feel we made a mistake. We (have to) deal with how things are. But we can say sorry and try again, along a different route.
Like in real life, in the Florissimo method mistakes become part of the music. It is in fact our search for improvement and overcoming obstacles that become part of our personal music or symphony. In fact: there are no mistakes. Failure becomes adventure. A false note becomes an exiting event in a performance. The art for the musician is how to integrate this note in the music, rather than delete it, being embarrassed by it or stop playing and start again!!
When applied to life, the same goes. It’s a pity so many educations, and religious leaders for that matter, feel the need to teach that life will only happen when you apply their lessons the ‘right’ way. There are no mistakes, only explorations that become part of the music. Your search to make it work is the music of your life. And the magic is that by making this search public, with all its pain and frustrations, you are an inspiration for others.
History
For those that want to know. How I learned to play and developed the method.
I had a friend, Joop Hoekstra, with a great piano at home. He was a brilliant improviser. He also let me play his piano at times. Not having much time to play (sooner minutes in a month, than hours in a week) I had to think smart on how to build on my capability. Thus I slowly developed the first rules for my method. Years later when some people actually started to like my playing (nothing special, few chords, but improv with emotion and at times daring) I once offered to teach a few people to learn to play in 15 minutes, from scratch. We even put the times on for it. Even I thought it a joke at the time. I played it could be done. Then a miracle happened. It actually worked. Half believing the result the next day, we (a group on a week in the mountains) heard some nice music inside, after which the 1st person I ever taught this way walks out. He has a hand on his heart and says, with a emotional touched tone, “I just played the birth and death of a butterfly.” That was when I thought, “My, I have to take this serious.” And when, about a year later, after several lessons a girl took me home for a lesson, where her boyfriend and prof musician would be too, I was very scared to get scrutinized for my arrogance. It was another girl there, who after a clocked 15 minutes was asked to perform a piece, as if she was doing a concert for us. She blew everyone, including the professional, away. The daring, adventure, variations and awesome sweet perfect ending were beyond all expectations. The professional couldn’t do it. He was too stuck in his ways. He did however have a breakthrough in his 15 minute lesson. Later a similar musician had a similar breakthrough. I asked him to let me hear what he could do. He plays until I say, “That’s a bit boring isn’t it?” His breakthrough was learning to bring in surprises and contrast. When he started to make big mistakes and then bring them into the music, he was so much more interesting and alive. Together with all technical capabilities, he already had, he even sounded grand. Experiences like those gave me the guts to start teaching. I think that seeing people being touched by their own music after one lesson is a gift to music. For good skills though technical lessons from experts are really worth it, especially if you want to get to a much higher level.
So if these rules are not self explanatory enough, you can always approach me for a piano or coaching session, on Skype or live in Amsterdam. :)
