So You Wanna Play Like A Maestro?  

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The guru. The sage. The Maestro.  

These figures of human culture have been revered and admired across the ages. Who amongst us has not wished to have the wisdom of the guru, the clarity of the sage, or the sheer depth of skill and grace of the Maestro? (that’s Italian for ‘Master’, in case you didn’t know)

Well, I’m not going to tell you that you can attain the rank of Maestrohood overnight, but I CAN teach you to play like one. And the best part of all? It’s nowhere near as hard as it looks…

Still interested? Read on…

Only a Maestro like Rick Wakeman could handle this many keyboards at once

When I was a kid, I was enamored with players like Rick Wakeman of Yes, or Keith Emerson of ELP. These guys could play such crazy riffs like nobody’s business. They’d flow all the way up and down the keyboard like a sonic lightshow and I was hooked. I wanted to play like that.

Nope, that’s not a wall of silly string behind ELP’s Keith Emerson… It’s a synthesizer that only a Maestro like Emerson can tame

So I broke down what it was that they were doing, and found that a lot of this kind of playing comes down to playing the same pattern repeatedly while flowing down multiple octaves. It really all came down to muscle memory and spacial awareness of the distances of the keyboard.

Take the riff in this lesson, for example. This riff is all about the shape of the minor 3rd from the position of F minor and C minor. Close your eyes and observe how the shape of the minor 3rd feels under your hands in both F and C minor. They both feel the same. They are two white notes topped off by a black key. And to play these three notes all you need it (naturally) finger 1, 2, and 3.

You can start off integrating how these note shapes feel by playing each set of them all at once while flowing down the piano. So that just means playing F, G, Ab and then C, D, Eb down and down each octave. This will give you a sense of how long to travel your hands as you move down the keyboard.

The next step is to work on your finger dexterity. The phrasing pattern goes 2, 3, 2, 1 and then it shifts down to the next hand position. You’re always leading with finger two, so keep that in mind as you move down to the next positioning for your hands.

Once you master that fingering pattern, that’s it! It then becomes a process of taking that pattern as far as you can take it. You can play it in one octave or 5 it’s up to you! If you want to challenge yourself further you can shift the riff into another key!

Was this riff enjoyable for you? Let me know in the comments below.  

Happy playing :),

Jordan

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Jordan Leibel is passionate about songwriting, improvisation, and helping you become a creative musician! He’s worked as a composer for film, commercial, and theatre projects as well as a session musician and producer for recording work.