Playing the piano is a special breed of musicians. If you play well you have the ability to not only keep rhythm and time as a drummer would, but there are many variations that you can do when playing. You can play chords and progressions, but also pull out melodies and improvisational passages within a song, without overlapping the guitar or taking away from lead vocals.
Piano skills are only enhanced when playing more, so it’s a no-brainer that you should use your piano playing to work alongside other musicians. But why is this so helpful and important as a pianist? There are many reasons that you should consider.
- Assistance With Making Original Music
One of the best outcomes of working with other musicians is that it helps you establish and build upon your songwriting. As a piano player and a musician, you likely have big goals to make it in the music industry, and creating your own music as an original artist is part of that. How much better is it when writing to have multiple people giving input?
When you have many heads put together to come up with different parts of the song like the melody tune, chorus, song lyrics, progressions, and tempo, you have a great opportunity to create an awesome final product. You also can focus on parts that you know you’re good at and pass the other parts to the others that may be more suited for them, and it helps to move the process along that much faster. Getting feedback and input can also go a long way to making improvements upon different songs since you will have more influence and opinions from multiple artists.
- Music Licensing Lets You Work With Other Artists
When you are creating your own original piece, one place you should look to is a licensing company like Marmoset Music, who hires artists to compose custom music on a per-project basis. You will be supporting and collaborating with other musicians in a virtual sense, as well as creating your own custom song or musical piece! Music licensing agencies provide you with the ability to contribute to all styles and genres to find what area of music works best for your talents. You also don’t have to worry about clashing personalities, as you’re not in person with other musicians if you don’t want to be – you can simply provide the piano for a track and let their team layer each instrument or piece of the song together.
- Hearing and Performing All Parts Together
Collaboration with other musicians allows you to hear and experience the full force of the music when it is played with every instrument and vocal needed. It can be difficult to tell what the final product is going to sound like, so it is a really good idea to work with other instruments and singers, getting feedback and ultimately listening to the entire sound altogether. Having the ability to hear all of the instruments like that at once can give you good feedback as to what is working and what isn’t, where things need to be changed or fixed, or maybe what instruments should or shouldn’t be added/removed in certain places within the piece.
- More Outreach = More Gigs
Working with other musicians can give you the opportunity for more gigs or live performances – even virtual ones that engage more people. Typically, musicians know “people” who can help get them into certain venues, or competitions, or open mics, etc. and it helps when you are a working musician to book as many performances as you can. As a piano player or keyboardist, by partnering with someone else and reaping the benefits of their gigs and connections, you give yourself the opportunity to have more reach so more people know your name and remember you. Sometimes people may just want a piano player for something like a formal dinner party, and as a piano player, you’ll have more of a chance to get those types of gigs when collaborating and networking with others.
- Improve Upon and Advance Your Piano Skills
The last and probably most obvious reason for any piano player to work with others is to advance in your own skills and abilities. If you can work with other bands and play the keyboard, maybe you can learn to be just as masterful on the keyboard as you are on the classical piano or vice versa, as there is a difference in playing each. You also get great practice and multiple chances to improve upon your fine motor skills and also increase your memory recall for songs you play multiple times and know well, making it easier to play without music in front of you.
Piano players and musicians of all sorts should always be striving to learn more from one another to perform and compose better, as you would in any craft. Collaborating with other musicians can open up doors and introduce you to innovative music that you find to be more your style, as well as maybe even learning a new instrument in addition to the piano that you might not have previously considered.
I’ve played piano for more than 40 years and felt a comforting difference everytime I played along with other musicians