Most of the time when you play piano one part of a song will be melody. Usually the melody is the part we want to hear most. Emphasizing that part is an important skill you will need to learn.

When the melody is in the right or left hand and nothing else is present in that hand, like a counter melody, than all you need to do is make the melody hand louder. To do this simply put more weight on that hand.

If the melody is present with counter melody than you will have to put more weight in one part of your hand. This is tricky. You’ll need to balance the weight by feeling if the inside, thumb, is heavier than the outside, pinky, or vise versa depending on where the melody is.

One tip to practice both methods is to ghost the notes that are not melody. To do this, play the song but for no melody notes simply hoover your fingers but don’t play the note. Once you have ghosted for a couple of times you can try and put all of it back together.

Let me know how this works for you.

When writing music be it a quartet or pop tune you’ll want to think of your composition on 3 levels.

• Melody
• Counter-Melody
• Harmonic Material

Melody is usually the lyrics or the singing part of the music. This is the part most people grab onto.

Counter-Melody is a secondary melody. Sometimes it occurs at the same time and other times we get a call and answer effect. But it’s function is to balance the melody and fill some musical space. Most of the time this is the bass line, but it doesn’t have to be.

Harmonic Material is the chords and background sounds. In pop music this is usually played by the rhythm section. This part of the music helps to drive the music along. It’s what gives us tension and release which is like jet fuel for songwriting.

I’ll post more details about each section in the next few weeks. Questions? Put ‘em in the comments section.

What would a week of practice do for you? I mean if you stuck to your plan and played music everyday.

Well, you would be on your way to a good routine and you’d most likely have a new piece of music under your belt. If you’re expecting anything more I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

Music, like most fine motor skills, requires about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice in order for you to become proficient at whatever skill you are trying to master. The Beatles played for hundreds of hours at German night clubs before creating a chart topping song.

What makes it tough is many musicians like to tell people they only practice a short amount of time. However, when we probe deeper we find that the expert has practiced far more hours than they have led us to believe.

So, have you put in your 10,000 hours?