5 Tips To Improve Your Gospel Piano Playing During Lockdown

As lockdown continues in a number of different places, it’s an optimum time to really delve into your gospel piano playing - we give you 5 tips for how to improve during this time!

1. Listen to the greats.

Delve into the discography of some of the best gospel keyboard players.

We’ll do another post talking about the must-listen albums for any gospel keyboard players, but some of the best to check out are Thomas Whitfield (The Thomas Whitfield Singers, The Winans), Shaun Martin (Kirk Franklin, Kim Burrell), Kevin Bond (Marvin Sapp, Bishop TD Jakes, Kurt Carr, Donald Lawrence, Edwin Hawkins), Mike Bereal (Judith Christie McAllister, Dorinda Clark-Cole), Jason White (Judith Christie McAllister), Eddie Brown (Maurette Brown Clark), Cory Henry (Kim Burrell, Myron Butler), Asaph Ward (Dorinda Clark-Cole), Parris Bowens (Tye Tribbett), Phillip Feaster (Fred Hammond), Ay’Ron Lewis (Kirk Franklin, James Fortune), Trent Phillips (Donnie McClurkin), Jason Tyson (Smokie Norful, Marvin Sapp) and lots more…

2. Learn as many songs as you can.

One of the best pieces of advice we can ever give you is to learn ALL the songs you can. Pick an album and resolve to learn it back to front. For instance, try learning the Rebirth of Kirk Franklin back to front. It’s not the most complicated and the tracks are mostly quite accessible for learning by ear to all levels.

3. Learn correct technique.

Many gospel keyboard players have terrible posture - the typical hunched over look will not look great at 50! Get a back brace, sit up straight and place your hands in the correct position.

4. Ask YouTube/buy DVDs.

There are so many amazing gospel piano DVDs out there, and people who teach for FREE on YouTube. Some of the best teachers we’ve seen are Jermaine Griggs, Jonathan Powell, all the videos that Wheatworks Pro does, Kevin KC Conley and Jamal Hartwell. We could do an entire blog post on this!

5. Create a practice routine.

If you want us to do a full blog post on how to create a practice routine, let us know! But this is probably the most important of the 5 tips - without a practice routine, it will be extremely difficult to improve.

Here’s a rough example to do for a week:

10 minutes - Scales & Arpeggios (G major scale in thirds, G major 7 arpeggios - vary the scales & arpeggios daily)

10 minutes - Learn a track from an album - e.g. Hosanna by Kirk Franklin from the Rebirth album (2002)

10 minutes - Slow down a lick or chord progression and learn in all 12 keys