Will Learning The Piano Make Me A Better Producer?
Absolutely!
You’ll make beats faster.
When I first began to produce music years ago one of the hardest things I struggled with was starting beats off. I would have these melodies in my head, but I couldn’t flesh them out. But once I learned basic major and minor chord triads, I pretty much just played them every time I wanted to start a beat.
Eventually, I learned that you can use these chords to play chord progressions (a group of chords) in every key. These are pretty much formulas or templates that you can use as a producer to make beats. Soon I was able to make multiple tracks each day now that I had some basic music theory under my belt. No more ‘beat block’!!!
It will be easier to understand the relationship between other instruments.
When you learn where to place your piano sounds within your tracks, you’ll also start to understand where other instruments should go. The piano can act as an anchor instrument and you can build around it. This really helps with arranging because you can build a track around a simple chord progression. Or maybe even turn a basic minor scale into a lead solo (for example).
It helps with your mixing too because you’ll know the frequency range for the piano, and it will be easier to place other tracks where they need to go within the mix to sound better. I would often start a track with a few chords, and then a melody, and sub melody. Then I would add a snare to the track to get some bounce, and so forth. Everything just seemed easier when I started using the piano as my anchor track.
Your overall production quality will drastically improve.
Knowing how to play the piano will enhance your overall beat production. Your beats will be fuller because you’ll know how to create full arrangements as opposed to undeveloped loops.
You’ll understand how to evoke various moods into your music by using minor (sad/dark) and major (happy) chords, and even learn more advanced chords (I discuss 7th chords here). By understanding some of the basic rules in music theory, you’ll know when to break them, and that’s when it really gets interesting.
It will be easier to learn other instruments.
Once I learned how to play the piano, my confidence went up, and I soon tried other instruments. I picked up a bass guitar and never put it down. I was fascinated to see that the same theory I learned for piano applied to the bass guitar. So I was able to learn it faster.
So in closing, you don’t necessarily have to learn the piano to be a great producer. I know a lot of dope beat makers who can’t play any instruments at all. But if you do learn to play, it can only make you a better producer, and you’ll learn a lot along the way.
