One of my little-known secrets is that I play piano. And I’ve also recorded it. And uploaded it to YouTube. I’ve witnessed some of the lashings you can take when you upload videos of your own to the site, but I have to say that sometimes it’s worth the risk.

Back in 2008, I was playing around with YouTube to get some firsthand experience with the process of creating a channel and uploading videos. The first time around I created a simple photo montage accompanied by music – something I quickly threw together using iMovie. A few months later, I thought I’d try filming something and then uploading it there as well – the challenge at the time was finding something to film. Coincidentally, at about the same time as this, I was teaching myself how to play some Coldplay songs.

The Music

Using a Flip video camera and my dad’s old tripod, I filmed my cover of Fix You. Much to my surprise, I actually got some comments. And not only that, but in spite of the mistakes in my playing, the comments were actually quite positive.

Encouraged by the feedback, I got to work on my next piece: my version of Death and All His Friends. This one was a little better-timed as the song was just released a month earlier.

After uploading this one, I was curious to see what the reaction would be. I knew it wasn’t perfect, and actually quite off or wrong in some spots, but it was the best I could do at the time. I also knew that there weren’t many other covers of the song out there at the time. Thankfully, it was well-received and the positive comments started flowing in again.

The Teaching

Along with the kudos were requests for tutorials. The teacher in me couldn’t resist.

I slowly worked out how I would go about teaching this song and immediately faced a couple challenges. For one, I had to go back to my old old days of being a student myself and think about what I would need to learn this song. The next immediate challenge was filming the thing – not an easy task when the song covers a greater range of the keyboard than could be covered by the Flip camera. So a simple solution that met both challenges: film each hand separately one by one.

Now even though my earlier cover seemed to have been rated well by the viewers, I was still self-conscious about uploading another video – I think there’s always a little bit of trepidation when you expose yourself to the masses. Thankfully, both of these tutorials also got positive comments.

Starting to feel pretty good about myself, I decided to film a slightly more complete tutorial to Death and All His Friends, this time with some narration, as well as a new camera view. This one I got by using a mini-tripod, mounting it on top of the piano, and then filming with the Flip camera pointing straight down. The video actually ends up being filmed upside-down, but luckily there’s a handy feature in iMovie to rotate the view.

Sure enough, the good vibes flowed through again.

The Learning

I write this all now because to this day I still get comments about the videos (along with requests to post more songs or different versions of what’s up there already). After getting another comment just a few days ago, I went back to read through more.

It’s sure flattering when someone calls you a legend or compares your playing with Chris Martin himself, but I think the most rewarding part of it all is hearing someone say:

“thank you so much! i’ve spent hours learning this song with your demo and got a lot of joyful moments. Thank you”

To me that’s the beauty of music, teaching and learning all rolled into one.