The DecPlay method is designed to make playing popular songs on piano quick & easy. It utilises the simple patterns that exist in songs, and is not designed for complex classical music. That said, it can enable simple classical music to be played, such as Beethoven's Fur Elise; Moonlight Sonanta (the first part) or Pachelbel's Canon in D.
How DecPlay Works
Learning piano by traditional methods is great if you want to play complex classical music, but it is a slow process. I spent 12 years doing traditional piano lessons and I only had a limited repertoire of examination pieces that I didn't enjoy playing. I couldn't play with confidence and ease or memorise songs easily, or play popular songs at parties - that's why I created the DecPlay method.
Traditional notation only shows individual notes, not chord patterns and pieces like Beethoven's Fur Elise (first part), Pachelbel's Canon in D and thousands of popular songs only use a tiny number of chords which makes them very quick to learn. For example the main theme in Fur Elise main repeats the same 2 chords and the next theme adds only 2 more chords. The melody line is a series of repeating phrases with small variations to the phrases that can be learnt really quickly.
Many professional pop stars use the 'playing patterns' and chords approach eg this is how Sir Paul McCartney wrote and played hits like Let It Be. The DecPlay system extends this approach, adds a system for the melody and uses relative numbers (like Jazz and Classical music theory), making it effective for instrumental pieces, absolute beginners and enables the professional style of playing, advanced skills (improvisation, instant transposition from the same song sheet etc....).
Writing the music (melody and chords) using relative numbers instead of absolute pitch and learning 'playing patterns' makes playing pieces like Fur Elise easily accessible to people who have struggled for years with traditional notation.
Whilst DecPlay is not designed for complex classical music, it makes simple pattern based classical pieces as well as the majority of popular songs, quick, easy and fun to learn.