Designed for Playing Songs / Popular Music
DecPlay is designed for music which uses repeating patterns of chords, such as popular songs. It is not designed for complex classical music, however it can be used for 'pattern' based classical music, such as Canon in D, the first sections of Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata.
Relative Pitch
The DecPlay numbers method (PianoTabz) references 'relative' pitch for both melody (like tonic sol-fa) and chords (like jazz chord numbers / Nashville system and diatonic triad Roman numerals in classical music).
Lead Sheets
Using a lead sheet format (showing just the melody and chords), enables absolute beginners to play popular songs on piano incredibly quickly. Playing patterns are applied to the chords to create the accompaniment.
The method is the same whether you use standard lead sheets with notation and chords or PianoTabz lead sheet which use numbers and do not require students to learn traditional notation.
PianoTabz takes most students just minutes to understand. It negates the need to read rhythm as it harnesses the students familiarity with a song and uses the lyrics to indicates where to play the melody and chords, in the same way chord sheets are used by millions of guitarists.
Many students find it much easier to see the distance between notes and intervals by using numbers rather than letters. Using chords for the accompaniment shows the incredibly simple patterns that exist in the majority of songs. Using relative numbers for chords makes it much easier to see chord patterns which are obscured when songs are written in letters in 12 different musical keys.
Beginner to Advanced Styles
Within the DecPlay method, FastPlay is the beginners style, where the left hand plays the accompaniment and the right hand plays the melody.
ProPlay is an advanced style where the left hand plays a 'bass' part and the right hand plays both melody and accompaniment at the same time.
SingPlay is a style which is designed specifically for playing piano accompaniment for singing and ranges from beginner level to professional level.
Introducing more advanced patterns (including chord inversions and advanced rhythms, passing notes etc...) in incremental steps and introducing improvisation techniques, enables the both beginner and professional styles to be played using the same lead sheet.
Instant Transposition
Beginners can start playing in C and if required, can learn different scales later, to enable instant transposition to other keys, again using the same lead sheet.
Fun, Improvise, Compose and Play by Ear.
By getting straight to the fun of playing, theory is learnt first in a practical way through playing songs and only by deeper analysis later, once the application of the further knowledge is required for a practical purpose. This way, the chord patterns used in popular music become clear, which makes it much easier to improvise, compose and play by ear.
Classical Music
A variation of the PianoTabz method enables 'exact notes' style pieces to be played, which specifies individual notes in the accompaniment instead of applying playing patterns to the chord. This enables students to play pattern based classical music eg first sections of Moonlight Sonata / Fur Elise / Canon in D etc... without having to read traditional notation.