DAVIS COUNTY—For those who have always dreamed of playing the piano but don't read music, a unique class could be the answer. Rather than focusing on the notes as in the classical method, Instant Piano for Hopelessly Busy People teaches chords. 

“There’s always been two different ways of learning the piano,” said instructor Craig Coffman, who started teaching in 1993. “There’s the classical note reading method which I was trained in like everybody else back in the day. And there’s what’s called the cord method, which is the way every single professional plays.”

The reason it’s done that way is because there are a lot of different types of music in modern popular styles, he said. “When I talk about modern music I’m talking about anything that’s not classical. Jazz, blues, show tunes, country music, anything like that.”

The fact is there are lots of things in those styles that are impossible to write down with a note on a page, said Coffman. “How do you write a blues note on a page? It’s a note that’s bent. You can’t do it. So things that are like that in these modern styles are things that are really, really important to the style of music and if you take those things away you literally suck the life out of the music.”

That’s why every single professional who plays modern music on the piano always uses the chord method, he said. “They never use the note reading method. Now some of them do read notes, but when you ask them if they read notes they’ll say, ‘yeah, but not enough to mess up my playing. In other words, they’re not dependent on it.”

It’s still a radical notion to most people today that you can play the piano and not have to read notes to do it, said Coffman. “It’s because of the way it’s taught. It used to be almost kind of a secret. Now it’s not a secret but it’s still not taught by most piano instructors. So because of that, I’ve had about 35,000 people come to my classes in the last however many years.”

Coffman said he’s not the only one who does this. “When I started doing this in ‘93 the internet was just getting started. Back then there were very few people going out of their way to teach this. Now everybody’s online teaching it. I love teaching it because people are so eager to learn it.”

It’s fun to teach people who are eager, he said. “The nice thing about the cord method is it’s not only the right way to play modern music, it’s much, much easier than reading notes. Because you see, music is made of chords and patterns that conveniently repeat themselves a lot.”

When some people think about playing with notes they’re having to read every single note that their finger presses down on the key, said Coffman. “That’s one of the things that makes it so incredibly difficult. Where the cord method is teaching you patterns. So it's much, much quicker and easier. I tell people who leave my class they will be able to play simple songs right away with both hands and that’s pretty radical to people.”

Because of COVID, Coffman said he had to start teaching online. “Now I have more students than I’ve ever had. People absolutely love taking my class at home. Now people sit at home with their piano. I’ve got two cameras, one on my face and one on my hands. I can say ‘now mute yourself and follow along with what I do.’ I can’t do that in a live class.”

That is one advantage of teaching online rather than in a live class, he said. “But I love doing the live classes so much.”

Coffman said he has people call him back all of the time just thrilled with what they’re doing. “It still takes work but because it’s so much easier than note reading, people that would never ever learn the note reading method, learn this and have a lot of fun with it.”

Coffman is 71. “I’ll probably be doing this until the day I kick off.”

For more information and to register for a class go to contact Davis Community Education at 801-402-8395 or https://daviscomed.davis.k12.ut.us/o/daviscomed/.