YouTube Piano Tutorials: Tools, Technology & Tips
I’ve been creating YouTube piano tutorials for over nine years – you might have seen them on Easy Piano Teacher. My techniques and tools have changed over time, but now I’ve settled on a standard formula that works…
Today I’ll take you behind the scenes for a look at my methods and processes. Maybe you’re just interested in how I make my YouTube piano tutorials – or perhaps you’ll be inspired to create some YouTube videos of your own!
Choosing Perfect Pieces For YouTube Piano Tutorials
These days, I only use public-domain music in my tutorials. This makes it easier to include them in my printed music books (published here).
I try to choose music with broad appeal – reasonably well-known tunes, as far as possible. As a guide, I reckon if I know it, someone else will! Fortunately, there are thousands of timeless hymns, songs, and melodies to choose from.
Importantly, I assess whether the music is suitable. Some pieces are simply too long or complex to arrange for easy piano. Others don’t have clear enough melodies or need elaborate harmonies. I usually reduce songs to a right-hand melody and one or two notes in the left – that’s my stock-in-trade for the Easy Piano Teacher brand.
From Melody to MIDI: Creating Accessible Piano Arrangements
When I’ve chosen a song, I arrange it for easy piano in Musescore on my Windows PC. Musescore is free, but don’t let that put you off – it’s an excellent music notation program. I try to simplify the piece whilst retaining as much of its character and essence as I can. Once I’m happy, I export the arrangement as a MIDI file. Then, I export it twice more: firstly with the right-hand volume turned low, and secondly with the left-hand volume turned low. These different versions help my learners focus on one hand at a time in the left-hand and right-hand sections of the final video.
Bringing the Music to Life with Synthesia
To turn my MIDI files into a ‘falling-notes’ display, I use Synthesia. Synthesia is game software – it’s a bit like a Guitar Hero for piano (I might be showing my age there…) Having loaded my MIDI exports into Synthesia, I can choose whether to display the notes for the right, left, or both hands. I can also change the playback speed: this how I make my slowed-down videos. Other display options include how much of the piano keyboard to show, and whether to add the note names to the falling bars.
Capturing the Action in Windows 11
Synthesia does a great job visualising the MIDI files, but then I need to capture the display. Rather than a separate screen recorder (which I find a bit laggy) I use the Windows built-in Game Bar recorder. I play each file (left, right, both hands) at both speeds (full speed and slower) and screen-record the six video segments in turn. The Game Bar allows me to capture them relatively smoothly at a high resolution and frame rate.
Editing YouTube Piano Tutorials in Movavi
I divide the six captures between two videos (full speed and slower) in Movavi Video Editor. I have tried various editing programs, but Movavi gives me the right balance between complexity and usability. I have templates for both the full-speed and slower videos, with placeholders for song titles, pre-recorded introductions, transition screens, and endings. I drop three captures into the template and then adjust, crop, and screen mask as required. Using consistent start and end sections helps maintain my Easy Piano Teacher brand identity. To a casual viewer, the editing process probably looks quite complex, but after doing it so many times (over 900 videos!) I can prepare the final cut quite quickly. Movavi then builds the project into an MP4 file of the correct size, orientation, and quality for YouTube.
YouTube Piano Tutorial Upload and Final Touches
My creaky old internet connection used to take an hour or more to upload the two videos for each song. Today, they are online in less than a minute – thanks to my excellent 500MB ultrafast broadband! I upload the files, add the Title and Description (again using templates to save time), and set the monetisation to ‘on’ (to boost my meagre channel earnings.) I also add a custom thumbnail, which I create in Paint.Net – another free program (are you seeing a pattern here?) Again, I use templates to maintain brand identity and save time. Finally, I schedule the videos to go live at a future date and time.
Combining Skill Sets
Whether you’re a piano learner using my videos, or an aspiring video creator or musician looking to understand more about my process, I hope this brief description has enlightened or inspired you. My two main areas of skill are music (playing, understanding, reading, and writing it) and computing (automation, keeping up-to-date with new developments like Artificial Intelligence, and devising new solutions to practical problems.) So it’s hardly surprising I ended up combining them into creating YouTube piano tutorials.
Perhaps your own skill blend is different – where do your abilities and passions lie? Perhaps you might combine some of your expertise in a new way? I hope you feel inspired to try – and I wish you every success in innovating, creating value, and finding your passion!
Which part of my tutorial creation process makes you think, “Hey, I could do that!“?
Have you ever tried creating a music tutorial or video? How did it go?
Do you combine two or more very different skill sets in your work? What new possibilities could you come up with?