This guy reckons you can ‘fake’ being good at the piano – and we have questions

18 June 2019, 17:34 | Updated: 11 July 2019, 13:34

Can you really fake being good at the piano? We give our two cents on this viral video guy…

A video has been doing the rounds on the Internet lately in which confident YouTuber, Fidabulous, claims to know the secret to faking being good at the piano.

It’s all down to learning “three main things”, he claims: the four main chords used in songs, a particular finger spacing and then “pressing random buttons”.

How do you fake being good at the piano?

“This is how you fake being good at the piano”, Fidabulous begins. “There are many chords and scales and techniques that somebody who becomes good at the piano must learn.”

He continues: “We’re not trying to get good at the piano, we’re just trying to fake it.”

Before we go on much further, let’s start where Fidabulous starts – with a disclaimer: “Anyone who actually plays the piano will see right through what we are doing”. We’re glad he said it so we don’t have to.

After the intro, he explains that there are four main chords used in most songs.

Then he presses four notes – crucially, notes, not chords – but we can forgive him and assume he’s just demonstrating the bass note of each. So far so good.

First big mistake, though, is that he identifies the bass notes (which he calls chords) as C, G, A flat and F but actually plays C, G, A (not flat!) and F. We’re willing to forgive one small(ish) mistake, and have noticed it is rectified in later edits of the video posted online (like this one).

His hand spacing used to create chords from these bass notes works pretty well. What he’s playing around with are thirds and fifths, and he later sneaks in a bit of insider theory knowledge by letting us know we’re hovering around a pentatonic scale. Pretty convincing.

Now that we’re down with the notes and flying around the keyboard based on this guy’s tips for looking like a pro, it’s on to the next half of the video.

“Everything sounds prettier when you hold down this [sustain] pedal.”

With the sustain held in place, it’s all about the full keyboard run, according to fake-good-at-the piano guy. It doesn’t sound half bad, although the piano could do with being tuned in the upper registers. Ouch.

So, is it possible to fake being good at the piano?

Our verdict? It might take a bit more than this to convince some of us that this is proper piano playing, but Fidabulous’ demo isn’t half bad.

And because he’s avoiding the black keys altogether, staying in fairly safe tonal territory all the way through, we have to hand it to him that he’s made a pretty convincing case: that it’s possible to fake being good at the piano.

So there you have it – three easy steps to making it sounds like you really know what you're doing on the piano. To echo this guy’s confident closing sentiment: “you’re welcome”.