In this blog, let’s check out how to add an oriental touch or effect to your notes (Watch above video).

Rather than actually hearing these played by Asian musicians themselves in their music, I’ve heard them mainly applied in western interpretations of Asian music. I may be Chinese, but don’t ask me why – maybe it’s like having chop suey in America, when nobody in the East ever cooks Chinese food that way!

So, I’ve heard these oriental sounds applied in songs like (a few are my renditions):

- You Only Live Twice

- Rose Rose I Love You

- China Nights

- Green Island Serenade (The ending part)

- Sayonora (as played briefly in the above video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgvCQsX0Jn0

- Sukiyaki (watch this YoutTube version by A Taste Of Honey – very nice! )

…. amongst others.

You may have occasion to apply these oriental sounds, or otherwise use them for the fun of it.

Watch the video to try these notes out.

Thank you.

Here are some nice notes to add to your major and minor chords, rather than playing them ‘straight’.

As the above video illustrates, you are basically adding the major 9th and major 7th notes in the case of the major chords, and the minor 9 th and 7th in the case of the minor chords.

They then lend some sounds which are typically heard not only in ‘New Age music, but a lot of the contemporary songs, and even Jim Brickman’s piano stylings.

When you playing left hand chord, or even right hand meldy with more than one notes, try adding touches of these extra notes. Doing this, coupled by your hearing of how other pianists apply them as well, you’ll start getting a feel of which parts of the song to best apply these notes.

Thank you.

When you play a chord, say C (holding down the notes of C, E and G). you would typically hold the major position, so the bass that sounds is your left-most and smallest finger of your left hand. That’s playing the root bass of C on the C chord.

In a song arrangement that requires you to hold the chord longer, you don’t have to just keep pressing the C bass for your C chord; as doing so would sound boring and monotonous.

Instead, you should try alternating C bass with a second bass of G. This sounds right, and is allowed because G is one of the notes making up the cord of C.

So, just keep in mind that every chord has at least a second bass you can play on (if the time allows), and that 2^nd bass is always 5 semitones to the left (lower) , or 7 semitones to the right (higher), of the root bass.

You can figure out the 2^nd bass of any chord by counting either of the above ways. Hence, the 2^nd bass of F chord is C; for Ab it’s Eb; for G, it’s D etc.

To illustrate further in the diagram below - after your left hand holds the the notes in the first diagram, your little left finger then plays on the lower G bass note, and then goes back to the C normal position. You can also play the higher bass (ie., the G to the right of C) in the second picture to add variation, but it usually sounds better playing the lower G bass (to the left).

Now, it would also be ok if you make E (being one of the 3 notes making up the C chord) the second bass after playing C, but it just doesn’t – generally speaking - sound as nice as the ‘further-away G. Playing E would be more approriate right if the song arrangement requires you to play the chord of C in the 2^nd inversion position… ie. a chord made of E, G and C).

Playing C and its second bass of G applies to pretty well all the old-style tempos like swing, march, rock, tango, waltz, and also the latin beats. You can turn on an auto chord accompaniment on an electronic piano, and hear exactly what I mean; because these pairs of basses will sound for most of the rhythm variations, when you press any chord.

Thank you.