In this blog, I”d just like to show 3 ways of ‘strumming’ or playing your left-hand chords in accompaniment to your right-hand melody, when you play a slower-type song that has the very common ‘Rock Beat ‘ tempo.This is the tempo you hear often, when a vocalist (especially one also playing the piano together ) sings a slower contemporary song.
As the above video show, the purpose here is to show a few the ways you can strum* your left –hand fingers, and when youre familiar with each of them, you can then flexibly, and as appropriately, blend them in yourpeft-hand playing throughout a given song.
* Sorry, I’m fond of using the term ‘strum’ - for want of a better word - as this is what I used to do when I first learned the guitar… strumming the strings, and humming the melody along.I couldn’t sing of course.
A chord refers to nothing more than a commonly-played sequence or pattern of playing a few chords (usually 4- 5) during a song. One chord typically ‘progresses’ to another expected one, before the pattern is often broken and the player plays a chord other than the next one in this chord progression pattern. But the point is, it’s good to recognize and be familiar with patterns when they occur
Some simpler songs just repeat these patterns through the song, Eg., oldies music with a C –Am-F-G progression.
For starters, the above video illustrates this very common progression.
It is useful to be familiar with chord progressions because:
- Being able to better anticipate what the next chord/s will ‘typically’ be helps make learning and playing easier in that part of the song where the pattern occurs;
- It possibly also helps when you’re composing a song. Many popular song melodies are built around common chord progressions because they’re proven and work nicely.
- Knowing chord progression also helps when you’re in a situation of playing impromptu, and may need to think quickly to apply an appropriate set of known progression chords for say, an intro or a break before the main melody starts again .
We’ll talk about other chord progressions in due course.
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.
In this blog, let’s talk about a quite common chord progression on the minor chord on the left hand.
As usual, I’ll illustrate with the simple key of C, where its most used chordin a progression is A minor (Am).
Watch the video….While holding down this Am chord in the first inversion position, ie., holding down the notes ofof A, C and E, we are going to move our extreme left finger from A to Ab, to G and then to F#.
Songs that can apply this pattern (but of course, often not throughout the whole song) include Summertime, Time In A Bottle, Music To Watch The Girls Go By, Chim Chimminee (Mary Poppins), etc.
So, the purpose here is for you to recognize the sounds of this movement, in case you encounter it.
Every time you move a note, the name of the chord changes, so if you had to name the 4 chordscreated by the move, they would be:
A-C-E = Am
Ab-C-E = Ab Augmented
G-C-E = 3rd inversion of C chord
F#-C-E = Am6
But to a write-my-own-notes guy like myself…. for all intent and purpose, I just write it down as Am 1,2,3,4.
With my way of learning the piano - through listening to myriads of popular music ( standards, pop contemporary oldies etc) - I’ve observed that piano playing is mainly about how well you combine and interpret the playing of the melody of a song on your right hand with the chords on your left.
The improvements come when you start knowing how you can do more and more things on both hands to enrich the interpretation of the song you’re playing. You gain that knowledge through self-observation when you practice, and through hearing closely to more and more music.
I for one would certainly admit I still can’t do many of the amazing things I hear other pianists do.
However, if I could just from my own experience, describe what the sequences learning of the piano are - progressing from a beginner to more advanced piano playing - it would be the following 10 steps:
1. To start off as essential ‘theory’, you need to at least be able to
- recognize all the notes on the keyboard
- distinguish between the 7 octaves on your 88-key piano, and hear the difference between a given played note and the same note on a higher or lower position on the keyboard
- first memorize the position of at least 6 chords, and then another 6 and so on, until you know at least 30 different chords, and be able to switch between them relatively smoothly and swiftly (i.e., when your mind says change, your hand almost instantly changes!).
- play the inversions of these chords, i.e. a chord made up of 3 notes has 3 inversions or different positions of playing it.
- tell what the different keys and gain some understanding of how they can be transposed from one to the other
- have some idea of the scales of your favorite key/s
2. You start off by learning to play simple melodies on your right fingers, while pressing the correct chords on your left fingers according to where they need to change in the song’s arrangement.
That is why - if you prefer not to read conventional notes - you have to start off memorizing a bunch of most-commonly used piano chords to play with our left hand (see my blogs on Chords)
3. You then learn how to move your left fingers on these chords, arpeggio-like, to ‘spread’ the sounds of the individual notes, which result in making your playing sound more ‘active’ and interesting (Watch video). This is the part where things get more challenging, as you try play the right-hand melody in synchronizaton with your left and moving on the chords. You just have to conquer this part to move on to bigger and better things! Like learning to ride a bicycle, it will just click together after repetition and practice.
4.
At this stage you’re really starting to get ‘into piano’ now, as your fingers produce some nice results.
To try and gain better playing hints - and a good habit to develop at this early stage - you start listening to more music, particulary those you have a good chance of figuring out or learning from… nothing too abstract or difficult.
Preferably, do listen to the older 1960-80s music which have distinct, easier melodies and arrangements, and to the playing styles of solo pianists (CDs by the popular pianist Van Craven , being a great start).
NEVER stop listening closely to other performers’ renditions of piano-friendly music, ie. from an analytical perspective, try figuring out the way they play their right hand melody, the way they move on their bass and chords etc. Don’t get too discouraged if they sound so complex, because hey, those pianists started somewhere very basic as well!
5.
Next, instead of playing the melody with single notes, you start to try playing it with your other free right fingers. That is, the appropriate right-hand fingers don’t lose touch of the melody, but the other unengaged/unused right-hand fingers are in fact now playing part of the chords that you’re at the same time playing with your left hand. Even use their right-hand fingers to take over some of the notes you can’t play on your weaker left-hand fingers. This makes the sounds created by your two hands more balanced and also sound richer.
6.
At this more advanced stage, you might start trying to add those extra counter melodies in between the main melody and start really making your playing more interesting and complete (instead of leaving gaps between the main melody lines).
You may also start exploring how your left hand can play some ‘countering’ melody notes at the same time as your right hand is playing the melody with other notes. In addition, to lend emphasis on some parts of the song, you use your left and right hand fingers to hit one more notes, with the left on the lower pitched note, and the right on the higher pitched note.
7.
Wow! Your playing is now starting to sound really quite impressive with all that practice. You feel good about your new-found skill and start playing longer hours, and even performing for friends and family, developing praise and confidence. You’ve got something special not many others do, and this special feeling motivates you to learn more songs and practice even more. Maybe you might even start putting up a video on YouTube to get some feedback. This good feeling will only grow and grow if you can play and improve even more.
8.
By now, as you now become quite familiar with playing the same chords so many times over, you begin figuring out and practicing how to play arpeggios on the simpler chords, and then applying them to appropriate parts of the song.
9.
As your left hand playing improves, you may become more aware about how playing the basses on your left-hand fingers is making your playing sound richer. You might also check out how your left hand can try to duplicate and move ‘in beat’ (syncopation??) to the more common rhythms or drum beats , by perhaps listening to the automatic finger chord on an electronics piano. You could also buy a drum machine and try playing your piano to it for an extra challenge. This really helps brings out variety and ‘percussion’ in your solo piano, where otherwise there would be none. You could after this even to play a song in a different rhythm or beat .
10.
You start improvising. You have heard so much music by now that you try imitating other pianist’ playing… like the way they touch or express their notes, their intros and endings, chord progressions, and other cool techniques you could also use.
Thank you.