Doper pianists - how can I improve?

Cafe Society
1

I hope I can articulate my questions properly.

Background: I’ve never had a piano lesson in my life; everything I know and can do, I taught myself (some from books). I have no illusions about my finger position, posture, etc. being anything better than ‘sloppy’.

I always had a piano in the house, I’ve been ‘playing’ as long as I can remember. I play popular music, strictly for my own enjoyment. I am good enough where I can impress the hell out of those who do not know any better, but a real pianist would spot me as a ‘faker’ instantly.

And that is what I feel like I am doing, faking. Even though I can read music and know virtually all the chords. I basically open a book up to a song I like and play the melody with my right hand while playing some variation of the chord with my left, sort of improvising the lower notes.

I’ve actually become pretty adept at running chord notes in a manner that sound pleasant within the structure of the song, but I know there is so much more I should be doing with that left hand. For example, say the chord is an F for two measures; I would play rhythmic and varied combinations of the three notes that make up the F chord for those two measures. I rarely stray from those three notes, though.

My right hand has similar limitations. Much of the melody is single-noted (although I am getting much better at recognizing some 2 or 3-note combinations that work for certain notes). Again, I limit myself to (mostly) the notes of the melody.
There are some easier songs – ‘Hallelujah’ is one – where I can recognize and manage more keys and deeper sounds, and when I play these they sound full and non-amateurish.

Am I correct that many pianists (think piano bar, not concert) typically just play the melody and do major improvising to fill in the gaps, based on the chords? Is this why chords are even indicated on sheet music? Otherwise, one would just play all the bass notes to get that bottom sound with no need to be aware of the chord called for, right?

I’d love to take real lessons some day, but there will not be time for that for a couple more years (work full time + school full time).

In the meantime, aside from practicepracticepractice, what can I do to improve?

Thanks!

mmm

2

The first thing that pops into my head is trying to play entirely with your right hand. You can make all 3 or 4 chord tones with your right hand. If it sounds too weird for you, play the bass note of the chord with your left hand. Heck, most studio playing is based on playing that way, with runs and fills added later.

Another is simply to learn how to create fills without bothering to play the actual melody. It may be easier after you get the idea of playing the chords in your right hand, as I suggest above.

Anyways, when it all comes down to it, I think all of us studio-style musicians feel like we are “faking” rather than playing. You just fake it until you sound like some of the other people who you don’t think are faking.

ETA: Oh, and your style must sound really good with “O Holy Night.” I’d love to hear a recording.

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I don’t want to hear anything bad said about ‘faking’ - it’s a skill I don’t happen to possess, and though I work at it, it is coming slowly.

First off - any interest in working on some classical stuff? I ask that because it’s easier for me to suggest - that’s what I’m working on right now. A very useful resource is to find a copy of the Royal Conservatory of Music Syllabus for piano (Check the library(s) in your area first!) and look for repertoire that you already know. From there, you figure out what grade level of rep. you should be working on. Look that rep up in the library, or order some of it on line. Just as an example, say you’re at a grade six level - you can order the Grade Six repertoire book, or you can find some of the pieces at the library and borrow them for a while.

Also, there is the Popular Selection List, which is partly aimed at young students who might be losing interest in standard repertoire and who might be inspired by working on the theme from ‘Star Wars’, or a Disney song, etc… There are also some very good jazz arrangements to work from. Curiously, while the Syllabus must be purchased, the Pop. Selection List can be downloaded for free.

There are some good jazz materials to work from - there’s ‘The Jazz Piano Book’ by Mark Levine, which is excellent. There are good materials available from Jamie Abersold as well.

Do you have some means of recording yourself? GarageBand, iPhone or Blackberry? Zoom? It’s really useful. GarageBand has lessons that can be downloaded. (Can’t vouch for them - I only know of their existence.) Band in a Box is a very useful bit of software for PCs - the Mac version is an antique, but the PC version is great.

I highly recommend lessons - I understand you feel like that’s not a possibility right now, and you may well be correct. You know your schedule and finances far better than I do. I can only say that one of the best things about a teacher is that they can keep you in the right notch between getting frustrated with repertoire that is too hard and getting bored with repertoire that is too easy. I’ll just throw out the idea - if you’re finding the time to practice/play one hour a day, you might be able to manage 6 hours of practice/play and a one hour lesson. I don’t know about your school - is there any way to work in piano lessons as an arts elective? or sign up for the piano pedagogy lessons? Music students who are taking pedagogy often need ‘guinea pig’ students… Okay, that’s enough sermonizing - I’m getting off my soap box now.

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I’m not sure I see the problem – if your rhythm is good and you hit the melody (whether it’s the straight melody or something you’re creating on the spot), various strategies for LH (or even inner voices split between RH and LH) should sound fine.

If you want to play the music as written, then you’ll just need to practice sight reading more. Despite stories from the old days, nowadays any decent jazz piano player is also a monster reader, and not just of lead sheet/fake book type stuff. Classical training is probably the royal road to learning to pop off some rounds of easier Haydn or Beethoven, such that you won’t have to think much about the specific notes.

But if it’s “just” jazz (!) – work on the sound you get in LH and internal voicings and be happy if you hit on something good. That’s what everybody else does, AFAIK. Don’t forget octave work in RH and internal chordings between the octaves in RH – that’s a legitimate sound as well, and everybody does it (some more than others).

5

I do classical and improvised music, and what you described sounds like what I do when I get the creative juices going. Really good stuff man.

If you’re looking for a challenge, I would try learning figured bass, personally, though I’m not sure how much that would interest you. You could always try playing music outside of your normal domain.

I’m a music theory teacher and amateur organist, and so I’m admittedly biased, but if you learn a bit of harmony, and know why certain chords are placed where they are, you can create a great sound by substituting chords. It sounds beautiful and really shows your chops. Nothing too wild, even - just spotting a few patterns in the music and altering them a bit.

Do you play with other musicians? If your goal isn’t to be a Chopin master, jamming with a guitarist or a singer or whatever, and learning how they play a melody and follow it…that can be a fantastic skill to learn, and something I wish I had more free time to master…

6

Want something real simple, but effective, to play around with to start? Learn some chord voicings, particularly open or shell voicings. I’m not sure how you’re playing your chords now, but it sounds like you have all your chord tones in the left hand. With open voicing–which is what you hear in a lot of laid-back soft cocktail piano–you spread the notes out. The most typical voicing is root-5th in the left hand, and 3rd, 7th, melody note in the right hand, or root-seventh in the left, and 3rd, extended chord tone, melody note in the right.

This video gives you an idea of what I’m talking about. You’ll want to learn about all sorts of voicings and accompaniments (if you’re interested more in playing from lead sheets with melody lines and chords), but open chording is fun and relatively easy to play around with to start.

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You have found one way of playing and now you’d like to find another? I think it’s a great idea to diversify. Just because learning music is fun.

Since you’ve never had a teacher, how good is your training? Can you listen to yourself while playing?

Find yourself some new training routines. Play with just one hand. That will force you to pay attention to just one part of your playing. Play too slow or too fast. Leave the pedals out so you hear your hands as “bare”. Decide not to use F at all and just see where it goes. It doesn’t matter how stupid it is as long as it makes you focus on something you didn’t see before.

Training in a varied way is good even ifyou learn from the sheets.

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There are some amazing recordings of classic Bop pianists playing solo with primarily “shell” voicings as they’re usually called.

You may have to dig around, but there are excellent examples of this on record by Bud Powell (there are some on “Genius of Bud Powell,” but he does this solo style pretty often), Sonny Clark (“The Sonny Clark Memorial Album”), and Barry Harris (“Listen to Barry Harris”) that come to my mind.

There are lots of other examples, but these are just the ones I could think of while not around my record collection. If you get the rhythm right, you can really burn it down just using these real simple LH voicings, but it will no doubt take a while to get an uptempo style to sound happening. Shouldn’t give you any trouble for anything less than a Bud Powell on Fire tempo, though.

9

Get some videos from The Piano Guy, Scott Houston. Highly recommended, and great fun to watch. See if your local PBS or public access station carries the series. I play Scott every weekday at 5PM, so if you’re in my neighborhood and get cable…

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I’ve seen an episode of “The Piano Guy” – it’s a pretty entertaining show, and I learned a new tune without even trying just flipping through the channels.

You might also try “walking” the bass on a medium tune – the way an organ player would do it. Hampton Hawes’s “The Challenge” (all solo) is a pretty good album to see how a real master makes it work, but there’s at least one example on the “Live at Maybeck” concert by Gene Harris (“Blues for Rhonda”) which is pretty sick. IIRC Herbie does walk a blues on “The Piano,” but not totally sure on that.

I play “Lush Life” by doing a faux-impressionistic kind of arpeggiation in the LH during one of the sections – that works on a lot of ballads, and you can go all kinds of ways with that rolling bass, depending on the mood you want to create.

I’d suggest getting your hands on all solo piano albums you can find and afford – there’s no substitute for transcribing or at least getting some new sounds in your head.