So, I had a lesson last night (from my husband ) and combined with some prior knowledge, I am learning chording. So we have a good fake book with lots of familar songs, and I’m practicing all my chords. But…it’s kinda boring. There’s a song I know and love, there’s 4 chords given, and I play them in various combinations 8 or 9 times. Whoopee…
So, my hubby says that I use the chord as a starting point, then noodle around to fill in the rest. I conceptually understand what he’s saying, but have no idea how to put this into practice. I could start with say, a G chord, then “noodle” all day, but it still doesn’t sound like anything. Is this just a product of having no experience and uncertainty about song structure? Any ideas on how to practice noodling?
Also - I have some prior experience from Piano for Dummies (fabulous teaching tool, BTW), and am eager to play from real sheet music. Will the chording work interfere with the actual sheet music work, or will they complement each other in the end. It just seems like my brain is trying to do two things at once, and failing at both.
Yes, pretty much. A fake book gives you a sketch of a song, or at least all the important parts like melody and chords. Many pianists will play with the harmonies, expand chords, throw in substitutions, etc., but that’s more advanced than what we’re looking at right now.
Like you said, you need to practice and learn some basic styles of accompaniment with your left hand. One simple accompaniment appropriate to more down-tempo songs might be broken chords in your left hand. So, if you have a G chord, you might play somethiing like G1-D2-G2-B2-D3-G3-D3 as eighth notes under the melody (for a chord held for a full measure). If you, say, have a G-C progression where the G is two beats and the C is two beats, you might do G1-D2-G2-B2-C2-G2-C3-E3 (sorry for the awkward notation, it’s hard explaining in text.)
So right there you have broken chord accompaniment. And there’s plenty of permutations of this basic left-hand backing, but that’s probable one of the easier places to start. A famous classical-era broken chord accompaniment is the Alberti bass, whose simplest permutation is the first note of the chord, followed by the fifth note, then third, then fifth, all in eight notes. This gets kind of boring quickly and sounds pretty dated (think Mozart’s well-known Sonata in C). And it doesn’t really always go root-five-third-five. For a dominant seventh chord (the G7 in the key of C), the Alberti bass part might be D-G-F-G, but but it maintains that low note-high note-middle note-high note shape to it.
Another easy accompaniment technique is open chord voicing. In this, the left hand plays the root and fifth of the chord (and sometimes doubles the third up an octave, so a C chord would be C-G-E, with the E a tenth above the C). The right hand plays the melody, the third, and the seventh (if included). If the chord is extended beyond a 7th (9th, 11th, 13th), oftentimes, the left hand would drop the fifth and play the seventh, and you’d stick some of these extended “color” notes into the right hand.
Then there’s techniques like stride, closed voicing, drop 2 voicing, walking bass, etc. I think the two techniques: broken chords and open voicing are probably one of the easier places to start, but it always helps either having somewhere there to show you how good it could sound when done well or find a good book that teaches these techniques. It’s rather difficult explaining in words.
I missed this part. I think they will complement each other in the end. The chording work will help you recognize chord progression patterns in songs and may well help with your memorization of pieces. I assume you already know how to read music if you’re playing from a fake book, is this correct?
Em - G - | D - - - | Em - - - | B - - - | Em - G - | D - - - | C/E - B - | Em - - -
And that left handed part is one simple way of playing it. Once you get the hang of chord progressions, you’ll realize that you could also add a couple chords to the progression above to add a little more harmonic interest. This is still simple, but try playing the above melody adding a couple slightly different chords, using the exact same left handed pattern to practice (play B-F#-A for the B7 chord below)
Em - G - | D - Bm - | C - Am - | B7 - - - | Em - G - | D - Bm - | C/E - B7 - | Em - - -
This is not so much a lesson to teach you how to do harmonic substitution (that’s a bit well more advanced), but rather to give you a sheet music example of one of the techniques above and offering a simple way to have you practicing other chords, while still maintaining a clear blueprint to work from.
Sateryn, it really depends how you would like to sound/what’s going to impress you, and keep you interested.
Sightreading can be a chore to most; chords appear to be an easy way out, but as guitarists and keyboardists both quickly find out (as did you - “whoopie”), you can easily get stuck in a rut. More so when trying to improvise (noodle). This is where most folks give up.
All the techniques pulykamell mentioned, stride, walking bass, etc. are ways to get out of the rut. They’re tried & true, relatively easily memorized patterns for the left hand that progressively leave boring, chunky block chords in the dust. Some take more coordination than others.
So, perhaps find a keyboard artist you like - simple, but not boring to your ears, and listen to what their left hand is doing. See if you can duplicate it.
Also, concentrate on developing your ear. Try playing/listening to the “other” two note intervals besides fourths and fifths, like the major/minor thirds & sixths, and tritones, in both hands. Make them your friends. These are the building blocks of chords, and as a bonus, provide another starting point for creativity. By anchoring one finger and moving another, in either direction along a scale, or moving the interval in parallel, you’ve suddenly got a whole new well from which to draw inspiration.
So, the way to play with Fake Books is to have an idea of how the song goes and a facility with the instrument?
Er, knew that from guitar fake books. Jeeze, I’m a godawful guitarist with little musical education, but I realized that, if I knew the key and what I was doing, I could play the supper club circuit. The key was easy. The rest? I stayed a busboy.
I’m not exactly grasping what you’re saying here. Familiarity with the song is a plus, yes. But not necessary. The Fake Book has the melody and chords there for you. You can take cues from the tempo markings to make a good guess at what the song is supposed to feel like. The tempo markings are usually in English and may have a stylistic description. Opening up my Fake Book at random I see: “With an easy flow” for “April Showers.” “Bright rock” for “At the Hop.” “Medium Boogie Woogie” for “Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar.” “Moderate Slow Rock” for “Islands in the Streat.” Etc. Your sight reading skills should be able to help you fake your way through the rest.
I’m not the fakir you are and lack your musical training. I could never use a fake book without my (this will sound egotistical, but it’s one of the few things I’m good at) encyclopedic familiarity with the Great American Songbook and use fake books for lyrics to tunes I already know. I know be cause I tried, and if I didn’t happen to have a battery for my radio when a song was popular I’m often screwed.
ETA: Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar? I’d be lost if Commander Cody hadn’t recorded it, and if my brother were not a HS pal of the lead guitarist’s brother.
) and combined with some prior knowledge, I am learning chording. So we have a good fake book with lots of familar songs, and I’m practicing all my chords. But…it’s kinda boring. There’s a song I know and love, there’s 4 chords given, and I play them in various combinations 8 or 9 times. Whoopee…