Posts Tagged ‘Chord Changes’

When you are learning to play guitar by ear it’s helpful to use
some easy to remember concepts that help relate the new material
to something we already know, this is called connected learning.

Our western music system, is based on the European diatonic
system, the effect of this music system is not unlike the effect
of gravity.

The ‘one’ chord is like our ‘musical’ sun, just as the sun has a
strong magnetic effect on the other planets in the solar system,
our ‘one’ chord has a musical magnetic effect on the other
chords, meaning each chord in a particular key wants to return
‘home’ to the ‘one’ chord.

This musical gravity concept will help us accurately predict the
chord changes in a piece of music, and will make the process of
playing by ear a very simple task.

Our musical solar system:

From our previous studies we were able to place the ‘one’ chord
in the first and last bars of a song. Returning to our musical
solar system concept, if we think of our ‘one’ chord as the
musical sun the next chord closest to our musical sun would be
the ‘five’ chord.

In other words, the chord that has the greatest desire to return
home, because of it’s proximity to the musical sun is the ‘five’
chord.

Visually, think of the ‘five’ chord as the planet Mercury
orbiting the sun.

Two chord songs:

Now, we will apply this new information to musical situations
that will increase our ability to understand how musicians play
by ear, without any written (visual) information.

Two chord songs reference chart:

Key of C – Chord 1 = C | Chord 5 = G

Key of C# – Chord 1 = C# | Chord 5 = G#

Key of Db – Chord 1 = Db | Chord 5 = Ab

Key of D – Chord 1 = D | Chord 5 = A

Key of D# – Chord 1 = D# | Chord 5 = A#

Key of Eb – Chord 1 = Eb | Chord 5 = Bb

Key of E – Chord 1 = E | Chord 5 = B

Key of F – Chord 1 = F | Chord 5 = C

Key of F# – Chord 1 = F# | Chord 5 = C#

Key of G – Chord 1 = G | Chord 5 = D

Key of G# – Chord 1 = G# | Chord 5 = D#

Key of Ab – Chord 1 = Ab | Chord 5 = Eb

Key of A – Chord 1 = A | Chord 5 = E

Key of A# – Chord 1 = A# | Chord 5 = E#

Key of Bb – Chord 1 = Bb | Chord 5 = F

Key of B – Chord 1 = B | Chord 5 = F#

Here is a typical eight bar, two chord song template in the key
of ‘C’.

| C/// | C/// | G/// | G/// |

| C/// | C/// | G/// | C/// |

Get this progression off the paper and into your head, play this
progression over and over until you own it!

This progression is the basis for all your ear training, knowing how this progression sounds and feels will turbo charge your ability to play guitar by ear.

When you improvise you need to know the relationship between chords and scales. You can of course use your ear when you improvise over chord changes but you will benefit from the freedom of knowing what you are doing when you press down the keys to create music.

Let us start with the C-major chord. In this piano lesson you will use your left hand to play chords and your right hand for scale improvisation. You can practice improvising with your left hand and playing chords with your right hand too. You are the one to decide what you need to practice.

This article is not written on a music sheet so I can not use traditional sheet music notation. I will instead use the note names together with an indication of which octave to play the note.

Here is the C-major chord for your left hand:

C: C3 E3 G3

The number three tells you to play the chord in the third octave of a common piano keyboard. That is, a keyboard with 88 keys. The important thing to remember is that the fourth octave is the middle octave of a keyboard. C4 is the famous middle C or keyhole C on an traditional piano.

Okey, it is time to see what scale to use together with the C chord. The most common choice would be to use a C-major scale as a base for your improvisations. The C-major scale consists of the white keys on your piano. Here is the C-major scale in the fourth octave:

C4 D4 E4 F4 G4 A4 B4

As soon as you can play a piano scale by heart it is time to create music with it. You can practice to play patterns built upon these scale notes. Here are a few examples:

C4 E4 G4 B4 D5 B4 G4 E4 C4

E5 B4 D5 C5 B4 G4 E4 C4 B3

C4 D4 E4 G4 A4 4B C5 E5 B4

Another common scale to use together with the C-major chord is the C-major pentatonic scale. This scale consists of only five notes in each octave instead of the seven notes in the C-major scale. This scale is constructed by omitting the fourth and seventh note in the major scale. Here are the notes:

C4 D4 E4 G4 A4

The pentatonic scale has a few benefits:

1. With only five notes it can be used together with more chords without interfering with the chord notes.

2. It is so interesting as it is that you can create melodic patterns by just playing it up and down the keyboard.

Let us create a pattern with this scale:

C4 D4 E4 G4 D4 E4 G4 A4 E4 G4 A4 C5

You can also play it the other way:

C5 A4 G4 E4 A4 G4 E4 D4 G4 E4 D4 C4

Before we finish this piano lesson we have to take a look at another interesting scale. It is the C Lydian scale. It resembles the C-major scale but with a F# instead of F. Here is the scale written out:

C4 D4 E4 F#4 G4 A4 B4

As I mentioned before the scale looks a lot like the major scale with the exception of the raised 4th. The raised 4th gives the ear the sensation of momentum and it sounds modern. Many people feel that the normal F is dissonant together with the C major chord. The F# on the other hand can be used the same way as the other notes in the scale.

Here are two examples of patterns:

C4 E4 G4 F#4 A4 C5 B4 G4 E4

C5 B4 G4 E4 A4 F#4 E4 D4

The important thing with all these scales is to create your own melodies. Give yourself time to practice slowly which will give your heart and mind time to create music.

How do you improve yourself as a worship drummer? The supportive nature of your instrument means that growing in skill and maturity is less a question of developing more riffs and chops and more that of learning how to choose the right notes for a song.

The root problem for worship drummers is this – They are usually not engaging with the songs that are being used for the worship. With this in mind, here are the three steps that will enable you as a drummer to engage more deeply with the worship songs, and help the congregation you serve to do likewise.

1) Get your rudiments right.

Many drummers playing for church are self-taught. This means their rudiments usually leave much to be desired. But you will need them in order to express the music within you and engage with the music.

So give the basics serious attention. If you can afford the time and expense get at least a few formal lessons in drum basics. Learn your single strokes, double strokes, paradiddles and double paradiddles; learn them well. Find a few four-way independence exercises and practice them diligently.

If time and money are an issue at the moment, seek out the free online drum lessons that abound on the Internet. Whatever you do, make sure you can express yourself through the instrument and get a good sound, or you may end up dragging the rest of the musicians down.

2) Learn a chord instrument.

If you want to play the drums with understanding and engage with a song, you need to think about how to use the drums to emphasize the important chord changes. For example, the crash cymbals very appropriate for bringing out the linking chords of a song. But it is hard to do that if you have no idea what is happening in the chords of the song.

So spend some time learning a chord instrument, maybe guitar or contemporary piano. When you can sense the chord movements within a song, you are better able to use the drums to support and emphasize these chord changes in a meaningful way.

3) Sing as you play.

It never fails to amaze me how few drummers actually sing as they play, even church drummers. But it is one of the simplest ways to grasp the feeling of a song and engage with it.

It also helps you choose the right notes to play on the drums. The singing will often give you strong hints on what rhythm patterns to use for a particular song. They will also tell you when to use fills and when to hold back.

And that is pretty much the area most church drummers miss it. They are as involved with the music as a drum machine would be, which is not at all. Or they play too much and become a distraction to the worship of the congregation. All these can be dealt with by just simply singing along with the song while playing and listening to how everything fits together.

Conclusion: These three steps are not flashy or glamorous. But they are very helpful to you because they force you to engage on a deeper level with the songs used in church. You will find that you then greatly enhance the worship experience of the church you serve, and glorify God in the eyes of his people.

“What are those foot-thingies for?” Kids always ask that when they see me playing a tune on the piano.

“They’re called pedals, and they are what make the piano have a magic sound,” I reply.

Children in general cannot correctly operate the pedals until they are much older, but on certain pieces it is wise to let them hold the pedal down, without changing it, to see the effect it has. Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” and “Moonlight Sonata” are perfect examples of pieces with which you can start experimenting. Any piece will do to illustrate, as shown below.

Holding the pedal down without release will, of course, blur all the chords together, but it lets the child feel more in control of the piano. And it gets the child ready to use the pedals correctly, moving the pedal up and down every time the harmony (chord) changes.

Here’s how I begin to teach the pedal.

First, explain what each of the pedals does. There are three pedals, but some pianos do not have the rather obsolete middle pedal.

Right: Sustain
Middle: Does not work on almost all except the finest concert instruments. Ignore.
Left: Soft

Begin with the sustain pedal, the one on the right.

Before you say anything, illustrate so the child sees what the pedal does to the sound. Here’s how I do it:

Have the child hold the pedal down with their right foot. If they are too short, let them stand. Don’t play anything, just let them poke around and hold the pedal.

Then have them release the pedal while you play a C chord, arpeggiated slowly from the bottom of the keyboard to the top. Play very staccato (short) so the notes are sharp and clean with a space in between each note. In Piano by Number this would be:

C E G 1 3 5 8 10 12 15 17 19, etc.

I then say, “Now let’s make a chord castle.” They will say, “What’s that?”

Now have the child press the pedal, and you play the same keys again. The notes will seem to merge together into a lovely sonic mass. Call the sound a “chord castle.”

Give a command that says, “Off with the pedal,” so they know that the event has both an “on” and an “off.”

Make a game of having them hold the pedal, and you play other chords. Minor, major, diminished, augmented, half-diminished.

Explain that the pedal is like watercolors. If you have a dab of color (a note) and add a bit of water (pedal) the color mixes with the water and washes across the page. Pedal makes the sound ring in the room and makes it larger.

Most beginner pieces do not require the pedal (The Entertainer.) Many do (Moonlight Sonata.)

Do not restrict their access to the pedal. If they want to try Entertainer with the pedal, try it. But then explain that some pieces have a “dry” sound (play a staccato piece) and some have a “wet” sound (play a piece that demands pedal.)

As for the soft pedal, have the kids try it. First show them the difference between the soft pedal by playing Moonlight Sonata first without pedal (“I can play this soft without it.”) and then with pedal (“Listen how soft I can make it!)

Pedals are not really useful for the very early beginners, but if they ask, show them.

It’s their piano and the more they know what all the accessories do, the more they will like it.

Also, if they adopt the pedal(s) on pieces like Moonlight Sonata voluntarily, applaud their maturity, but do not teach them about changing the pedal. That process is all but impossible for beginners who are having trouble enough with their two hands, without adding the feet into the equation.

In general, it takes children until about the age of 10 or 11 to be able to try changing pedals. There are obvious exceptions, but don’t push it.

Kids feel like the pedal is some secret teacher’s device, because they can barely reach them.

Let them reach further than they can grasp.

Someday they will reach the pedals and already know what they do.