#10: How To Play Chords With Melody

good evening everyone welcome to another piano lesson with Warren my name is Warren McPherson this is tutorial number ten so today I want to talk about some things specific that some of you guys have reached out to me about - emails and questions and it's how to play chords with melody and it's a very important skill once you start to get into the intermediate level playing you want to be able to sit and just play a song accompanying chords melody bass line and everything going at the same time and it can be a little bit tricky and even scary at first and confusing a few years ago when I started playing the piano I was a little bit confused as to how do I approach it you know do I play all the chords in my left hand and the melody alone in my right hand if I'm going to break it up how do I keep everything going and so in this tutorial I want to shed some light on that I'll probably do some addendum tutorials to this in the future because as you start to learn more complex songs and start doing a lot of chord substitution and stuff we we have to alter the way how we approach each of those methods so that we still keep the melody going and someone can recognize the sound instantly as we start to play it okay so for this tutorial I'm gonna be using the Elton John song can you feel the love tonight made popular by The Walt Disney movie The Lion King but a couple things I want to note before I get started um if you're still struggling with your chords make you know basic triads major minor chord diminished and so on still trying to wrap your head around the concept of the major scales and the minor scale I would recommend you go back to my tutorials and sort of clear that up first before you dive into this one because playing chords and melody at the same time especially in the split fashion that you saw I made it earlier really requires you to have a good command of the major scale and a good command have you tried be able to see them in different conversion okay so the first thing I'm going to point out regarding this structure is learn the structure of the song and what do I mean by that how many verses how many chorus are diverse in the course the same they're bridge so sort of execute the song and in a form like that verse chorus verse bridge etc or you can use letters a B a C note each section once you have done that then you want to learn what I called or what we call the harmonic rhythm of the song and what is the harmonic rhythm that simply tells you how often the chord changes is it one chord per measure for example if songs in the timing of a 4/4 this one is in 4/4 and so on so we established that there's a four big pattern in the front so now we need to see how often the chords change and is it a consistent change throughout the song or in some cases is there more than one chord in a measure or so on so we try to make a mental note of that if you're doing this for the first time I'd recommend grab a pen and paper pencil and paper and physically write out the chord changes or if you have a printed sheet or if you download a copy of the whatever song you're going to try this with from the internet then be sure to have the chord changes in front of you that's the first important thing so for the first part of this song from so far where we've been keeping two chords per measure consistent harmonic rhythm one to one one one one one so once you've established the harmonic pattern of the song we're going to step three learn the melody on its own be able to pick out the melody of the entire song once you can play the melody like that then you get an understanding of okay how it flows what notes am I going for your melody most likely in a sort of songs like this more simpler songs the melodies will belong to the key so we're gonna give up you know that we have one flat one black key b-flat and the red white the only white key that doesn't belong to the key the B and the only black key that belongs b-flat so then you know your melody is going to be playing those notes variation to those notes so that narrows it down for you it's a good thing to also sing and hum along if you're not a singer that's okay still practice to be able to hear a melody and hum it back or sing it back because that helps a lot when we're trying to pick out a melody if you don't read music so once you're able to play the melody all the way through we're going to do a little bit of analysis of the melody and this is something you can do you already have your chords written out so the first part of Sonic starts with B flat then an F in first inversion they have a in the basis it goes back b-flat a d-flat a I mean I've been saying a B flat F with an A to B not a sorry then G minor C and that pattern repeat B flat F B flat D minor this is a a minor but it's in first inversion being then B flat and E flat and right there the harmonic pattern changed a little bit we had a chord for every beat in that measure we 1 2 1 2 and that's the harmonic rhythm for the first verse and now we put the melody on top of that [Music] you that's diverse very scaled-down simple version just wanted to show you what the chords look like with the melody in the right hand now the analysis that I spoke about earlier you want to decide in the melody what notes belong to the chord tone and what note does not for example we start with a b-flat the melody start with a D so it's a chord tone then all the other notes are just passing tones and then these other two or core challenge repeat [Music] so all those three or core tones then drop on the D which is not really a chord tone drop on the B flat which is a chord tone then a G which is a chord tone and the reason I want you to go through and do that with the song slowly because it will help you to memorize the melody easier it also helps with identifying what chords coming next you can go okay it's going to be that note so I should also point out to you that this a flat does not belong to the key of s what's the relationship with an E flat chord in the key of F well it's the flat seven he's a seven and chord EU key of F the diminished chord but mr. Elton John went play the E flat and get this nice a flat major chord which is the flat seven of E and the influx has an indicator and it resolved to see and as a very common chord progression you'll hear it once you start to listen out for it in other songs I just wanted to point that out so again don't you answer started with mental analysis of how the melody and the chords are lined up because that will help the memorization process easier when you're playing okay so now you're able to play the song basic like that in its entirety [Music] there was another part of the song where the harmonic rhythm was a chord every note let me meet you had a G minor F in first inversion B flat F if you notice I've been playing this really basic and I've been playing a lot of my chords in root position just so you can see how I'm playing the chords in annuity now once you're able to do that comfortably throughout the entire song start experimenting now with how you can divvy up the chord between both hands to give you a fuller sound to give you more options one common way that I I play most things sort of a default way I go to what I call the basic template of how I play is to do a one five one in my left hand root the fifth and the root then I play the rest of the court in my right hand the third and in our probably double v and dilute again I give you a nice full court so then I would start with [Music] my b-flat and the melody melody and I just thrilled it'd be in here you know to help harmonize the melody which is an interval of a six I can do so because I know that based on my harmonic rhythm the G minor goes for too deep and the sequel's into meat I know I don't have to change the cord on all these passing tones in the melody I can just pee please no I want I can harmonize it with or and that parts repeated again here I'm just pulling out the cords the D minor for the melody the see we have this nice B minor 7 then to a minor chord the melody UVA because it's a a minor to C in the base but it's sort of doubly dumped in the left hand again it gives me a full sound so we have then then e flat cup away the clubs on this student potential nice harmonization right there or good so another thing that you can do to make your melody interesting is by harmonized it harmonizing it with third or in six jump to the chorus I start can you feel the love tonight so then I have I can start with a nice cool F chord again melodies appear in little arpeggiation there then check this part out the chords are G minor Appleton a base B flat and it was supposed to be a D minor but I just thrilled it said the D with I mean a G with the B base he could have gone to a B minor either I just liked us the way to fit around it but the melodies walking down la da da da and the belong all those ones belong to the court own Sofie make g-minor full thank you f poppy I came to base full but then the B flat chord against the G the G melody so then we have display everything and we get this nice B flat 6 but of course forget they can do so that's it I'm not going to go through the entire song I just wanted to show you the concept how to begin to approach playing melody with a song I find it easier when you divvy up the chords between the hand like that just a nice sometime you can just do often in the left hand but I like to add more notes because it gives the scored a fuller sound and it also frees up my right hand to do additional things like if I wanted to give some little improv between the melody you know I can I can do all that kind of improv stuff and and the right hand the left hand is carrying the rhythm carrying the bass and most of the chord tones because you can see some of the times I'm not even playing the fifth of the chord you know no v will be flat chord or if I'm doing some improv and the reason that works is because the most important notes in a chord is the root and the third fifth not so important so don't be bogged down that I always have to play those three notes of the chord or I need to fit those three now it's not as long as you get the root and the third of a chord we get the essence of the chords v is just there to help balance the court to make it sound full and round but when you're playing the notes that you want to be looking out for or the root and the third and if you want to get more you know technical and a little more on the advanced side you can start adding your seventh when I play doesn't matter what song I always add a seventh and a nine so I'm playing this song now the way I would play it seeing each other Jean here if you're not screen here those are nice I might even put the D minor like that seven nine right up against the third and so you start getting sound like we will additional line two and so on Hey in start makes mess with me and I'll show you how to do those things eventually that's the basic essence of how how to play a song with a melody let me just give you a quick recap under steps learn the structure of the song first form verse chorus etc etc second learn the harmonic rhythm and third learn the melody on its own just to be able to play the melody then put the chords with the melody together nice and simple and then one should can do that comfortable start playing with how you can divide the chords between hands and put the melody in there another thing to note is that the melody must always be the highest note in the chord learning by highest I mean in pitch so no point in time I have any other note crowded the melody above so our melody stays on top I try to keep the rest of the cord to the left of that if you want you can play your melody an octave higher we know more arpeggiated stoutly and so on so I'll stop there on that hopefully you found that helpful leave me a comment below shoot me a message treat me an email let me know what you think about this particular tutorial in displays anything else you'd like me to clarify on playing chords with melody there is a there's a lot more to it that not able to get into in this tutorial and I'll keep doing things along that line as I go forward but let you let me know what you think about this particular tutorial and playing chords with melody until then my name is Warren McPherson thank you for watching I appreciate you guys following and commenting and giving me thumbs up and I'll continue to answer your questions in tutorial to the best of my knowledge or continue to cover topics that I think is necessary for you to near to pick yellow help you to play better please subscribe if you're seeing my tutorial for the first time subscribed will be a lot more tutorials earning your way and incomes up Lee questions below and until then thank you keep practicing [Music]

Channel: Piano Lesson with Warren

Views: 1,805,335

Keywords: chords and melody, music theory, major scales, how to play melody on piano, chord melody piano, piano songs, chords on piano, chords explained, piano lessons for intermediate, piano lessons, piano melody tutorial, piano tutorial, how to play piano, melody piano tutorial, melody songs piano, music theory for beginners, piano chords, how to play chords on perfect piano, play chords with melody, playing chords with melody, harmonize melody piano, how to play chords

Id: SmUZlRjlwvA

Length: 27min 58sec (1678 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 18 2017