Matching Piano Chords To Melodies

so you've heard a song that you love and you've picked up the melody to it or maybe you have composed your own melody and you have no chords to match the melody that you have so you can play but that's it what does your left hand you how do you build a song around the melody so in this lesson we're going to be diving into that and really what this is is it's music theory at its finest we're harmonizing we're creating chords but you don't have to look at it like that if you don't want to what this is is it's gonna feel a little bit like a magical puzzle that you have some clues for and you get to piece together to create a sound in your song in your composition that you love so let's take a look at how we can match piano chords to the melodies so here we go I have some sheet music for you for a very simple song that we all know you are my sunshine and if you don't know it it's very simple song and easy to learn now the reason that I chose this is because when you're learning songs by ear it's really great to pick a song that you've most likely heard in your childhood because that's where you are most likely to absorb musical concepts so and you hope you have heard it so many times so it'll be easier to build from something that you're very familiar with you can download the sheet music to this lesson so you can have it to accompany if you don't have the melody memorized and we're gonna build some chords or other melody so number one you need to figure out what the key is of the song that you're playing and the best way to do this is to figure out what you're starting notice and what you're ending notice because in most cases that'll tell you what the key is so in the case of our example song here the first note is C the last note is C there's no sharps or flats we are in the key of C so it stands to reason that our first chord will most likely be the root note which brings me to my second point my second point is that most songs use the same chords just in a variety of orders in most cases the one before the five and the minor six are the chords that are going to be used in songs especially in popular music so what you want to do it once you've figured out the key is determine what those chords would be in that key see is our one count up for from see you've got our four which is F count have five you got G and count up six that puts you on the relative minor you've got a minor so more than likely based on the key that you're in those chords are going to fit somewhere in your saw so when you're trying to figure out what chords are gonna fit under the melody you're gonna use those as your first sort of point to guess from so let's take a look at how this applies to our song I'm gonna play block chords for now just cuz it's easiest to demonstrate but at the end I'll play it kind of break them up and make it sound pretty for you but let's start with our one chord the key of C the C chord and put that with our melody sour melody goes from C that sounds fine I'm gonna keep playing this chord until it doesn't sound good anymore and then we'll talk about how to change that's not good anymore so when things stop being good you're gonna have a chord change your ears are awesome they don't like to hear things that don't sound good so they're gonna help you a lot in this process so it stops sounding good I'm gonna take a moment now to examine the melody notes they're not gonna fit in that chord family of see that I was in let's take a look at the notes I was playing where things fell apart it was F and a so let's find a cord out of the cord family we talked about earlier the one four five and six that uses the notes F and a which is the F chord so that's our best guess for what the next chord should be so let's see how that fits it sounds awesome it feels very natural so let's see how this sounds all together so we'll start with our C [Music] another see here's what we're trying our fo and it's something awesome so let's find out where the next chord change has to be so let's see what happens we've just come off of that happy and we're gonna carry on to the winds guys are gray and we'll see what fits in that left hand so let's do it from beginning again our C works still works that's awesome now if you wanted something kind of modernly jazzy you could make that work but it doesn't sound quite right to me in the context of this song so it tells me that's time to find another chord so again it's solving this mystery and putting the puzzle together to figure out what chord this 'if it's in two so what we know about the chords and the key that were in the one four five and six what chord does that you fit into well it fits into the C chord because the C chord has a C and E energy the other chord it could potentially fit into that has an e is the a minor chord so we're actually gonna play with trying both the C there and the a minor chord and we're gonna decide what sounds best so here we go from the beginning got our C [Music] moving to an F let's try see now that sounds awesome what happens if we play an E minor there so it's back up to you make me happy it works it's dark and it's a choice if you wanted to play a minor chord there you absolutely could so this is what makes this extra exciting is you have choices if you're building the chord that you're playing around the melody note you have you can have options there's a relative minor there that sounded really really cool I'm gonna go with the safe for this lesson but I'm gonna leave that twist up to you so let's keep going so let's go from you make me happy you make me happy when skies are gray we're on the sea now we're noticing a pattern you'll never know dear we've been here already and we know that we play that F in the a fits so nicely into the F chord that our left hand is going to move to F so we're we're building some patterns here and we're making them work for us you'll never know dear how much I that gonna fit unless you want a seventh sort of interesting sound there you're gonna want to move the chords so let's take one more guess at what chord would logically contain an E and a C it's a C chord it's awesome it fits so let's stick with see until doesn't sound good again please don't my son sunshine that's where things change so we've got a D now so we're gonna go on a hunt to find a chord that's gonna sound good with a D so what could that be we've got C doesn't have a DF doesn't have a DG that's the five chord in this key that has D in it G B D so let's try a G with it and it works and now we're ending so we're gonna end on that chord of C so if I play that for you using those chords that we chose and I'm gonna break up my chord so it sounds a little more musical this is how maybe you normally play it let's see how all those things sound and put into action it's cute it works so we had no left hand notated here we had no cord names suggested this was all up to us to figure out what chords we could fit around the melody so to recap figure out the key that you're playing in figure out the most common the most likely chords to fit within that key which ones are gonna sound good one four five and minor six you couldn't write them down beside you like write the chord names out the one is C eg the four is FAC so you can see exactly what you're working with and then when the chord no longer sounds good take a look at the melody notes that you're playing and fit in like a puzzle the notes of the chords that are your options and try until you find something that sounds good so there's guesswork involved there's a little bit of trial and error you were going to play some bad chords as you figure this out but you get quicker at it and better at it the more you do it so let me know how it goes I would love to see your comments in the comment section below and have fun with this bye [Music]

Channel: Pianote

Views: 904,286

Keywords: music theory, melody tutorial, how to, piano chords, piano lessons, chord progressions, how to play piano, find the right chord

Id: SRSKjJSeVJw

Length: 9min 38sec (578 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 05 2019