Question about covering a song on the piano by ear?
So this might be kinda hard to explain.. The way i play a song on piano by ear is to play the chords on my left hand and the melody on my right han...
So this might be kinda hard to explain..
The way i play a song on piano by ear is to play the chords on my left hand and the melody on my right hand. But it gets reallly repetitive and boring when i play the same pattern over and over on the left hand. For example, if the chord progression was C/G/A/F then my left hand would play CEGE/GBDB/ACEC/FACA. haha sorry if that’s confusing. i know you can vary it by playing the first note of the chord, then playing the next two simultaneously, or different inversions of the chord, but it still sounds really boring…how do people make it so that you can’t really detect the chord progression right away in the song and make it interesting?
sorry if this question doesn’t make sense…:)
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It does make sense as practically all of us have gone through such stages before. In fact, I have coached about 5000 people to Play By Ear for the last 25 years and they all go through this phase initially.
Using arpeggios(broken chords) like what you did is very common. What you described secondly is called vamping. You might initially start off that way. However, there are variations to it which I called Open Chord Arpeggio and Open Chord Vamping which I would describe as playing chords *extending more than 1 octave.*
There is another way to do it: Playing your chords or broken chords accordingly to the groove of the music to simulate the ‘feel’. It’s kinda hard to show here in text. It is best shown via video in my Play By Ear Online Course. The fundamentals 6 styles are covered in Level 1. Then you will be trained to play according to the groove of all the various styles in Level 2.
Once you can handle that, the next thing is to do improvisations which essentially fills up the song to add color and fullness to the song. That will also kind of ‘cover’ up the progression somewhat.
It can be broken down into:
1. Bassing Improvisations (Using the low notes to color up your music)
2. Harmonics (Double Notes, Block Chords ,etc.)
3. String background writing (Like how you hear orchestra strings filing up a song)
4. Fills (Those little phrases filling up the in-betweens of phrases)
5. Faking & Ad-Libs
6. etc.
All these have their science and art of handling them and using them accordingly. It would be good to have tutorials on how to use them. I would be more than glad to run through them with you if you care to want to learn more.
VALID QUESTION!!!
I had that same question…
this is how i went about fixing it…i play liek you said by ear and yes i did come to the stage where everything is repetitive and boring…
So i figured…i would LISTEN to the songs i like..and analyse WHY theres sounds so good…i also do the melody in the right hand and chords in the left.
here are some of the tricks they use to make the chords unrecognizable…
`arpeggios.
`continuing the chord with your right hand then going back to your melody…
`adding color notes…so your f wouldnt just be f b and c…id add a g into it or an e….its still an f but with a different voicing to it….
`roll your chords
these are just a few…but i really leanrt to disguise the actual chord by learning to play a song i liked becuase i couldnt recognize their chords. i learn it then i memorize it from sheet music, then i learnt it so well that i can play it in any key, so i really understand whats going on THEORY wise (YES you will need to know theory) And then soon im just incorporating that style into my own playing. Do that with about 20 songs..and your chords will be unrecognizable! you learn all the tips and tricks of keeping your chords interesting and non-repetitive!
Hope that helps!
Estelle
OH and even use chord substitutions…so if you were going from C to G…go C…dmin…then G….that also helps to hide the chords you use becuase then youre not just playing the basic 1, 4 and 5 chord progression.
free download mp3 and lyrics…
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