Chords for Piano Lessons for Beginners: Part 2 - Interesting chord accompaniment patterns

_ Hi, welcome back to the beginner piano mini-series.
In the last lesson I've shown you four chords and explained a bit
how you can string them together and how to play them using the piano pedal.
We've encountered C major, _ _ _ [F] F major, _ _ [Am] A minor _ _ [G] and G major. _ _ _ _ _ _
Now what I'd like to do is show you four tricks
which you can use when playing these chords to make your accompaniment sound richer.
We're still going to focus on the case where you're playing [Eb] the chords with your right hand and
the sort of bass with your left hand, and I'm assuming that you're
singing along or you have your favorite song and you know either you're singing or your friend's singing or
_ you're aiming for a more of an accompaniment.
_ So the first thing is
[C] _
_ _ that you can do is you can double the bass.
So, so far we've played the bass using just one finger.
We played a C, an F, [G] an A or G
[E] depending on the chord.
[C] Now I'm saying that you can, if you're playing a C,
take your left hand,
stretch it like this such that your fifth finger hits a C and your thumb hits the C an octave above it.
_ _ _ _ This sounds fuller than just playing a
_ single note bass.
So a double bass is really a fun, sort of a very very [G] pervasive
_ technique in [C] popular piano. _
And when you play, when you shift between chords, your bass has to jump as well.
C,
_ _ [F] _ then F, F major,
[Am] _ then A minor,
_ [G] to a G major.
_ [C] So you saw that the left hand jumped from a double C
[F] _
to a double [A] F, to a double A,
[G] _
to a double G.
_ [C] _ _ _ _
So that's trick number one.
_ The second trick which you can use is
_ when you play the chords you can,
one type of accompaniment is one that tries to mimic how guitar players play.
_ So _ _ _
you can simply [Abm] play the chords with a certain emphasis and what we're going to use is
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2
[E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [C] Let's see how this sounds like with a C major chord.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Let's play this with a progression.
Let's do a C to an F to an A minor to a G. _
So here's how it will sound.
_ _ _ _ [F] _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ [G] _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ [F] _ _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ [G] _ _ _
_ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Ab] And when you start out this is going to be difficult because you're going to have to jump around both with your
left hand and your right hand.
So when you practice this make sure to practice slowly.
Start slowly,
[C] don't try to play this at full speed.
Really just try
playing it slowly, _ _ as slow as you need [F] _
to get it right.
_ _ _ _ [Am] _ _
And
the trick to this is really to keep this sort of [Gb] 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2.
So this sort of accent going and for that you have to have good technique when switching the chords
because you want to give the emphasis at the right points.
_ _ Here's another tip or technique that you can use to spice up your accompaniment, and it's called arpeggiation.
_ What you do is [C] instead of playing all of the chords notes at once you simply
arpeggiate them.
You play them one at a time.
_ So this is for more ballads or softer slower songs. _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ This was for C major.
[F] Of course you could do this for any chord.
Here's F major. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ And let's play this with a progression.
Let's do an F major going to a G major
going to an A minor going to a C major.
So the chords are going to be F major,
[G] G [Am] major, A minor,
[C] _ C major.
_ And
this will repeat.
With arpeggiation it will sound like this.
[F] _ _ _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _
[Am] _ _ _ _ _ [C] _ _ _
_ _ [F] _ _ _ _ _ [G] _
_ _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _ _
_ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [Ab] _ _ So [E] this was a third trick.
By the way, you don't have to play the arpeggiation pattern twice.
[F] You can just play it once. _
_ _ [G] _ _ _ [Am] _ _ [C] _
_ _ [F] _ _ _ [G] _ _ [Am] _
_ _ [C] _ _ [F] _ _ So it's up [Ab] to you and the song [G] and what you're trying to play. _ _
_ Now for the fourth trick.
And in this fourth trick what you're going to do is you're going to play
alternating notes within the [C] chord.
Let's take the C major chord and it has these three notes.
This G, C and E.
And we'll call them 1 2 3.
Just to label [G] them.
So what you're going to do is you're going to play 2 3 together.
And then the 1.
[C] Then a 2 3 and the 1.
2 3 1.
So it's gonna sound like this. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
When you play it, you're going to want to emphasize the 2 3
[G] slightly more than the 1.
[C] Because it's 1 2, 1 2, 1 2, 1 2. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [D] So let's take the same progression F, G, A minor, C and play it using this trick.
_ [F] _ _
_ _ _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
_ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _ [C] _
_ _ _ _ _ [F] F major,
_ _ [G] _ G major,
_ [Am] _
A minor, _ _ [C] _ C major. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ That's it for now.
I hope you've learned something interesting.
In the next lesson
we're going to add a few more chords to your repertoire and that will let you cover even more songs.
_ That's it.
I'll see you next time.
[N] _ _