In this final level, we'll see our biggest departure from the original arrangements,
and our most artistic interpretation of the elements in the song yet. It's really important
here, to (sort of) adopt the perspective that you are an artist, and you are painting with
colors and textures, when you're playing this piece on the piano. And to really lean into
the piano's range, its diverse use of dynamics and articulations. Be on the lookout for all
those things in this level, and be sure to stick around to the end of the video, so you can see how
to get access to, not only this arrangement from today's video but, the other three versions as well.
"If you're new to mDecks Music, we create music books and apps, piano arrangements, and we discuss:
improvisation, songwriting, and sometimes, we take music theory to strange and uncharted places.
So subscribe and hit the bell, and join us for exclusive access to our ever expanding library
of music resources." So, one thing this open and free, and impressionistic artistic interpretation
of the harmonic elements in the original piece, are going to offer us, is a really cool opportunity
to paint a (sort of, like) dreamy ethereal landscape, that implies a lot of original
elements, without explicitly saying so. Let's just play the first 10 measures we have ..
...we have here a sort of pre-intro to our intro, as a result of our impressionistic sort of mindset.
We'll take a listen to these first 10 bars, and then break them down.
So, there is elements of the original melody in there. There's elements of the original harmony
in there, and yet, it sounds almost nothing like the original (uh) back in level one, or even level two.
One thing (this intro) this pre-intro illustrates really really well, is the versatility
of our instrument, right? The Piano-Forte., right? It's even in the name, the dynamic contrast implemented
here, these little sudden moments of loud and soft, or these gradual crescendos and diminuendos.
The broad broad range of the instrument, right? You can see that, over here, if we fast forward
to measure 6. Look at the highest note of measure 6 and, look at the lowest portion
of measure 10. I mean that's a pretty broad spectrum of range, and the instrument is capable
of that, (and we should know that) and we should know that's a tool at our disposal, and that we can use
it whenever we want, to paint our picture, not to mention the articulations that we use. We have
this nice long legato run in measure 6. Let's take a listen to that again... and then not even
a couple measures later: a nice implementation of separated and detached staccato notes, right? A good
illustration of subtle dynamics, might be this B/D7 in the second measure. You'll hear how it
sort of pops out of nowhere, and then fades into a softer dynamic, in that Ebmaj7#11...
right? All these things are tools that are always available to us, and we need to keep that in mind
when we're painting our picture. These first three measures are a good example of how the melody
is present, while (that not be) might not be (like) super obvious, right? Like the F -- our first melodic
note -- is the 5th of this chord, and then, it jumps up to an A# (Bb) the #11 of our F#/E7#11
Then it jumps down to be this F#, this 3rd of D7. And then you find
it in the next measure inside the voicing again, as this #11 of the chord that we're on, there.
This is kind of a really cool... well it's not what we did here... it's a cool
perspective like: if you want to re-harmonize something, I mean, the only chord that illustrates
reharmonization here, is this F#/E7#11. All the other chords
are part of the original progression. But one perspective of re-harmonizing might be:
What is this A# melody note? What could it be the chord tone of? It could be the maj7
of this, or it could be in this case the #11 of E7. And then, you could just kind of plug that
chord in. The point is: the melody is in there. And sometimes it's the highest note of the voicing,
sometimes it moves to a more obscure -- harder to hear -- interior note of the voicing. And it's
part of what makes the intro sort of vaguely familiar and impressionistic yet -- I guess --
true to the original -- to some extent -- and that the melody is present. And we're using it as
a launching pad, to spring in some (to some) new ideas, you know. Like this F# over E7#11
and then you see all these upper structures up here, right? We talked about this
in the last level. How great upper structures are for highlighting tensions,
and creating new colors and textures in your music. We have a couple upper structure triads over here:
F#/E7, this B/D7. We have an upper structure quartal over here in measure
(what is this?) measure 4. And then we have this upper structure pentatonic voicing:
Cadd9/Dm7. We have a whole course on upper structures. We have
upper structures (season one) focusing on triads. we have upper structure (season two) with the
quartals. And be on the lookout, in the future, for our 3rd season of upper structure pentatonics, because
we're going to talk about that more in depthly, in those courses too. If you haven't checked those out:
go ahead and do so, so and you can understand upper structures really really well. So, let's take a
listen to those first 10 bars and then, we'll venture into the next part of our pre-intro.
...and all this here, in these two measures, is just driving us to this extended dominant sequence,
that sets up our dominant pedal point, into the intro. We have this V/V/V/V to1
effect going on here. And we're using these altered tensions -- like we talked about in level
three. This b9 over here, this #9, which again is something you can implement pretty
reliably on dominant chords, and that's what we've done here. So, let's take a listen to that again and
then we'll let it play so we can hear the whole dominant pedal point intro, that sets up our head.
There really isn't anything in this intro, that we haven't talked about already. There's just
like more of it, right? So there's that dominant pedal point -- that F on the bass --
being constant, that really sets sets our key for us; builds the tension; creates momentum and
allows us to do kind of whatever we want with the harmony on top. Like this Eb/F, E/F.
All these chords are now available to us, because that bass is so strong of an anchor -- and we've talked
about that. And then of course, there's that sort of layered perspective -- we talked about
in the last video as well -- and kind of seeing the instrument, or playing from the perspective
as a drummer, or a draw a set player, right? and these 4 layers: the bass; the harmony on the
left hand; the harmony on the right hand; and the melody. Here we have three of those elements
present. We have the bass, and we have harmony on the right hand, with a melodic line also.
And this constant (like) rhythmic interplay between the hands, and all these spaces being filled in
by one hand or the other -- or by one element, or layer, or the other -- and how that creates
that nice rhythmic grid, that we talked about, or how it illustrates --in this case -- this eighth
note rhythmic grid. And this is a way of creating a groove, exactly like a drummer would. Everything
about this line here -- because our pedal point is present -- is just triads, and/or broken triads.
Everything about this it's just three note chords, and it's a really effective use
of triads. When you're playing a pedal point, you're tried and true, you're like... You can't go wrong
with triads on the right hand, when you have that pedal point on the bottom.
All right, so you have your upper structures again -- these upper structure triads -- again, a great way
to introduce color and texture to the chords. We have our grid. We have a lot of the elements we've
already talked about. In the 4th measure of of this line (here) really kind of see that
drummer mindset, where this line on the right hand, is basically just kind of like, you
know, like what a set player would do as a fill into this accented note on the and of 2 here.
You can see the implementation of that rhythmic displacement -- that we were talking about
in levels two and three. How this G is displaced over, to the end of 1.
This E is all the way now at the end of the measure on three. The B is on the end of three, and
so on. So the melody is still intact but this is a good illustration of how our rhythmic displacement
has sort of iterated it -- or redefined it. Also more prevalent in this line --
maybe compared to the last level -- is how there's a more explicit (like) two layer
thing going on on the left hand, right? bass-harmony-harmony, bass-harmony-harmony,
bass-harmony-harmony, and how that's being kind of implemented more often in this level.
So on these four bars here, you can see the harmony is exactly the same. And again, that dotted quarter
note rhythm, that we talked about in previous levels, and how that becomes a a basis to start to
do all sorts of stuff on the right hand, right? So in measure 38, we're (sort of) officially
abandoning the melody all together, and just kind of creating these lines. It starts off kind of
linear in 38, but you can see it becomes a bit more angular, in the last two measures. And again,
all these angular lines are just merely created by using the chord tones, and approach tones,
to those chord tones. Rhythmically, what's happening here is really interesting, right? but
the grid is becoming like denser, and denser, and denser, as you read from left to right on this line.
Here we have some eighth-notes -- six eighth-notes on top of the two dotted quarter-notes
underneath it. In the next measure, we're keeping the dotted quarter-note rhythm, but now we've switched to
triplets on the right hand. So we have this like 9 on top of 2 sort of polyrhythm
thing going on, in the last two measures of this line here. It's really cool!
These next three bars -- of this section -- are probably the most
set player-esque interpretation, of how to play the instrument, right? There's a really clearly (sort of )
defined: "This is my kick drum, these are my toms, this is my snare drum, and these are my crash
hits" sort of perspective here. And we get this really cool "do da da doo da da da" like that's a
really sort of like drummer perspective, of how to play the instrument -- that rhythm. Here, listen again...
Right? Really, really cool, when you start to see the piano for what it is, a
(literally) a percussion instrument, it might re-inform some of the decisions you make, and
we're leaning into those layers -- again, those rhythmic layers.
So everything that's going on, on this line, is just setting up the climax of our piece, which would be
right here like this E7 to Ebmaj7. And everything about these measures
that lead up to that, is about (I guess) building the tension into that. Like whoe the grid complexity -- the
rhythmic grid complexity -- gets a little bit more and more, we build and build, from eighth-notes
to triplets to 16th notes. Dynamically, we're building, we have that dotted quarter-note
pulsed again -- on the left hand -- which kind of has a a 6/8 feel to it, and when paired with all the
rhythms, that's going on in the right hand, it really kind of helps us build the tension, along
with all those other elements we talked about: the dynamics, the articulations, to the apex of
our piece here: this E7. All right. one more listen to that section, then we'll check out our ending.
So, we're officially beginning our "outro" here in measure 55. And much like our our pre-intro,
this creates a really (kind of) sort of an impressionistic ethereal dreamscape,
that echoes what we just heard, with elements of the song present.
One thing worth noting is: we have this pedal point, kicking in the last measure of that line,
and carrying in into this chord here -- his C#o7. This is a really peculiar voicing.
We subbed out a lot of the chord-tones with tensions. So it actually has like more tensions, than it does
chord-tones. The only reason we know it's a C#o7 is because that was our
starting point, for subbing out the chord tones with tensions. In this next part, we start to (sort of )
abandon traditional voicings, a lot of quartals here, some slash chords, and we start to also
(sort of) depart away from tonality a little bit, right? especially, culminating in these
chords over here, in the last measure. These constant structures, that have the melody embedded
into them, as the the highest note of each voicing. But the qualities of the chords are all the same ,
and we have this sort of constant parallel structure, and that really (sort of) is a stark
departure from the tonality that the song is
predicated on, especially the original arrangement. Let's listen to that real quick...
with this last line here, we have a subV -- the Cb7 -- that resolves
to our 1. Some upper structures again, to highlight the tensions, and create those extra textures
and colors, that we've been talking about. This run here, is just a Gb lydian scale.
Some things worth noting, right? like: this Gb, right? Here, we really kind of
hammered home that Gb. When you hear this run, you hear that Gb stick out,
so that it resolves clearly -- there on that F. And that really kind of embellishes the sub-fiveness
of what's going on here. And of course, at the end, this upper structure, this
C chord, this two major over one, is a really great way to end the song, highlighting some of
the tensions in the chord. Like this #11. Let's take a listen to that ending one more time
All of our current members will have access to this arrangement ,and the other three arrangements
we've created within this series. If you'd like access to these arrangements, go
ahead and click on the join button, become a member today, or click on the link down below.
Check out this video here youtube seems to think you'll be interested
in this content join us next time as we dive deeper into the world of music thank you