Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman,
and today we are expanding our birthday repertoire even more by learning how to
improvise an accompaniment for "Happy Birthday to You".
Oh boy! Then we'll be able to play happy birthday to you as a duet.
Cool!
That's right. Once you know the accompaniment,
you'll be able to play along with someone who knows the melody and turn it into a piano duet.
Or another thing you can do is play the accompaniment while you or a friend sings the song.
Let's come to the piano to get started.
Now, in order to improvise an accompaniment, it's important to know what key we are in.
Now,
I've usually been telling you what key a song or a piece is in,
but I'd like you to start learning how to figure that out for yourself.
So here are two main clues to figure out what key a song is in.
Clue number one is to look at the last note of the song or piece.
Can you tell me the letter name of the last note of "Happy Birthday to You"?
What know do we end on? It ends on an F.
Now, not always, but I'd say 95 to 99 percent of the time
the last note of a song is the key that you're in.
So that's one clue.
The other clue is to look for any sharps or flats.
Now here in this last phrase what do we have? ♫Happy birthday to you!♫ We have a B-flat,
and the fact that we end on an F and we have a B-flat, that tells us that we are in the key of F major.
Now that's very important because looking at the chord symbols,
if we see a Roman numeral I like
here at the end, we have to know that that means to play an F major chord.
In the key of F, a I chord means to play DO MI and SO
This is our I chord.
Now since we're going to be playing this accompaniment as a duet,
your melody player, if you play it with a partner at the piano,
melody might be playing up here instead of on middle C,
and the accompaniment might be played down on the lower part of the piano. Again here's my middle C.
So let's just work on our right hand chords using this bass F and middle C position.
Okay, can you play a I chord with your right hand?
Now we're also going to need the V7. chord. Remember for the V7 chord we'll need an E
a B-flat and a C, which you can play with 1 4 5.
Try your V7 chord.
And then back to the I chord.
Now on line two we'll need a IV chord which is F B-flat and D.
Play with fingers 1 3 5 in the right hand.
Can you try that?
Play your IV chord, and then back to the I chord.
Let's review them all one more time. I chord,
let's try V7 chord,
back to the I chord, now a IV chord,
back to the I chord.
Now pause the video if you feel like you want more practice with those. You want to feel pretty comfortable
with all of those
that you can change back and forth.
Otherwise, let's keep going and figure out what we can do with our left hand.
Our left hand will be playing the root of each chord.
How do we know what the root is? It's just the same as the name of the chord.
So in the F major pentascale, when you see a I play DO, the first note of the scale.
so when the right hand plays this for I, the left hand will play just F.
♫Happy birthday to♫, and then on V7,
the root of a V7 chord is the fifth note. Five for fifth. One, two, three, four, five. The fifth note is C
or SO. So the left hand will play C while the right hand plays that V7
♫Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!♫
♫Happy birthday dear♫ Now what do we need?
IV in Roman numerals stands for four.
So now we need the fourth note for the root. One, two, three, four is B-flat.
So the left hand plays B-flat, the right hand plays our IV chord.
♫Happy birthday dear Henry♫
I'm thinking about Henry a lot. I guess it's Henry's birthday today.
And then we go back to ♫Happy birthday to you!♫
And notice there on 'to you', the chords change pretty quickly. We have just 1 beat for the V7 chord
then it goes straight to the I chord.
Okay, now on this very first
beat, which we could call a pickup beat for these two pick up notes.
On 'happy' you'll notice the V7 is in those parentheses, and that's to tell you you don't have to play a chord there.
But what I like to do for fun
when I'm playing for like someone's birthday that I know and I want to play piano for them,
I might make it fancy and go like:
I hold down the pedal on my piano and I might kind of
you know do a little shimmy on those notes, or even go like:
See how I just took some V7 chords, or you can even:
and see that gives everyone their starting note. I was just playing V7 chords going higher and higher
to make it sound fancy. See how I did that?
♫Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!♫
♫Happy birthday dear someone♫
♫Happy birthday to you!♫
Now pause the video, and I'd like you to practice
singing "Happy Birthday" while you play those chords.
Then press play and I'll show you an even fancier way to do it, but first practice that with just these block chords
on your own, then press play to go on.
Now block chords are okay right? ♫Happy birthday to you!♫
♫Happy birthday to you!♫, but there's a way to make it sound even more fun
and interesting.
Which I like to do.
So I'm going to teach you an oom pah pah accompaniment,
but you might remember from a previous lesson.
The oom pah pah means you play the bass note on beat 1,
and then on beats 2 and 3 you play the block chord. Oom pah pah,
oom pah pah Can you try this? We're just going to play the I chord over and over again since we're in 3/4 time.
The oom pah makes a nice accompaniment for 3/4. 1 2 3 1 2 3
Play this note long, and then play the chords staccato 1 2 3 1 2 3
Now let's try the V7. we have 1
The left hand will play beat 1 on the root of the chord, and then the right hand will play two staccatos
chords on beats 2 and 3. 1 2 3 1 2 3, try this with me, go:
1 2 3 1 2 3
Now let's apply this to the first line of the song.
Like I said, you can hold down the pedal
with your foot and do something fancy for that first
little bit and then we have those pickup notes. ♫Happy birth-♫ and then on the word 'birth',
that's the first beat 1. That's our first downbeat. That's where you start with the left hand on
♫birthday to you!♫ So remember, 'happy' is your pick up beat.
Your pick up notes. So you can just do something kind of fancy if you want.
♫Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!♫
♫Happy♫ Okay, let's stop there. Pause the video and I want you to practice
your oom-pah-pah accompaniment while you or a friend sings or plays, if you're trying this as a duet,
the melody. Just work on this first line. Get that oom-pah-pah going,
Remember the first downbeat is on 'birth' not on 'happy'.
♫Happy birthday to you!♫ That's very important
for it to sound correct. Now pause and practice that accompaniment on line one, then press play to go on.
Now let's keep going to line two. We have ♫Happy birthday dear♫ then the IV chord
we play the root on beat 1, then the block chord on beat 2 which has that fermata.
So watch again. ♫Happy birthday dear someone♫
And you can hold that extra long because of the fermata, then I don't play a chord
on these next two notes ♫Happy♫ so I can get ready back on beat 1 for the I chord.
♫Happy birthday to♫ Now you only have one beat for this V7 chord so,
we've got to do the root and the block chord at the same time. See how I did that?
♫Happy birthday to you!♫
And then I like to do a little SO DO at the end down low to sound extra fancy.
So let's listen to that entire second line with the pickup notes from the previous line.
♫Happy birthday dear someone, Happy birthday to you!♫
Now pause the video and practice line two playing the accompaniment.
Remember to hold for the fermata, and then if you want you can do something fancy at the end.
Sing along as you play, and then press play to go on.
Now let's try putting the whole thing together.
If you like you can try playing along with me,
or if you want to just listen and practice more on your own later, that's fine too.
So for the beginning this time let's do something fancy by playing
a long V7 chord,
And that will give anyone who wants to sing happy birthday
a chance to hear the starting note, because that C is their starting note for singing.
So watch again. We have:
That's the starting note.
♫Happy birthday♫ and on 'birthday' we start. Okay, let's try it together now.
Here we go. Do something fancy for the V7 chord, ready, go:
♫Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!♫
♫Happy birthday dear someone♫
♫Happy birthday to you!♫
Great work today learning how to improvise an accompaniment for "Happy Birthday to You!"
I hope you enjoy making anyone's birthday even more special
by adding your piano music to the celebration.
Thanks for learning with me, and see you next time!
Okay, I thought of another birthday joke.
Go for it!
Okay, why did the little girl hit her birthday cake with a hammer?
I don't know, why?
Because it was a pound cake! Hahaha
Oh, here's one.
What kind of music is bad for birthday balloons?
Pop music! Hahaha
Pop music.
Alright, what do clams like to do on their birthdays?
I don't know, what do clams do?
Why they shelebrate! Hahaha. Shelebrate..
♫Shelebrate good times come on!♫ It's a shelebration!