Hello and welcome back, and congratulations on making it to lesson 100!
Screen high-five!
You've worked hard and I'm so proud of all the practice and progress you've made.
I hope you're proud of yourself too,
and I hope you are enjoying the skills you've learned for making music at the piano.
Today we're going to be learning how to improvise an accompaniment part for our duet
"La Cinquantaine" let's come to the piano to get started.
So, accompaniments are usually built on chords,
and this song "La Cinquantaine" is in the key of A minor, so what is the I chord?
A I chord's always built on DO, then skip up to ME SO. So these three keys will make our I chord.
Now we're also going to need the IV chord.
For a IV chord we usually move ME up to FA,
and SO up to LE since we're in a minor key we don't go a whole step.
If we were in A major we'd go up to F-sharp but we're in A minor so we use LE which is a half step up.
That makes this really nice sounding IV chord.
Again the I chord is right here, in A minor we have all white keys, then we come up here.
Well, I said all white keys, but there is one exception to that. When we do the V7 chord
sometimes in minor we use G,
but for the V7 chord we use G-sharp because that gives us that quintessential F
Sorry, V7 sound okay?
Without that G-sharp it would sound like this:
Isn't that
classic V7 sound that we're going for okay?
Let's try all of these chords with the right hand.
We're going to use right hand for the chords today.
So first try the I chord.
DO ME SO I'm going to use blocked chords today find the I chord.
Now find the IV chord. To find the IV chord leave your finger one on a but shift all your other fingers up.
Then you use 1 3 5
These three keys make the IV chord.
then shift your fingers back again to the I chord.
And let's just practice going back and forth. IV chord
I chord.
Pause the video and I just want you to get really comfortable going back and forth
from I chord to IV chord back and forth a few times then press play to go on.
Now let's practice going back and forth between the I chord and the V7 chord.
So to have your thumb reach that black key, I recommend shifting your fingers in. Don't
contort your hand to get that black key, just shift forward.
That will feel a lot better probably.
Okay, now pause the video and practice going back and forth between the I and V7 chord.
Then press play to go on.
Now when I say improvise an accompaniment,
what I mean is you're going to take the chords of the song or piece,
and use those chord symbols to come up with a fun accompaniment pattern.
and I think for this song where it's a
happy kind of celebration
song maybe they would have used it for dancing.
Let's make it a bouncy staccato feel,
and to do that let's have the left hand down
here in this A minor pentascale. Here's my middle C.
So my right hand is here, my left hand is down here.
The root of the I chord is A, and by the root that just means the lowest note.
I chord.
Can you try this? So your left hand plays A, the right hand plays a I chord.
A, I chord, A, I chord. You're just going to go back and forth playing each one staccato.
Now you try.
Let's do it again. 1-& 2-& Your turn.
So while whoever is playing the melody,
your duet partner 1-& 2-& while they play that, the accompaniment is playing 1-& 2-&
Try it one more time.
Let's do it together. Ready, go: 1-& 2-&
Okay great. Now in the next measure we have a IV chord.
Now the right hand is going to play this
which we practiced just a second ago. The left hand is going to play the IV
which is, now, the reason it's called the IV chord is one two three four is the root
of that chord which we'll learn more about later why it's the root,
if you just go up to the fourth note of the scale A is 1, B is 2, C is 3, D is 4.
That's called the root of the chord.
So you're going to play D with your left hand.
You're going to play the IV chord with your right hand. D, IV chord, D, IV chord.
Now you try.
Now let's go back to measure one. We have: I chord, I chord, then IV chord, IV chord.
The left hand is just playing A A D D
A, I chord, A, I chord, D, IV chord, D, IV chord
Pause the video and I'd like you to practice that going back and forth
between those two chords, then press play to go on.
Now just looking in the score you can see which chord to play.
In measure one we have a I chord. 1-& 2-& , then a IV chord, 1-& 2-&, back to I chord
back to IV chord, and I chord.
Now if there's no symbol you stay on the same chord.
So in measure six we continue on the I chord, then we finally get a V7 chord.
Now the root of the V7 chord is the 5th note of the scale.
A is 1, B is 2, C is 3, D is 4, E is 5. so if you see a V7 chord you have to play the fifth
note of the scale for your root. That's E, and the right hand will play the V7 chord.
For two measures. E V7 E V7 E V7 E V7
Let's try that together. Play with E with your left hand,
V7 with your right hand, and we go back and forth. 1-& 2-& 1-& 2-&
Now let's put that together from back to measure five. We have
1-& 2-& now to the V7 1-& 2-& 1-& 2-&
Pause the video and practice the chords for line two, measures five through eight then press play to go on.
Now we're ready for line three. Once again we have I chord to the IV chord.
To the I chord, to the IV chord. Let's practice that together slowly.
Ready, go: 1-& 2-& IV chord -& 2-& back to I chord -& 2-&
to IV chord -& 2-&, and line four is very similar to line two, but a little different too. We have:
I chord, I chord, this time only one measure of V7,
then we go back to I chord.
And to make it sound extra cool,
in the last measure remember we are improvising an accompaniment, which means there's no
one way you could do it.
If you don't want to do this 1-& 2-& you could do
1-&-a 2-& 1-&-a, I mean you know there's no one right or wrong way to do it.
I just came up with this rhythm so I thought it would sound cool.
For the ending I want to go 1-& 2-&, come down and play this low A.
1-& 2-& To make it sound extra cool.
Okay, but if you don't like that you could go 1-& 2-&. I just think it it doesn't sound
doesn't sound very exciting to end on that chord. I want to end like hands together 1-& 2-&
That's what I'm doing. I'm using finger 3 just coming down to this low A. 1-& 2-&
So I recommend something like that.
So now remember when you have these chords mastered, you can play this with the duet partner.
You're duet partner will be 1-& 2-& 1-& 2-&
while the accompaniment goes: 1-& 2-& 1-& 2-&
1-& 2-& 1-& 2-&
It should sound really cool together.
The tricky part is staying together. You have to really listen to each other so your notes fit together.
You have to be pretty confident too if you're struggling or pausing it's going to throw off your duet partner.
In music the notes always flow. You can't really pause to think about it,
or it messes up the other person.
So you've got to really practice hard so when you play with your duet partner
the notes flow all the way from start to finish.
If you don't have a duet partner, you can play along with the practice album.
If you want to play the accompaniment, then you need to use the practice track that plays the melody.
So choose the melody practice track so you play the accompaniment while the track plays the melody.
Let me show you what that would sound like
playing along with the melody track.
So I'm going to play the melody practice track while I play the accompaniment.
You're going to hear 4 clicks and then you can start.
2 3 4
Great job learning to improvise an accompaniment for "La Cinquantaine".
Once again, congratulations on making it through lesson 100.
I hope you enjoy playing this duet with a friend or family member or with me on the practice track.
Happy music making, and see you next time in lesson 101!
Congratulations! You made it to lesson 100!
Yeah you've been working really hard.
Keep up the great work!
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