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okay you know what I'd like to work through in this segment is a famous Elton John
tune called Your Song now I say you know work through it what I mean
in what we're going to do here is really not focus on his actual arrangement or
is actual
stylistic things to make it sound like it like it you're you're used to hearing
it on the record
instead I want to take three or four steps backward and really focus on learning
what the chord changes are to this tune
and with the melody line and where they change and where they interact
so that once you get that basic stuff down your will really have the
the foundation that you need to move forward
to take advantage of somebody's other tips and tricks we can teach you
that really bring it up to to sounding polished and like something you'd be
you would be ready to go out play in front of people, so we are going to go backward a
few steps and focus just on the structure the tune
and to do that as always we're going to use a lead sheet because by its very
nature a lead sheet is only going to show you the DNA of the song if you
will
it's just the melody line and the chord changes not any of the arrangement that
someone may have used in the past it's just the bare bones
essence of what the song is which is really what you want to learn at the
beginning so you can get comfortable with that
now this a melody line is really
(a assuming you know the tune well it's a tune you're used to hearing)
it's a melody line that I think is pretty darn easy to play if you try to play along
with your singing
we've talked about that in the past ten times but this one in particular if
you literally
play everything you sing ...
now you're probably not going to see that
you know written that way but if you can if you can just sing out loud and you
know I'm a terrible saying I'm doing it here on TV so
if I can do it you can certainly do it here, you can certainly do it at home.
that point of trying to imitate yourself singing ...
or whatever you're doing that's a really healthy exercise to go through
that's going to end up making your melodic line sound a lot more interesting
than sitting and reading verbatim from a lead sheet and going ...
you know that was exactly the way it's written in the lead sheet, well you know
that's not how you would ever really play the tune in the real world
so practice what you are going do in the real world and just play it the way
you would sing the tune
so you can work on you know you can work your way through the tune
you can ignore my left hand
you know
and on through the tune, so work your way through the tune doing that so
that will get your right hand comfortable
with what the melody line is doing but now to really kinda lock that
that melody line into some context
you need to do with the chords so we need to learn what the chord changes are
in this tune
and this follows some really very nice chord changes
It starts on an Eb chord because it is in the key of Eb
and goes to an AbMajor7th chord
Where I am coming up with the notes for this chord is I have memorized these from chord diagrams in some pain tin
all these record diagrams at some point my life and if you don't have any chord
diagrams available
I would strongly encourage you thinking about getting a resource that has some
in it whether
it is a little keyboard chord finder electronic battery-operated thing which
is what I really like to use (These are no longer manufactured.)
or you can get the big fat books that have all these chord in it but
you make sure that it has the little keyboard diagrams which have the
pictures with little notes and the dots where you put your fingers that
the best way to learn chords in the style rather than trying to see what
they look like notated
so doing it that way you just need to get these chords under hand and learn it
now a couple things I want to mention in these chord changes coming up here
there's a lot of something called a slash chord in this tune and
probably the simplest way I know to describe slash chords is it's the way in
lead sheet notation they tell you to play something in the bass
that is not the root, okay it's basically saying I want to play a chord
but instead of what you would normally play as the root no to that chord on the
bottom
I want you to play some other chord which may be in the chord or not.
it's just not the root.
so the simpler way too think about it is when you see
for example this third chord after the tune starts
we've got Bb/ D so what's that telling us?
if you can take that slash and tip it to the right so it looks like a
fraction I think it's a simple way to think about it and this is how musicians
describe this
instead of saying Bb/D The musician would call that Bb
over D so tip it to the right and think about Bb over D
and that makes it pretty straightforward you have a Bb chord
over a D note
so the B flat on top or in some way play that Bb but make sure the Bb
is the bottom note
and so in essence that's all you doing there instead of playing a Bb like this
This is a normal B flat major chord Bb, D and F.
you just tip it
so the D is on the bottom so there you have accomplished it a
Bb/D
so moving on through the tune we have ...
There's a Gm
here's another Cm/Bb that saying
play the C minor chord but you gotta play B-flat on the bottom and that's
telling you to move this baseline to go
Here's a C/A
then
Ab
then
Eb/Bb again I'm just following my way through the chords
there are a lot of slash chords in this tune.
it is important for you to think that through
in most cases because he wrote a nice baseline
that moves very stepwise to force you to play that
baseline
he give you all the slash chords and that's why it's like that
Let me move to the bridge section this says ...
there's a C minor chord
Fm7, Ab nothing hard there
yeah even in the coda at the end
again just more slash chords there is a C minor, Cm/Bb,
C/Am,
Ab It's wanting to hear
that's how that is and they're going to tell you that with slash chords
let's take it together and kind of give you a sense of how that would work then
you can spend
time on your own really getting this thing underhand a good way to start if
you're struggling getting all the chords played is to just play the root of the chord
so if that's a step one you need to take before you play all the notes in your
left hand, feel free to do that
it would sound something like this. you would go ...
again at this point we're not focusing on playing up-tempo or playing it
perfectly in Tempo, we are focused on
what does this sound like together what's the chord change along with the
melody line okay
just playing roots
or whatevers to the right at the slash
or with full chords ...
now I will move the melody line up an octave to get out of the way
on and on so
whatever it is, moving that way, so that's a great way to get through a tune
I really think it behooves you
to spend a little time doing just what we're doing thinking okay what's the
chord and where's the melody line
and intentionally not worrying about
how fast you're playing it or whether you're playing it in tempo forget that
right now that
that's the next step up the ladder right now you just need to think about
really learning the tune so you won't be fumbling over what the next chord
change is
as you then focus on adding some more tips and tricks in kinda putting some
more layers on the cake so
I hope you have fun playing your song by Elton John. It is truly a beautiful tune and is
piano based
and boy to get some these things under hand will really really be fun to play
for your family and friends so
as always have fun this excerpt from the public television program
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