Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 14:18:53 -0700 (PDT) From: Winslow Yerxa Subject: Becoming a really good chord player
ElginDoc writes:
>Would appreciate some good advice on becoming a >really good chord player. most of the chromatic >players that I know play by ear - and only in the key >of C. I read the music chords but don't do well >playing by ear, although I can play the chromatic by >ear or reading.
Do you want to figure out what chords to play when there is no written music? I can't tell for sure, but I'm guessing that's what you're looking for.
This is one of the mysterious arts of the accompanist. There's a little magic involved, but there are also three very concrete, learn-able things you can work on:
- - Knowing songs in the repertoire of tunes your companions like to play. Ask your companions to get together with you and collaborate on making up a list of tunes they like to play. Getting everyone together, they will spur one another's memories. Then, take the list and go to a large music store, and find one or two "fake" books - books that contain the melody and chords to a large number of tunes. To save space, there will be no piano part, and maybe not any words. That way, a large number of tunes can fit into the book. This is the book the cocktail looks through on the sly as he assures the customer "just hum a few bars and 'll fake it."
- - Knowing how chord progressions work. There are principles of how chord progressions work, no matter what the key. The more you know about this, both intellectually and by sound, the better prepared you are to accompany whatever is thrown at you.
- - Melodies often give hints as to what chord should be played. Sometimes it's obvious - like the melody is an arpeggio that outlines the notes of the chord, and sometimes it's more subtle. But these little hints are one of the sets of clues accompanists use to supply appropriate sounding chords and chord sequences behind singers and melody instrumentalists.
Now, the latter two involve learning some music theory. The notes of the scale can be numbered, and so can the chords. Numbers describe the relationships instead of the notes themselves. The same set of relationships exist in every key - just the names change, depending on what key you're in. Learning theory can give you a map that gives the same logical order to every key.
Theory also comes in handy when you need to transpose. Let's say someone wants to play a tune in C and your songbook has it in F or Bb or D or something. You know that, say, in D a D chord is the I chord and an A chord is the V chord. You know that in C, the I chord is C and the V chord is G, so you play those instead. What C and D have in common is a set of underlying relationships. When you know what those are, it becomes possible to substitute one for another.
Hope this helps a little.
Winslow
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