How many piano arranging techniques do you know?

Good morning. This is Duane. Today I’d like to talk about the variety of piano arranging techniques you can use in any given song. I’m going to take the old jazz standard, Satin Doll, and play it in a variety of ways, and we’ll talk about what we can do in both the right hand and the left hand. I think you’ll be surprise how many different styles we can use in the same song. You know the tune … That’s the whole theme of the song. That’s section A. It’s very easy, isn’t it. You could learn that melody in 3 minutes or maybe 4 you learn it. Okay. What I can do is I can play that in octaves … like that.

Or I can play it in thirds … Of course I could play the single finger … I could play it in chords, not just octaves and not just thirds but whole chords … In the bridge I could do a … Okay. So far we’ve used octaves, fill in, and notice when I fill in octave I fill in the names of the chord notes between … If a chord’s d minor 7th I fill in the notes of the d minor 7th chord. Often, just to get a … I don’t know. I kind of like the impetus of sliding off a black key now and then. Okay, in the left hand, right then I was playing the left hand in the rhythm of the right hand. You see the rhythm of the melody, but the first time I did this …

I’m playing steadily. Low note, chord, chord, chord. Low note, chord, chord, chord. Low note, chord, chord, chord. Low note, chord, chord, chord. Low note, chord, chord, chord. Low note, chord, chord, chord. Okay. All those are a viable way. We had 1, we had thirds, was 2. We had single finger. That’s 3. Chords, that’s 4, so at least 4 styles in the right hand that we could use.

In the left hand we’ve talked about playing in the rhythm of the melody. That’s better when you have a trio so that the bass keeps the beat for you and establishes that. Otherwise you don’t really have a steady beat in the left hand. That’s why most of the time people want to play a steady beat like so. Then when we come to the bride, if we’re playing the theme in octaves like that … Let’s say that we’re playing the key [inaudible 00:03:52]. I mean the theme … Then we come to the bridge we probably want to do something different …

Then back to whatever we were doing in the theme. In section A, I used the octaves [inaudible 00:04:30], but in section B I just used a single finger and little playful that. I left the melody for a minute, and I went like this … a blues scale in F. That’s what I did. That’s a possibility, too. Really I just wanted to illustrate how many different styles you can get into 1 song. Really I’ve just scratched the surface. I haven’t talked about any of the half step slides. Like it makes sense to do something like this. You set the table like that … or … When you have enough time you can come down and play the chord in both hands to set the table for the style that’s going to happen shortly.

That’s it for today. Just a few ideas on different styles you could plug into a song. I used satin doll, but that applies to any song. Thanks for being with me, and if you enjoy these kind of types come on over to playpiano and sign up for our free piano tips. See you there. Bye bye for now.

YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Egz6O-XAKqA&feature=youtu.be
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