“Angels We Have Heard On High” For Piano Using Alberti Bass

Hi. This is Duane. Today we’re going to take a look at that old classic Christmas carol, “Angels We Have Heard On High” For Piano Using Alberti Bass. I think we’ll tackle it from the Alberti-Bass standpoint. It’s pretty easy. The Alberti-Bass as you know is to take any three -note chord and play bottom, top, middle, top, bottom, top, middle, top. The only two chords so far in that song that I just played are the F chord – I’m playing the key of F by the way. It can be played in any key but I’ll play it in the key of F. Then I played the C seventh chord like that, bottom, top, middle, top.

By the way when you play the Alberti-Bass on a seventh chord, you have to leave one note out. The fifth is probably the best note to leave out because if you don’t have a third, you don’t know whether it’s major or minor. Then, of course, if you don’t play the seventh, then you don’t have a seventh chord. If you don’t play the root, then you don’t know what the chord is. The fifth is definitely the best note to leave out. It would be like this. It would sound better if we did it higher.

You might want to depress your damper pedal, the pedal on the right, a little bit so that it all kind of meshes together. I don’t mean push it down and hold it but push it down once in a while and let it accumulate a little bit. Then let it up between chords. If we were in the key of G, then our two chords would be G and D seventh. If we were in the key of A flat, it would be the E flat seventh chord. It’s the exactly same thing. The key of A. The key of B flat would be the key of B and so on. It doesn’t matter what key you play it in but the principle is exactly the same.

That’s the neat thing about music. The concepts are transferable from key to key. By the way, the techniques are transferable from song to song. You could use the Alberti-Bass on not just this but on tons of songs. That’s true of all the techniques that are available to any piano player. Let’s come back in the key of F. We played the first part. Now the second part goes like this but I think we’ll add some left-hand runs. Watch this. Let me walk you through this real slowly.

It goes from the F chord to the D seventh chord. With my left hand I’m going to F, E flat and G. I’m simply walking the path between F and D. I could go to E natural but I kind of like the feeling of the E flat chord because that creates an F seventh. This is D seventh. Now your left hand can do down just like I did the first time but if you do that you’re doubling the melody because the melody does that. That may not be a good idea. You might want to go, in other words a little different. Now when you go with G minor seventh, you can walk down from G. G, F, D, E, C. Then when you get to F, F, E, D, C, B flat, B natural.

In other words, when your right hand is busy maybe your left hand shouldn’t do too much but when your right hand’s resting, then your left hand can do something. Do you see the logic there? You can do the same thing in the key of G. There are some ideas on “Angels We Have Heard On High.” By the way I’ve had a couple of comments lately on You Tube about my hands being ugly. I’d like to explain that. They’re absolutely right. My hands are ugly but that should be an encouragement to you because in the first place I wasn’t born with hands that are suitable for piano-playing. My hands are little. My fingers are short and kind of stubby.

Piano players should have long fingers, supple movement and so on but I was not given that. It should be an encouragement because I’ve done fairly well even with the hands that I have. The reason they’re so ugly now is because I had a series over the last few years of four heart attacks followed by a four-way bypass. Since the four-way by-pass, the blood pools under my skin in my arms and hands. That’s just a little explanation of why the hands look a little funny but it doesn’t bother me if it doesn’t bother you. God bless you. Merry Christmas. Bye-bye for now.

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