Away in a Manger For Piano – Using Alberti Bass Style

Good morning, and merry Christmas to you. This is Duane, and today let’s take a look at that old familiar Christmas carol Away in a Manger for piano. It’s a very simple song to play, and we could do it in many ways, let’s just a couple. Okay, let’s play it, say, in the key of F, okay? And my left hand, I think I’ll do something like this. Or I could do like– I could use an Alberti bass. Either way is fine, or both. You could do it both ways. Let’s take the Alberti bass first of all and just take a look at it.

Alberti bass, of course, is where you play bottom, top, middle, top, bottom, top, middle, top, okay? Just break up the chord, and the chords are very simple. They’re either C, F, or maybe B-flat sometimes, or C seventh… like so. Listen. Watch. Now see, that’s B-flat. Back to F. I’m playing it upside down, of course. And here’s C or C seventh. Back to F. Notice my right hand, too, instead of just playing the melody, I can play some under notes on the off beat. In other words, those are notes of chord that I’m playing on the off beats, one and two and three and– like that. Now, the first way I played it was kind of like an ostinato on my left hand. I played it like this.

What was going on on the left hand was I was keeping my little finger on F all the time and just playing alternate notes like this… depending on what the chord was. And you keep your foot on the damper pedal quite a bit. So let the notes flow together, okay? So we have one and, and one and, and one and… that kind of feeling in the left-hand depending on the chord, and it gives it kind of a– kind of a– almost a dreamlike quality, okay. So there’s a couple ideas on “Away in a Manger.” Alberti bass in the right hand– I mean, in the left hand. In the right hand, just play the melody, but you can use chord notes under it, or you can play a chord in the right hand… and your left hand does that ostinato kind of thing. Notice in the right hand, too, I sometimes use some grace notes like that. I’m using– that’s the B-flat chord, but I’m just playing the top two notes, but I’m glancing off the second note to the third note. Okay? Now, notice I felt free to alter the melody too a little bit.

I want you to always feel free to do that as well. It makes it a little more interesting if you get off the melody a little bit, you improvise just a little bit, but not enough to where people lose the melody, okay? In other words, get off it for a little bit, but come right back to it, okay? Well, there’s a couple ideas on “Away in a Manger.” So thanks for being with me, and we’ll see you again tomorrow as we continue playing through some old familiar Christmas carols. Thanks, and bye-bye for now.

For a complete course on playing Christmas Carols please check out https://www.playpiano.com/musical-courses/christmas-carols.htm

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmrYHGlhKKc
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