“White Christmas” – Some Ideas For Piano Arranging

Here is the transcript of the video if you would like to follow along:

Good morning, this is Duane and Merry Christmas to you. Today we’re going to look at three kinds of parallelism and to do that we’re going to take the song “White Christmas” as an example. “White Christmas” – Some Ideas For Piano Arranging. As usual you can apply what I’m showing you in “White Christmas” to many, many other songs, so we’re not learning a song we’re learning the principle of parallelism.

There’s three kinds I’d like to show you. First of all, I’d like to show you this kind of first of all that goes like this: [Playing piano] It makes kind of a chime sound and what it is is your right hand is playing all you do is you play a scale, whatever the scale is, I’m playing the C scale but you could play D scale or F scale or whatever but I’m playing the C scale and I’m playing it with both hands but under my right hand I’m playing a fourth, one, two, three, four and on my left hand I’m playing a six. One, two, three, four, five, six.

I have my pedal depressed, my sustained pedal de3pressed and so the tone sustains. [Playing piano] Notice I’m playing it percussively, I’m kind of striking it like that and so what you get is kind of a chime sound and that’s, we’re imitating a sound. Parallelism is, parallel means you’re keeping your hands frozen and you’re moving like so, in this case down.

I’m playing it an octave higher because It has more of a sound. Before I do that I’m playing a low kind of a bell sound, I’m playing the C chord, C G on my left hand and on my right hand C D E G. Putting in the second and kind of rolling it; again kind of percussively with my pedal down. [Playing piano].

If you like to you can use that as an introduction for this song or for lots of songs, then when we get to the song itself … I’m going to show you this kind of parallelism. [Playing piano] Okay, I’m not putting anything in just so you could see the raw, the raw parallels. My left hand is playing in fifth. My right hand is playing the melody in octaves with the seventh put in so it’s parallel seventh is what it is. [Playing piano]

I’ll do that again. [Playing piano] Okay, that’s the second kind of parallelism. The third kind of parallelism is this: [Playing piano] Did you hear that? I call that frozen, a frozen chord parallelism. I’m starting out with the F chord but then I leave my hands frozen in that position and I just play the melody; it’s the F chord but I just play that frozen chord. [Playing piano]

Whoops, the chord changes to G there, I’m sorry. [Playing piano] But you keep that frozen hand position and then you can use whatever styles you know in the song but that parallelism gives you a unique sound. Now here’s another kind of parallelism. It’s that chimes sound but it’s a one-handed chimes sound and I’m playing an octave from E right down to where the melody starts again and then I can use that parallelism.

After you do the parallelism I just showed you in this raw form at first but you can echo it. Let me show you again. [Playing piano] You see that, after I play that first chord I echoed it up the keyboard an octave or two. Echo … Christmas, you see I echoed the … [Playing piano]. I forgot how it went. [Playing piano]

Then you might end with this: [playing piano] something like that. Well that was, I started to teach you three kind of parallelism but really turned out to be four because not only did it have that kind of thing but I mentioned the parallel six leading in, back into the melody. There’s some ideas about how to use parallelisms in songs and remember it doesn’t apply just to “White Christmas” but applies to every time, every kind of song where you have an opportunity to go up a half step or a whole step and it slides nicely. Look for those kind of opportunities.

If you enjoy this kind of piano tips come on over to Playpiano.com and sign up for our free newsletter because the newsletter is loaded with piano tips and videos and audio instruction and pictures of chords and so on. You don’t want to do without that if you’re serious about improving your piano playing so thanks for now, thanks for being with me today and again, Merry Christmas and we’ll see you tomorrow with another short video of some sort so bye-bye for now.

Here is the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asZey7Afj2U

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