Beginning Improvisation Using Just 3 Melody Notes & 3 Chords

Good morning. This is Duane and today I’d like to talk about beginning improvisation using just an octave fifth. This is for people that are just beginning at the piano or maybe they begun a bit but certainly in the first year or so.

What I’d like you to do is play an octave from A to A. That’s an octave, octavo, octopus, eight notes right? We’re going to play an octave and then we’re going to play the fifth. That’s between the octave notes. Let’s call it fifth because I’m playing the note. There’s five notes higher than the original A so I’m playing root, octave, fifth okay? Now push down on your [down propel 00:00:42] as you do that and do it again. Do it again. Nothing could be simpler, couldn’t it?

In the left hand, we’re going to use just three chords. We’re going to use the A minor chord which is like that, A, C, E except we’re going to spread it out. We’re going to play it as an arpeggio so you’re simply taking the notes of the A minor chord and you’re starting on A and skip C because that’s too muddy on there. Skip C and go to E and then A, C, E. Let’s play it that far. See how that, that’s a nice sound, isn’t it? It’s an empty kind of hollow sound or maybe a sad sound but I like it and maybe you do too.

You play these three notes and as you play the E, the middle note, the fifth, then you play your left hand part. Here we go. Now, I’m going to play the same thing on the right hand except I’m going to move to the D minor chord. D, F, A and again instead of playing there, we’re going to arpeggio it. Break it up. We’re going to play D, A, F, A, D. Then we’ll take it that far. First, A minor. Now, D minor. Now, we’re going to play E minor, E, G, B. See they’re all white keys. I’m not going to hit on any black keys here.

Again, we’re going to arpeggio that chord E, G, B down here E, A and again we’ll leave out the G because that sounds too muddy down there, E, A. Let’s say E, G, B. It doesn’t really matter as long as there are notes to that chord. Let’s try that. Okay, let’s try all three now. Here’s A minor, D minor, E minor. Did you get that? A minor, D minor and then we’re going to play this melody twice on E minor and then back to A minor.

Just by varying it a little bit, you see that’s one rhythm and then the middle rhythm is : and it just gives it a little variation but you’re still playing the same notes.

Now, what I want to show you in the left hand is you’re playing the three primary chords in the key of A minor. That’s all is going on. The A minor chord, the D minor chord and the E minor chord and for those of you that know music theory, you know that the one, four, five chord are the family chords. They’re called primary chords. They’re the family chords in any given key so it’s the simplest thing we can do. A minor, D minor, E minor in succession like that okay.

Then if I was building a song, that’s a nice theme but if I was building a song then I would do something different for the middle part and then come back to this as the last part. A lot of songs are in a form called A, A, B, A. What we just learned was the A form. Maybe tomorrow we’ll improvise a B form. Let’s do that tomorrow but right now, let’s just master the A form.

Now, the A form is three quarters of any given song. If you master this, you got three chords of the song done so here we go. A minor, D minor, E minor, A minor, okay. Then that’s the A section and then we’d repeat it again. Then tomorrow we’ll create a B section or really is a contrast to that A section and then we’ll come back to the A section again and finish off with that.

If you’re a beginner, you already have learned three quarters of a improvisation in A minor. If you enjoy this kind of thing, come on over to playpiano.com and be sure to sign up for my series of newsletters on chords and chord progressions and it’s all free, the newsletter is so come on over and sign up and we’ll see you there and we’ll see you also tomorrow as I continue this little series. Bye-bye for now.

Here is the video at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZlCYMpFEj0&feature=share&list=UUBKvmNibsNRtlmFUgp1_npw
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