How To Use Parallel 10ths In Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”

Good morning. This is Duane. Today let’s take a look at How To Use Parallel 10ths In Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”. Last week, I recorded a video where I played an eight-chord, eight-measure chord progression. I’m going to do that again right now. I played the one chord and the five chord and the six chord, three chord, four chord, one chord, four chord, and a five chord. That’s the eight-bar progression, one of the greatest progressions ever written.

I ask people to identify what that progression was. Lots and lots of people got it correct. It’s Pachelbel’s Canon in D. It’s played lots of places, but typically it’s played at weddings nowadays as the bride comes down the aisle.

You’ve heard this: (plays piano) and so on. That’s Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

Today, I’d like to show you … we’re going to start improvising on it. I thought we were going to do that today, but I think we’ll wait until tomorrow on that because I want to show you a parallelism in 10ths that’s a natural.

The melody, by the way, is — you got the eight-chord progression that I just played. One, five, six, three, four, one, four, one. If you need to review that, go to my last Youtube video. You can find that progression. I won’t go over it more than that right now. The melody, it basically goes like this: (plays piano). I say melody. It’s kind of the implied melody, because the melody does some interesting things.

Incidentally, a canon is kind of like a round. You know, “Are you sleeping, are you sleeping,” and then, when you play “Brother John,” another part comes into “Are you sleeping, are you sleeping, Brother John?” It rhymes like that. That’s what a canon is. It can get really involved.

The melody basically goes like that: (plays piano) right down the scale, and then back up. What you can do in the left hand is, you can play a tenth below that. (plays piano) Not with index fingers. I’m not showing the correct fingering here. Let me do that a little fuller here, down here. (plays piano) Now it’s full chords. (plays piano)

Doing it, playing it in C now. I just [laid 00:03:57], so you can follow it. (plays piano) And so on and so forth. Okay?

Did you catch that parallelism? The melody moves down like that, so in the left hand, you can just go down like that. Straight down, just like the right hand went down, but a 10th below. It’s called a 10th because it’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten — ten notes’ difference. Then, when you fill in the chords, then it makes it sound very full.

Incidentally, I’m playing it too fast. It doesn’t go this fast. I’m just playing it to illustrate the chord progression here.

Okay. Try to get that under your belt. Tomorrow, we will begin to improvise on it a little bit, okay? I don’t know if that will take one session or several. In any case, we’ll begin that process. Obviously, you can improvise in any genre. It doesn’t have to sound like that. It could sound like lots of things.

That’s it for today. If you enjoy these little tips, come on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips. They’re free, and you can learn a lot from them. Thanks, and hope to see you there. Bye-bye for now.

Here is an article in Wikipedia on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachelbel’s_Canon

And here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdKDF1erMiM&feature=youtu.be
___________________________________________________________________________