Moon River For Piano – Adding Colorful Chords

Today we are going to finish up arranging Moon River for piano – part three.

Good morning. This is Duane. We’ve been doing a series of videos on how to add color to songs. Take normal songs the way they’re riffed and add colorful chords and progressions and fills and so on to make them more colorful than they might be otherwise. We’ve been attempting to play Moon River. We’ve been covering it for two sessions and this is the third. Without comment, I’ll just play through Moon River as far as we’ve gone and then we’ll take up the new section now.

Now, here’s a new section. The first chord is A minor and all you do is climb up the A minor chord. It’s three notes with A minor chord, A, C and E. The melody goes C, E, A. Let’s see. Let me take it in context though. Here we go. In the left hand, you could just chord on A minor seventh if you want. Now, the chord is F diminished, F sharp diminished. Yes, half diminished chord, F sharp half diminished which is F sharp, A, C and E. Okay, from that A minor, now the F sharp half diminished chord, then to B seventh chord. Now A minor, A seventh, D minor seventh, G and then back to the theme.

Okay, let me take just that section of A minor, F sharp diminished seventh, B seventh, E minor seventh, A seventh, D minor seventh and then go to some sort of G or if you want to skip, you could go to D flat. Either way is fine. Again, A minor, F sharp diminished, B, E minor and A seventh, D minor seventh, A flat seventh if you want and then of course there’s a duplication of section A, the first of the song.

Now, this starts, this section we’re just learning A minor, C, F sharp diminished seventh again and then that’s F seventh but in the right hand, I have a G chord. It’s a poly total chords, what it is. You got the G chord over the F seventh chord and then E minor seventh, F, C, F, C, A minor, D minor and then home to C. Then, you could just make an ending out of some of those chords I just played. Let me play it all the way through slowly and just let you watch my hands. Here we go.

I’ll try to play it faster. On slow, it doesn’t work. You know what, I think I lost it. I lost where I was in the song. Let me start again and I had to play it a little faster. Sorry. Now, here’s that A minor section, F diminished, half diminished, B, E minor, A, D minor seventh, G, then back to C. Now, this time, I didn’t do this run. I broke that just like I played three notes of the chord, then one, three. There’s that B flat seventh chord back to A minor, C, F sharp half diminished seventh, F seventh with the G over it, E.

Notice what the left hand’s doing there. Watch it. See that? The left hand has a nice counter melody here. Back to F, F back to C, A minor, D minor and then you can go home to C or you could do a fake chord like A flat major seventh or D flat major seventh and then you could either end on the C chord but you wouldn’t have to end on C. You could go something like that if you wanted to. I’m just playing with the seventh in root.

Now, that’s one way out of thousands of ways to play it. Don’t think I’m telling you to do that. I’m not. I’m just giving you some ideas trying to expand your mind a little bit so that you can do pick chords and apply them yourself and come up with something that you like. That’s it for Moon River. It took three sessions but we did it. We’ll see you tomorrow with another short video. If you’ve not already signed up for our free videos, come on to playpiano.com and sign up for them because they’re all free. Thanks. Bye.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ec5sxLXqaQ&feature=youtu.be

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