Create a new tune by improvising on piano chords!

Our video today deals with improvising on piano chords to create a new melody of a song.

Click on this link to watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edH21ng_Wv4&feature=youtu.be

Good morning. This is Duane. This is the second part of a series we are doing on how to improvise using chords. Last time we said that improvisation, when you’re making up a new melody … and that’s what improvisation is, where you take a song and you keep the chord progressions but you make up a new melody. Now I realize there’s some free form improvisations where you just make up your own music and your own chords and so on. I could play like that. I could do something like that where there’s no reference to a song there. That’s fine, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about taking an existing song and then making up a new melody. For example, if we were playing “Moon River,” here’s a melody. If I improvised on it I would make a new melody like that.

Last time we took up “Blue Moon.” There’s only two ways to improvise. That is to make up a melody out of scale fragments or out of broken chords. There’s no other way. You either have a scale of some sort, a scale fragment … you don’t play a whole scale of course but a part of a scale, or part of a chord. You usually don’t play a whole chord. I could improvise on C using any part of the C scale or any passing tones I wanted to. Or I could do it by breaking up the chord.

Today we’re going to take this just a step further and I’m just going to play two chords. Well, I think I’ll take four chords. I’ll take the four chords of “Blue Moon.” We’ll call them C or C major 7th, A minor 7th, D minor 7th, and G 7th. You know the song. Take those four chords: C major 7th, A minor 7th, D minor 7th, and G 7th. Now what I’m going to do is just break up the chords this time. I’m not going to use any scales. See what I did? I took the C major 7th chord and went right up the chord. Syncopated it a little bit. Then I took the A minor 7th chord and came down on it. I went up on the C major 7th chord, came down on the A minor 7th chord, went up on the D minor 7th chord, came down on the G 7th chord. You could do it in any order of course. I could go … and anything like that.

That’s very, very simple, but that’s the way you start. I suggest to you if you’re a beginner, then you just take those four chords and work on that. Break those notes up somehow, the notes of the chord. I’m sorry. It’s best if you can make a rhythm pattern out of it too. If you don’t use the rhythm and melody, make up your own rhythm pattern. Notice I went da da da da da, da da da da. I imitated the rhythm that I did at first. See that? As you get more advanced you can use a lot of different variations of that. That’s the way to get started.

Now tomorrow I’ll show you how to use some passing tones, some scale notes with passing tones to make it more interesting so that you can do this kind of thing. That’s very simple to do using some passing tones. We’ll talk about that tomorrow as we continue our series on how to improvise using chords. We’ll see you then. If you are not already signed up for our newsletter, be sure and do that. You get free videos most every day. It’s all free, so hope you take advantage of that. Come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for that. We’ll see you there. Bye bye for now.

***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

Click on this link to watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edH21ng_Wv4&feature=youtu.be
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