Good morning. This is Duane, and we are doing a series of songs just to show what arranging techniques and colorful chords will do for songs. There is nothing wrong with playing a song as written, by the way, and if you want to do that that’s great, and I recommend it, but if you want to make it sound a little more colorful, a little more full, then you need to know what to do with chords, and styles, and so on.

Today we are going to take a look at the piano chord progressions of The Nearness of You, the great ballad by Hoagy Carmichael, and it’s usually played in the key of F, and of course that would be based on the scale of F, so let’s just walk through the chords first of all. The melody goes like this.

What chord you think that would be? F chord, right. I’m playing F Major 7th there. The next chord is C Minor 7th over F. Or another way of viewing it is F 7th with a suspension. Therefore then … Next chord is B Flat. I’m playing B Flat Major 7th with a 9th in it. F chord is one of the diminished 7th chords, and as you know, there’s only 3 different diminished 7th chord. We’ll call it B Flat diminished 7th. B Flat, D Flat, E and G. Oh no … The chord is A Minor, there. A Minor probably give away to D 7th. I used a polytonel chord there. Let me take it that far.

B Flat. That’s that diminished 7th. A Minor. A Minor 7th, and now I’m going to play D Flat and 7th. Now if you want to play it just like that, that’s fine, but if you want it tightened use a Flat 9th, or even a Flat 9th and a Flat 5th. That’s really make it [inaudible 00:02:24] I kind of like it, but, you may not, okay. There’s always a choice, by they way, of chords. You don’t have to play like somebody else.

Now that chord’s G Minor 7th. I’m putting a 9th in it. Now what is that that I’m doing? That’s called block style chords. Notice I … That’s a G Minor 7th, but I have my little finger on G and I’m playing the melody in both hands. Melody is doubled, and under my right hand I’m putting in the notes of the G Minor 7th chord, plus a 9th. Then I changed to C 7th suspension. Then I can go to A Minor 7th. Kind of a turnaround.

You do that. A Minor 7th, A Flat 7th, D Flat Major 7th, C 7th. That brings us to the theme again.

By the way, what is that? That’s just an echo, isn’t it? I’m just echoing what I am doing here. Not exactly, but close.

Oh no … A Minor 7th, D 7th, G Minor 7th. Okay. When I land on F and change it briefly at G Minor 7th over F and then back to F. Then I think it goes like this. Yeah. That’s the F chord. G Minor 7th, now C 7th, back to F, that’s that C Minor 7th again, that’s a B Flat Major 7th, A Minor 7th. You can use that same D chord if you want to. G 7th. I’m putting in a 6th, or a 13th, and then flatting it, then change to G Minor 7th over C. There you used to have step slider. Instead of going … Like to B Flat, I slid into B Flat via B 7th. Open 7th with the left hand, B Flat, that diminished 7th chord again. A Minor 7th, A 7th. It’s just the nearness of you. D 7th. Remember how the melody goes. C 7th, and then of course you can go home to F, or you can go to D Flat, or G Flat, and then end on F. You could use a fade ending in other words. Okay.

That’s the basic chord structure and that’s all we’re going to do today, but tomorrow, we’ll flesh it out and talk about stylistic devices and get more detail into the actual chord voicing.

            That’s it for today, and we’ll see you tomorrow

***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=sqhBDEmWy2s&feature=youtu.be

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