Piano Runs & Fills Can Make Most Any Song More Interesting

This video demonstrates how to add piano runs & fills to a song.

Good morning again. This is Duane, and we’ve been doing a series on good stuff you really ought to know about music. Yesterday we took up the tune “Londonderry Air” and demonstrated how to put in some fills between the main section of the song. Previously we had learned how to play block chords on the melody to make the melody stand out. Then in the next video we talked about the fills. If you recall, after the melody stops or pauses at that point, then we used a fill like a run, a four octave run. That’s all block chords. Then I said at some point we could just echo the chord. Then we took up a half step slide there where we slid from A flat 7th down to G 7th. Then we went back to the runs, echo. I saved the second part until now.

When we got home to one, we went down a whole step to B flat, then came up by half-steps to B. That brings us to the next section. I think in the second section you ought to do something different than block chords, because the listeners have probably had enough of block chords [inaudible 00:01:40]. I would go to a big sound like that. My right hand is playing an octave with one chord in between. You could use octave 3rd if you want. In other words, here’s the melody. You could put a 3rd under the top octave note wherever it sounds decent. I wouldn’t put it in there because that’s a non-chordal tone, but you could do that.

Then when you got there, a good fill would be an open octave run like that where you take a octave and play the octave, 5th, octave, octave 5th, octave, octave 5th. Or the second 5th octave. Either way is okay. Let’s do it again. Continue on. Probably do a A minor run there. Continue with the strong octave sound. You could do the half step slide there again. This is kind of the climax of the song. Whoops. Forgot how the melody went.

Better yet, you could go back to block chords for the very end. Let’s take it from the … You could slow down there, then end on C or any substitute. Then a C or A flat, maybe go to D flat and C, or you could do a whole declension. You could start on F sharp diminished 7th and then go down to F minor 7th, E minor 7th, E flat, D minor, D flat, and home to C. Let me show you how that works.

Those are just some ideas of what you can do in the way of fillers. To sum it all up, if you’re using block chords, then you want to contrast to that block chord in your fillers. You want to do something that sound entirely different. Also, in the middle section of a song you probably want to use some contrast too from the block chords. That’s where I went to the full chords in both hands for a big sound like so. If you enjoy this sort of thing and you get some helpful tips here, then come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for our free series of piano tips. Hope to 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

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

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