Piano Fillers For Your Right Hand

Here is a transcript of the video if you would like to follow along:

Good morning. This is Duane and today I’d like to talk about right hand piano fillers. Your right hand is useful for more than just playing the melody. A lot of people think they just play the melody with the right hand. For example, let’s say you were playing along here [playing piano], okay that’s fine, but you could do so much more. In other words the melody rests from time to time, doesn’t it?

After you play [playing piano] there’s a long time before you have to play the [playing piano], and that’s a long break before it goes on [playing piano]. Break, break. [Playing piano]

So, what do you do with the right hand when it’s not playing the melody? Well there’s lots of things you can do in the way of right hand fillers, and I’d like to talk about a couple. For example, after the first fools rush in, after the first melody note, you can just take the chord, whatever it is, I’m playing a D minor 9 [playing piano] and then break it up the : take it up the keyboard. [Playing piano] If I had time I could come back down. See that, I actually came back down for an octave I think. [Playing piano]

You see, the fills that you put in can be as simple as an echo. That time I just went [playing piano] in an echo an octave higher. [Playing piano] Now when I have a break there then I’ll take the chord down in straddles. The chord is B flat 7th, but it’s got a C over it, so I’m going to straddle the C chord down as a filler until it gets to the next chord.

[Playing piano] Then you go back to the next chorus. Any time you go through you can do different echoes, I mean different fillers, okay? So some of the fillers I talked about between the melodies were runs. [Playing piano] Either up or down [Playing piano] and straddles. [Playing piano] there I just played the chord. I put in an extra chord. I did a half step slide from A flat to G [playing piano]. As soon as I got done with the melody, I got my right hand down and played the chord. I kind of took it up, [playing piano] kind of a passing tone.

[Playing piano] There I just took the chord and made a little rhythmic thing out of it. Echo than an [ek-tah-fy-er 0:05:01] [playing piano]. So, just some of the fillers you can put in between the melodies.
So my point is, in addition to playing the melody with your right hand, you can play the single finger, you can play an [inaudible 0:06:07], you can play all full of chords or whatever, but in the breaks, put in some fillers of some sort and they can be echoes, they can be runs, they can be straddles, they can be two one break ups, they can just be chords that are played beneath the melody, or passing tunes [playing piano] like that sort of thing. You can do it high, you can do it low, and you can do it all over the keyboard. So, you can fill up your piano playing a good deal if you’re just using the empty spaces to create some counter melodies and some interesting things.

Okay, that’s it for today and we’ll see you again tomorrow. Bye-bye for now.

Here is the YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wlhoe8Gyag4