“Take Me Out To The Ballgame” – Learn To Play It!

Well, good morning, This is Duane and as I’m speaking, spring training is in practice, is in session in Arizona and other places. Baseball season is upon us so I thought let’s learn “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”. A lot of people would like to be able to play that in a pinch. I played it at certain occasions and it’s kind of a fun song anyway, so let’s work through it.

I just saw Will Ferrell playing centerfield for the Angles this morning and that was a lot of fun. He actually fielded the ball quite well and hit the cutoff man, so he was pretty proud of that.

In any case, let’s work through the melody first of all. Let’s do it in the key of C so it’s based on the scale of C, of course. It starts out with C, I start at middle C, and then it jumps up an octave.

Now all those notes are members of the C6 chord. There’s the 6th. D, then back to C. Very easy, right? Let’s take it that far.

Incidentally, what I’m doing in the left hand is just playing the root of the chord. The first chord is C, then A minor, D minor, G. It’s that old, you probably heard me say 1,000 times that that chord progression is used literally thousands of songs. It’s often disguised like, I don’t think somebody would think about that as they listen to “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” but that’s indeed what it is.

If I played it with both hands, I might go like this. I went C, A minor, D minor, G7th. Let’s continue with just the right hand first. Very easy, right? Now it goes up a half-step. Then back to the start. That phrase repeats three times, doesn’t it?

Okay, let’s take a look at the chords then. C, A minor, D minor, G or G7th, C, A minor, D minor, G7th. Now A7th, the next chord is A7th, then D minor. Got that? A7th, D minor, now D Major or D7th, G7th, C, I’m sorry, C, A minor, D minor 7th, G7th, C, C7th, F, F, now this is F sharp diminished. It’s a transition chord so we have F, F sharp diminished 7th which is F sharp, A, C and E flat, now C, A minor — A7th, I’m sorry, D7th, G7th, C.

There at the end we go right out around the circle of 5ths, don’t we? We go from A7th to D7th to G7th to C. If you’re familiar with the circle of 5ths, that progresses up the 4th. The 4th above A is D, a 4th above D is G, and a 4th above G is C. There’s a zillion progressions that follow that circle of 5th as well.

Just by knowing those two things, the Blue Moon chord progression and the circle of 5ths, you’ve got a lot of the song covered.

Now, let’s take it with both hands slowly. It’s in 3/4 time so I’m playing a low note, chord, chord, low note, chord, chord, low note, chord, chord, low note, chord, chord. Later we might syncopate it a bit but right now let’s just do it a straight waltz time.

Low C, two C chords, a low A, two A minor chords, a low D, two D minor chords, a low G, and G7th chords, and then again. Now the next chord is A7th, isn’t it, so low A, A7th, you’ve two measures of that and then low D, D major, D7th, G7th, and then back to C, A minor, D minor, G, C, C7th, F, two measures of F, three measures of F, F sharp diminished, C, A7th, D7th, G7th, C.

Okay, let me take that slowly. When you get done, you can do something like this, play right through the C chord and left hand going C, G, A, C, the right hand going C, E, G, C, up, or any combination like that. It just kind of finishes it off a little bit.

Now that was a straight waltz. It could use a little bit of a jazz waltz feeling since it’s kind of playful. It’s fun to be out at the ballgame so you might do something like this.

Now notice I was going, in my under notes, under my right hand, I was sometimes playing on the off beat. It’s like 1, 2 and 3, 1, 2 and 3, 1, 2 and 3, 1, 2 and 3.

Okay, so there’s some ideas for “Take Me Out To The Ballgame”. It’s a lot of fun to play, so enjoy.

We’ll see you tomorrow with another short video like this. If you enjoy these video tips, come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for our free newsletter because it’s free and you’ll learn a lot over the course of time. Bye-bye for now.

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Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GT0uuYJAmI&feature=youtu.be

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