Idiot's Guides - Music Theory

by Michael Miller

  Playing the Part

  Once you have the chords written down, you have to play the song. Because there’s no formal piano part, you’re on your own in terms of figuring out what type of part to play. Fortunately, you can employ some common accompaniment techniques; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

  Block Chord Accompaniment

  The easiest type of accompaniment to play is the block chord accompaniment. This approach is exactly as it sounds: whenever there’s a chord change, you put all your fingers on the keyboard (at the same time) and play the chord.

  That’s it. You don’t play any special rhythms, you don’t arpeggiate the chord, you don’t do anything except plunk! the notes of the chord all at once.

  All you have to do is put the three (or more) notes of the chord in your right hand and double the root of the chord with your left hand, like this:

  Accompanying a melody with block chords.

  The primary benefit of playing a block chord accompaniment is that it’s easy—for you, anyway. The drawback is that it’s a rather sparse accompaniment; it really doesn’t add anything to the music, except to provide the most basic harmonic underpinning to the melody.

  Still, if block chords are all you can master, that’s what you should play. No one will ever accuse you of getting in the way or covering up the melody!

  Rhythmic Accompaniment

  There’s another way to play chords that isn’t quite as boring as the block-chord approach. You play the block chords, but with a more interesting rhythmic pattern.

  What kind of pattern am I talking about? There are several you can choose from, including these:

  Rhythmic accompaniment in quarter notes.

  Rhythmic accompaniment with a syncopated rhythm.

  Rhythmic accompaniment with a syncopated dotted quarter note rhythm—kind of a Latin feel.

  You can even break up the rhythm slightly by playing your left hand (the bass) on beats one and three, and your right hand (the chords) on two and four, like this:

  Playing the chords on the backbeat.

  Or, if you want a more lively sound, play the bass on each beat and the chords as eighth notes on each upbeat (plus the downbeat of one), like this:

  Playing the chords on the upbeat.

  The benefit of this approach is that it provides a driving pulse for the song. The drawback is that you have to pick the right kind of pulse, which requires you to have some sense of rhythm.

  If you don’t have any natural rhythm, you might want to stick to block chords.

  Arpeggiated Accompaniment

  If you’re playing a slower song, you might want to break up the chords and play the individual notes in a sequence, like an arpeggio. You can create a simple arpeggiated accompaniment by playing straight eighth notes over two beats, with the root of the chord on beat one, the third of the chord on the first upbeat, the fifth on beat two, and the third (again) on the second upbeat. (An arpeggiated accompaniment is often called a broken chord accompaniment because you break the chord apart and play each note separately.)

  Written out, it looks something like this:

  Playing an arpeggiated accompaniment.

  You can vary this accompaniment by changing up the order of the chord tones, varying the rhythm, or even adding passing notes, like this:

  An arpeggiated accompaniment with passing tones in addition to the main chord tones.

  If you make sure you play the root of the chord in the bass, you have a quick and easy accompaniment for all types of music.

  Moving Bass

  Once you get good at these simple types of accompaniment, you can spice things up by playing a more complex bass part.

  So far, all you have to do is play the root of the chord—in time!—with your left hand. However, if you listen to just about any song from the pop era, starting with the Beatles and the Motown sound, you’ll hear a lot more in the bass than just the root. That’s because bass guitarists in the ’60s upped the ante and started playing some really interesting bass parts.

  NOTE

  James Jamerson, the great Motown bassist, was one of the pioneers of this new style of bass playing. One of the most influential bass parts ever recorded was on the Four Tops’ hit “Bernadette”—which is James Jamerson at the top of his form.

  If you want to add more bass to your piano accompaniments, start by adding passing tones between the root notes of consecutive chords, like this:

  Passing notes in the bass.

  You’re not limited to the root in the bass, either. Many bass parts provide interest by stopping on the third or the fifth of the chord, instead of on the root. If you expand on this concept you end up with a walking bass line, such as that found in a lot of jazz music. A walking bass line goes beyond simple passing tones by “walking” up and down the scale, like this:

  A walking bass line.

  As you develop your accompanying skills, you can elaborate on the bass or the chords in lots of different ways. Just remember to listen to the song and play a part that’s appropriate.

  One Good Strum Deserves Another

  Pianos aren’t the only accompanying instruments, of course. If you play guitar, you have to face many of the same challenges a piano player does when asked to provide accompaniment to others.

  Chief of these challenges, of course, is figuring out what chords to play—which, you now know, is within your grasp. All you have to do is use the skills you learned previously in this book.

  Once you’ve figured out the chords, you have to play them. In most instances, you can get by with simple strumming. You can strum on the first beat of every measure, you can strum on every beat, you can strum a backbeat on two and four, or you can strum in a more complex rhythm. Depending on the song, you can even break up the chords by playing one string at a time in an arpeggiated pattern. The important thing is to use your ears and play what fits the music.

  And make sure you keep up with the changes!

  Exercises

  Exercise 13-1

  Play a block-chord accompaniment based on the following lead sheet.

  Exercise 13-2

  Play a rhythmic accompaniment based on the following lead sheet.

  Exercise 13-3

  Play an arpeggiated accompaniment based on the following lead sheet.

  Exercise 13-4

  Play an accompaniment with a moving bass part, based on the following lead sheet.

  The Least You Need to Know

  If you’re given a lead sheet with chord notation, play the chords as written.

  If you’re given a melody sheet with no chords noted—or no music at all—you have to figure out the chords before you play.

  When accompanying other musicians, play the chord with your right hand and the root of the chord with your left.

  You can play many different types of accompaniment—block chords, simple rhythms, broken chords, and so on—depending on the mood and tempo of the song itself.

  Before you play a new song, make sure you sketch out the form of the song (verse, chorus, and so forth) so that you don’t get lost in the middle of things.

  CHAPTER

  14

  Transposing to Other Keys

  In This Chapter

  Understanding transposition

  Discovering when you need to transpose a song

  Learning different methods of transposition

  Using computerized music notation programs to transpose your songs automatically

  You’re sitting at your piano, on stage, ready to play the next tune, when the female vocalist walks over to you.

  “This song’s a little high for me in B♭,” she says. “Take it down to A.”

  Huh?

  Or maybe you’re just starting to play guitar, don’t know all the chords yet, and just got the sheet music for one of your favorite songs. You blanch when you discover that the song is in the key of G♭. G-flat! Who plays in G-flat? You don’t know any chords in G-flat—not a one!

&
nbsp; But you do know all your chords in G; maybe there’s a way to change the song from G♭ to G.

  Perhaps you’re arranging a Christmas carol for your church choir, which will be accompanied by a solo trumpet. You hand the trumpet player his part, he plays what you thought was supposed to be a C, but it comes out as a B♭ instead, according to the notes on your piano.

  What gives?

  All three of these examples are situations in which you need to know how to transpose a piece of music from one key to another—which is what this chapter is all about.

  Move Your Notes Around

  Transposition is the art of translating a note or chord from one key to another. It’s really a math exercise—this note in this key equals that note in that key. When you transpose a note or a melody or a chord, you take it from one key, and instead play the equivalent note, melody, or chord in another key.

  For example, let’s say you’re playing the note C in the key of C—the key’s tonic note. When you transpose that note to the key of F, you now play an F—which is the tonic note for the key of F.

  Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

  Let’s look at a more complex example: say you’re in the key of C and you play a melody that moves from C to D to E—the first three notes of the C Major scale. When you transpose that melody to the key of F, the new notes (the first three notes of the F Major scale) are F, G, A.

  Getting the hang of it yet?

  Here’s another example: say you’re in the key of C, and you’re playing the I-vi-IV-V chord progression—C-Am-F-G. When you transpose that chord progression into the key of F, the new chords are F-Dm-B♭-C. It’s still I-vi-IV-V; just in a different key.

  You can transpose from any one key to any other key. That means you could move the notes anywhere from a half step to a major seventh up or down from where you started. (You also can move notes up or down by whole octaves—what is called octave transposition—but you’re really not altering any notes; you’re just changing octaves.)

  Why You Need to Transpose

  As you saw in the introduction to this chapter, there are many different reasons you might need to transpose a song. Here are some of the most common:

  The song, as written, is out of the range of a vocalist or instrumentalist. If a singer can’t hit the high notes in the key of C, maybe the key of B or B♭, or even A might be friendlier.

  You or another musician don’t know how to play the song in the given key. This is especially a problem with casual guitarists who don’t always know the chords in some of the more extreme flat or sharp keys—but they do know the chords for G and A and C and E. If you can transpose the song to one of these keys, everyone can play their parts. (You have the same problem with any instrument that has to deal with a lot of sharps and flats in the key signature; it’s easier to play in C, G, D, F, and B♭ than it is to play in the other, more complex, keys.)

  You’re writing or arranging for one of the many instruments that don’t play in what we call concert key. For example, trumpets always sound one whole note lower than what is written—so you have to transpose all trumpet players’ music up a step so they’ll be in the same key as the other musicians. (So if the concert key is C, you write the trumpet part in D; when a trumpet plays a D, it actually sounds as concert C.) These instruments are called transposing instruments because you have to transpose their parts for them.

  These scenarios are more common than you’d think—which means you better learn how to transpose—and fast!

  DEFINITION

  Concert key or concert pitch is the underlying key of a piece of music—that is, the actual pitches that sound when played. The piano is always in concert key. (Many instruments do not play in concert key. See Chapter 20 to learn which instruments play in what keys.)

  Four Ways to Transpose

  When you have to transpose a song from one key to another, there are four ways to go about it. You can …

  Put your math skills to work and manually move each note up or down the required number of half steps.

  Put your music theory skills to work and utilize degree-wise Roman numeral notation.

  Use your music theory skills again and mechanically transpose each note based on the interval from the previous note.

  Put technology to work and let a computerized music notation program do the job for you.

  Step-Wise Transposition

  Step-wise transposition is the grunt work of the arranging and composing world. In this method, you count the half steps between the first key and the second, and then move each note and chord up or down the necessary number of steps.

  For example, let’s say you have the following melody in the key of D:

  Your original melody, in the key of D.

  You need to transpose this melody to the key of F. When you do the counting, you find that F is three half steps above D. So you have to move all the chords and notes up three half steps.

  Start by changing the key signature from D (two sharps) to F (one flat). Then move the melody up three half steps, one note at a time, like this:

  1. Take the first note of the melody—an A. If you move this note up three half steps, it becomes a C.

  2. Move to the second note of the melody—a B. If you move this note up three half steps, it becomes a D.

  3. Move to the third note of the melody—a C♯. If you move this note up three half steps, it becomes an E.

  And so on, and so on. You do the same thing with the chords:

  1. The first chord is D Major. If you move this chord up three half steps, it becomes an F Major chord.

  2. The second chord is a G Major. If you move this chord up three half steps, it becomes a B♭ Major chord.

  When you get done transposing all the notes and chords, you get this:

  The same melody, transposed to the key of F.

  It’s grunt work, that’s for sure—but it gets the job done.

  Degree-Wise Transposition

  If you’ve done a good job reading this book—and developing your music theory skills accordingly—there’s another approach you can take to transposition. This approach requires you to break all the chords and notes down to their degrees of the underlying scale; you can then apply those degree representations to the new key.

  The easiest way to understand this approach is to look at chords—in this case, the chords from our previous key-of-D melody:

  The original chord progression, in the key of D.

  To get the ball rolling, we’ve noted the chord type above each chord—I, IV, V, and so forth. For the next few minutes, we’re going to work strictly with this degree notation and forget (for the time being) about the original chords.

  The chord progression in Roman numerals only.

  With the chord progression broken down by Roman numeral, you can write out each of the chords in your new key—in this case, the key of F. When you write out the new chords, you get this:

  The chord progression transposed to the key of F.

  Voilà! You’ve just transposed the entire chord progression—and you didn’t have to count any half steps to do it.

  TIP

  If you’re not sure which chords to use, refer to the Scale-Based Chords table in Chapter 10.

  You can apply this same technique to the notes in the melody. Work through the original key-of-D melody and put the degree of the scale (1, 2, 3, and so forth) under each note of the melody, like this:

  Marking up the original melody, write the degree of the scale under each note.

  Now get a blank sheet of music paper and, in the key of F, write out the scale degrees below the staff. If you fill in the actual notes for each scale degree, you end up with the completed melody:

  Your transposed melody, by the numbers.

  This method is a little more work for melodies than it is for chords, but it definitely works.

  Interval-Based Transposition

  In interval-based transposition, you have to transpose the first note f
rom one key to another, but then you ignore the key change and work completely in the new key. You do this by noting the intervals between each note in the melody, and then using those intervals to “compose” the transposed melody on the fly.

  Let’s turn again to our original melody, and note the intervals between each note in the melody, like this:

  The original melody, marked up with intervals.

  Now, you start composing your “new” melody in the new key. The first note in the new key (which you have to manually figure out) is a C, and the interval between that note and the second note is a major second—which makes the second note a D. The next interval is another major second, which makes the next note an E. The next interval is a major second down, which makes the next note a D. And so on, until you’re done.

  Transposing your melody one interval at a time.

  This method doesn’t work as well when you’re transposing chords, because it doesn’t tell you what type of chord comes next—major, minor, or other. I suppose you could augment this interval-based approach by noting the chord type from the original version, but that gets a tad complex; there are easier ways to transpose chord progressions.

  Software-Based Transposition