A Song without notes.. Just chords above the lyrics??

[musicsminion]

I know how to read piano notes, and I consider myself to be a pretty good site-reader (as long as it's my level or difficulty) , but I get so lost whenever I get a song without the notes; instead there are chords written above the lyrics.

Now, I know how to read them as well. But when I play it, it's too simple. I just play the three root notes of the chord and that's pretty much as far as I can go.

I've met people my age that can make such a masterpiece of a song by just creating from the chords that are on the page. I've tried so many times, and I've tried so hard. I've even asked my teacher about it, but all she said was that I have to practice and it will come easier for me once I'm more experienced.

I don't want to give up. Maybe my theory skills aren't very strong or fully developed yet?


How can I learn to play the song with the chords??? 

[sharmayelverton]

Hi there,

If your getting music in this format I presume it is 'popular/jazz' music of some description. The way you would generally interpret the chords will be largely dependent to the style of the music. Of course for any style you would need to learn some of the conventions of that style.

Jazz is the most  sophisticated genre to use this approach, where one would learn to play the chords in various rhythmic configurations, learn to extend them up to higher degrees, use different voicings and at times even re-harmonizing them. Having even a little knowledge in this area would be hugely beneficial and would cover a large amount of what you would need to know to play simpler pop genres as well as giving you some tools to do some interesting things that you might not have considered otherwise.

The most comprehensive book on this is Mark Levin's 'the jazz piano book' which has been my bible since I bought it 10 years ago.

I know Tim Richards has also published a series of books on jazz piano and these take things at a slower pace then the Mark Levin, perhaps more a little more accessible but not so complete.

A guy called Willie Myette has a fantastic website www.jazzpianolessons.com, which I feel is both really accessible for beginners yet amazingly complete. He breaks things down in really easy to follow ways in a extensive series of video lessons. The subscription to his website is modest although he offers a 3 day free trial with full access to all of his videos as well as those of his sister sites (funk piano and blues or gospel I think), I learnt allot in those 3 days despite having played jazz for 10 years.

Aside from all that it's always good to just experiment with things. Having a little knowledge of harmony and composition will help of course but you can always discover things without the theory.

So you know how to construct a basic triad; Cmaj = C,E,G. Cmin = C,Eb,G. Cdim = C,Eb,Gb. C+(augmented) = C,E,G#

Firstly you can think about inverting those chords, voicing them in different ways ie spreading the notes out...(a common ballady voicing is to play r (root), 5th, 3rd and play that as a broken chord).

Next you can think about extending the chord in various ways. The principal being the 7th chord;
Cmaj7 (Constructed from the C major scale) = C,E,G,B. The others follow the same logic. Cmin7 C,Eb,G,Bb. C7 (or dominant 7 often confused with Cmaj7 but derived from the 5 chords and of course the mixolydian mode) C,E,G,Bb which is used extensively in blues. You can now apply inversions and voicings to these.

Of course in principal you can easily arpeggiate any scale at least up to the 13th degree (otherwise known as the 6th) like so; r 3rd 5th 7th 9th 11th 13th. Major 9 chords are particularly nice C,E,G,B,D. Of course there are allot more ideas to think about and I'm starting get complicated here but these are the basics.

Finally, you can learn a huge amount simply by listening to versions of the songs you want to play, and then with a little theory you can attempt to transcribe or approximate these styles. There is also a massive amount of instruction on youtube. I probably learned half of what I know from the net. I hope this has been of some use. Ultimately just use your ears and try out different things, theory is good for allot but also don't feel you have to stick to it. If you find a particular cluster of notes sounds nice at that point then use it. Plenty of people have and you can be sure that somewhere someone has derived a theoretically explanation as to why it sounds nice.