Accompanying impromptu

[donjuan]

Hello,
I am in Guitar class this year at school, and my teacher somehow found out I play piano.  Now, he asks me to play the keyboard to accompany the guitars in various pop pieces.  I dont have any set directions- just a sheet of paper with names of chord changes.

eg

Gm7   Em            F              Gm7      D
I ---- knew I-----couldnt ----Le----a---ve



I just made up lyrics there to show you the kind of thing I would be looking at.  My teacher expects me to accompany the guitars by using my creativity. -Frankly, I find it enough of a challenge to play the right chords alone with the guitars, let alone trying to be creative.  I dont have too much experience with pop music stylings, so I was hoping you expert improvisors, composers, and jazz people could give me a few pointers.  Like, if there is a website you can suggest with info on how to accompany, that would be great.

Thanks,
donjuan

[Max]

I assume you know the chords?

Well it is as simple as playing those chords with left hand bass notes, maybe arranging some sequences from those chords. (like D, E and F in the left hand for those first 3 chords as the bass notes)

[Daevren]

Listen to people that play piano.

Listen to jazz. Its the only way to learn music.

You just play those notes, mostly block harmony. Then you need to get some kind of grove. Also, use different inversions to get good voice leading.

A jazz musician would really frown on the "let alone trying to be creative." If you accompany someone you aren't being creative. You just bang out those chords, thats it

In classical music accompany is often done by playing arps in the left hand. This is much rarer in pop music, and jazz. Probably only in ballads.

If you want to learn this you just have got to listen. I recommend Art Tatum. Rachmaninoff and Horowitz thought he was the greatest pianist alive. But most of his songs its him solo. If you listen to some other jazz guys they will do really minimalistic chord voicings. They call it 'comping' and its an artform.

But you have to learn this. You need to get some freedom in this, some experience, you need to learn the way to thing, before you can do this. You need to be confident so you will sound confident. If you sound confident it will sound ok. The less you play, the better.

I don't know if you can find all those chords easily. If you can't you will have to learn it. It will free you up as a musician. It will not increase your skill playing Liszt but you will improve as a pianist.

Then you will also see that Em if the top 3 notes of Gm7. So Gm7-Em is actually the same harmony. Also, for seventh chords, you can leave out the 5th if you want. And if these is a bass players, you can leave out roots too(the bass player is supposed to play the roots).

So you don't play melodies. Just play 3-7 with the left hand and play some 1-3-5, 3-7-1 or 3-5-7 chords over that with the right hand, getting some nice grove/rhythm. You can play those very staccato.

If you get more experienced you can actually reharmonise those chord progressions on the spot, adding more colour. But then we are really talking jazz, not pop.

You can also ask your guitar teacher for help. He probably plays some keys too. In that case he could give you some examples.

[donjuan]

Thanks Daevren for the suggestions.  I will look for art tatum and get working at theory- I have a pretty hard time just knowing which keys to play.

[Daevren]

Ok here some more names: Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson. Imo, those are big names in jazz piano. Maybe you want to listen to some Keith Jarrett too. He did both classical and jazz.

Its important to listen and steal/learn some ideas. In jazz its more important than playing itself.