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Personal Piano Professor, Issue#045 -Piano Melodies, Ode to Joy and Danny Boy
April 17, 2015
Hello Friends!

Piano Melody.. Ode to Joy, Danny Boy

Finally Spring time!!

Thanks to all of you for supporting and visiting piano lessons for life.com.

Our website is geared toward those who want to learn the language of music and to develop their ears and improvisational skills.

To this end I will be busy giving my best attempt at a series of guided video lessons that will start with the very basics and lead to the eventual goal of every teacher to "not be needed anymore"

I will also be redoing many of the video tutorials to make them more understandable and comprehensive as well as adding many new song tutorials in various genres of music.

Your comments and suggestions are helping greatly in the development of this new curriculum. thank you so much!!

Piano Melodies, "Ode to Joy" and "Danny Boy"

Along with the lyrics of a song the piano melody is the musical statement that defines the song and make it different from every other song.

Songs will share chord progressions and in fact they often do but the melody is the thing that sets one song apart from another.

So how do we create great a sounding and memorable piano melody?

Most of what I can tell you about melodies on the piano comes from experience.

I have learned to play, sing, and compose hundreds if not thousands of melodies over the years.

In music school we had special classes in which we would analyze different melodies note by note to determine the relationship of the notes to the chord changes or progressions.

All Piano melodies start out as some sort of improvisation, sometimes on an instrument like the keyboard or in the case of many popular songs as a vocal sung using a specific lyric idea.

The art of improvisation is as old as music itself. It certainly existed before any notation was used for composition.

This lesson on melodies will use two popular memorable melodies and teach you to play and understand what makes a melody stand out.

It is a two page lesson: Ode to Joy and a link to Danny boy.

View the whole article by clicking the link below

Ode to Joy Danny Boy

Piano Improvisation starts here!

Have you ever thought: “How excellent would it be to sit at a piano and play any melody that comes into my mind – without any notes?”

Or: What do I do when my band wants me to take a Piano Solo?

Piano improvisation, is the art of spontaneously playing melodies on the piano at the spur of the moment.

You may think it is domain of few very creative, experienced, and gifted musicians and thus unreachable for hobbist musicians or beginners. However......

I believe if you read on and go through some of the suggestion contained in these lessons that you or anyone can begin to learn this awesome skill.

View the whole video lesson by clicking below.

piano improvisation
Korg PA3x quick record example

A pastor friend of mine came to me with a melodic idea for a gospel style praise song. The recording below of "Count it all Joy" including the vocals was done entirely on the Korg PA3x using available patterns and the quick record function. Enjoy please!!

Count it all Joy - Korg PA3x

Learn the 12 bar blues progression on piano."

Learning the 12 bar blues progression is basic to understanding the roots of American popular music.

When you see a group of musicians getting together to play everyone seems to know what to do almost magically.

This is because at one time or another they learned the 12 bar blues progression.

While there are lots of variations of this timeless progression the most common is a three chord 12 measure version explained in this lesson.

The 12 bar Blues for piano

4 Steps to Learning How to Play Any Song on the Piano

1. Determining the melody - Melodies determine what chords will be played. If you can use your ear to figure out what notes are being played in the melody, you are 1/4 on your way to learning a song! More resources on learning how to determine melodies

2.Harmonizing the melody - Once you have figured out the melody (using some of my techniques on the resource page), it is time to harmonize it. This is simply choosing various chords to accompany the melody. There are several techniques and tricks to doing this. More resources on learning how to harmonize melodies

3. Altering Chords - This is the best part! Now that you have strategically figured out the melody to a song and have harmonized it, altering your chords to produce certain sounds is the next step. If you were playing gospel music, you would alter your chords differently than if you were playing classical or country music. More resources on altering chords

4. Listening - After you have determined the melody, harmonized the melody, and altered some of your chords, there are various techniques you can use to make sure that your song sounds right. More resources on listening techniques

I personally recommend "The Secrets to Playing Piano By Ear" 300-pg Course and through my relationship with Jermaine (the author of this course), I've been able to get him to throw in a few bonus items (3 additional piano software programs). He has taught literally thousands of musicians how to play the piano by ear. If you understood just half of what he discussed above, you'll definitely benefit from his 300-pg course. Click here to learn the secrets to playing absolutely any song on the piano in virtually minutes! I highly recommend it.
Learn Jazz Here!!

Best Gospel Course for Ear players

Introducing GospelKeys 101...

Now In Less Than 2 Hours, You Can Jump Start Your Piano Playing With These 3 Easy Steps!

Dear Friend,

Jermaine Griggs, the pioneer of the award-winning GospelKeys learning system, has come up with 3 simple steps so that you won't waste any time at all. In fact, it'll virtually cut your learning time in half! I copied and pasted the most important parts below so you can get a general idea.

HERE IT GOES...

Step One: Determining the Melody

Step Two: Harmonizing the Melody

Step Three: Adding the Bass


These three steps are not super complicated theories that require several years of experience. In fact, they were designed for the total beginner with absolutely no musical experience.

What most people don't understand is that most songs follow patterns. If you've been mistakenly learning songs, one by one, you're only exercising your ability to MEMORIZE chords --- and
that's exactly why it takes SO LONG to learn just one song.

BUT...

If you concentrate on LEARNING PATTERNS, you'll never go wrong because songs are built on repeating patterns. You should NEVER EVER have to memorize dozens of songs when they all share the same exact CHORDS, PROGRESSIONS, AND PATTERNS.

So head over to their site and let me know what you think

If you have any questions, feel free to reply.

Talk soon,




P.S. - You might find more interesting information, techniques, or resources just by clicking around on their website..
I want to remind you that many of the ideas for lessons come from those of you who contact me with questions. I encourage you to let me know what you need.

Also you can find a contact form on the site and suggest a song for a future lesson. Don't be shy. Let me know how i can help!!

I am grateful for all of you, and wish you the best success in your playing!!

Thanks, Greg

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