Ken Richards - HOW TO PLAY PIANO: A GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS IN PLAYING PIANO, PIANO MUSIC, PIANO LESSONS, PIANO SCALES, AND PIANO THEORY

We'll be looking at how to play various songs and hymns. The purpose of learning how to play these hymns is for you to be able to spot out similar techniques used in these hymns and also to be able to apply them in your piano play.

We'll be looking at the following hymns; Amazing Grace, Pass Me Not, O Come, Let Us Adore Him and other bonus songs.

I have divided this "How to Play Piano by Ear" into three steps:

Step One: Figuring out the melody

To be able to figure out the melody of any song, you must first be familiar with the tune of the song. When figuring out this melody, you'd only have to make use of the notes of a major scale, that is, in most cases.

Step Two: Harmonizing the melody

By knowing that the 1, 3, and 5 tones are usually accompanied by the I-chord, the 4, 6 and 1 tone by the IV-chord and the two-tone by the II and V chord, and the seven tone by the V-chord, you've successfully understood the concept or technique behind the harmonization of melodies.

Step Three: Chord alteration and listening

In this step, we'll be altering chords in the simple chord progression gotten from step two to beautify them. Finally, you'd have to take time to listen to these altered chords and see how well they fit in the chord progression.

Hymn One (Amazing Grace)

Step One: figuring out the melody

In figuring out the melody of the song "Amazing Grace," you'd only have to go through the eight notes of a major scale. You can figure out the melody of this song by using your ears and some of the techniques. You should take a look at the melody, as shown on the page, if you're not familiar with the song.

Now that you've played the melody of the song try playing this same melody on your own by using your ears. What are the passing and neighbouring tones in this melody? Can you distinguish the chord tones from the non-chord tones in this melody?

Step Two: Harmonizing the melody

Now that you've been able to separate the chord tones from the passing and neighbouring tones try harmonizing this melody by forming chords with the chord tones of this melody. Firstly, make use of only major chords in harmonizing this melody before making use of more appropriate chords.

Note that a Csus2 (or Cmaj suspended second) chord is equal to a Gsus4 (or Gmaj suspended fourth) and a D quartal chord (or a quartal chord starting from the D tone). It all depends on how the chord is voiced.

Step three: Chord alteration and listening

The idea is to start simple and work your way up. Firstly, we made use of the I, IV and V major chords in harmonizing the melody of "Amazing Grace," then, we went further to make use of the II, III and VI minor chords. Now, try altering these chords and see what fits. This is where you have to listen to know what works and what doesn't.

Something I always make use of is the min9 and dom9/6 chord to resolve to the IV chord, as studied in level two of this book. Try applying these chords to the tenth (10th) measure of "Amazing Grace (Altering Chords)." I prefer using the III-VI-II-V-I to resolve to the IV chord for this hymn in particular. So instead of playing Cmaj for the 10th measure, I play "Amin9-D9/6-Gmin9," which leads me to the F9 chord in the 11th measure. Note that the chord progression "Amin9-D9/6-Gmin9" all have to be played in the 10th measure, and under the word "lost" so, you'd have to play these chords a little bit faster for it to work.

Look closely at the notes on the bass clef; you'd notice that I played more than one tone as the bass note. There is a lot of left-hand patterns you can make use of, such as the single notes, Alberti Bass, R-5-8 (Root-5-octave), walking bass, etc. In this song, I made use of the Root-5-octave, which is also known as the 'pop' pattern, and it is the most straightforward Left-Hand pattern for modern music. In using this pattern, you'd move from the root tone to the fifth tone and finally to the octave of eight tones.