Felix Jaehn - Ain't Nobody (Loves Me Better) feat. Jasmine Thompson
Download MIDI file - >>HERE<< (Right click, Save link as)
How to play "Watermelon man" by Herbie Hancock?
In the following lesson we will go through "Watermelon Man", song written by Herbie Hancock. Left hand makes some simple groove, right plays riff and melody. I have tested this on kids in the music school, seems like they can understand it. Even one boy had learned solo, three choruses long, but that's the material for some of the next classes :)
"Walk" bass
How to play a "walk bass" on a piano?
- Other forms of accompaniment are more or less easy to implement, or to somehow improvise, but when it comes to walk bass line, people got stuck.
Why?
- Well, this is because it requires basic knowledge ofchords, scales and music theory, in general, but yet, it's not a rocket science so there's no need to be discouraged, at all.
So, I sat down and arranged jazz standard "Fly me to the moon" with walk bass in left hand and chords in right hand. We got an accompaniment for the solo line- voice, sax, clarinet, flute, guitar, whatever.
I haven't had enough time to write a complete score with 2nd ending and Coda, maybe fingering, and so on, but this is just for educational purposes, to get the picture of the whole idea.
Soon, I will add some more details to it and maybe video is not a bad idea -to pass slowly through that bars and see what is inside.
- Other forms of accompaniment are more or less easy to implement, or to somehow improvise, but when it comes to walk bass line, people got stuck.
Why?
- Well, this is because it requires basic knowledge ofchords, scales and music theory, in general, but yet, it's not a rocket science so there's no need to be discouraged, at all.
So, I sat down and arranged jazz standard "Fly me to the moon" with walk bass in left hand and chords in right hand. We got an accompaniment for the solo line- voice, sax, clarinet, flute, guitar, whatever.
I haven't had enough time to write a complete score with 2nd ending and Coda, maybe fingering, and so on, but this is just for educational purposes, to get the picture of the whole idea.
Soon, I will add some more details to it and maybe video is not a bad idea -to pass slowly through that bars and see what is inside.
As we can see, the upward movement in the first bar consists mainly of notes of C minor scale, except fourth altered quarter, which leads to F. On the first beat in the bar, bass line always matches root of the chord, On 2nd and 3rd beat you can play any note from that chord or from the scale related to that chord. In this case, matching scale for Cm7 is C minor scale. 4th note leads to the next root, in this case tone F, which is root tone of Fm7 chord.
Leading tone may come in a chromatic movement (half tone), diatonic (tone of a scale), or as a dominant, fifth tone of the next chord. Root of the new chord can be approached from above or from below. As we can see, walk bass leaves us more than enough space for creativity because every time we can play differently, and that is the point - improvisation. When we practice this basic concept, over time we become more and more steady and creative.
Download here:
Download here:
walk_bass_example.pdf | |
File Size: | 1572 kb |
File Type: |