This time, let’s think about how to practice piano accompaniment.
When we think of the piano, we often imagine solo playing, but if you can accompany, you’ll be valued in many different settings.
You can accompany at choral festivals, too.
Accompanying for a choral festival may sound difficult, but what matters most is “playing together.” So it’s important to choose accompaniment at a level that leaves you enough leeway to listen to your own sound and to everyone’s voices.
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Basics of Accompaniment
To play with both hands, you should first practice each hand separately. However, unlike piano solo, accompaniment generally involves playing chords with both hands, so it’s relatively easy as a first challenge for practicing with both hands.
In a piano solo, the right hand (melody) and the left hand (accompaniment) play completely different things, but for accompaniment, you can start with the same movement in both the right and left hands.
Of course, the prelude and interlude are in the same form as the piano solo, so practicing each hand separately is important.
Let's practice with simple patterns!
Now, regarding the accompaniment, it follows a pattern where it gradually builds from the A verse to the B verse and then to the chorus.
First, this kind of pattern is common for the A verse.
Just by changing the base, the atmosphere changes quite a lot.
For things like this, we first practice with the leftmost one, the 'Shiratama.'
After that, you change the rhythm little by little within what you’re able to do.
There are also patterns like the ones below where the accent position is changed.
The right-hand part uses the same pattern but an octave higher, so it sounds more exciting.
The pattern below is also a form that often appears.
There’s also this kind of pattern.
All of these patterns are F.
You can play it in various ways like this, but first practice the simple form, and then gradually change it to versions you can handle.
Let's make good use of on-codes!
When you play from sheet music, you’ll often come across something called “slash chords (inversion chords).”
In the diagram above, the notations like "F/A," "B♭/F," and "C/F" are slash chords.
For example, when we say “F,” the left hand, which handles the bass, should be playing the root note “fa,” but when it plays a note other than “fa,” that’s called an on-chord (slash chord).
Since F is Fa-La-Do and B♭ is Si♭-Re-Fa, in F/A and B♭/F the bass is not the root, but the notes used come from the chords Fa-La-Do and Si♭-Re-Fa.
In contrast, in “C/F,” the bass note is F, so it’s a slightly unusual form since F isn’t one of the notes in C (do–mi–so).
As shown in the figure below, there are times when it’s written in fractional form and times when it’s written as “on ○,” but they mean the same thing.
There are various rules, but for now, if you see this notation, remember that the left hand plays F (fa) and the right hand plays C (do–mi–so).
Even with the same chord progression, just changing the bass note should make the atmosphere feel quite different.
The chord progression below is from the intro through the A section of “Believe,” a song often performed at choral festivals. It’s a great example of how the same chord progression can be used while only the bass note changes, making it useful for practicing slash chords.
I'm posting a practice video of 'Believe.'