THE MUSICARTA CANON PROJCT

Table of Contents

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Module One: Thirds in the Treble

You get straight into music-making, finding a beautiful but simple string of paired notes (thirds) using both hands. Even these pairs on their own sound great over your Canon Project backing tracks. You are shown how to memorise the thirds, and start improvising simple variations right away.

Module Two: The Bass Line

The simple, eight-note Canon bass line is the foundation for much of your music-creating going forward, and of your understanding of chord sequences. You learn the bass line by shape and with sound fingering, learn to play the thirds from Module One with the right hand alone, and put the two together.

Module Three: Triads in the Treble

Popular modern keyboard styles in general require dependable, right hand three-note chords (triads). To avoid confusion and frustration, the Canon Project introduces the Canon chord sequence triads in a fail-safe two-hand fashion, with variations for duet-playing or backing track improvisation.

Supplement: Voice Movement Diagrams

It’s difficult keeping track of the all the notes in a string of eight triads. Musicarta’s patent Voice Movement Diagrams will greatly shorten the amount of time it takes you to learn the right hand Canon chords, and is applicable to all your chord work.

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Module Four: Triads in the Right Hand

A quick look at fingering makes playing the Canon chords with the right hand alone much easier. As soon as you can do this, you can start playing around with them – over your left hand bass line, if you can manage it. Playing the chords an octave lower shows how ‘rocky’ the Canon chords can easily sound.

Module Five: Broken Chord Patterns

Broken chord patterns – playing the notes of right hand chords one after another instead of all together – is an important part of modern keyboard styling. Musicarta’s ‘bottom, middle, top’ (BMT) shorthand lets you get straight to the heart of this useful music-creating technique.

Module Six: The Chord Sequence

Every modern musician needs to know what chord symbols are and what to do with them. Now that you have a good working knowledge of the Canon chords, we take a theory break to formalise your understanding of chords, and show you how to practice ‘inverting’ them to put other notes in the top, melody, position.

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Module Seven: Accompaniment Patterns

Left hand accompaniment patterns are also made out of chord tones. The basic Canon chord tone accompaniment pattern can be used over and over in music of all styles. Musicarta has ways of learning the Canon accompaniment which will ‘embed’ this accompaniment pattern skill in you for all time.

Module Eight: Accompaniment with RH Thirds

Playing the left hand accompaniment and the right hand thirds at the same time is a landmark achievement which requires careful preparation to avoid frustration and confusion. If you are able to, you bring in some of the variations from previous modules, too.

Module Nine: Accompaniment with RH Triads

Module Nine of the Canon Project builds on your Module Eight accomplishment with triad broken chord patterns in the right hand. This requires exercising some artistic judgement, and introduces you to real keyboard arranging skills.

Module Ten: Mixed Accompaniment Patterns

Playing some of the earlier right hand variations over the standard left hand accompaniment gives more chances to ‘tweak’ your keyboard arrangements to perfection. We take a look at other accompaniment patterns you can make from the left hand chord tones, and how they fit with the right hand material.

Module Eleven: Suspensions

Suspensions are an easy way to get more out of the chords you know – you’ll recognise the technique as soon as you listen to the module audio. You learn to apply suspension-resolution technique to the Canon chords, adjusting the accompaniment to fit. After that, it’s your to use anywhere.

Module Twelve: Slash Chords

You often see ‘slash chord’ symbols in sheet music – A/C#, for example. Module Twelve explains this second way of getting more out of the chords you know. The bass line ends up smoothed out, exactly as a bass guitarist would play it, and the ballad potential of the Canon chord sequence is revealed.

Module Thirteen: Melodic Variations

Now it’s the melody’s turn. You practice listening so you can copy a melody fragment. The structure of the Canon chord sequence (which you can easily see from the bass line) means that, using your acquired behind-the-scenes know-how, it’s easy to make a whole chorus of music from the fragment.

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Module Fourteen: New Chords and Melodies

The Canon chord sequence – or minor variations on it – is the heart of dozens of pop songs. In this module, the left hand takes a turn playing the treble chords in inversion, and you take another step towards using your Canon Project hard work in any key with a thorough transposing treatment.

Module Fifteen: Ear Training and Harmonic Variation

The ability to tell just by listening what chords are being played in a piece or a song seems quite magical, but it can in fact be learned and practiced, and your familiarity with the Canon chord sequence, together with Musicarta’s ear-training material, offers the perfect opportunity to make speedy progress.

Module Sixteen: New Chords and Melodies

The Canon consists of one repeating chorus of eight chords – not enough material to make a popular song out of. This module explores extending the Canon into a 32-bar ‘AABA’ structure, plus two other ‘top secret’ ways of mining the Canon chords for some absolutely modern realisations.

Supplement: The ‘Answers’

All the ‘answers’ to the Module Challenges are gathered in this section. You may have been asked to finish a version using a pattern presented in the module or play a variation on the module material. In the ‘Answers’ section you’ll find the audio files of the completed challenge, written-out music or MIDI file reference numbers. so you’re sure to ‘get it’.

Supplement: The Key of D

To enjoy playing the Canon and make speedy progress, you need to practise getting to the D major piano keys. Playing scales is the traditional way of learning to do this. In your Musicarta Canon Project PDF file, this free-access Musicarta site module is perfectly formatted for easy and efficient study.

Supplement: Major and Minor Chords

The Canon uses the chords which naturally occur in the key of D – D, G and A majors, and B and F sharp minors. Your growing knowledge of these D major key chords presents an ideal opportunity to understand the difference between major and minor chords, and practice changing their ‘quality’. A 'public domain' Musicarta site page.

Supplement: Accompaniment Practice Patterns

The modern keyboard player needs to be able to build root, fifth, octave, tenth accompaniment patterns from chord symbols ‘on the fly’ and play them in the left hand almost automatically while the right hand plays the music the listener mostly listens to. This module reveals the most efficient practice methods.

In your Musicarta Canon Project PDF file, this free-access Musicarta website material is perfectly formatted for easy and efficient study. You can print off just a few pages of your Canon Project PDF at a time, at home, if you find it convenient to have a hard copy for practising – in conjunction with your downloaded audio and MIDI demo files.

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