Canon accompaniment patterns

THE MUSICARTA CANON PROJECT

MODULE SEVEN – CANON ACCOMPANIMENT PATTERNS

This is Module Seven of the Musicarta Canon Project, a series of free online piano lessons which shows you how to play a chord sequence freely and put together your own unique Canon performance from easily-mastered musical components.

To get the most out of this module, you need to have done all the things detailed in the ‘Preparing to learn’ sections of the first Canon Project module, and have completed Modules One to Six of the series. Don’t skip this vital preparation! Use the Quick Links in the table, right, to catch up.

You can download the latest Canon Project MIDI files (including the files for this module) using this link. Keep your MIDI files and folders tidy!

• Delete your previous MIDI file folder before downloading the new one.

• Always save your MIDI files to the same location.

• Remember to delete the zip folder 'wrapping' when you've finished unpacking.

Here is the Module audio performance file, which plays some of the treble patterns you’ve learnt previously over the accompaniment pattern you’ll be learning in this module.

(This music is available scored for duet performance using this link.)

Chord tone accompaniment patterns

Each chord has its own root, third and fifth, counting up from its own root. Here are the roots, thirds and fifths of the Canon chords:

You have found these notes before, but you didn’t name them as chord tones. Find them again and name the notes as you play them as in the audio file.

The chord tones keep their own names wherever they are on the keyboard. The note F sharp is always the third of a D major chord, whether it’s above or below the D in a chord, and so on.Here are the chord tones of our six Canon chords, played and named from around ‘low D’.

Find and play the notes, saying the chord tone names.Sometimes, though, it’s useful to give the root and the third different names, especially when there are four notes to name – as you’ll learn in the next section.

Canon accompaniment patterns

• We call this second root note ‘the octave’ (8), to show it’s a different key on the keyboard.

• We say we have ‘doubled’ the root because we play the second note as well as, not instead of, the first.

Find these notes. Use two hands for convenience – L, L, L, R or whatever you like.

Try the exercise with a couple of left/right combinations and be sure to say the chord tone names.

The R, 3, 5, 8 accompaniment pattern

You have to know these notes! Practise until you can play them from memory, without any music, just from the chord sequence. Try playing them to your Canon recordings – which are a bit faster than the module performance tracks.

The R, 5, 8, 10 accompaniment pattern

Note that:

• The tenth (10) is the third (3), but an octave higher.

• The octave (8) is the root (R), but an octave higher.

Find the root, fifth, octave and tenth of all the chords in the Canon chord sequence. Play the root (R) with the left hand, and the fifth (5), octave (8) and tenth (10) with the right hand. (We call this a L, R, R, R pattern – one left hand and three right hand notes for each chord symbol.)

Practicing the R, 5, 8, 10 accompaniment pattern

There is a lot of information in the illustration above. Reading from the top, you see the chord symbol (D, A etc.), then the chord tone order R, 3, 5, 8. (You could try playing the accompaniment pattern just from this information, plus the keyboard diagrams and the chord sequence chart…) Then comes the actual music, with fingering, and lastly the reminder to play the notes one with the left hand and three with the right (L, R, R, R).

Finding the notes is your first priority, but you should also be trying to use proper/bass line fingering. Here is the bass line with the fingering given above:

The right hand always uses fingers 1, 3, 5 to play the chords. If you always put your right hand third finger (RH3) over the ‘octave’ (‘8’) note – making it your ‘target note’ – your right hand thumb (RH1) and little finger (RH5) will be in the right place almost automatically. Here’s a little exercise to make that clearer.

You should try to devise exercise like this to practice the essentials of whatever you’re learning.

Playing the accompaniment pattern different ways

Run through the chord sequence using these three different combinations.

• Type One: Play the root with the left hand an the other three notes with the right (L, R, R, R)

• Type Two: Play the root and the fifth with the left hand, and the octave and tenth with the right (L, L, R, R)

• Type Three: Play three notes with the left hand and just one with the right (L, L, L, R)

Two bars of each type are shown in the music – you don’t have to change so quickly. The MIDI performance file demonstrates one whole chorus of each type – try that first.

This might seem like ‘just extra work’, but experience shows it is very effective practice.

For clarity, the notes are all shown as one-beat crotchets, but you should try to make your fingers ‘sticky’ and layer the notes up to make a four-note stack by the end of each bar, You will see this in the MIDI performance on MidiPiano.

To be thorough, play a L, L, L, R version as well. You can see this when you play the MIDI performance file on MidiPiano – the hands are colour-coded.

Playing duets with this accompaniment

In duets, the top part is called the ‘primo’, and the bass accompaniment is called the ‘secondo’ One person (‘primo’) can play any of the patterns from the previous Canon Project modules while the other person (‘secondo’) plays the L, R, R, R accompaniment pattern in the bass.

The audio track in the table is the same performance as presented at the start of the module.

If you have not already done so, download the music using this link.

The primo part is written on one treble clef stave and the secondo part on the bass clef stave. Right hand notes are written stems-up and left hand notes, stems down. For variety, the secondo (accompaniment) player can play different combinations of left hand and right hand notes: L, R, R, R, or L, L, R, R, or L, L, L, R - the Types One, Two and Three of the exercise above.

When you’re ready, click through to the Canon Project Module Eight, where you practise playing the Canon accompaniment pattern with just the left hand with simple thirds in the right hand - your first solo Canon performance.

The Canon Project will broaden and deepen your understanding of chords and how to use them, but if you have spare time, click through to the Chords home page for an overview of Musicarta’s other chord-related resources.

Or take a break and click up to the Musicarta home page for an overview of all Musicarta’s free online piano lessons.

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