Canon in D piano solo

THE MUSICARTA CANON PROJECT

MODULE FOUR – TRIADS IN THE TREBLE

This is Module Four 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 a recording of the Pachelbel Canon to listen to, study, and play along with.

• Have downloaded and learnt to use MidiPiano to play your free Canon Project MIDI files.

• Have downloaded the latest Musicarta Canon Project MIDI file folder.

• Have learnt the D major scale and have worked through Modules Two and Three of the series.

Start your Canon Project sessions with some D major scale practice. There are useful scale practice patterns in Module One.

Adding a third note to the thirds in the treble

It’s the line of thirds in the treble from Modules Two and Three

Now listen to the higher notes in this audio clip. They are slightly different.

The sound is ‘filled out’. A third note has been added below the thirds, making triads (three-note chords).

The third note in the treble chords is what we add to the Canon performance in this module.

Playing the triads with two hands

Revise the thirds. Use any fingering for now.

Here is the new ‘voice’ (line of notes). Practice with the left hand, using the fingering shown.

You need to know this line by heart.

Play the hands together. This music shows the notes on two treble clef staves, right hand on the top, left hand underneath. This makes it obvious which hand plays what. The hands are still right next to each other on the keyboard.

(The audio file has a chord accompaniment, which you don't play.)

Triad patterns using two hands

Listen to the audio performance file and study the music. Watch the MIDI performance on MidiPiano for more clarity.

There is a chord accompaniment on the audio and MIDI clips: Play along, or use one of your backing track recordings, or get a fellow- pianist to play the accompaniment.

Easily make this sound more sophisticated by doubling up the right hand chords:

When we split three notes between our two hands, we can play either two notes with the right hand and one with the left (R,R,L) – as up to now – or two with the left (R,L,L), as follows:

This will make it much easier to play extra notes in the top voice (line of notes).

The pattern shown is a R,R,L pattern – two notes in the right hand. Change it to two notes in the left hand, one in the right, and use a pattern from Module 3 in the top voice, as follows:

In the following example, you play a top-voice pattern from Module 2 over the double-speed left hand notes. In the music, though, your two left hand notes are shown as whole notes – you will change them into four crotchets. Listen to the practice-tempo audio file and copy the performance.

Fill the full eight bars with the same pattern – only the basic triads are shown in the bottom line. Leave out the ‘tweaks’ in bars seven and eight, if you want to! Build up to performance tempo and play over your CD/mp3 backing track.

Your Module Audio Challenge

It’s nearly the same as the previous audio clip, but some notes are missed out in both hands. The left hand doesn’t play all its notes in the first bar; the right hand doesn’t play all its notes in the second bar. This two-bar pattern repeats. (Look out for the ‘tweak’ in the last pairs of bars!)

Use the slider on the audio player to repeat the first few bars, and try to replicate (copy) the pattern. The pattern is recorded at a slightly slower tempo to help you. The written-out music and the MidiPiano MIDI file reference are given at the end of this web page.

MODULE SUPPLEMENT - VOICE MOVEMENT DIAGRAMS

To play and remember triads that move all the time, like the top parts of the Canon, it’s useful to look for patterns in how the three individual chord ‘voices’ (notes) move.

We say ‘voices’ because we are imagining that the triad is sung by a three-voice choir. A voice moves to the closest note – it doesn’t jump around.

In the Canon, our two original treble (right hand) voices ‘sing’ the thirds – one the upper, the other the lower note. The new voice sings the bottom note of the triad.

Here are the top two voices.

The lines show how the voices move. You see that they move in parallel, always a third apart.

Here is the new voice (note).

You see that the new voice ‘sings’ two notes the same, then another pair of notes, then three notes the same and lastly one on its own. You need to know this line by heart. Practice using the left hand, using any convenient fingering.

The chords in pairs

Thinking of the chords in pairs, as we did with the bass line, is much more useful:

If we exaggerate the shapes, we get these useful ‘voice movement diagrams’.

As with the bass line, you see three pairs that are obviously the same, and one different pair.

The voice movement diagrams (VMDs) say:

Voice movement diagrams are used in most Musicarta material. As a popular music keyboard player, you will use triads in the right hand all the time, and VMDs are a great help for seeing in your mind’s eye (and remembering) what the chords are doing.

Voice movement diagram chart

Module audio challenge - solution

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