Canon piano

THE MUSICARTA CANON PROJECT
- MODULE TWO -

The Bass Line

If you listen to any classical recording of the Pachelbel Canon, one of the first things you hear is the string of eight low notes – the ‘bass line’. In Module Two of the Musicarta Canon Project, you learn to play the bass line with your left hand and the thirds from Module One with your right hand, combining them in a performance like this:

Learning the bass line is essential preparation for understanding and remembering the chord sequence. Understanding chord sequences and chord symbols is essential for the creative modern keyboard player.

The Musicarta Canon Project is now available as an e-book digital download and on CD-ROM. These skeleton Canon Project web pages are being left on the internet as an expanded Table of Contents, so you can see how much you’ll benefit from purchasing the Canon Project.

To give you the best chance of evaluating the Musicarta Canon Project, you can download the MIDI files for these free-to-view Canon Project web pages. File reference numbers are shown, where applicable, in the right hand audio player table cells.

To play your MIDI files, download MidiPiano here. Learn more about MidiPiano on the Musicarta MidiPiano page. You can also play the MIDI files as basic audio in most media players.

Pachelbel’s Canon is in the key of D major scale. Click through here for a thorough D major refresher course.

Click back to the Canon Project home page here.
Click back to the Canon Project TOC page here.

Module Two of the Musicarta Canon Project is a good example of how Musicarta presents material in several ways, so that your particular learning style is sure to be covered.

The bass line is presented in traditional written music manuscript:

As an audio file you can listen to and a MIDI file you can watch unfolding on MidiPiano:

CPM_M2_02

As a keyboard diagram showing the actual keys used:

…and ‘conceptually’, as a graphic:

In the Musicarta Canon Project, all learning styles are covered so you’re sure to ‘get it’.

Notice also that you don’t have to know how to read music to start work building your Canon performance. In fact, with the Musicarta Canon Project you can ‘work backwards’ and start learning to read music from your ability to play the music that’s written down.

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Then you will be able to put the hands together over a backing track to produce a performance like this:

CPM_M2_05

You can take as much time as you need getting this performance into your repertoire – another advantage of working one your own with the Musicarta Canon Project.

Aspiring pop/rock keyboard players must recognize that some of the things 'straight' piano teachers bash on about are worth learning!

For example, nobody wants to bother much with fingering, but finding the right fingers for the bass line is necessary for you to play it reliably as part of a two-handed performance. The same goes for playing the Module One thirds with one hand in the next step.

Nothing is left to chance in the Musicarta Canon Project, which is the result of hours of real face-to-face teaching. Every ‘angle’ is covered and no-one gets left behind.

Once you have mastered this simple performance, you can start trying out some of the thirds variations from Module One – but played right hand solo:

CPM_M2_08

You can easily develop the bass line (left hand) a little, too:

CPM_M2_09

There are more piano-and-drums backing tracks for you to practice over, too, and they've been made slower than commercial Canon recordings so you'll be able to keeping up. Once you can play the basic two-handed performance, you can start combining elements into more advanced variations:

Your only limitation is how much time you are prepared to spend! Here is one of the two Module Two audio challenges.

The written-out audio challenge music and MIDI file reference numbers (to ‘see-and-hear’ the performance on MidiPiano) are always given in the ‘Answers’ section of the Project PDF file.