PIANO LESSONS ONLINE

Pyramids Variations

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This module is part of The Pyramids Variations, a series of free piano lessons online from Musicarta.com. To benefit fully from the following material, you need to have completed the previous lessons in the series. Visit the series covering page for an overview and to get started.

The Pyramids Variations is Musicarta.com’s flagship project. Please go to the Musicarta home page for more great free piano lessons.

Pyramids - the next step

All the variations presented in the audio clips below are taken from the forthcoming (March 2011) 126-page Pyramids Variations hard copy. In addition to tthe eight-lesson build up to the Pyramids Concert Performance, the Pyramids Variations hard copy has a key 'Variations' section, where you can continue to develop your music theory knowledge and keyboard improvisation skills by treating the Pyramids chord sequence to a structured, progressive series of variations.

The audio performances below offer you an ideal opportunity to practise 'playing by ear'. The variations are closely related to what you’ve already learned, and the text gives you just enough information to work out how the variations are constructed. No written music is presented.

As with the all the Pyramids Variations piano lessons online material, the emphasis is not on ‘getting it right’ as much as on ‘having a go’. So if you don’t get a version exactly right but you do play something slightly different which flows and sounds nice, you’re entitled to score it a success!

The full set of hard copy 'Variations' section audio performance files can be found in the tables on the Piano MIDI files page. Click through and listen for more help working out how to play the versions given here.

Developing the bass line

1. the root of the current chord in the first slot, then

2. another note (which you will pick, or copy from the next audio file).

Think of the bass line in terms of the steps, skips and jumps you learned about in the Pyramids Variations Memorising module. The movements used in the example bass line are taken from these (five) types

Forming first inversion chords

Taking the root of a right hand BMP chord up an octave gives you a first inversion chord. Find the first inversions of all the chords in the chord sequence.

Play an ‘express’ developed bass line with just one right hand first inversion chord between the segments.

Using mixed root position and first inversion chords

If you take the top note of an A minor root position (BMP) chord up one white key, you get an F first inversion chord.

Continue this alternating root position/first inversion pattern right through the chord sequence as far as bar 13 (F), then play root position F, root position E, first inversion A minor.

The left hand copies the right exactly, an octave lower.

Play a version of Pyramids which climbs up the root position (BMP) chords and then slides down the first inversion chords. Copy the audio file for the ends of the first and second halves (bars 7 and 8, and 13 to 16).

Play the original simple Pyramids melody over this rising and falling pattern. (Again, the ends of the two halves get slightly different treatment.)

Descending variations

Play a version made up of only descending alternating root position and first inversion chords.

On the last two quavers beats, develop the top-note melody using some of the step/skip/jump movements you used to develop the bass line in the first of the variations on this page. The right hand developed melody moving notes come the last two descending notes – LH3 and LH5.

Play the developed 32-bar AABA melody over these descending chords. You have to make certain adaptations in the B section.

Pyramids in four-four time

Play alternating right hand root position and first inversion chords an octave lower in four-four – four steady chords per chord symbol. The left hand plays the chord roots in a simple one-note bass line.

Add a little ‘kick’ to the bass line between beats two and three. Add some developed bass line movements on beats ‘four and’.

Rock 3+3+2 rhythm

Using alternating root position and first inversion chords, play the three chord tones of each chord in this order:

top middle bottom top middle bottom middle top

This divides the eight quavers into groups of three, three and two (3+3+2)

Play the bass line from the previous four-four version under this 3+3+2 pattern (second half of the audio clip).

Pyramids and the Circle of Fifths,/ul>

Playing the Lesson Two ‘First Performance’, change the first note only of the left hand from notes

A F G E F D E A F G E F E A

to notes

A D G C F B E A D G C F E A

The result is a circle of fifths chord sequence.

Further variations

The following variations are very like those above. Listen carefully to work out how the variations has been put together, then learn to play them.

• File One

• File Two

• File Three

Warm up for composing your own variations (next section) by completing the following ‘seed’ versions:

• Seed One

• Seed Two

• Seed Three

Two more warm-up exercises:

• Compose B sections for all the variations on this page that don’t have one, using the patterns from the A sections.

• Apply the circle of fifths bass line to all the versions given, adjusting patterns if necessary to make them sound right.

Your own variations

If you can get some way towards playing the variations on this page without music, you can easily start making up your own variations. You would just be playing a variation that you can hear in your head, rather than one you listen as an audio clip on this page. But first you need to hear something in your head to play.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

Start by listening to just the chords in your head. (If you have an electronic keyboard, could you make a slow-ish background track of just the chords and listen to that for inspiration.)

Let you fingers find the music. You know the Basic Music-making Position, plus inversions for the right hand and bass lines for the left hand. Waft up and down the chords without anything specific in mind and see if one particular chord tone doesn’t select itself for the melody note.

That melody note has to get to a chord tone of the next chord in the sequence by a series of steps, skips or jumps. Remember, any pattern that works for getting from A minor to F will work from G to E minor and from F to D minor, because those three pairs contain the same-sized jump (root down a third).

You might find it easier to start from the rhythmic pattern of a song you like. Play a track by a favourite singer-songwriter – a soulful song in a minor key would be best. Then see if you can make a ‘Pyramids version’ of it, using the Pyramids chord sequence.

Above all, take a long view and enjoy the process! Keep 'messing about' at the keyboard on the Pyramids chord sequence and listen intently for the ideas in your head.

This is the final module of the Pyramids Variations series of piano lessons online.

You can link back to the Lessons here:

Lesson One: The Basic Music-making Position

Lesson Two: Pyramids First Performance

Lesson Three: Adding the Melody

Lesson Four: A Four-chord Version

Lesson Five: Developing the Melody

Lesson Six: The 32-bar AABA form

Lesson Seven: The Four-chord B Section

Lesson Eight: Pyramids Concert Performance

Memorising Pyramids

Pyramids Variations: Playing by Ear

Or link back to the Musicarta home page for more great free piano lessons online.

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