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Applying the Ballad Style to
melodies in three easy steps.
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Step one.
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Left hand.
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So very easy left hand ballad style.
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In G.
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Root, fifth, first back to the fifth.
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[MUSIC]
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And the peddle, keep the peddle down for
each chord change.
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So, without the peddle.
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[MUSIC]
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No sustain.
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With the peddle.
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[MUSIC]
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And if you're changing chords you're
left to put it back down again.
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And the great thing about this left on
ballad style pattern is that It works for
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either major or minor chords in
the right hand because your leaving out
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the third which determines whether
its a major or So G major [MUSIC but
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your not playing the third your just
playing first and fifth just the same for
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for either major or minor.
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So it will apply to both.
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Okay, let's apply the pattern to the first
four chords of the song Auld Lang Syne.
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G going to E minor,
up to A minor, up to D.
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[MUSIC]
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Very often you'll see songbooks with
lyrics and chord changes will come in
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exactly at the point of the lyric
where they're meant to change.
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Step two add the right hand melody line.
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So the melody line for this song is.
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[MUSIC]
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And you can see above the melody
line the chord changes.
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So this for G, G,
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changing to E-minor.
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A-minor.
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D.
Basically that also means that you can
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play a G chord underneath.
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E-minor.
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A-minor.
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To D.
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[MUSIC]
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Okay, step three.
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We're going to add some right hand
chord notes beneath the melody line.
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So what you just played sounds okay,
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but the overall sound is a bit thin.
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It's just a single melody line.
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There's no depth to it.
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You're going to try and add some chord
tones underneath the melody line.
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As we looked at before,
you could play chords very close to that.
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[MUSIC]
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G, E minor, A minor,
you see how that thickens the sound up?
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So, if you could play those
chord tones with the left hand,
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see how much thicker that is,
how much more depth it's got.
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So the reason you add the chord tones,
underneath the melody line, is because our
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ears always pick out the top notes of
a chord, more so than any other note.
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Okay so there's your
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[MUSIC],
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that's the G.
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So if you play the G underneath, you're
still hearing that note above all else.
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If you play the G up high, it's not so
clear what the note is, but
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it's very clear when it's
beneath the melody note.
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So let's go through the song.
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So the melody line is, first note is G,
and that's with the G chord.
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So you're looking for
G chord tones to add underneath.
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So you could play G backwards,
because you're actually on a G,
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so there's G backwards.
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The next chord tone is G again,
but you want E minor chord.
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So there's E minor.
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So you can play an E minor middle.
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Next melody line is A, and
you want to play A minor underneath.
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A minor backwards.
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A again for the melody and
you're playing a D chord underneath.
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[MUSIC]
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So G backwards, E minor middle,
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A minor backwards, D.
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And if you add the left
hand in on top of that.
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[MUSIC]
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Okay, you can hear how
much more depth that has.