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2016

A Year of Piano Lessons

by

Sean

[pic]

Foreword, by Michael Mulroy:

Dedication

May this book inspire you to

Explore your OWN creativity

And encourage you to make

your OWN journey of discovery

and delight in

freeing yourself from what I call the “Slavery to written music”.

This book contains simple techniques

you can teach yourself and use

to enhance your enjoyment

of playing this wonderful

instrument,

the piano.”

And now me, Sean.

I have played pianos for 35 years, I have always loved music, yet also often felt like throwing the pianos out of the window.

It has never been easy or natural, I am not a natural musician.

I have read many excellent books of the basics, but beyond that I struggled with everything.

Some sheet music is too hard to even contemplate, whereas some Easy-Play sheet music is very lacking.

I am often frustrated.

I had a year of intensive classical training, which was very good, and hammered home the basics of practise, fingering, timing/counting accurately, sight reading and trying to read cadences. Essentially I learned things will come with hard work, but progress was slow, I was hitting a wall and true understanding was minimal. I also hated the metronome.

I was not exactly grasping that special something, and found it very hard to visualise, or find any practical value, of calling chords l, ii, V etc other than seeing basic cadences, such as V – l.

Then I heckled a stranger as he played Nobody Does It Better on a piano in the local piano shop.

“You are not playing the dots that are on the page” I pointed out, “it sounds great, but what are you doing?”

I received a lengthy lecture and I was getting far more than I could process.

“Do you teach?” and “can you fit in another pupil?” I had to concede.

So started a new chapter in my piano playing, with Michael Mulroy guiding me.

(March 2016, Insert to intro: I plan to have a yearlong quest with Michael, we eventually settle on 50 lessons. Please feel free to join us)

(July 2016, Insert to intro: I use MuseScore extensively. Go to . I use the app from Lesson 1 but I don’t actually use MuseScore’s sheet music stock until Lesson 44! See MuseScore now. Or any music app.

How is the music presented?

The whole book is written in Microsoft’s Word 97 – 2003.

I load songs into MuseScore and save them as MuseScore files.

I also Export them from MuseScore as PDF files.

I open the PDF and copy the screen with the Print Scrn key.

I paste the screenprint into Microsoft’s Paint.

I cut out the relevant music and paste it into the main Word file.

For printing purposes I save the Word document as a PDF file.)

(August 2016. Note, there is deliberately no index or chapter groupings in this book. I want you to experience the Lessons in the way I did. If there is something you want to find you can always interrogate this Word document using the Search facility, go to HOME, FIND, and type in what you’re looking for. “house” for instance will bring up 5 locations of House of the Rising Sun. If you have a PDF version you will have a ‘Find on page’ option.)

(September 2016. I have read and reread this innumerable times. I apologise in advance for any mistakes.)

Michael wants a song list though, so you can find things easily.

Most of these are just excerpts of course, to demonstrate concepts:

Lesson 3

Nights in White Satin.

Lessons 4 and 5

You Only Live Twice.

Let it Be. (1)

Lesson 6

Hello Goodbye.

Lessons 7 and 8

Pretty Woman. (1)

While My Guitar Gently Weeps. (1)

Lessons 9 and 10

My Heart Will Go On. (Titanic) No sheet music.

Someone Like You.

Real Love.

Lessons 11, 12, 13, and 14

Gesu Bambin.

Lesson 16

Theme from Spartacus. (1)

Walking in the Air.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps. (Again, 2, see Lessons 7/8)

Counting Stars.

Nobody Does it Better.

Lesson 18

Let it Be. (Again, 2, see Lessons 4/5)

Lesson 19

Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 2.

Lesson 21

Schubert: Opus 90 No 4.

Moonlight Sonata. (1)

Moon River.

Lesson 22

American Pie.

Lesson 24

Cwm Rhondda.

Mr Tambourine Man. (1)

Lesson 25

Love Me Tender. (1)

Lesson 26

Michelle. (1)

Lesson 27

Pretty Woman. (Again, 2, see Lessons 7/8)

Stand by Me. (1)

Michelle. (Again, 2, see Lesson 26)

Bright Eyes.

Lesson 28

Mr Tambourine Man. (Again, 2, see Lesson 24)

Nowhere Man.

Lesson 29

Stand by Me. (Again, 2, see Lesson 27)

Mad World.

Bohemian Rhapsody.

Beautiful stranger.

Theme from Spartacus. (Again, 2, see Lesson 16)

Beethoven’s Bagatelle Op. 33 No. 4.

Scarborough Fair. (1)

Lesson 30

Scarborough Fair. (Again, 2, see Lesson 29)

Mr Tambourine Man. (Again, 3, see Lesson 28)

Fields of Hope.

Clocks. (1)

Over the Rainbow.

Hurt.

While my Guitar Gently Weeps. (Again, 3, see Lesson 16)

Lesson 31

While my Guitar Gently Weeps. (Again, 4, see Lesson 30)

Pretty Woman. (Again, 3, see Lesson 27)

Lara’s Theme.

Everybody’s Talkin’.

Stairway to Heaven.

Love Me Tender. (Again, 2, see Lesson 25)

La Valse D’Amelie. (1)

Lesson 32

La Valse D’Amelie. (Again, 2, see Lesson 31)

Love Me Tender. (Again, 3, see Lesson 31)

Clocks. (Again, 2, see Lesson 30)

Lesson 33

Frustration.

Aquarium.

Michelle. (Again, 3, see Lesson 27)

Lesson 34

Michelle. (Again, 4, see Lesson 33)

Lawrence of Arabia.

Glasgow Love Theme.

Lesson 35

Morning Has Broken.

Susan’s Morning Win.

Lesson 36

Bohemian Rhapsody.

Good King Wenceslas.

The House of the Rising Sun. (1)

Lesson 38

Caprice No.24.

Moonlight Sonata. (Again, 2, see Lesson 21)

Unchained Melody. (1)

Lesson 39

Unchained Melody. (Again, 2, see Lesson 38)

Pomp and Circumstance.

Lesson 40

Happy Birthday to You. (1)

Overture to La Forza Del Destino. Theme from Stella advert.

Lesson 41

Onedin Line. Theme from Spartacus. (Again, 3, see Lesson 29)

Fanfare for the Common Man.

Hawaii Five-O.

Blueberry Hill.

Elisa Aria.

Dr Who.

Lesson 42

Happy Birthday. (Again, 2, see Lesson 40)

The Entertainer.

The Quiet Room.

L’Heure Exquise.

The End of the World.

Lesson 43

You’ll Never Walk Alone.

House of the Rising Sun. (Again, 2, see Lesson 36)

Lesson 44

Air.

Prelude No. 1.

Impromptu Op. 90, No. 2.

Schindler’s List.

Killer Queen.

Lesson 45

1st Symphony.

Lesson 46

Lick.

Lesson 48

Star Trek.

Living Doll.

Steptoe and Son.

I Walk the Line.

Perfect Day.

Sparrow.

Etude en re mineur “l’Orage”.

Someone Like You.

Lesson 49

Under the Bamboo Tree.

Lesson 50

With a Little Help from My Friends.

One Way or Another.

Mr Tambourine Man. (Again, 4, see Lesson 30)

Downton Abbey.

Lesson 51

Bridge Over Troubled Water

Let it Be

Lesson 1

1 Sep 2015

The melody is the song, and harmony is provided by chords below.

Much sheet music has chord indications, called chord symbols, above the staff, and this is what I should be concentrating on. If these chord symbols are not there then either write them in or put the music away.

Here is a simple melody, and the harmony is a single note in the left hand per bar, indicated by the chord symbols above the staff, Am, F, Dm etc.

[pic]

A lot of classical sheet music is very hard and the left hand can be very hard to read and play, with complex patterns, genius maybe, but deeply unsatisfying for me.

Concentrating on chords as named objects, not numbers, nor proliferations of dots, made the world a clearer place.

I found these chords somewhere:

[pic]

Just experimenting with these was great fun.

It is in the key of G (major), G is chord I in the scale of G, and D is chord V.

Movement between these two is fun and significant.

I could mess around with them and find out odd things, like the top 3 notes of G7 are Bdim.

Or that the top 4 notes of Em9 are Gmaj7 (E G B D F#)

(MM points out that E G B D F is Em-9, which is E minor 7 flat 9)

Other chords spring to mind

C = C E G

C+ = C E G# (this is C augmented)

Csus = C F G (note 4 is “suspended”)

C5 = C G (there is no E. In guitar terms this is a “power chord”)

C7 = C E G Bb

Cmaj7 = C E G B

Cmin(Maj7) = C Eb G B (this is a peculiar animal) Chord symbol CmM7 per Wikipedia

Cm = C Eb G

Cm7 = C Eb G Bb

C⁰ = C Eb Gb A (this is C diminished, it is always a 7th, played as C⁰7)

C9 = C E G Bb D

Cm9 = C Eb G Bb D

C11 = C E G Bb D F (not a significant chord, also the E is redundant)

C13 = C E G Bb D F A where the E Bb and A give the significant sound of C13

For more about power chords, or more correctly dyads, see guide/power-chords/. There is no third so the dyad is neither major nor minor.

Michael points out that this gets complex, and for instance instead of C11, why not just use the chord symbol Bb/C.

C13 is significant because the A resolves down to G then down to F

[pic]

This moves the piece from C to F. It’s a bit beyond me, to be honest at the moment.

Getting used to playing these and the various inversions is the basis of my study now.

It seems a mammoth task when you include the chords built on all the other notes, but patterns become familiar, and also you meet the same chords time and again.

Google ‘4 chord tricks’ for instance, to prove that some songs only use 4 chords, but to great effect.

Hence learning and playing scales is very good for developing a feel for scales, both major and minors. Practising arpeggios, or broken chords, however will ultimately be much more useful. Especially if one is handy with rare and at first awkward chords, like G#m, partly because if you are schooled in scales you will have practised the scale of Ab, and not G#. But G# is handy for musicians and guitarists to locate themselves, the scale of G# is just one semitone up from G.

Lesson 2

9 Sep 2015

T RL

T RL stands for Together Right Left, getting familiar with bouncing a theme.

(T is two semitones, the R and L are a semitone each, hence the gap between the T and R)

T RL builds like this:

[pic]

Counting quavers, 1 and 2, Together, L hand plays C and C, and R hand plays C, E and G.

Count 3, R hand plays CEG

Count 4, L hand plays CC

Count 5 and 6, Together, L hand CC, R hand CEG

Count 7, R hand plays CEG

Count 8, L hand plays CC

Count 1 and 2, next bar, L hand plays CC, R hand plays C Eb G

And so on.

[pic]

T R L T R L

This is the run in to Nobody does it better, by Marvin Hamlisch.

The chord sequence is C (R hand is root position), Cm, G (1st inversion), G7 (1st inversion), as shown above, repeated 4 times.

Then continue the T RL sequence with C, Cm, B7, Em (2nd inversion), C/A, C/D, G (1st inversion). The music is not shown, but for clarity here are the chords:

[pic]

Note that the B7 is the 3rd inversion

Root is B D# F# A

1st is D# F# A B

2nd is F# A B D#

3rd is A B D# F#

This got me bouncing about the keyboard like I had never really done before, and messing with the chords built some patterns, for instance that B is B D# F#, while Bb is Bb D F.

The essence of T RL is:

[pic]

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 (Quaver count)

I found that instead of reading the notes carefully and interpreting the chord, which was very slow, I could predict the notes needed by looking at the chord symbol and by looking at the music I could decide which octave of the notes to use, and which inversion of the chord.

Notice how the random choice of chords is not a good one, C F D A would have been better, especially if the notes are enriched with harmony notes. Try this:

[pic]

Things became much more intuitive, quick and fun.

To finish the lesson I was told that the melody note is the note of the chord. And to add harmony in the R hand the melody is King and the chords will always be first inversion, assuming the melody note is part of the harmony chord.

For instance if the melody note is C and the chord symbol (harmony) is C then the R hand will be playing E G C.

That is C chord, 1st inversion, so the melody, C, is topmost, and not hidden in or under the harmony.

Lesson 43

13 July 2016

Vamping.

Avant leçon.

I watch examples of extemporising on YouTube but can’t do it. Irritating.

Aeolian mode improvisation



Lydian mode improvisation



A girl plays a LH simple arpeggio but with a fancy rhythm.

No problem.

Then she plays a made up melody in the RH with accompanying harmony to match the LH.

Can I do it without the LH hand rhythm going to pot. NO.

I wish I’d spent more of my youth plinking around on a piano (with guidance) instead of cycling round looking for interesting things, wasting time.

It seems a simple model:

The music is in a key. Pick from major, harmonic minor, or minor modal. Practise this key.

If it is C then play the scale C D E F G A B C.

Play the main chords from the family of chords, I, iii and V (ie C E G, E G B and G B D)

There are no accidentals in C, which makes documenting it easier. But do try it with other keys.

Draw up a short simple list of chords as your basis for your music. Each chord represents a bar.

eg I IV I V IV I. Or in Arabic 1 4 1 5 4 1. In the key of C for instance it would be C F C G F C.

Whatever method you prefer.

Draw up a simple melody, half a dozen notes, a nice little tune you have just made up.

Play an LH arpeggio like C G C’. Add some LH rhythm if you can, so there is a beat, like C G C’ G C’.

(C’ represents the octave above C)

Play your melody. Add harmony notes to match the key at that point. The harmony notes match the family of chords for that point.

Then put it all together, LH arpeggio with rhythm, and RH melody with harmony notes, like this:

[pic]

Bar 1. Key C. Play LH arpeggio C G C’. Play your melody (R hand) with harmony notes C E G below to match the key where you can. The third (E) is important as there is no third in the LH, later you can put them in the left hand but as C G E’, quite a stretch.

Bar 2. Key F. Play LH arpeggio F C F’. Play your melody and harmony notes F A C below to match the key where you can.

Bar 3. As bar 1.

Bar 4. Key G. Play LH arpeggio G D G’. Play your melody with harmony notes G B D below to match the key, where you can, or want. I put the dotted crotchet in to add a bit of syncopation, something which is getting automatic with me, albeit it can get out of control lol.

And so on.

Out of interest I wrote the above tune in 5 minutes to demonstrate the principles involved. After a few plays on the piano it very quickly became this:

[pic]

To me this was a remarkable moment. I had written a little bit of nothing and elaborated it a little to a pleasant little musical episode in half an hour.

If you struggle, like I do, with improvisation and arpeggios, then just play a “block” LH chord at the beginning of each bar.

I still can’t do it. Michael can do this automatically easily. I will have to draw up some sheet music.

The Lesson.

A quick refresher to ensure I understand the important scales:

[pic]

I play the scales and the accompanying families of chords.

We discuss how these are the basis for movement, and also how composers avoid using the 7th chord of the major scale because it is disruptive, and how they might modify it to suit their needs.

Notice the important points about the harmonic minor modified scale:

Chord ii is modified (from diminished to minor)

Chord V is major (the 7th note is sharpened)

Chord vii is diminished and on the 7th note of the harmonic minor scale. (B in this case)

Notice the important points about the minor modal scale:

Chord ii is modified (from diminished to minor)

Chord v is minor.

Chord VII is major and on the 7th note of the minor modal scale. (Bb in this case)

This brings up how effective straightforward arpeggios are, I try Michael’s arrangement of You’ll Never Walk Alone by Gerry and the Pacemakers:

(no example here)

These are of course 4 note arpeggios. Not 6 NA’s or 12 NA’s. Idiot me. Bar 1 is C E G C’ for instance, with the same notes then repeated several times.

Don’t miss the octave instruction, above the tempo.

The melody is cleverly carried in the last two quavers (in the triplets) of the (treble clef) bars. I steal Michael’s version and feed it into MuseScore, but without using his shorthand version. I thought it did not sound right at first as he only indicated all the triplets in bar 1, I put them all in. It now easily eclipses my version that I took off the internet.

I ask him to play it right through to check it is all correct, I am soon lost so I say “Tell me when to turn the page”

“I’m not looking at the music”, he says.

Git.

I am now seeing the tunes very well, I am reading the chord symbols and finding it much easier to play the arpeggios because I know the key of the bar and the notes involved.

I think of other tunes which carry well with arpeggios, like The End of the World, Lesson 42. Another 4 NA. And the fabulous House of the Rising Sun by the Animals:

(no example here)

It plays brilliantly and makes you wonder how anyone after 1964 can come up with anything new.

Strange to find a bar in D, with an F#, when the piece is in Am. This just shows how clever these people are. You can play Dm to keep true to the family of chords of Am, but the subtle D bar is invigorating and spicy. And genius with just ONE note going outside the scale.

To demonstrate how the same thing can be written different ways Michael has a version of HotRS with the quavers in the treble and the single notes in the bass, and it still sounds great. Though I am not the impassive Eric Burdon, nor do I have the awesome natural speed and flexibility of Alan Price on the organ, making a sound that “was a key element in the group’s success” (Wiki).

Also these pieces don’t need any additions, they are complete as they are, and they do not need “fleshing out”. Michael declares them very good versions. This is so important, there is so much rubbish out there that is needlessly difficult to play. I would rather feed my arrangements of tunes into MuseScore, and mess with them until I am happy with them than struggle with badly arranged unplayable versions which were actually deflating me.

They also don’t need more beats adding, or T RL or any sort of syncopation. I like them.

Vamping

I try again to vamp, following my how-to-do method at the start of the lesson. I am on exactly the right lines and just need to prepare a chord sequence, draw up some melody and fit the harmony into the right hand. It also works just to bash out chords for fun using the same formula, LH arpeggio or block chord, or even a single note. Plus RH melody, and RH harmony to match the bass chord or note.

I can do it of a fashion, I just need more practise.

It went something like this:

[pic]

It is very hard to do without pre planning. There are a myriad of paths to follow.

MuseScore. A wonderful learning experience. So much better than pen and paper, and it teaches you to put the right notes in. If you put in a note of the wrong length then it will push all the other notes around. Infuriating at first, but very instructive and clever. I recommend any music writing app as an excellent way of learning.

It is extremely satisfying to copy and paste in MuseScore when you have got the basics in, so many bars repeat this is an easy way of moving forward quickly.

Lesson 44

Tuesday 19 July 2016

Après leçon:

So do I understand any of this chord/bar, family of chords theory?

I draw up this wistful piece after hearing something similar on the radio.

This, my Opus 4, Wistful:

[pic]

[pic]

I think I am getting there, at least it is all balanced and sounds harmonious.

I feed it into MuseScore and amend it, then try to play it again:

[pic]

[pic]

I like the extra notes, but they make it more difficult to play. This is what it is all about though, playing what you want, and believing that some music is badly written and that you can re-write it to suit your playing.

And what is the last chord in bar 10? Dm7 perhaps, D F A C, without the F.

I have this obsession with chords especially having looked at Air from the Water Music, by Handel. It is a pleasant melody with a pleasant sequence of chords attached almost note for note. It is a bit difficult to fathom, but if composers are playing chord sequences they like the sound of it makes more sense:

[pic]

Reading the chord symbols makes playing a lot more understandable, as a sequence of 14 chords it is a lot easier than trying to read about 60 notes individually exactly. Also there are patterns of chords which re-appear for you to recognise.

The Lesson proper:

We correct some of the various errors I’ve put in You’ll Never Walk Alone, something I find difficult to do alone as I am trying to put all the notes into Michael’s shorthand copy. Certainly looking at things in terms of chords before playing the piece helps, as I don’t always look at the chord symbols as I’m playing, though they are often very handy if I get a chance to glance at them.

I have the bad habit of playing the easy bits fast and the hard bits slowly, or even wrongly. I must be more metronomic and use the free time on the easy bits to look ahead.

A perfect exercise for reading ahead is Beethoven’s Prelude No. 1:

[pic]

[pic]

The first eight notes of every bar are identical to the second eight, so you set your hands to auto and read ahead while you are in the last half of the bar. Only the last three bars don’t follow this pattern.

I play Handel’s Air. Pre reading the chords beforehand proves very handy, even though I had to put all the chord symbols in myself, the music does not have them.

Further into Air we try to deconstruct what is going on.

In Gm the fifth chord, V, is D. So in bar 1 (below) the D, V, moves to i, Gm. A perfect cadence.

The Gm moves to Cm, another v to i.

Cm to F = v to I.

F to Bb = V to I.

Cm is a Pivot Chord

Moving the music from Gm to Bb

[pic]

I don’t know exactly how this works. Look it up? But that is what is happening anyway here.

I say that clattering up and down the scales does little good. However here is a piece where it might be a worthwhile prelude to playing, Schubert’s Impromptu Op. 90, No. 2:

[pic]

[pic]

[pic]

Always try to hit Eb with your 3rd finger and Bb with your 4th finger in the runs, just as you would in practising scales.

Once you get the feel for Eb you are running up and down the scale and only need to read the top and bottom notes of runs, and in bars 4, 5, 12 and 13 it’s a chromatic climb. It looks a nightmare but it deconstructs well, and in bars 7, 8 and 9 the chords are ii to V to I of the family of chords of Eb, creating a perfect cadence. Later on in the piece it climbs up to the B on the fifth leger line above the treble stave, a nightmare to read, so write a B on the score and belt up the scale from Eb an octave and a half to the Bb and back down two octaves. Make things as easy as you can. Watch it on YouTube, then take up golf ha ha.

And another thing, I must stop correcting mistakes while I am playing. If I hit a wrong note it is more important to keep the beat than to try and play the right note as well as the wrong one. Needless to say this comes from years of playing alone, a case of musical auto-didactism. I must imagine myself playing to others more, or better still, I must play to others more.

Electronic piano £1500.

Hair grip to keep music book pages open, £1.50:

[pic]

Cereal packet cut open and placed behind the sheet music to stop the sun shining through 3 thin A4 sheets, free.

I wonder how I am really getting on and try some different pieces. One is Schindler’s List by John Williams:

(no example here)

If I were really clever I would be able to enhance this from what I see above, but I need to go away and carefully add what I can in stages. I must admit some of the syncopation and melodic inversion chords are there if I go really slowly.

I pretty much automatically add some T RL syncopation.

I can understand why they don’t necessarily put this in an Easy Play book, if you’re clever enough you can do it yourself, and if you’re not yet up to doing that then you don’t want to be bamboozled by a mass of dots.

The syncopation is in the bass, and is as we have done before.

I also added more harmony notes in the treble, and to be honest the dots are just showing exactly how to play the chord; in practise I found I was playing the melody as written (I can never memorise melody) but after a few trial runs I was putting in the additional harmony notes by reading the chord symbols and using appropriate melodic inversions, first introduced in Lesson 6, with perhaps a cursory glance at the actual notes.

If the chord proved too difficult as (re)written, if my fingers weren’t up to it for instance, or if I was fumbling, then I just fell back on the original version, which is of course still here, represented by the top notes in the treble.

Of course bar 7 is fun, with Bm7(b5), but even this constructs well,

B is B D# F#

Bm is B D F#.

Bm7 is B D F# A.

The music states it is Bm7(b5) so the fifth is flattened, it is B D F A, which is exactly what is in the bar.

You do need to run through it first though, it is fresh in my mind now, but in two weeks I will wonder what is going on.

Needless to say you sometimes have to hold back from enriching everything beyond reason or playability, and it is refreshing to lighten the bass occasionally to stop it becoming a heavy drag. There are numerous incarnations of every song I amend, and endless scribbled on scores and printouts. And a lot of time consumed, unsmiley face.

I amended bar 2 (Dm7 G7 C E/G#) because it was unplayable before:

(MuseScore sometimes counts the anacrusis in the bar count, sometimes it only counts full bars. Here it has decided on full bars)

(no example here)

Played with choral sounds nicely blended in this piece sounds superb. (ie setting the piano to two voices, such as piano and strings, or piano and chorale) Especially when I found out how to balance the two sounds properly.

The fact that I could take a well written piece and add things stunned me. This is what I have been aiming for for thirty years. I am not totally dictated to by the sheet music. I do need the melody, and the chord symbols, but if a piece is badly written I won’t mess with it as I find it too disheartening. And music is meant to be fun.

This is why the journey is coming to a close, I feel like I am getting to a good starting point, and if it has helped you then we will be well pleased. As Michael says:

“Yes excellent lesson

Good we are getting through more playing THAN THEORY!!!

GETTING  GOOD BALANCE NOW!”

(And I will be able to stop this compulsive documenting and recording of things)

(And get a life ha ha, sure)

Go to sheetmusic

This is a wonderful resource of music. Type in the music you want, press search and see what appears. You can play the music online on your computer, or download it into your own MuseScore app and print it. It is a great starting point for any music you are interested in, you get a choice of lots of versions of whatever you are looking for and saves you guessing how the music looks on paper. I know you can always google sheet music and feed it into MuseScore, but that is time consuming. Or find a version you like on-line then find a similar MuseScore version. The great advantage of MuseScore is that you can play it on the computer and re-arrange it.

As a MuseScore experiment look at or download Bach’s Praeludium and deconstruct some of the chords. This took me some head-scratching and took me right back to Lesson 1.

This bar was the most difficult:

[pic]

Everything I expect is there, F A C E, with E in the bass. The major seventh is a semitone below the tonic.

(F7 is F A C Eb, the seventh note is a tone below the tonic)

And this wasn’t easy either:

[pic]

Similarly everything is there, B D F Ab. Remember all the notes are 3 semitones apart.

There are at least 5 different types of chords in this wonderful piece, and they are all identifiable.

This one did fox me, it is basically G7 with the C being a suspended 4th, which MuseScore auto trims to G7sus:

[pic]

The C resolves downwards to B in the next bar.

I have tried to keep everything as understandable as possible, and light if possible. I don’t have a natural flair for music but have made every effort to understand it. This next bit proved how much there is to know, it is neverending.

I then deconstructed Freddie Mercury’s superb Killer Queen. But unfortunately cannot show it here. Yet.

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