First of all we will take a look at how melodies are notated in a fake book. Usually you will find the melody of a song in sheet music notation together with chord suggestions above the notes. This economical way of notating makes it possible to fill a fake book with a lot of melodies.
The advantage of this way of notating melodies is that you can have a fake book as a reference book with a lot of melodies at your disposal.
The drawback is that you do not have a written out arrangement of the song for piano. You have to figure out how to play the song by yourself. Actually this can be an advantage that will help you develop as a pianist letting you interpret the song's performance as you feel is appropriate.
One little melody in a fake book can give you many exercises in different areas of your piano playing and help you in your development as a musician. Here are a few examples:
1. Learn to play chords together with a melody. For example, play chords with your left hand and melody with your right hand, play bass notes with your left hand and combine melody and chord notes with your right hand, play various combinations of bass notes, chord notes and melody notes with both hands.
2. Learn to find the right chords to use when playing a melody. In a fake book you will find chord suggestions that can easily be supplemented with more chords making the voicings and chord progressions more exciting.
3. Learn to improvise by using the melody as a starting point. This is often called melodic improvisation. You can also use the chords or the fitting scales as a foundation for your improvisation. This is called chordal improvisation and scale improvisation.
4. Learn to play the songs in the piano fake book in different keys thus developing your ability to play by ear and understand the piano keyboard by transposing songs you have learned.
Actually you can use a song in a fake book as the basis for your development as a pianist if your goal is to be a good piano player in the area of improvised piano music.
Let us take an example from a fake book. You have a song of your choice in front of you with melody, chord suggestions and nothing more. What can you do to use this song as a starting point for a piano practice session?
We suppose that the song starts with the chord C-major and then in the next bar you will find the chord F-major. Here are some suggestions on what to practice drawn from these two bars of music.
1. Work on chord voicings. Practice playing C-major triads with your left hand in the three inversions. That means that you play the chord C-major with the three notes involved, C, E and G, in three combinations, that is, CEG, EGC or GCE. Do the same with the chord F-major. Practice also to move from C to F in various combinations.
2. Work on playing the melody in different ways. Single right hand notes, playing right hand octaves, playing the melody with your left hand and chords with your right hand and more.
3. Work on adding more chords. For example, taking the C-chord to F could go via Gm7 and C7 thus creating the following chord sequence, C, Gm7, C7, F. Much can be done to spice the song by adding more chords to the ones in the fake book.
4. Add notes to the chords you use in your song. A C-major chord can easily be substituted with a Cmaj7 chord or a Cmaj9 and you can find more interesting chords if you focus on one chord at a time. Of course you can work on playing these new chords in different combinations and inversions too.
5. Use the song as a foundation for improvisation. Learn a melody passage by heart. Play this passage over and over again with small changes in the melody thus practicing melodic improvisation. Or use the chords. The chord C-major suggests two major scales to use when improvising. You can use a C-major scale or a C-major pentatonic scale for example.
To sum up you can use one single song in a fake book as the basis for piano exercises in many areas of your development as a pianist and at the same time you build up a repertoire with popular melodies for your own benefit and the enjoyment of other people.
There are many things you can do with just one song in a fake book. In this piano lesson we will focus on the chords of a song and how we can use them in a piano practice session.
You can learn to play piano chords in many different ways. Here are just a few examples:
1. You can focus on just one chord memorizing it in twelve keys and then learning another chord the same way. This way of learning chords can be effective if you concentrate long enough on the chords committing them to your long term memory. Some people find this way of learning to mechanical and boring.
2. You can work on learning chord progressions by heart an then applying them in all twelve keys. You can find such chord voicings in piano method books or you can "invent" you own progressions and voicings. Maybe this approach is a little bit more interesting than the before mentioned method.
3. You can learn chords in a more creative way by just deciding to work on finding out variations of a chord as you sit down playing. For example, figure out as many nice sounding variations of the chord Cmaj7 as you can.
4. You can learn progressions and voicings in a more creative way too. For example, play the chord sequence C, A7, Dm7, G7 over and over again trying to create smooth chord changes in an improvised manner.
5. Compose your own chord progressions and write them down with sheet music notation. In the process of writing them down you will probably trigger your creative mind to come up with interesting piano chord voicings that you never have thought of before and that you also can share with others that can read sheet music.
6. Focus on a melody you like and use is as a basis for your piano chord practicing sessions. One melody can be the source of many chord exercises and at the same time you will have a melody at your disposal to play to others.
In this piano lesson we will focus on the sixth suggestion on piano chord practicing. Now we will delve a bit into the art of playing from a fake book.
Actually, what is a fake book?
It is a book with songs and melodies written with sheet music notation. It is produced in a concise format with only melody, lyrics and chord names. The songs have the lyrics beneath the notes and above the notes you will find the names of the appropriate chords to play. In other words, the notes of the chords are not written out. This way of notating gives you the choice to interpret the performance your own way.
Let us take a look at the previous suggestions on how to practice piano chord playing by using a fake book. Here are some ways you can play the chord suggestions above the melody:
1. The first step is to play the melody with your right hand and the chord voicings with your left hand. Practice to play the chords in different ways and practice to move smoothly between chords as you practice playing the chord changes.
2. The next step is to play the bass notes with your left hand and the melody and chords in your right hand. This means that some of the melody notes will be embellished with notes from the chord suggestions. You do not have to include the left hand bass note.
3. The third level is to use both your left and right hand to play chord notes. This can give the song a professional touch if handled with elegance. There are so many ways to play a song this way that it has to be covered in a separate article. You can listen to solo piano recordings to find inspiration. You can also play written out arrangements in sheet music notation of melodies to build up your ability and taste in this area.
Peter Edvinsson has sinced written about articles on various topics from Guide Guitar, Programming and Guide Guitar. Peter Edvinsson is a pianist, composer and music teacher. He invites you to download your at. Peter Edvinsson's top article generates over 135000 views. to your Favourites.