D Chord Piano Sound
Joke Grinman
Major chords are triads constructed using a root, a major third and a perfect fifth. Major chords usually sound happy and bright. Major 7th chords are 4-note chords constructed with an additional major seventh.
Minor chords are triads constructed using a root, a minor third and a perfect fifth. Minor chords usually sound sad and darker. Minor 7th chords are 4-note chords constructed with an additional minor seventh.
Diminished chords are triads constructed using a root, a minor third and a diminished fifth. Diminished chords tend to sound dissonant and unresolved. Diminished 7th chords are 4-note chords constructed with an additional diminished seventh.
Augmented chords are triads constructed using a root, a major third and an augmented fifth. Augmented chords tend to sound dissonant and unresolved. Augmented 7th chords are 4-note chords constructed with an additional minor seventh.
Suspended 2nd chords are major chords where the third is lowered by a whole step to get a major second. Sus2 chords are therefore constructed using a root, a major second and a perfect fifth. Sus2 Chords tend to sound open and unresolved.
Suspended 4th chords are major chords where the third is raised by a half step to get a perfect fourth. Sus4 chords are therefore constructed using a root, a perfect fourth and a perfect fifth. Sus4 chords tend to sound somewhat dissonant and are looking to be resolved.
Dominant 7th chords are major chords with an additional minor seventh. Dominant 7th chords are therefore constructed using a root, a major third, a perfect fifth and a minor 7th. Dominant 7th chords chords tend to sound tense and unresolved.
Half-Diminished chords are diminished chords with an additional minor seventh. Half-Diminished chords are therefore 7th chords that are constructed using a root, a minor third, a diminished fifth and a minor seventh. Half-Diminished chords chords tend to sound tense and dissonant.
Major 6th chords are major triads with an added major 6th on top, so the intervals are root, major 3rd, perfect 5th and major 6th. Major 6th chords tend to be dark and don't have as much tension as major 7th chords.
Minor 6th chords are mior triads with an added major 6th on top, so the intervals are root, minor 3rd, perfect 5th and major 6th. Similar to major 6th chords, minor 6th chords don't have as much tension as minor 7th chords.
For example, the song I'm playing at the moment is in 4/4 and has the chords: Cmaj7 F#7#11 Fmaj7 F/G F/Ab G7sus. The first three chords take a measure each, and the last three chords all together take up one measure. At the moment, I am just playing them vanilla. So I play the Cmaj7 and hold it for the full measure. Then I play the next chord and hold for a full measure, etc.
But when I hear people playing accompaniments, they play lots of notes in between the chords, with cool syncopations. And sometimes the notes they play aren't belonging to the chord, so they sound quite interesting. Are there some go-to rules I can use for making it sound better? Things like "a sixteenth note before playing the next chord, play the root of the current chord"? Improvisation and experimentation haven't worked for me, so I need help!
Arpeggios! They are your friend. The more you play them and the more chords whose arpeggios you play, the more often you will think to yourself "Hey, I've heard that before, played by someone good on a real record!" Once you've got an arpeggio down, ascending and descending, play it starting on each note of the chord. Also start on the top note, then ascending arpeggiate up from the bottom and vice versa. Don't hesitate to make up your own drills. This is exploring, and there is a whole universe to explore.
Are you the complete accompaniment (i.e. there isn't a bass player?) Then your first job is to provide a strong, rhythmic bass line with your left hand. Right hand can play chords, arpeggios, sometimes support the vocal melody by doubling it, invent a counter-melody...
I'm wanting to start playing along with popular songs and the easiest way to find lyrics and music only has guitar chords. I can play those chords on the piano but it just sounds boring. How should I be filling the space between chords to make it sound more interesting and more full?
The guitarist does have a couple of advantages over a pianist in this respect. Early on, a guitarist learns to get more rhythmic interest out of a basic chord, by varying the rhythm of strokes, and by muting. Some of these effects are more difficult on a piano, and some are impossible.
On piano in particular, straight major and minor chords can sometimes sound a little basic, and a lot of the piano accompaniments you hear include dissonant extra notes - ninths, flat 7ths etc. It's hard to say when it's right to do this, but experiment and see what you like the sound of; and look at sheet music to see where they do it (ragtime sheet music is a good place to start).
You can try different inversions of the chords. For example, you might use chord Ic (second inversion) when approaching a cadence. E.g. in the key of C, instead of playing C E G, you would play G C E. I find on the piano that if you play chords in such inversions that you don't end up moving your hand as much, it can sound nicer, as subtle movements which create a larger harmonic change are often more interesting to the ear.
I'm a pianist for a contemporary church, and 90% of the time, I only have chords to work off. The main elements are broken chords and rhythm. I will seem a bit dictative here but I don't want to talk too much and feel free to experiment around. (Will use C Major as an example, / = rest)
When you play a song with just the piano, you have to fill out every register, so with two hands I try to spread out as much as possible. Left hand will always play bass and right will go from G upwards.
It is really hard to explain without showing you, there's a lot more to explain, ideas for improvisation, adding dissonance, building a song, rhythm with both hands etc. if you're interested, just ask and I shall blabber on because improvisation on chords is a joy to play.
Everything above is reasonable advice, but I think an additional consideration is just learning lots and lots of songs, because the more you have under your hands, the more you will naturally draw on this expanding musical vocabulary. When you think it sounds boring, you can draw on the entirety of your resources to add interest, whether that is adding melodic interest with a counterline, harmonic interest by increasing the density of the sound (adding to or changing the basic chord structures), or rhythmic interest (don't forget that the piano is ultimately a percussion instrument).
Also don't forget that one way to add interest is to consider, when it is appropriate in the entire context, not playing at all. In a group context, this is something that is not considered frequently enough. When you lay out and then introduce the new element later, what seemed boring now may sound entirely new and interesting. Of course, this doesn't work for a solo piano setting, but in virtually every other context it is worthy of consideration.
One frustration for chordal instruments in play-along settings is that the background is usually pretty full, and there is just no space for an additional chordal instrument. Not much to do about this when playing along with an actual commercial recording of a song, but on properly done play-along materials, you should be able to dump the channel or track that contains the instrument you play, which will open up the sonic space.
I usually improvise to include something like the melody, parts of the melody, harmony or an accompaniment. Sometimes I mix and mash with these things, or play a counter melody. Practice is key, eventually you can just sit at a piano and play most songs in an interesting way regardless of looking up chords (it is so much faster looking up chords though).
I have a Hammond organ and really want to play invisibly shaken by Rodney Atkins and can't seem to find the right tone. In the song the music sounds like it is coming from a keyboard or piano. How can I adjust the tablet to make it sound like a keyboard or piano? Please help!
The Hammond organ is a truely great instrument with a haunting, sweet and very distinctive sound, precisely because it has a really unusual approach to tone generation. Consider yourself happy to have one!
But this unusual tone generation means, obviously, that you can hardly create sounds that "work" physically completely different. In the Hammond organ, very little sound comes from each tonewheel, the final sound is a result of the way the various partials blend together through the drawbars and the further signal-forming through tube amplification, possibly Leslie speaker etc.
To get a piano sound, get a piano! Best is an acoustic grand, but that may well be too expensive / space-consuming... There are plenty of digital home piano models available, ranging from cheap and bad to play (but still not necessarily bad sounding, nowadays) to high-end, which will approximate an acoustic one very well (but still not perfectly).
I don't believe you will be able to. The sound is indeed a piano and it's virtually impossible to get a piano sound from an organ.Even with a keyboard the piano sound isn't too realistic, as the way the sound is produced is artificial. A really good up to date keyboard will go to something close.
You can't. The unique sound that comes from a Hammond is in the speaker, and how it throws the sound around the room. If you were to take off the speaker panel from a Leslie cabinet, you would see a big wheel with slots cut out of it. When the organ is on, this wheel spins, and throws the sound around, which makes that pulsing sound. There is a setting on the organ where you can change the speed of the pulse, which just speeds or slows the spin of the wheel. In contrast, the sound texture of a piano is from the vibrations of the strings after being struck by the hammers, and is a completely different texture.
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