Saturday 12 April 2008

Discussing Waltz "bass chord chord" at Pianoworld with "koldo"

Hi Folks

Over at pianoworld a new member "koldo" was asking about Waltz rhythm played as "bass chord chord"

This was part of his question :-

"The question I have arises from the book "How to Play the Piano Despite Years of Lessons", which I saw on Amazon and seemed interesting. I've got to chapter 10, in which the authors describe what they call the basic skeleton arrangement (bass-chord-chord - if playing in 3/4 time). The right hand plays the melody an octave higher than written, whilst the left hand plays both the song's chords - tightly grouped around middle C - and the bass line- which is the root of the chord played from the piano's lowest possible octave - two notes an octave apart".

Then further advice was given thus :-

"This would be the "bass-chord-chord" you mentioned (it's often characterized as "om-pah-pah"). This is common practice for 3/4 time pieces at the beginning level."

A little further on koldo asks :-

"Having read ahead it seems that it's a technique that is quickly abandoned, and that it just serves to give the student a quick grounding in navigating the whole keyboard. I'll keep at it."

To which I replied :-

"nope, its a technique and all techniques one can, will and should grow from...I use it all the time when playing waltzes"

and then I continued to play a little demonstration for him using the song "Edelweiss" from the Sound Of Music :-

Edelweiss with waltz "Oom pah pah" or "boom chuck chuck" as we call it at pianomagic {click to hear}

That was only a quick demo and a few people have commented on how much they like it so, I'm gonna work on it some more to see what I can come up with...stay tuned

take care y'all

Lee



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.