The Passing Notes That Turn Boring Chords Into Beautiful Music

[00:00:03]Listen to this.

[00:00:08]>> [music] >> Those are some nice chords. C E minor F G C You could make a nice song out of them.

[00:00:23]Nothing wrong with them, but the way I just played them they're just kind of sitting there. Now, listen to the same progression, same chords in the same order, but watch what happens when I add a few little notes between them.

[00:00:45]Hear that? The same chords, but I just added a handful of notes in the spaces between them.

[00:00:52]And the whole thing kind of sounds a little more interesting, doesn't it? Kind of comes alive. Now, I added some notes in the left hand, as you could see. And those in-between notes have a name. We call them passing notes.

[00:01:08]And by the end of this video, that one little trick is going to change how every song you play sounds. If you've been following along, this is the third video of this little series about what you can do with your left hand.

[00:01:23]And today, we're going to continue to add things to this. Everything's going to click together.

[00:01:30]Now, you remember in the first video, you learned the four left hand patterns.

[00:01:35]You learned about broken chords.

[00:01:39]You learned about walking bass.

[00:01:43]The Alberti bass.

[00:01:46]The fifth, the fifth [music] thing.

[00:01:49]Anyway, in the second video, you learned when to switch between left hand patterns. And now today, we're going to add some connective tissue, if you like.

[00:02:00]We're going to add notes that link one chord to the next, so that your baseline stops sounding like separate blocks, and starts sounding like one flowing line.

[00:02:12]Now, if you missed those first two videos, I've included links to them in the description.

[00:02:19]So, we're going to talk a little bit more today about passing notes in the left hand. Now, I don't want the term passing notes to sound like heavy music theory. It's not really.

[00:02:31]Think of these notes the way we talked about the walking bass. They're like stepping stones. So, let's say you've got two chords.

[00:02:42]That's C to E minor.

[00:02:45]And the bottom notes in your left hand are like the two banks of a creek, if you like. And there's a little gap between them. You know, maybe with some water flowing along.

[00:02:58]Well, a passing note is [music] just a stone that you drop in the middle, so that you can step across smoothly, instead of leaping. That's the whole idea. So, we're going to look at the simplest passing note, then which direction to walk them. In other words, is that passing note going to be heading up or heading down? And then we're going to add some even more interesting passing notes that professionals use. And believe me, it sounds much harder than it is. Let's start with something almost ridiculously simple. So, let's say my left hand is moving from C >> [music] >> up to E.

[00:03:43]Those are the two bass notes under two chords. Now, right now, I could just jump from C to E.

[00:03:53]That's fine.

[00:03:54]>> [music] >> It's a leap.

[00:03:56]But, let's drop one stepping stone in the gap. The note that is halfway between them, which is D.

[00:04:08]So, instead of going from C straight to E, we're going to play Hear how that little D in the middle, it carries me there. It fills the gap.

[00:04:30]Now, the chords, of course, are C and E minor in this example. [music] But, that D it isn't part of either chord. It's just passing through.

[00:04:42]>> [music] >> And so, that's literally why it's called a passing note. So, to help you get this under your fingers, you start with the right hand alone. Here's your two chords.

[00:04:56]Of course, you could play them this way.

[00:05:00]Either way, you're playing C to E minor.

[00:05:02]And you can practice this in other keys, by the way. Now, the left hand alone.

[00:05:09]You feel that little >> [music] >> walking up?

[00:05:13]And then, we play them together.

[00:05:16]>> [music] >> Now, if you have to do this slowly at first, there's no shame in that.

[00:05:25]There's no shame in playing it 10 times slower than you think you should, because slow is how it gets into your hands.

[00:05:36]You'll notice that filling the gap between these two notes, we're going up.

[00:05:41]So, you have passing notes that can walk up to the next chord.

[00:05:45]>> [music] >> Or, they can walk down to the next chord.

[00:05:50]So, the simplest rule is this, you follow where you're going.

[00:05:56]So, if your next chord is higher, you walk up to it.

[00:06:06]If it's lower, you can walk down.

[00:06:12]Now, there's going to be times when you can go up or down and both will work. So, this is not a hard and fast rule.

[00:06:21]But, generally, you can just let the destination pull you in whatever direction sounds best to you. So, let's say you're going down from C to A minor.

[00:06:36]So, now you have these two notes in the bass.

[00:06:38]>> [music] >> And you can walk down.

[00:06:44]Are you going up from C to F?

[00:06:48]>> [music] >> Well, you've got more room, so you can walk >> [music] >> And look, that's our walking bass, isn't it, from video number two?

[00:07:02]Which is really just passing notes stacked one after another.

[00:07:07]So, it all connects. And in some cases, you can walk down >> [music] >> from C to F.

[00:07:16]And it depends on the context. And there's our walking bass again.

[00:07:21]And so, what the walking bass is in reality is a series of passing [music] notes strung together.

[00:07:31]So, your ear can guide you. You can start with the right hand alone.

[00:07:38]And then the left hand walking down.

[00:07:42]Or it can walk all the way down.

[00:07:45]>> [music] >> Or up.

[00:07:50]>> [music] >> And of course, you want to do this in other keys. Right now, I've been in basically in C major, but >> [music] [music] >> Now, if you grab a wrong note on the way, but don't never let those wrong notes bother you. The beautiful thing about passing notes is that they go by so fast that sometimes your ear can forgive what may have sounded like a wrong note. You can always say, "Well, I meant to play it that way."

[00:08:29]You can't really get this badly wrong.

[00:08:32]So, if this is making piano feel a little less mysterious, be sure to hit subscribe. If you haven't subscribed already, I make these videos for adults who are finding their way back to the piano or to the keyboard as it is in this case.

[00:08:47]And perhaps that's who you are.

[00:08:50]Also, if you'd like to say thanks, there's a buy me a coffee link below.

[00:08:54]It's a great way to help support the channel. The passing notes we've been using to this point are all part of the scale.

[00:09:02]>> [music] >> But now, let's add a type of passing note that makes things sound even more interesting. And it's only a little tiny bit harder than what we just did. This type of passing note is called a chromatic passing note. Now, all chromatic means is we're dealing with the note right next door.

[00:09:30]A half step. The very next key. It could be a black key, a white key.

[00:09:35]Basically, you're not skipping.

[00:09:38]Just whatever key happens to be right next. So, if we're going from C to D, instead of leaving a gap, we can put in C sharp.

[00:09:48]>> [music] >> So, that kind of gives it a little bit more spice, if you like.

[00:10:04]Now, you hear piano players use that half-step slide when they're playing jazz, >> [music] >> or playing old hymns, or pop songs, or standards, and your hand it barely moves. It just steps to the very next key.

[00:10:23]Let me show you the difference side by side. Here's the plain passing note that I've demonstrated now, going from C to E minor and the bass just goes C, [music] D, E.

[00:10:36]But now, here is a chromatic passing note.

[00:10:41]>> [music] >> Same idea.

[00:10:46]It's just a little bit richer.

[00:10:48]So, you can practice this by using the left hand alone at first.

[00:10:54]Let your ear find that half-step, and then you can add the chords.

[00:11:00]>> [music] [music] >> Notice now we added a chromatic passing note going down.

[00:11:14]But notice how nicely it lands under your fingers there.

[00:11:22]And don't forget now, you can go very slowly at first. Slow and smooth wins every time.

[00:11:29]And you can gradually speed up. Speed shows up on its own.

[00:11:34]It always does.

[00:11:36]Now, I'd like to show you how we can put this all together using everything that we've covered in these three videos. And we're going to use our old friend Amazing Grace to demonstrate. So, like before, I'm going to play it in the key of G. We'll start with a broken chord pattern.

[00:11:57]And then I'll switch patterns at the appropriate places. [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> So, you can hear how full that sounds.

[00:12:43]And I want you to realize there's nothing advanced happening. I've just used four simple patterns, a switch or two, a few stepping stone notes in the gaps.

[00:12:55]The left hand is now doing a lot of interesting things. And that's basically it.

[00:13:00]Nobody listening is ever going to guess that your left hand is doing something so simple.

[00:13:06]And that is the whole secret to creating a beautiful arrangement basically of any song that you want to play. Remember the stepping stones?

[00:13:17]That's all a passing note is. A stone that you drop in the gap.

[00:13:24]So, the music steps across smoothly instead of leaping up and down.

[00:13:30]>> [music] >> You can walk them up, you can walk them down, and you can slide through the half steps in between.

[00:13:43]So, your job is to take one song, just one song, and find somewhere to drop in these passing notes. You may end up with a walking bass. You may find yourself using the chromatic passing tone.

[00:14:00]But, that's basically the assignment that I'm giving you.

[00:14:04]And that brings our little left hand series full circle.

[00:14:09]We started with the four patterns. We learned how to switch between them, and now we've learned how to connect them.

[00:14:18]Now, if you came to this video first, and you don't have those four patterns yet, go back and start with the very first video. There is a link in the description. It's the foundation that everything else sits on. And what I'm going to do, once I put this video up on YouTube, I'm going to put all three of these videos together in one playlist, and I'll call it left hand mastery. And then you can go through them in order.

[00:14:46]I believe that if you work through these three videos slowly over the next few weeks, your left hand will sound completely different. You'll get away from just playing block chords. Now, playing block chords is a wonderful way to start out because it helps you learn chords. But now, when you're playing melody and chords in your right hand, you can add some interesting things in your left.

[00:15:13]So, thank you for spending part of your day at the piano with me. If you'd like to support my work, you can go to my Patreon page. As I mentioned before, you can buy me a coffee.

[00:15:23]I really appreciate your support and I really appreciate all of you who have subscribed to the channel.

[00:15:30]I look forward to speaking to you in the next one.