As The Deer

I have divided this song into 2 parts. Part 1 is repeated a few times. It should be quite easy to follow the video.

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Changing The Bass Notes (part 3)

When you can see a pattern in the bass notes, you can then recognize a chord progression (or a pattern of chords) a whole lot easier.

For example, the chords on the right hand in the sample progression in my previous post (“Changing The Bass Notes (part 2)”) may seem rather random, but the bass notes reveal a pattern of walking down the scale, i.e., 1 (doe), 7 (ti), 6 (la), 5 (so), 4 (fa), 3 (me), 2 (re).

In fact, the easier way to recognize a chord pattern is by recognizing the bass note pattern.

To play freely by focussing on bass notes, however, you have to know which chords to accompany each bass note, and be familiar with their association.

Rule number 1: In general, use Chord I to accompany bass note 1 (do), Chord IV to accompany bass note 4 (fa), and Chord V to accompany bass note 5 (so). That’s easy enough. 🙂

Rule number 2: For the 2 (re), 3 (me), and 6 (la) bass notes, try accompanying them with Chord IV, V, and I respectively. That gives you the 3 minor chords.

Rule #2 applies only when the sound you are to produce is a minor chord, i.e., if you see on your music sheet that the chords are 2^nd, 3^rd or 6^th minor chords. In the key of C, that means, Dm, Em and Am chords.

Rule number 3: If Rule #2 doesn’t apply, then try Chord I for bass note 3 (me), Chord IV for bass note 6 (la), and Chord V for bass note 7 (ti),

Usually such chords are indicated on the music sheet, e.g., in the C key, they would look like C/E, F/A and G/B respectively.

Rule number 4: If applying Rule #3 still does not get you the sound you want, then you are very likely looking for the Major chords of II, III and VI. In the C key, that means D major chord, E major chord, and A major chord, for the 2 (re), 3 (me) and 6 (la) bass notes respectively. Now, that is a bit of a leap for those of us who want to learn piano the cheat way. So, I will cover that much later. Anyway, not to worry, because… (please allow me to repeat)… a lot of songs can be played with just the 3 basic chords. 🙂

As for now, there are still some tweaking we can do with the 3 basic chords that I should cover first. These include suspension and superimposition, just to sound sophisticated with the names. 🙂 Anyway, to conclude the 3-part series on “Changing The Bass Notes”, let me show you something interesting…

Let’s bring back the progression earlier… (from part 2):

I –> V/7 –> VI m –> I/5 –> IV –> I/3 –> II m –> IV/5

… and tweak it slightly to become this…

I –> V/7 –> VI m –> –I/5 –> IV –> I/3 –> II m –> IV/5

We have tweaked the 4^th chord (marked red) in the series above to become Chord –I over the 5^th bass note (so). Try playing it. How do you like the sound?

Now try the following shortened version of the above progression with the song “As The Deer”…

I –> V/7 –> VI m –> –I/5 –> IV –> IV/5 –> I

In the key of C, it would look like this:

C –> G/B –> Am –> Bb/G –> F –> F/G –> C

And not to forget the ‘Am’ may be substituted by ‘C/A’ (refer to the theory in ‘The 3 Minor Chords’ post).

Here is the video illustration…

Note: In the video, my left hand started from a C note that is very near to my right hand. This is solely for the purpose of the video shooting. If I were to play my bass notes one octave lower, then I would have to move the camera further in order to capture both of my hands on the screen. For your own practice, please do play the bass notes one octave lower.

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