Melody and Rhythm are More Important than Harmony
The proper priorities regarding chords and fakebooks can save time and improve your playing
Note: This essay is taken from my ebook concerning Advanced Chord and Fakebook Use. I felt it too important to limit it to that source.
Before we get into the nuts and bolts of what I consider Advanced chord and fakebook usage, I want to urge you to keep your priorities straight as you study. These priorities are stated in this essay’s title, at least as I’ve found them in 40+ years of successful piano performance. I truly believe it will be very worth your time to consider my reasoning before you embark upon the study of the rest of this ebook.
For the key idea here, I turn to a man who was a true virtuoso, both in performance and composition, the great Romantic Period composer Robert Schumann. He said it in his advices to piano students:
“Strive to play easy pieces well and beautifully. It is better than to play difficult pieces indifferently well.“
I’ve given students this quote many times, both verbally and in writing. In fact, it appears on a poster in my studio waiting room. I doubt that message could be stated too many times. Most piano students have been shown that only virtuosity is worthwhile over and over and over. Something must provide the necessary reality and thus the repetition of this quote and it’s meaning.
I take the above to mean it is only necessary to achieve enough technique to accomplish music that one enjoys making and such achievement is completely within the ability and willingness and time available to almost all piano students. What a wonderful reality this is
Of course, the word “beautifully” screams out for definition. Happily, this is easy to define, so long as you refer to YOUR definition. Are you playing music which is beautiful in your own ear? Great, that’s what is required. As a teacher, I see myself as a facilitator who helps you more quickly achieve a level of technical prowess capable of “playing easy pieces well and beautifully” to your perception rather than mine. (After all, my perceptions are those of a 40+ year veteran player and will be finer than any students I’ve ever taught, even the very talented ones.)
What does this all have to do with your study of chords and fakebooks?. It’s simple and exactly as Schumann said above – don’t get so difficult (I’d add complex) in your work that you play only indifferently well. I’ve seen a ton of lounge players who miss this point and play poor sounding music, although technically what they are doing is quite difficult.
I often surprise my own students by telling them that I am only at an Intermediate pianist but I’m an Advanced musician. All this time they thought I was a GREAT pianist, and, compared to most of them, I am. However, I have never been one of these folks who can run up and down the piano endlessly. I’ve had to focus on ensuring my music sounds great to listeners rather than technical “fancy footwork” for the simple reason that I simply can’t do it. Even if I could, I doubt I would want to, understanding as I do what is needed to make music most folks love to hear.
Making such music for you is almost certainly within your grasp. Advanced technical ability is not at all necessary to sound great as a pianist, play very satisfying music, and please oneself or others with your musical result. This point is what you must grasp in order to understand what I’ve found to be the proper priorities in making beautiful, satisfying music, namely, that the twin qualities of playing a steady beat while providing a clear and crisp melody are far more important to your result than any fancy harmony created by flashy LH chord work or huge nuanced chords.
Rhythm and melody are FAR more important than harmony in every case I’ve ever come across, unless the player or listener has become obsessed with harmony. I say avoid such obsession when studying chords. Sure, improve your technical skill via competent PRACTICE That’s what this ebook is all about. However, when PERFORMING, never do anything that would ruin the music for listeners (that would include yourself, of course) by focusing on harmony to the detriment of the steadiness of the underlying beat or the clarity of the melody.
For full and complete coverage of this topic and many others
see the For Your Own Enjoyment ebook series – Purchase here
Tags: chord, chords, Fakebook, Fakebooks, Harmony, Melody, Piano, Piano Performance, Rhythm
