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Turn Boring Lead Sheets Into BEAUTIFUL Piano
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- A question I get asked all the time by my piano clients and piano students is this. How can we take a lead sheet like this and turn it into beautiful piano
- music like this? [Music] How do you take a simple melody with simple chords and flush it out and add
- stuff to it and add rhythm and build out the chords and make it really beautiful? Well, in this video, I'm going to show you how you can start doing that today.
- Okay. Now, I love lead sheets. In fact, they're probably my favorite way to play piano. Why? because they live in this beautiful middle ground of taking
- pressure off of you in both extremes. It takes pressure off of having to read really complicated sheet music where everything is written out and it's a lot
- of ink on a page to play and it also takes pressure off of you from just having to make everything else everything up in your mind, right? It
- still gives you structure. It gives you melody. It gives you chords and then it says have fun and be free. And I love that. So I love when people play with
- lead sheets. it it's it's just such a great way to play piano. So, let's dive into it. First, let me introduce myself really fast. If you don't know me, my
- name is Matt Hodgej and for the last 15 years, I've been a music professor and a music author and a professional piano player and a private piano coach. And my
- biggest passion in life truly is helping people discover their joy of piano. No matter your age, your experience level, I love helping you on your piano
- journey. So, let's dive into lead sheets. The first thing you need to do when you have a lead sheet is you need to make sure can you play the melody. So
- here is the melody of this lead sheet example we're going to work with in this video. [Music]
- All right. So that little section as an example we're going to use that's just the melody. Now once you can play the melody the first step with adding left
- hand is just playing the root of the chord meaning what is the bottom of the chord. So luckily in sheet in Le sheets when you see the chord names it usually
- will give you what that note is. So let's go through each of these chords because I want to point out a couple of things to you. First off you see G.
- Well, what type of chord is that? If it just says G in lead sheets, if you just see the note without any type of chord written after it, that means it's a
- major chord. It's a shorthand. So, if you just see, for example, F sharp and nothing else with it, that means an F# major chord. So, here we have a G by
- itself, which means G major chord. So, a G major chord is G, B, and D. Okay. Also, let me uh tell you really fast. If you need help determining what chords
- are or how to find the names of different chords, what notes are in the chords, I have a free PDF linked below. It's a free uh 24page PDF that I created
- just for you all, my YouTube community. It's called the ultimate intro uh guide to piano. And I have a section where I show you a bunch of different chords,
- all the different type of chords you can have in in different key signatures. So, there that is there to help you know the notes of a chord. Okay. So G major, our
- notes G, B, D, but that means G is going to be on the bottom, the root. So I'm gonna play just G in my left hand. Now the next note, uh, the next chord, it
- says B M slash Fsharp. Now, people get confused by this. This is what's called a slash chord, and it's really common in lead sheets. A slash chord does not mean
- it's two different chords. So, for example, when we see little M, that means minor. But this doesn't mean a B minor chord over an F sharp major chord.
- That's not what that means. When you see a slash chord, the bottom note just means the note, like literally the single note that's played on the bottom,
- whether it's in the chord or not. So, this means play a B minor chord, but Fsharp is on the bottom. Play an F#arp on the bottom. So that means when we're
- doing this practice of just playing the the bottom note, if our first note was a G, the next one is just an F sharp. It's not B even though it says B minor chord
- because it says it's over F#. So F sharp is going to be our bottom note. Next E. We already said little M means minor. So E minor. So playing an E. C means C
- major. We're going to play a C. Now, here another slash chord, G over B. That doesn't mean G major chord over B major
- chord. It means a G major chord, but a B is on the bottom. A B is the low note. So, that means B is going to be our low note. And then A minor. Now, that seven
- that means an A minor 7. So in a in a uh in a minor 7th chord, that basically means you have an A minor chord, A C E, but then you have a seven, which is uh
- you're adding 1 135 is the minor chord, and then you're adding a seventh. So 1 3 5 7. So, but again, we're going to get to the chords in a second. You just have
- to know the bottom notes in A. So if we're just playing the melody with the the bottom note in the left hand, it would be like this.
- [Music] Okay. And you just want to practice that until you've got it. All right. Each
- stage that we're going to talk about in this video, perfect that stage and then move on to the next one. Okay. So the next stage is now that you know the
- bottom note, we want to be able to play the actual chord in the left hand. Now first we just want to play the basic chord before we start to do fun stuff
- with it. So let's go back left hand that G we said without anything written past it is a major right? So G major G major is G B and D.
- Our next chord is a B minor. So B minor is B, D, and Fsharp, but it says over Fsharp. So F#'s on the bottom. So if we had a G chord here,
- then we could do this because we have B, D, Fsharp, but we need to put Fsharp in the bottom. Our next chord is E minor. So E, G, B.
- Our next chord is C major. C E G. Our next chord is G major, which G major is G, B, and D, but it says put B on the bottom. So, we can play it like that
- where we have B D G. And then A minor 7 is that A minor chord. A C E, but then we're going to add a seven. So, a G. A C E G. Okay. Now playing just this the
- basic chords with the melody. Okay. Now also notice I'm playing the chords when I want to do it this way where I'm playing just the three notes. I'm not
- doing it low. I'm not doing it down here. There's going to be a reason for that that we talk about here in a minute. Okay. So I'm going to play them
- up here. So I'm going to play I'm going to play just the melody with just the basic chords. So like this.
- [Music] Okay. And then you want to practice that until you feel comfortable with it. Now,
- once you're at this point that you can play the melody and you can play the chords in the left hand, now we get to the fun stuff. This is where we have fun
- and we really break it open. And I'm going to show you a bunch of ways you can do this. Some are easier than harder. So, it's okay if you can't do
- all of the stuff I'm about to show you. Just pick your favorites or pick ones that feel easier to you and then try it. All right. But I'm going to show you a
- bunch of different options, kind of like a buffet, and you pick and choose what sound you like. Okay, first option is you can do what I call a bounce. A
- bounce sounds like this. [Music] It gives it a little rhythm and it gives it some bounce, some light energy. So,
- the way you do this is you're just going to play the melody in the right hand. So, you're not going to do anything weird with the right hand. In the left
- hand, remember how a few minutes ago we played just the bottom note? Well, you're going to do that. So, you're going to play the bottom note. So, here
- you're going to do it a little lower and then bounce up and play uh the chord. So, if I'm doing G major, G, and then bounce up and do a G major chord. Now, I
- want to point out something. As I do this, I'm trying to play the chord part. The the low part, the boom boom. The low part's going to be low because it's just
- one note. The chord part, remember I said I don't want chords to be really low because the lower you get, the muddier it gets when you're trying to
- play multiple notes together. So, the goal is with this bounce, this oompa type of stuff is low note and then you bounce up. And so you want to play the
- notes of the chord in a little bit of a higher range. So I like using this range, which is the octave below middle C. Here's middle C, and you're doing it
- below here. It helps you live in that range because this sounds nice. This doesn't, right? But that also may mean you can experiment with some inversions.
- Meaning, if I'm playing the bottom note, we get that it's going to be that chord. We're going to hear it. So now when I bounce up to play notes of that chord, I
- I don't have to go GB D. I could go D GB or I don't have to play all three notes of the chord. I could just play boom and two notes of the chord because we're
- going to get we're going to hear what the chord is. So it's up to you how you want to try to bounce each one. All right? And you can practice just take
- each chord and just do this a bunch of different ways until you have something that feels natural. And you do that for each chord. So the second chord F
- sharp's on the bottom and then B minor. So I play balm, right? I can do a different way. Notice how I'm I'm rearranging the notes. I'm
- doing an inversion. Instead of going B D F sharp, I'm going D F# B because I'm trying to make my chord part live in this range. So if you go through and do
- that for each chord, then you can have something like this. [Music] Yeah. Now, did you also notice in the
- measure that has E minor, because that measure is longer, meaning that chord lasts longer, I did E twice to give it rhythm, to stay in rhythm,
- to fill in the the time, fill in the gap. Okay, so that's one way to have some fun light bounce to it. Another way that you can make it more beautiful,
- make it sound like a ballad, is breaking the left hand up in a couple of different ways. One way is you literally just do the chords in the left hand, but
- instead of doing them all at the same time as a chord, you do it as an arpeggio, one note at a time. So it can be something like this.
- [Music] That adds rhythm and it's flowing. And you just do one note at a time and hold the pedal down for each chord. Now
- notice again I'm trying to do that the arpeggios up in this range, not down here because it'll sound prettier. Now another trick that you can do is because
- if it feels like your hands are kind of clashing into each other because your left hand is up here, you can play the the melody an octave higher. Especially
- if you're trying to make it sound really pretty. [Music]
- Yeah. Another way you can do the arpeggio is instead of doing the three notes, you can do what's called a 158, which is the one chord, the uh the first
- of the chord, the fifth of the chord, and then the octave again. So, I'm not playing all the notes of the chord. I'm playing it like this.
- And they're spaced out more. [Music] Now, notice those are fine to play lower
- because you're spreading the notes out more. They're not bundled together. Um, also on the the chords that have slashes on them, I did them like this
- because I still have to play that note on the bottom. So to make it a 1 58 like I was doing with the other chords, I kind of have to just play the bottom
- note that I need to play and then I play the one chord and then the bottom note again. So, whatever order you do it, it's all about having your the first
- note and the last note you play are the same note just in octaves and then you have it that note in the middle.
- Yeah. And then if you really want to add stuff to it once you're really comfortable doing that, you can experiment with
- adding different notes in the right hand. First, you can try adding notes that are in the chord. So if G major is my chord, that means can I add somehow
- if my melody notes a B beneath it a G or or a D, maybe all three, maybe just one, but I'm adding notes from the chord.
- So you try adding notes in the right hand like that, adding one or two notes from the chord underneath the melody. Then you can really challenge yourself
- by adding notes that aren't in the chord. So my favorite note that I love to add is what's called adding the second, which is if you have a 135
- chord, like the normal chord, you add the second. So adding the note that's in between the the bottom and the middle note. So for a G major chord, I'd
- be adding an A somewhere. If it's an E minor chord, I'd be adding an F sharp somewhere. If it's a C major chord, I'd be adding a D somewhere. So, I'm going
- to do that and see if you can hear and see that I'm adding a second to some of this stuff. [Music]
- Yeah, all of these things can add up together to make it beautiful. And again, depending on whatever level you're at, it's fine to go really slow.
- It's fine to keep it very simple, or it's fine to really try to to complicate it. Um, I love I love it all. If I was hired to play this for a gig, depending
- on what they want, I can make it complicated. Right. [Music]
- Or I can make it really simple. [Music] [Music]
- Yeah. So, you do what you want to do with it. That's the beauty of lead sheets. What's right for me and what's right for you are both right. Okay. So,
- let me know in the comments how you did with this. I know this was a longer video. I know I um there's a bunch of different stages to this. Some are
- easier than others, but let me know. I love meeting you where you're at, trying to help you at what at whatever level you're at, but also challenging you a
- bit. Okay? So, let me know in the comments. Chat with me in the comments. I love chatting with you. I read every single comment. I try to reply to every
- comment. Let me know if you have questions in there and put in the comments what topics you like me to cover in future videos. I am here to
- help you. All right, download that free uh PDF in the video description below. The link to it if it'll help you with chords. Um totally free 24 page PDF. Uh
- I hope it helps you a lot. Um, and there's also a link in the video description where you can uh find out more information about doing a private
- piano lesson with me. Every week I do uh virtual private lessons with people. You can do one session, you can do multiple session. I love helping you and figuring
- out what your goal is and helping you crush your piano goal, no matter your age and no matter your experience level. Yeah, also do all the fun YouTube stuff.
- Please like, subscribe, all of that great stuff. It lets me know you are enjoying this content, okay? And let's keep this piano party going. I want you
- to click on the video showing up on this screen where I show you even more cool stuff you can do on the piano, especially playing beautiful music.
- Okay, I'll see you over there. And until next time, my friends, keep making music.