Learning an instrument for self accompaniment – Musical Vocabulary

Last week’s article seemed to strike a chord (no pun intended) with many clients and readers. It sparked a lot of questions along a variety of different angles.

For example, for those who have not studied with me – I accompany clients by playing piano when they want to sing their songs. This means I have to listen to the song, perhaps read the chords if a chart is available, then create an accompaniment that matches their voice, their style, and their ability.

A comment this often gets is: “But how do you just LOOK at these random letters on a screen… and you can suddenly just play the song?”

Perhaps I’ve been doing it too long to realise how confusing this look to those who don’t play an instrument, but I can assure you this is entirely normal once you start to grasp the basics of playing an instrument and interpreting music. Sure, I may have been doing it a long time and therefore I do it a bit more fluently and comprehensively than someone less experienced, but it’s still the same process.

Music is a language

The great bassist Victor Wooten describes music as a language. He once commented that he was learning to “speak” music shortly after he could walk. There was always music around the house, and learning to apply that to bass within his family band allowed him to ‘converse’ in that language.

Learning to play an instrument really helps you to grasp the language of music, in a way that JUST singing often doesn’t reveal.

Let’s use an example, and I’ll stick with one I’ve referenced a few times, just to keep it simple:
I Can’t Make You Love Me – George Michael’s version

Most people when they listen to a song, they are just following along in real-time. They aren’t thinking about “what’s the next section of the song”, “when will we hear the chorus”, “I wonder what chords they’ll use” etc. They are just following the bouncing ball and enjoying the ride.

And while I absolutely do enjoy that, when it comes to accompanying people, I’m not thinking quite so linearly.

Song Structures

Most songs have fairly predictable structures. The start of the song is called the introduction (or intro); the end of the song is often called the outro.

As the song progresses, the stanzas are called the verses. The main hook of the song is called the chorus. These two sections alone make up 80% of all songs in existence. This is important to understand.

There are sometimes sections that build up the intensity between verses and choruses – these are called pre-choruses (obviously enough). But they are rarely long and still tend to be bundled with verses and choruses.

There are sometimes other sections, e.g. bridges, middle eights (often because they are an 8 bar excursion in the middle of the song), guitar solos, etc. Some more adventurous song formats have extra sections that are almost like a change of pace within the song. Progressive rock and metal bands like Dream Theater are known for this.

But regardless of how many different TYPES of sections exist in a song, we can all appreciate that songs can be broken down into sections. These sections may only occur once, but typically verses and choruses repeat multiple times. The number and order of these sections make up a song’s structure.

So when I am listening to a song (to learn/accompany) for the first time, I am trying to identify which of the above sections the song has, and map out how often each of those sections repeats and in what order. Per my comment above, once I know how the verse goes and how the chorus goes, I’ve already grasped at least 80% of a given song.

In the George Michael song, there are only verses and choruses. The intro and outro, and the musical interludes between are also just sections of the verse repeated but without the sung melody. Which means once I know how the verse and chorus goes, I know the whole song and it’s structure. Such songs are very quick to grasp (same with Adele’s “Make you feel my love”, though that has more complex chords to play).

Chords

Once you know the structure, you need to know the chords that populate that structure. When you see chord charts for songs, you’ll see a lot letters above the lyrics. For example, here are the opening two lines of the verse. The chords are indicated above the lyrics, approximately over the word that it should be played over.

C Em D C
Turn down the lights, turn down the bed
C G D Am7
Turn down these voices, inside my head

– If you see just a letter by itself e.g. C, D or G, that means it’s a major chord.

– If you see a letter with a lowercase m after it, e.g. Em or Am, it’s a minor chord.

– If you see extra letters after it, e.g. Am7, that means it has additional notes you need to consider.

You will need to learn what these different chords are, how they sound, how to play them, and how to move between one chord to the next to the next.

And this is where the vocabulary aspect comes in. I’ve learned enough chords, and know enough music theory, to be able to look at all these chords and know they belong to the key of G. I know all the chords in the key of G, and I know how to move between any one chord to any other chord. My “musical vocabulary” means I am sufficiently capable of conversation to read the chords as written, and play them back in the right order, with the right timing.

I also know how each of these chords functions within that key. Which means I could recreate that sound in an entirely different key without too much difficulty.

Note: You cannot acquire that level of fluidity overnight. I’ve been making music for over 25 years, and accompanying in vocal coaching for about 15 of those years. That’s a LOT of experience and a lot of practice (and a LOT of getting it wrong along the way!). To be truly fluent for that kind of accompaniment, you also need to be able to do that for every key (there’s 12).

Concluding Thoughts (and why I recommended Ukulele)

When accompanying yourself (or others), you have to be able to break down a song like I’ve just explained. You have to be doing something called active listening – listening to the song as a piece of music, but also as a script you are going to try to memorise then repeat back with your hands and ears.

This requires you to learn how chords, melody and rhythm function in a given song, then repeat that over a sufficient number of songs that you can see the commonalities across them all.

At this point, you may be realising that trying to do all of that AND learn to do it on a more complex instrument like piano, AND sing along at the same time… it’s challenging to say the least. This is why I say “start with ukulele“.

Learning to play an instrument technically already has a LOT of work that goes into it. To be able to quickly listen to a song, digest it, then regurgitate it with two hands on piano, or two hands with a pick on a big instrument like guitar… it’s a big ask. Ukulele presents an incredibly simple way to learn the ropes of chords, music theory, rhythm, self-accompaniment, etc. Once you have that, it is WAY easier to apply that to piano/guitar. You end up creating a neural framework for how to interpret and re-deploy music on the fly, WITHOUT having to figure out how to get two hands operating fully independently on piano.