As we continue working
through "Take My Life," I will
be showing you potential color
notes to add. Today, I
want to give you a few specific
voicings for adding the 9th.
Remember that the 9th is just
a complicated way of saying the
2nd. (you call it a 9th rather than a 2nd when a 7th is present in the chord.) The sooner you
memorize that the 9th is the
2nd, the 11th is the 4th, and
the 13th is the 6th, the better
off you will be. In a C
chord, the 9th is D, the 11th is
F, and the 13th is A.
I need to take a moment and
explain how we are going to go
about this process. It may
be overwhelming at first, but
you can get it with practice.
Remember that I have
emphasized in previous lessons
that you need to be able to
analyze chords quickly.
Now, we are going to make things
a bit more complicated.
Once you figure out the chord,
you need to also identify how
the melody note fits into that
chord. Let's look at the
first phrase from "Take My
Life".
The first melody note is an F
and the chord is F so the melody
is also the root. However,
in the first beat of measure 2,
you are playing a G minor 7 and
the melody note is F. F is
the 7th of a G minor chord.
In the first beat of measure 3,
the melody note is the 3rd (C)
of an A minor chord. In
the first beat of measure 4, the
A in the melody is the 3rd of
the chord. Do you see how
this works?
Now, take a moment to go
through this hymn (see below)
and circle all of the places
where the melody note is the
3rd, 5th or 7th of the chord
being played. I am going
to show you simple voicings to
add a 9th to all of those
chords.
Before I start, let me
emphasize that you can add 9ths
in many other places than the
three I am about to show you and
you can add the 9th in different
voicings from the ones I am
about to show you. These
are just simple by effective
voicings that I use very often.
Here are the voicings:
LH
RH
Melody
note is the 3rd
1-5
7-9-3
Melody
note is the 5th
1-7
9-3-5
Melody
note is the 7th
1-5
9-3-7
So what does this chart mean?
The first row means that if the
melody note is the 3rd of the
chord, play the root and the 5th
in the left hand and the 7th,
9th, and 3rd in the right hand.
Here are the three voicings with
a C chord.
Note that using these
voicings keeps you from doubling
the root as most church pianists
are prone to do. You end
up substituting the 9th for the
root in the right hand, and that is a great trade.
Now look at "Take My Life"
again and change the voicing for
the chords you circled
according to the chart above.
In these voicings, you should
keep your hands close together.
You may find that these voicings
do not always work for you in
this song--if you do not like
the way something sounds, don't
play it.
While this may seem tedious
at first, you will get to the
point where you are using these
voicings without even thinking
about them.
If you would like to print
this arrangement, click
here.
Practice strategy:
Continue to work on playing from
the lead sheet. Add the
9th voicings to "Take My Life"
and then experiment with adding
them to other hymns.
