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easy solo piano tunes
What are some tunes you’ve found easy to play in a solo piano style?
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18 Replies
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Thanks for asking this. I found Autumn Leaves very easy to solo to. (By contrast, My Romance is more challenging).
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Awesome Suzanna! Yes I agree. Autumn Leaves is a great one to start for beginners. My Romance certainly has more chords. I know beginner’s are looking for more easy tunes to start playing so I was curious as to what other students found to be best to start with. If you have any other suggestions please post. 🙂
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Fly Me To The Moon is very simple, too.
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For me, personally, “My funny Valentine” turned out to be quite manageable: I like playing in C minor (Eb major), the chromatic bass line adds some color and as it’s a ballad you have enough time to think about the changes. The main challenge: Keeping the pulse and perhaps going for tenths in the LH…😉
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haha yes those 10ths are rough! And true! That’s a great beginner tune. Maybe I’ll compile a list off everyone’s comments here in the thread and post for all the students.
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I’m working on Autumn Leaves and I can play the melody plus roots and fifths and melody plus seventh chords in the left hand. What would be a good next step? It sounds good but it’s still very basic.🙂
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I find it very helpful to learn solo piano tunes from watching ‘Tune of the Month’-videos at JPS. I have recently worked on ‘Like Someone In Love’ and Brenden’s videos were spot-on what I needed. He presents achievable goals for beginners (like me) and also some challenges for more advanced students. Most importantly, he gives me essential tools how to continuously develop my own style of harmonizing a tune.
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Maybe there’s a “Tune-of-the-Month” on Autumn Leaves but I can’t seem to find it if there is one. But I think Autumn Leaves is covered in different videos and courses here. I guess I’ll just get some inspiration there.🙂
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Hey Nico,
We actually haven’t done Autumn Leaves, strange enough! I’ll add this to Sterling’s list so that we can get it added in there. Thanks for writing this!
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I appreciate this Jan! So glad they helped 🙂
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Hi Nico, Re. Autumn Leaves. You ask what the next step is. You could try adding a (G major) pentatonic scale, a blues scale and a (G minor) scale, for example. There are also (G7 alternative) and Db7 voicings you could try.
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Hey Nico,
See if you can put your shells below the melody when it’s aligned with a chord. This is a simple next step to harmonize the melody. The shells are the 3rd and 7th of the chord. Try playing single note bass notes in your LH. This strategy should sound quite different and much better! Post a video if you get a chance!
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Thank you. I will work on this and record it soon!🙂
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I tried to add some guide tones underneath the melody, at least in the A section. It’s a work in progress. I don’t often film myself and I’m kinda surprised by how weird my technique looks, mhmm.😆
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Nico fantastic! Sounds excellent! Really great things you’re doing here. After you learn some rootless voicings you can use those to jump your RH down to comp in between the space of the melody. That will thicken up the arrangement a little bit. Marvelous job though.
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Also next steps would be to harmonize under the melody notes where they align with chords. Try adding your shells below the melody notes that align with the chord symbol. This will help bring out the sound more! Let me know how it goes. 🙂
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Here’s my “improved” version of Autumn Leaves. I’m having a lot of fun playing around with it. As soon as I hit the record button I get nervous though, hehe. But this was actually my first take, with little mistakes.🙂
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Very nice played… I hope that I will be soon able to get in such jazz tune with such new skills… before, I have to learn from the beginning… I am trusting JPS with the structured step-by-step program to master it rapidly provided that I am disciplined and working at least 10 min per day… wait and see…
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