{"id":158,"date":"2019-04-05T10:55:00","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2023-06-15T14:53:06","modified_gmt":"2023-06-15T21:53:06","slug":"background-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/background-music\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret To Playing Background Music On The Piano"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you&#8217;ve ever played at church, a wedding, a private function, or in a band, you&#8217;ll have&nbsp;likely been&nbsp;in a position where you had to play background music on the piano. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I call this noodling, which is a term I got from a pastor when he wanted me to play&nbsp;something atmospheric while he wrapped up the service. I\u2019ve also&nbsp;done this at weddings, funerals, and private functions where I\u2019ve been paid to simply \u201cwaste time\u201d at the piano. How awesome is that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Whatever the gig, having some tools for wasting time at the piano can save the day and at the same time provide a wonderful avenue for stress relief.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-rank-math-toc-block\" id=\"rank-math-toc\"><p><strong>Table of Contents:<\/strong><\/p><nav><ol><li class=\"\"><a href=\"#the-sus-chord\">The Sus Chord<\/a><\/li><li class=\"\"><a href=\"#alternate-bass-notes\">Alternate Bass Notes<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/nav><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"the-sus-chord\" style=\"font-size:32px\"><strong>The Sus Chord<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The first tool in creating background music is the <a href=\"\/blog\/sus-piano-chords-101\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">sus chord<\/a>, which will enable you to play one chord for a very long time and still sound interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To play a sus chord, simply take a chord and swap the 3rd note for the 2nd or 4th. This creates either a sus2 or sus4. You can play these back and forth, resolving back to the 3 every so often. You\u2019d be surprised at how much time you can spend simply moving between sus chords. You can also break up the&nbsp;chord&#8217;s notes and play them one at a time which gives a more flowing feeling. You can play a simple root note or 5th in your left hand, or even octaves to add drama! <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<span class=\"blue-text-block\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.musora.com\/musora-cdn\/image\/quality=85\/https:\/\/pianote.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/blog\/2021\/Featured%20Box%20images\/Lisa%20Chord%20Hacks.jpg\"><center><h3>\ud83c\udfb9 Hack Into Chords \ud83d\udc4a<\/h3><\/center><p>Understanding how chords work will give you a BIG leg up in learning how to play the piano. Knowing just a handful of chords will unlock hundreds, if not thousands of pop songs. To get started today, check out our <b>free<\/b> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/chord-hacks\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Chord Hacks<\/a> course, or read <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/how-to-play-piano-chords\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">How to Play Piano Chords<\/a>.<\/p><p><\/p><center><a class=\"join\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/chord-hacks\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CHECK IT OUT<\/a><\/center><p><\/p><\/span>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:10px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"alternate-bass-notes\" style=\"font-size:32px\"><strong>Alternate Bass Notes<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another trick to creating beautiful background music is to stay on&nbsp;the same chord and alternate the bass notes. Keep playing&nbsp;a sus chord pattern in your right hand. This keeps the theme and allows you to stay on one chord while creating&nbsp;a variety of tones beneath it. Let&#8217;s say D is our 1 chord. If we use the rules for the <a href=\"\/blog\/pop-piano-chord-progressions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">1-4-6-5 &nbsp;progression<\/a>, we know the chords that will sound great in the key of D are D-G-BM-A. So stay on D and try playing these other chords as the bass notes. Sounds great, right?<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now let&#8217;s take a look at a little trick you can use with your right hand to create some atmosphere. I like to take a <a href=\"\/blog\/piano-chord-inversions\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">2nd inversion chord<\/a> and play the bottom two notes back and forth &#8211; it sounds really good overtop the alternate bass notes.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">And finally, if you&#8217;re bored of playing the same chord, you can move through the progression using all of these tricks. You&#8217;ll be amazed at just how much you can do with so little!<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<iframe class=\"email-form-include-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/weekly-email\" frameborder=\"none\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:15px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Play beautiful background music on the piano for hours with these simple tips. You&#8217;ll be able waste time and fill space (and sound great).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1110,1108],"tags":[1088],"class_list":["post-158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvisation-musicianship","category-musicianship","tag-ch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14285,"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions\/14285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pianote.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}