New to piano and looking for some feedback… Any piano players here?

[drummerdude25]

I recently bought an electric piano and was taking lessons beforehand for a little while… learned some scales, chords and intervals, inversions and voicing… however now that I am off playing on my own and improvising, I tend to fall into a habit of playing fifths on my left hand and then play the leads with the right hand… regrettably I don’t actually find myself using the chord shapes that I learned much at all!

Is there anything wrong with what I’m doing? Fifths are being played as essentially power chords and alternating rhythmic patterns between my pinky and thumb, sometimes as octaves as well.

I actually think some of my improvisations turn out beautifully sometimes. Occasionally I will stumble on a popular tune also. Recently it was a simple way to play Adele’s new song Easy on Me, found it simply just messing around.

I know music is kind of an “if it sounds good it sounds good” type of thing, but am I cheating by just playing combinations of fifth intervals as my chord arrangements and stringing together melodies or is it actually a pretty common way to play? I’m finding that my history with drumming is helping quite a bit in being a rhythmic player, but the musical side has definitely left me feeling a little bit unsure with how I’m playing.

Im finding the 5th interval in particular to be an incredibly useful “hack” at sounding good lol. 1,4,5, and 6.

Any thoughts or tips?

[musicbrain5]

That depends largely on the type of music you want to play. If you’re playing jazz, pop, rock, or even country, using power chords (two notes that are a perfect fifth apart) isn’t against the rules, and neither is using them in sequence (parallel fifths). They have a tendency to sound very open and not have a ton of depth. If you want depth and body, add the third somewhere in either the left or right hand, or both.

If you’re playing or composing anything Medieval, Baroque, Classical, or Romantic - perfect fifth intervals on their own are not frowned upon, but parallel fifths and parallel octaves are not acceptable at all. That is simply because it’s seen as the “easy way out” to spreading moving melodies across voices, and again it sounds too open. When the intervals are a perfect fifth or more apart, two of the voices should move in the opposite direction, but of course avoiding parallel fifth or parallel octave movement. Parallels can happen between any two of the voices being sounded, and even in two different octaves. This is a concept that would have been covered further along in your lessons under the topics of intervals and voicing, where you would eventually learn basic SATB choral voicing.

Music theory can get very complex, very quickly.

[drummerdude25]

This is awesome info, thanks so much! I may have to pick your brain on some more of this stuff sometime lol.

[Guy13]

If you go to the church ask your piano player. She will be a great resource for you.