Keboard Accompaniment

[Sweet Dreamer]

Hello everyone,

I play several instruments the keyboard being one of them, but not my main instrument.

Right now I'm looking for easy to play keyboard accompaniments. Some friends and I are working on the following Motown tunes:

What becomes of the Brokenhearted
Dancing in the Street
I Heard it Through the Grapevine
It was Just my Imagination
All in Love is Fair
and a few others.

We have books that contain the lyrical melodies that we've been learning on trumpet, guitar, and saxophone. We were also able to find bass guitar tab for these songs. But what we're having trouble finding is some good keyboard score or techniques.

Our books have the chords, so finding the chords isn't the problem. It's just that when we play those chords it just doesn't sound right. We're thinking their must be some special fingerings that play arpeggios, or various chord change combinations that seem to elude us in terms of being able to just play it by ear.

So I joined this forum in the hopes that you keyboard experts might be able to help us find detailed score for playing good keyboard accompaniment specifically for the Motown songs mentioned above. We'd be more than happy to purchase the books, or score. We're just looking for something that sounds good and is fairly easy to play. We don't have a keyboard specialist, and so we take turns hacking away at the accompaniment on the keyboard.

We just have a small 66-key Yamaha PSR-272 that we run through an amp that adds additional effects. The keyboard sounds ok, we're just looking for some good fingerings to use in terms of exactly what to play.

Any help will be appreciated.

By the way if this request would be better posted in another section of the forum, please advise and I'll post there.

Thank you.

 

[YeahDoIt]

Our books have the chords, so finding the chords isn't the problem. It's just that when we play those chords it just doesn't sound right.

I use charts as a starting point. I change or modify chords a lot.

 

[DickR]

The correct fingering of chords is usually mentioned in your keyboards manual.
So if the chords are printed on your sheetmusic you can look them up if you don't know them. If it still doesn't sound right, try the inversions of that chord. Not all keyboards can play all the chords in the perfect way, not even the high-end ones. Using inversions might come closer to what you want.

 

[Sweet Dreamer]

The correct fingering of chords is usually mentioned in your keyboards manual.
So if the chords are printed on your sheetmusic you can look them up if you don't know them. If it still doesn't sound right, try the inversions of that chord. Not all keyboards can play all the chords in the perfect way, not even the high-end ones. Using inversions might come closer to what you want.

We have the chords. The books we have focus more on the main melody than the accompaniment. For example the chords are just written above the staff. And they are written as follows above each measure, I'll separate the measures using three dashes.

F/C --- C6 --- Dmi --- Bb/D

This then repeats a few times and then begins to change as the song progresses.

We've tried various inversion and make-shift arpeggios but we can't seem to get anything that really sounds like the backing track. It's hard to tell precisely what the keyboard is playing in the backing track because there's a lot of other instruments playing too.

Now we did find a midi file of this song with a piano backing. We were able to load that into a sheet music program to see precisely what they are doing. Evidently they are playing some fairly complex stuff. Far more than just a simple F/C on the first measure, for example.

We actually have the precise notes of the chords they are playing. They change chords 3 or 4 times in a measure fairly quickly. And to be quite frank, it's a bit more complex than we as non-keyboard players can handle. So we were hoping to find a simpler arrangement that still has a sound that at least conveys the essence of this song.

We'll probably figure something out eventually. But I'm thinking that someone else has probably created a fairly simple keyboard accompaniment for this quite popular song. So that's what we are hoping to find rather than having to re-invent the wheel.

 

[goldi5210]

Hej, hej Sweet Water,

first tell us which keyboard you use, a Yamaha PSR-272 doesn't exist, and I never heard that a keyboard had 66 keys either 61, 76 or 88.

What style do you play with the accompaniment? Is it possibel to mute some tracks of the accompaniment?
Do you play only the intern chords of the style or do you play over the accompaniment an other voice on the left side of the splitpoint (lower)?
Do you play the melody together with the accompaniment or only the accompaniment alone?

 

[Sweet Dreamer]

Hej, hej Sweet Water,

first tell us which keyboard you use, a Yamaha PSR-272 doesn't exist, and I never heard that a keyboard had 66 keys either 61, 76 or 88.

Sorry, it's a PSR-275 with 61 keys. Sorry for the misinformation there. I didn't think that would be important to how a piece is actually played.

What style do you play with the accompaniment?

Not sure what you're asking here. We learned the main melody from a Hal Leonard book entitled "Jazz Play Along: Motown Classics Vol 107" The backing track that came with that book does not have tracks that can be muted.

Our ultimate goal is to play this pieces using an ensemble of drums, bass guitar, keyboard, and various different lead instruments. The lead instruments will change from time to time, guitar, saxophone, trumpet. We might even do vocals at some point.

What we're trying to do is create out own "accompaniment" with just drums, bass guitar, and keyboard. The drum part is easy. We also have the bass guitar part. The keyboard part is the only thing that is causing us some difficulty. And to be honest about it we don't have a keyboard player. So it's basically up to me to come up with something to play over this. And preferably something that's fairly simple to play yet provides a sound that really adds to the motion of the song. I'm just having trouble coming up with something that seems to really flow along. Although, having said that, I haven't really worked alongside the bass player yet, so that may help.

Is it possibel to mute some tracks of the accompaniment?
Do you play only the intern chords of the style or do you play over the accompaniment an other voice on the left side of the splitpoint (lower)?

I'm not sure what you're asking above. In the end it will just be drums, bass guitar, keyboard and a single lead melody instrument or possible vocals. All live with no backing tracks.

Do you play the melody together with the accompaniment or only the accompaniment alone?

On the keyboard we just want the accompaniment only. We already know how to play the lead melody on the keyboard.

We're looking for an interesting keyboard accompaniment to "back up" a lead instrument or vocalist.

We'll probably figure something out here on our own eventually. I was really just asking if anyone knew of a book, website, or midi file that might specifically have a keyboard accompaniment already written out. I haven't been working on this recently myself. In fact, this is why I was hoping to find something that's already been done to save me the time of having to figure out something on my own.

 

[The Y_man]

Hi Sweet Dreamer,

What Goldi (and the rest of us) is trying to acertain is this:

- we need to know the model of the keyboard because we need to know what it can do (see below)
- we are trying to figure out if you are attempting to play the accompaniments "by hand" or you are trying to program the "auto accompinent" feature on the keyboard (where for example you just press the c-e-g keys and the auto accompiment plays the backing including bass, drums in c major for you)

The easiest way in either case is to google for a midi file of the song
i.e. google "<songname> midi"

You'll get links like
http://www.free-midi.org/song/jimmy_ruffin-what_becomes_of_the_brokenhearted.html

Download the midi, and you can either play it through the keyboard (you'll need a midi to usb connector for your model similar to
http://www.dealsdirect.com.au/p/usb-midi-cable-connection/) or you can look at the score using software that can read it in
eg
http://musescore.org/en

Hope this helps

The Y-man

 

[Sweet Dreamer]

Thanks for the response Y-man.

We're not going to use any of the automatic features of the keyboard. We have a live drummer and bass player. So we don't need to use the automatic keyboard "accompaniment functions". We're going to by playing the keyboard manually. We're putting the output of the keyboard through an amplifier that has additional effects, So it's not going to sound much like the original Yamaha. We were originally hoping to use the Rock Organ voice and use is as an "Organ".

I've already done a midi search and there seems to be fairly limited midi versions out there. In fact, the one you pointed to is pretty much the same one I get all the time. I'm starting to think that it's the only midi out there. Although I did find one other version, but it didn't help either.

The version you pointed to is the version that I'm currently working with. It actually has some pretty good PIANO score that we might end up using. I've loaded that into a sheet music program. It is a really NICE piano part for sure. So it's worth learning in the long haul. And we will be working with that. But that one has quite a few chord changes in each bar and is pressing our "skill level". I'm probably the best "keyboardist" we have at the moment, and I'm not very good myself. Playing 4-note chords that change rapidly in each measure is taxing are abilities here at the moment.

I was hoping to put together something simpler using the Organ Voice that I could teach some of our other players to play as well. Something that's less challenging for causal keyboard players that actually "major" on other instruments. These guys don't want to dedicate themselves to learning complex keyboard parts. They tend to shy away from anything that isn't fairly simple to play.

The main reason I'm seeking such simplicity is so I can get them to play the keyboard once in a while and free me up to play another instruments myself. I don't want to be stuck at the keyboard all the time. )

I probably will learn the piano part in the midi you've just pointed to. But I'll probably be the only one in our group that can play it.

By the way, just to give my co-musicians a break. It's not that they are stupid or unskilled. It's just that they don't have as much time to practice as I do, and I also own the keyboard so I have access to practicing it more than they do. They need simple stuff to play because they don't have a lot of time to devote to practicing the keyboard.

But yeah, the midi you pointed to has nice piano backing. I already have that one in my sheet music program.

I was actually hoping that someone could point to an "organ" book that might have simple basic organ accompaniments for a lot of Motown songs (like the one's I listed in the OP). Something for beginners like "Simple organ accompaniments to great Motown hits" or something like that. (ha ha)

Wishful thinking on my part I guess.

But yes, we'll be playing this keyboard "raw". Just by hand. No automated midi accompaniments or anything like that. We're just using it as a manual keyboard. Enhanced with external amplifier effects only.

 

[Sweet Dreamer]

For whatever it's worth, I just made some progress here.

I didn't look at the piano music from that midi file in detail before. They are actually playing in a different key that we play it in. But I just transposed it into the key we're playing in, and then I had my sheet music program display the chords they are playing above the staff. Surprisingly it gave some different chords than are given in our book. And those chords do sound better. So I'm making some progress here.

This is also giving me more detailed chord changes per measure, which my book didn't do. So I may be able to come up with something easy to play from this score after all.

 

[The Y_man]

But that one has quite a few chord changes in each bar and is pressing our "skill level". I'm probably the best "keyboardist" we have at the moment, and I'm not very good myself. Playing 4-note chords that change rapidly in each measure is taxing are abilities here at the moment....

I probably will learn the piano part in the midi you've just pointed to. But I'll probably be the only one in our group that can play it.
.

Well you'd be a better player than me !!

I play with 4 fingers most of the time - 3 on my left hand, one on the right and leave the rest up to the machine

The Y-man

 

[barry murphy]

Sweet dreamer
I've got some midi disks with thousands of songs on them. Give me a day or so and I'll look.
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