Danny Boy: Arranging Project

Hello and welcome back!

I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson we're going to learn how to improvise your own arrangement of a famous Irish folk tune:

"Danny Boy."

Let's check out the lead sheet to get started.

Here's the lead sheet for "Danny Boy."

Remember, with a lead sheet all we get is the melody line,

and then some chord symbols up above are provided allowing you the performer the chance to use your own imagination to

improvise an accompaniment.

So let's check out what key we're in.

Our key signature has four sharps: F C G D.

And seeing that our first chord is E major tells us that we're in the key of E major.

If you don't know the key of E major, I suggest you watch my earlier lesson

on E major, which will really help you play this song today.

Now, if it's helpful to you, one thing you can do is go through and circle any notes that

are sharped automatically by the key signature, so circle all the F's, C's, G's, and D's

in the melody to help remind you which are going to be sharp, because there are a lot of sharps in this melody.

So pause if you'd like some time to circle the sharp notes, otherwise let's keep going and check out the counting.

Now I see our time signature is 4/4, which tells us we'll have four quarter note beats in every measure.

Well, I don't see 4 beats right here, which tells us we have pickup notes.

So how do we know what beat we do start on?

Well, you find your first bar line, and we count backwards from there.

So I know this has to be beat 4

because two eighth notes equal 1 beat, and the last beat before the bar line has to be 4.

Now we have this one more eighth note, which tells me we have to start on the & of an imaginary beat 3.

So we're starting on the & of beat 3 so I could count in like this 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&,

1-& 2-& 3.

Don't forget that dotted quarter notes get 1 1/2 beats, so that will last 1-& 2-&.

This eighth note comes on the & of 2 3-& 4-& 1-&

quarter note, 2-&, gets both halves of beat 2 and this eighth rest gets 3-& 4-&.

Now if it's helpful to you to write in the counts, feel free to pause the video and do that in your own music.

It's very important that we hold these dotted quarter notes.

This half note needs to last 1-& 2-& 3.

This song is marked andante, which means we're going at a relaxed, medium slow tempo.

So take your time on these longer notes.

& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3-&,

those longer notes, those rests, are really important part of the music.

Now the focus of my lesson today is going to be helping you improvise the accompaniment using these chords.

But I'd like to leave it up to you to teach yourself how to play the melody part with your right hand.
So pause the video at this point, download and print the sheet music,

and learn, teach yourself the right hand melody part make sure you're counting and holding these longer notes long enough,

and then press play and we'll learn how to do the accompaniment together.

So let's play through the melody once. I'm going to play it and you're welcome to play along with me, or you can just listen.

I'll count in 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, then I'll start on the & of 3. Here we go. 1-& 2-& 3,

2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2,

1-& 2-& 3,

1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3,

&-2

1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3,

1-& 2-& 3,

2-&

1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1 2-& 3.

Now I was adding in that counting just to help me make sure I was holding all of those longer notes long enough.

If that match what you played, great job.

If you need more time to practice the melody, it's important that you have the melody down

before we try adding in the left hand part. So take whatever time you need to make sure you've got it confident.

Now, the great thing about a lead sheet is you have so many possibilities. There is no one right or wrong way to do this.

Today I'm just going to show you some possibilities, and then on your own I want you to make this song your own.

Figure out how you want to add in a left-hand accompaniment part.

Let's start with some simple options.

One very common accompaniment pattern on piano is to take ...