Greensleeves: Accompaniment

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson we're going to learn how to improvise an accompaniment for "Greensleeves".
I'll show you how you can play the accompaniment in your left hand while your right hand plays the melody,
and I'll also show you how you can play an accompaniment with both hands, which would allow you to play "Greensleeves" as a duet
with someone else who plays the melody. Let's come to the piano to get started.
So first, we're going to learn how to play a left hand simple accompaniment
that can go along with your right hand playing the melody.
So our right hand will be doing 6 1 2 3 4 5-& 6, our left hand adds in the chords which you can see written up above the staff.
So our first chord will be this A minor chord built on A C E.
Go ahead and with your left hand find an A minor chord and try playing that.
Good, and since that is the only chord symbol we see in that measure, we'll hold that for the entire measure.
Also notice that the chord symbol is written over beat 1 of this first full measure. It's not written over the pickup beat.
That pickup note should be played by itself, 6 1. The chords generally want to reinforce
the time signature, which means giving a more strong sound on beat 1.
6 1 2, so we'll play the chord on beat 1. 6 1 2 3 4 5-& 6 And then notice in the next measure we have a G major chord.
If you don't see that little m, you always assume just a capital letter always means a major chord. So we had capital A little m, that means A minor, then capital G for G major, so just glide your left hand over a step for G major. G B D,
and now in measure three what chord do you see?
That's F major, so find an F major chord which is also all white keys.
Right, and then what's the next chord you see?
If you notice, capital E stands for E major, which is E, G-sharp, B.
And these are all diatonic chords in the key of A minor, right?
So, pause the video and practice just using your left hand to play those, that sequence of chords, and then press play to go on.
Now go ahead and try putting the melody together with the chords.
I'm assuming that you've already mastered the melody. If you need more practice with that, you can pause the video or go back to the lesson on the melody for "Greensleeves" for more review,
but together it will sound like this: 1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6
F major
E major
Now, pause the video and work on putting that melody together with those four chords, then press play to go on.
Good, now let's look at the next phrase, which begins here on beat 6 of measure four. We have 6 1 2
3, another i chord A minor, to G major.
So far it's been the same as before. Now here we get an F chord
switching to an E chord. So the chord changes. Now we have two chords in one measure.
1 2-& 3 4 5 6
And then here's a chord symbol we might not have seen before.
You see this D little m, which stands for D minor, slash A.
Now in chord symbols, whatever comes before a slash is the chord that you're supposed to play. So we need a D minor chord.
That A stands for the note you're supposed to play at the bottom of the chord. In other words, the bass note of the chord,
which could mean that we're going to use an inversion.
For example, if you were to just play a regular root position D minor chord, we'd have D F A.
A is on the top, well we know what to do with that. We can invert it like this. Now F is on the bottom. We can invert it again and put that F on top.
This is still a D minor chord, but it's in second inversion.
Now A is on the bottom, which is what this symbol is asking for.
D minor/A means to play a D minor chord, but make sure that A is on the bottom.
Another way we could have done that is just played a root position chord, and then just add an extra A down there.
That could have worked as well, but for this arrangement, again we're improvising an accompaniment so there's no right or wrong way to do this.
We're just making some choices. I'm going to choose to put the A on the bottom here,
and take this D and F and put it up here. So I'm inverting my chord
to this D minor second inversion chord. See, now I have A on the bottom
as part of this D minor chord, and that resolves to an A minor chord to finish the song. So again,
so that's the reason I chose to do this, because it's going to very smoothly go to this A minor there, okay?
And you might recognize, oh that's a iv chord going to a i chord. You may recognize that progression. Go ahead and try that with me.
5 2 1 is the fingering on that D minor/A chord, going to an A minor chord.
Okay, so starting in measure five we get A minor,
G major
whoops
F, E, D minor/A to A minor.
Okay, now pause the video and on your own practice this chord progression, which will feel
very similar to what we did before except now we're coming up to ...