Piano Video Lesson: How to Play Hymns

Welcome. I'm Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com and virtualsheetmusic.com with the subject today, How to Play Hymns. I've chosen a Bach chorale. You know, it's an interesting thing, once you can play hymns, you can pretty much play all of them. But before your reading level is to that extent, you can't play any of them, and once you've reached that pinnacle. So what is the secret for being able to play hymns, four part choral writing, essentially, on the piano? Alright. Well, you know, it's not as easy as you think. But once you understand the structure it actually starts to click.

Okay, the first thing you must do, you must ascertain what key you're in. Look at the key signature closely so you could figure out what the tonalities are. It's kind of like detective work, analyzing these chords, and I'll show you an easy way to accomplish this so you don't have to break into a cold sweat and go, "No, not music theory." It's actually quite intuitive.

So you take this beautiful Bach chorale I have here and I'm going to play just a little bit of it so you can get a feel for what it sounds like.

[music]

Beautiful. This is actually just choral writing, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. On the hands, generally, you play two voices with the left hand and two with the right hand. But one secret is, often times, it's easier to play three voices with the right hand and just the bass with the left hand. Now, this is a little tricky. Why? Because if it's choral writing, then the soprano and alto part are always in the treble clef, and the tenor and bass are always in the bass clef, but because of the way choral writing is done, you always have a bigger distance between the bass and the tenor from the bottom note to the other three notes than any other voices. It's often times more than an octave. So redistributing the hands is one secret.

Another thing that you can do that is really valuable when you're first approaching a piece, let's say, you just can't read it. It's above your reading level and you want to learn this thing or at least be able to get some sense of it. Well, the structure of four-part writing is such that the melody and the bass are fundamental. The bass is the basic structure and the melody, of course, is the song. So listen to it if I just play the top and bottom lines.

[music

Now, first of all, if you were playing at church and somebody asks you, "Oh, can you play these hymns with us," and you just did that and you had a choir singing, it would be supportive and fine. So that's one good news. But the, you know, better news is that once you understand the structure, because you know the bass and you know the melody, fleshing out inner voices is not so hard. So maybe you could play...once you're comfortable playing the soprano, the top voice, and the bass, the bottom voice, add let's say, the alto voice. That is the note just below the melody in the right hand, and just pay three voices leaving out the tenor line for now.

[music]

Now, once you have three voices, you can add the tenor line and it might not be too hard because you've already got a sense of the melody and the bass. More than that, when you're reading, it doesn't have to be like you're only going to play certain voices. You grab what you can. Make sure that you get the melody because everyone wants to hear the melody, and the bass is the structure. And then, add the notes that you can. If it's something quick and you can't grab all the notes, at least, get the skeleton of the chorale which is the bass and the treble. And as you get more familiar, I promise you, you'll be able to add more voices and get a lush sound, and be able to play any chorale in time.

Thanks so much for joining me. Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com and virtualsheetmusic.com.

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