Let Your Melodies Dictate Your Chords
(Solo Piano Rubato Intro P.2 on "Here's That Rainy Day")
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Check out this solo piano rubato intro for "Here's That Rainy Day" as played at the Black Cat (San Fransisco, CA) as part of the TrioGram II ft. Joe LaBarbera CA Tour.
One approach to a solo piano rubato intro is to play over the changes. This is an alternate approach, known as an "OPEN INTRO", where we start by playing over the first few chords of the tune (Gmi Gmi/F# / Fmi7 Bb7 / Ebma7), but then from there we venture into some new harmonic territory as we are improvising the harmonies. How do we do this? Let your melodies dicatate the chords. Notice how we with lead with our melodic ideas and let the chords follow the melody rather than the other way around. But whatever direction you go in your intro, remember you have to set up the tune harmonically. In order to do so, we end on D7sus-D7 to set up Gmi7 (the first chord of the tune). Since we ended on a big chord, to set up the tune rhythmically we did a simple 2-bar head nod. |