Piano for Vocalists - Melody

This series of posts is intended for the vocalist who wants to acquire more skills at the piano, but may not currently have the means or access to piano lessons. The tips and techniques discussed in these posts should not be taken as a piano curriculum. They are specifically focused on giving the vocalist the skills they need to use the piano most effectively as a singer. While the best attempt at providing good piano technique will and should always be made, these posts are no substitute for actual lessons with a good piano teacher.

The main point of a learning the piano as a vocalist is to be able to use it to help learn the melodic lines that you are required to sing. As such it is important to be able to comfortably play melodies as soon as possible. While the five finger scales are being used to instill technique and familiarity with the keyboard, you should also to start figure out how to play some melodic lines.

The best thing to do is to start with simple melodies that you know very well. Songs like “Jingle Bells,” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” are often good for this for example, because of their cultural familiarity. Whatever familiar simple melodies you choose, begin by playing them in C Major because it uses all white keys. A google search for simple folk melodies can serve you well at this stage. Just be sure they are initially in C Major (no sharps or flats). As more five finger scales are learned the melodies should be transposed into each of these keys. This is where solfege can especially come in handy. It is important to stick to melodies with a smaller range at first until the hand becomes more accustomed to the stretches and crosses that are required with wider ranging melodies or melodies with a lot of leaps.

To begin working that skill it can be useful to begin playing an intervallic scale exercise. The most basic way of doing this would be with the top fingering, but other fingerings should be explored – not just the ones included here.

Doing this not only gives the benefit of preparing your hand to play outside of the five finger pattern, but also gets it used to leaps of different intervals. The same exercise should be done with various fingerings. Experiment and play with multiple combinations. Use these four to get started:

One of the best ways to gain some comfort with the keyboard is to begin sightreading on the piano. I find one of the best tools to do so is actually a hymnal. Any variety of hymnal gives you access to tons of melodies, many of which meet the requirement of familiarity. Any piece of music will do for sightreading practice, even instrumental music, but a hymnal is a rich resource. Sites that contain public domain works such as imslp and cpdl are also excellent resources for finding these melodies. In addition to the simple google search for “easy folk melodies” mentioned earlier. The important thing is to play a lot of different things to get the hands prepared.

Hymnals are also useful for the next step of this, which is to begin playing more than one part at a time. This is a good skill to gain for practicing ensemble music because it allows you to hear your part with the others. Begin by playing the part that is closest to yours. It is easier for many people to play each part with a different hand, although some might find playing the close parts with the same hand easier right away. This should be your goal.

Using the five finger scales can be a good way to get used to this. Have one hand play the chosen pattern and the other start at a different interval. This can be done two ways – diatonically (by playing in the same key, Figure 4, measures 1 and 3) or intervallically (by playing the same sized interval, like a Major 3rd, Figure 4, measures 2 and 4). This should be done with each hand playing one line (measures 1-2), and also with one had playing both with different fingers (measures 3-4).

Speed is not necessarily a goal to reach for here. Oftentimes the benefit of playing both parts comes in hearing how they interact harmonically. Any practice at tempo can be done by singing your part and playing the other part on its own, a skill that should become easier after the melodic process described above.

Playing more than one part fits very well with the harmonic processes described in the next post.