EKS Lesson Ten Performing a song – ‘The First Time’
EKS Lesson Ten Performing a song – ‘The First Time’
Let us go through the chart togethe,r step by step, looking at each bit and understanding what the chart is asking us to do.
The first thing you will see is the name of the tune, ‘The First Time’, and the name of the composer [and the name of the arranger]. The title is the important one as, if you had a number of songs to play, it is essential that you play the correct one!
At the top left hand side before the tune starts you will see the note, ‘4 clicks’. This means that you will hear four clicks before the tune starts. This will help count you into the song.
Next is the time signature ‘C’ which is the sign for common time and means there are four beats in each bar. This is all familiar territory for you.
The first thing you play is a six bar pattern using whole notes and half notes. This generates quite a relaxed feel and you will realize later that this contributes significantly to the way the track builds dynamically.
This pattern is repeated, as you have the beginning of the repeat at the start of bar 1 and the end repeat sign at the end of bar 6. You have both the left hand, playing the bass note in the bass clef, and the triad in the right hand in the treble clef – which is a feature of the entire piece.
You will need to study the triads carefully, to see how the triads are formed, as we are using inversions throughout the piece to create smooth sounding chord progressions with economy of movement.
So after you have played the Verse you are then ready to move into the Chorus.
The first thing you will notice is that there is a change in rhythm, as we are now including the use of a mixture of quarter and eighth notes in the right hand part.
An additional challenge here is that the left hand is playing a different rhythm from the right hand part. So this section works your rhythmic coordination skills quite hard.
Bars 16 and 20 have specific rhythms written that you need to follow very closely, as the rest of the band play the same rhythm at these bars and you need to lock into that rhythm very tightly. Listen carefully to those bars to get the full effect.
After bar 20, we are into our second Verse and you should notice that we have entered a section that has repeats. Find the end of the repeat, at the end bar 26, so that you know where you are going.
Although the chords are exactly the same as Verse 1, the inversions are different – to create a different, feel, sound and emotion – so look carefully at your chord progressions through this section.
Chorus 2 varies from Chorus 1, as we are creating more urgency in the track by adding an eighth note rhythm to our right hand. Again, at bars 36 and 40, we are following a band rhythm so work on playing the rhythm very tightly.
The second half of the Chorus has a change of rhythm and there are more inversions of the chords to manage. Take time to work them out and practise your hand movements.
After our second Chorus, we have our last Verse which takes us to the end of the song. Here we have adjusted the chords again for dramatic and rhythmic interest, using quarter, half and whole notes.
The third Verse is not repeated and we finish the song by playing the chord of C in the final bar. The end of the tune is marked by ‘Fine’, which means ‘finish’.
Now, I would suggest that you watch and listen to the multimedia files, and follow the chart through a couple of times. Once you have done that, have a go yourself. You can play with the keyboard player, or mute the keyboard track so that you can play with the band on your own.
Remember to:
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