Intermediate – Advanced

Somerset Folk Harp Festival

Harping from Leadsheets July 19th, 9.30 AM

Workshop Description
Learn how to interpret the melody from a lead sheet and arrange the harmony and bass line to it.

Topics
 Why learn to play from leadsheets?
- improve your theory skills in a fun and hands-on way
- ability to play in lead sheet-style even though you’re playing from an arrangement (with chord symbols) and thus give it
your own flavour
- easiness and spontaneity for a jam with fellow musicians
 Basic Theory; reading chord symbols, playing a major scale, build simple intervals like major and minor triads.
 Form
 Learn to chart a song
 Voicing tips to make your chords sound great.

Practising step by step

1. Learn to play the melody
2. Learn to accompany the melody with the root of the chord
by playing it with your the left hand (preferably already with your 3th or 4th finger)
3. Try to add more notes of the chord

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 Voicing exercises
Start with a folk tune, that you like playing!
For example the Grenadier and the Lady, below.
1. practise the melody
2. practise the melody with the root
3. practise with adding chord notes to the root, like:
1-5 / 1-3-5 / 1-5-8 / 1-5-10 etc.
4. Vary blocked and broken chords, vary with rhythm

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 The Grenadier was a folksong in minor, now how let's go to a chord progression in major and use a 7!
That’s something we like a lot in jazz and blues, but you can also use a 7th chord in another simple folksong.

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 I – IV – V - I
The ‘oldie’ of the chord progressions. You’ll find them in classical, pop, rock, actually just let your
ears ‘hang’ towards this progression and you’ll notice it popping up in many tunes.
On a V chord, the dominant, really make yourself comfortable with playing the 7.
You can play seventh chords many times more, but when it’s too complicated, no worries to leave them
out, as long as you got the V!

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Jamaica Farewell

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 Turnaround!
bVI - V, is a typical minor blues turnaround. A turnaround is a passage at the end of a chord progression that leads you
nicely from (in this case) bVI to V to I. The Blues Walk from Lou Donaldson is a blues with this kind of turnaround.

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 Let’s add a little bit of sophistication;)
II – V – I is a typical progression in jazz. It starts on a subdominant (II), thus making
the key less immediately clear. The root motion is still upward by a perfect 4th or
downward by a perfect 5th. Tru to recognize this progression in your jazz tunes! Below
you’ll find an example of such a progression and some more in My Blue Heaven on the
next page.

Thanks for listening!

I hope you enjoyed the class.
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Don’t forget to check out our upcoming jazz harp frstival in October @ www.jazzharpfestival.or

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