Brent Olstad - awesome arranger!

As you know I almost never recommend other piano or music sites simply because I’m never sure about the quality or reliability of the site owner. In fact, over the last 15 years I believe I have only recommended 2 other sites. One was Dave Sprunger’s playpianotoday.com site and the other was Patti McCoy’s site at patmoranmccoy.com.

But today I have an enthusiastic recommendation if you are in the market for arrangements of any kind — piano, flute, trombone, etc. — and even custom arrangments where you pick the song and he arranges it specifically for you. He specializes in hymn arrangements, but he does other genres as well.

The site is http://www.brentolstadmusic.com Brent is my nephew (by marriage) and is a brilliant pianist and arranger. He is the author of at least a dozen published books you can see by clicking here: http://www.brentolstadmusic.com/published-works.html

Do yourself a favor and go over to his site at http://www.brentolstadmusic.com and just browse around and see all the exciting stuff he does. You can listen to audio samples on his page. He even has a free arrangment of Beethoven’s Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee you can listen to and then download if you want. Click here: http://www.brentolstadmusic.com/free-music.html

(If you are wondering if he is a student of mine, the answer is no — he is way beyond me.)

Great site - fantastic arrangments! Click here: http://www.brentolstadmusic.com/

Brent Olstad is an arranger and composer, most noted for his Faithful Flute series published by Ron Harris Music. Brent was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, and attended Biola University in La Mirada, California, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree in Organ Performance (1984).

Brent played keyboards in the Biola Jazz Ensemble and was active in the Biola Concert Band as a percussionist and as the Student Conductor for two years. He was a two-time winner of the Biola sponsored Composition Contest and was the recipient of the Howard Organ Scholarship two years in a row.

Brent is a classically trained pianist/organist but is also gifted in playing other styles, including jazz and gospel. He is the Minister of Music at Ashland Bible Church in Ashland, Oregon. Brent performs locally in small jazz groups, for community theater, and as an accompanist.

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How to play the same song at least a dozen different ways. In this short video Duane demonstrates over a dozen different ways a simple song such as Cum Ba Ya can be played. Some of the methods include Alberti Bass, open-voiced arpeggios, swing bass, block chords, flowing river of sound and more.

For a full course in 101 ways to apply various techniques to piano songs click below:

http://www.PianoPlaying.com

Piano Arranging Techniques: How Many Are There? I think the answer is “infinite”, because there are always individual variations on variations. In other words, Garner does a tremelo in his way, Peterson in his way, Brubeck in his way, Previn in his way, and on and on. But it is obvious that you should learn as many styles as possible so YOU can mix and match them in the songs you play and put your own distinctive stamp on your playing.

If you haven’t taken a look at “How To Dress Up Naked Music On The Piano”, you might want to - it teaches 101 different style variations you can use. Check it out at http://www.pianoplaying.com

Auld Lang Syne - A Few Arranging Ideas for this traditional new year’s eve song.

Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne ?

CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

For more videos, come on over to my YouTube Channel

Silver Bells: A Simple Arrangement Adding 3rds & Echos to create a
simple arrangement. Use any kind of left hand
accompaniment in 3/4 such as a swing bass.

Did you know you can watch over 300 of my short videos on piano playing at my YouTube channel? Click on
http://www.youtube.com/user/chordsgalore

“Christmas Time Is Here” is the theme song of the Charlie Brown Christmas special on TV that plays every year. It was written and performed by Vince Guaraldi from San Francisco. In this video I walk you through the chord progressions which are pretty unusual due to the polytonality.

For over 300 YouTube videos on piano playing please go to my channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/chordsgalore

A few arranging ideas for piano on the Christmas Carol “Hark The Herald Angels Sing”

Angels From The Realms Of Glory - Arranging Ideas For Piano. By simply using inversions of the few chords that are used in the song, plus a very simple bass part made out of octaves, and by altering the rhythm somewhat, we can create a joyful version of this great old song.

Over 300 free piano lesson videos on Duane’s YouTube Channel!

If you wanted to play “O Little Town Of Bethlehem” without depending on the sheet music, what would you do? Here are a few ideas:

Click here: O Little Town Of Bethlehem

Can you learn to arrange songs on the piano?

Absolutely! But in order to do that, you need to be able to analyze the structure of a song in terms of it’s form and it’s chords.

Watch this 2-minute video and see if this is something you would like to be able to do:

If so, click on How To Use Music Like a Map Instead of a Straight-Jacket

Did you grow up playing Chopsticks on the piano? I did. And many of my friends did. Even kids that didn’t play the piano knew how to play Chopsticks. It is probably the most “popular” piano song ever — not because it’s a great song, but because it is so easy to play.

If you would like to play it in a different way than everyone else, take a look at this short video. Perhaps it will stimulate some ideas in your mind that will apply not just to Chopsticks, but to arranging songs in general.

It’s fine if you WANT to play old hymns just as they are written in the hymnbook, but you certainly don’t have to. Most hymnbooks are written in 4 parts: soprano, alto, tenor and bass. But you as a piano player have 10 fingers and 88 keys — way more than just 4-part harmony. So what do you need to know to be able to arrange your own version of old hymns and gospel songs? Watch this short video and you’ll see.

Click here for info on Best-Loved Hymns & Gospel Songs

This video is the 3rd in a series about how to create your own unique chord substitutions for most any song. By creating a chord sub, you automatically put your own spin on a tune, as your listeners are used to hearing the same chord progressions in a given song, but you surprise them with a new and different chord.

Watch this short video, then toggle down on this blog to review the first two videos in this series.

For a complete course in Chord Substitutions, please click on “Chord Substitutions”

One of the techniques you can use in your right hand to make your piano playing fuller is to add 3rds under the melody. Just make sure it is a scale note 3rd — anything else will not harmonize correctly. When 3rds don’t work at a given spot in the melody, switch to 6ths under the melody — one of those two will almost always work. For more good stuff like this, come on over to http://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free online newsletter.

When you are playing a piano solo it is often effective to create an intro to the song to kind of “set the stage” for the song — establish the mood, the tempo, etc. And when you are accompanying someone (a singer or an instumentalist) it is imperative to play and introduction so that the soloist can get oriented to the key, the starting note, the tempo, the feel, etc.

In the following podcast you will learn how to create an intro to most any song using just two chords. It’s as easy as pie, so listen up:

For a full course of instructions on creating intros and endings to a song, please go to http://www.playpianocatalog.com/creating-intros-amp-endings-on-songs.html

Enhanced Podcast Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Is it really possible to play lots more notes in a song without having to read more notes in the sheet music?

The answer is an emphatic YES!

Of course if you just play a song note by note from the printed sheet music, you are limited to the notes on the page. But if instead you learn to read chord symbols it will open up a huge new panorama of possiblities for your piano playing.

Why? Because when you read chord symbols, you can do anything you want with them — arpeggiate them, straddle them, run them in scores of variations, chord them in various rhythms from simple to complex, and on and on. You can improvise to your heart’s content, arranging the song the way you feel it.

But the great thing is that you don’t have to choose between the two ways of playing: you can make a synergy by reading the music and then adding lots of notes based on the chord progressions. That’s what I do when I play most of the time. That gives you the best of both worlds: the ideas that the composer has written into the printed music, and your own ideas as you go along.

Take a look at this short video and you’ll quickly get the idea:

For information about the course that teaches this in detail, please go to How To Play More Notes Without Reading More Notes

How To Dress Up “Naked Music” by Crosspolinating Arranging Styles Into a “Hybrid” Style. By learning several different techniques of manipulating chords and then combining them, you can come up with a hybrid style all your own. Watch this 5-minute video:

Go to How To Dress Up Naked Music to learn more about it.

It’s true. Every single piece of sheet music has buried treasure hiding in it. The object of learning to play the piano in an exciting style is to use a “musical treasure map” to dig that buried treasure up and apply it to the song. Watch this 2-minute video to get an idea about how to do it:

Then go over to Musical Treasure Map and see if you can learn how to do it yourself.

What is the difference between improvising and arranging? The difference is mainly a matter of semantics, but I think it is useful to consider improvising as involving the creation of a new (or partially new) melody, while arranging involves a more or less new structure for an existing song. Watch this short video on the subject: