Playing a melody with a full, satisfying chord accompaniment is THE benchmark achievement for the modern-styles keyboard player. Musicarta’s ‘Mariaan’ piano solo is just such a piece.

The study pack takes this lovely solo and builds your performance, with written music and audio and virtual-keyboard performance files of every step of the way.

 Your download contains:

•  A 70-page PDF packed with musical examples;
•  A coaching video;
•  Audio and MIDI files of all the practice segments;
•  The MidiPiano virtual keyboard (Windows OS) which turns every MIDI file into a mini ‘how-to’ video;and
•  A set of flashcards other useful resources

Click through to the 'Mariaan' YouTube playlist here

Stepping-stone performances

Musicarta wants you to come away from your practising with a sense of achievement. Often, you don’t get that until you’ve learnt a piece through to the end, but ‘Mariaan’ has a host of stepping-stone performances you can celebrate and show off, starting with a 16-bar ‘First Chorus’ performance – with its own ending.

See for yourself!

Here are the keyboard diagrams for the ‘First Chorus audio above. The left hand notes are colour-coded green, the right hand notes orange.

Here’s MidiPiano playing the MIDI file for this section at practice speed.

The chord sequence is:

You can see that with all the resources in the download right there on your desktop, you CAN get this texture under your fingers, super-fast!

With ‘Mariaan’, you’re guaranteed to learn something useful and tuneful every time you sit down to play – and you don’t even have to read music!

‘Mariaan’ as accompaniment

Building to the half-way house Chord Study arrangement (just the chord texture, no melody) is an achievement in itself. Play the audio, and let your imagination relax into it.

Fail-safe teaching method

Here's an example of Musicarta's fail-safe  teaching method - full commentary, MS and fingering on the in-course version, naturally!

As well as being supremely satisfying to play (and an excellent spring-board going forward), this arrangement is the perfect backing for any solo instrument playing the Mariaan melody.

A melody lead sheet music for instruments in C, Bb and Eb is included in your package, plus a guitar TAB version. Or you could just sing the melody over the chords...!

Adding the melody

Once you know the Chord Study arrangement, you tackle the business of playing the melody as well.

Playing the syncopated melody is your first task. To help you get the rhythm, the melody is counted for you. “If you can say it, you can play it!”

Then you rehearse the melody over the audio of the chord accompaniment (above). You see that nothing’s left to chance –  it’s like having a teacher right there in the room with you! ‘Mariaan’ is tried-and-tested teaching material with all the building blocks in place and checked off.)

To play the melody as well as the accompaniment, you have to sacrifice some of the broken-chord notes to make room. A close note-by-note look is usually needed to get the ball rolling – and this is where MidiPiano’s ability to slow down the see-what-you-play MIDI performance file is invaluable.

You can set MidiPiano to Repeat, slow it down, zoom in and (an old hand's advice) - just stare at it until the penny drops!

‘Mariaan’ goes straight to the heart of the solo keyboard singer-songwriter style and the task of getting a performance learnt, with no padding or sending you off to practice irrelevant things (and maybe get back to what you want to play in a few years’ time!)

If you want to build a broader theory base, Musicarta has three home study courses that might interest you. Follow the Canon Project, Pyramids Variations and Musicarta Key Chords ‘Learn more’ links in the right hand column for details.

Exercises for right hand solo style

The right-hand chord-plus-melody technique is quite a finger-twister – and don’t listen to anybody who tells you you’ll be able to do it overnight…! Musicarta offers you a unique set of exercises to work your hand into the patterns and practice exactly the thing you want to achieve. Here’s a sample:

Because the MIDI file is included in your download, you can watch the full set of exercises on MidiPiano (as seen here) and slow the performance down until you can match the speed. With the full music included, you’re sure to make speedy progress.

Open-ended: Skills-to-go

Even if you never end up playing the full ‘Mariaan’ solo performance, you’re sure to add a whole host of tricks to your repertoire.

The four-chord set ‘Mariaan’ is mostly based around is the essential ‘starter-pack’ of all musical harmony. Here are a couple of chords-and-bass textures using the same four chords.

Songs have been penned with little more backing than that – especially with a band filling out the sound…!

You can play any chord sequence using the Mariaan accompaniment texture – or a slight variation of it – and while the combined chords-plus-melody right hand style is the modern keyboard singer-songwriter style stand-by.

Here are a couple of closely related improvisations.

(More examples plus the see-and-play MIDI files in the download.)

A unique offer!

‘Mariaan’ offers hours of top-class teaching material that’s available nowhere else – for less than the cost of a single piano lesson.

Everything you need to get a complete performance into your repertoire – and pave the way for future hours of creative keyboard pleasure.

If you’re serious about taking your playing to the next level, ‘Mariaan’ is the solo for you!

The original 'Mariaan'

'Mariaan' - like most compositions - went through a few versions before settling into her final form. out of interest, here's the original, with the chord sequence beneath.

Once you can do the melody-plus-chord-texture trick, you too can combine and recombine these chords into your own composition.

See you on the course!

Musicarta

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