How to play pop piano (properly)

[the author of this article, which is me, of course, used to play pop piano in the civil defence band, and in church bands and outside bands. he writes songs which can be found at www.myspace.com/shawnpoon and recently wrote a musical.]

It seems a bit pretentious to be writing an article about, this funny queer topic of, how to play pop piano. Simply because plenty has been written on it, and I don't pretend to be an expert in it although I do believe myself capable of playing quite reasonably well. So here's some things i feel happy to pass on to you, my readers, in the hope that you may discover the joy of playing pop piano well.

its the chords, silly!
Unlike classical music, most of the time you are given chords to accompany a song, which probably states something like C, F, Bm, Em, blah blah, and sometimes you get the occassional Absus4 or a Em7b5.....and so, you're supposed to play the chord along with the melody, when your'e playing pop piano, that's what we all know. but how do we do it?

1. Decide whether you want to play the melody with it, or not.
Usually, when you accompany a singer, you often don't want to play the melody, because you'd be doubling up with what she is doing, and then you're occupying the same frequency, and then people cannot really hear the purity of her voice/melodic line without your noisy piano accompaniment playing the same thing. so, if you're playing with a singer, don't double the melody line (ie dont play the melody line). play a chord variation in the right hand instead. when you're playing solo, however, without a singer, then of course you play the melody. but you don't have to play ONLY the melody in the right hand - what i mean is, let's say a song like "don't look back in anger" and the chorus goes "so sally can wait" - which is G - F- G - F - E .....with a C chord moving to g; you don't want to just paly that G F G F E on the right hand with a C chord moving to G on the left hand because it'll sound really empty for a chorus, so you want to texturise it by playing a chord (LH) C - G (RH) C-E-G (with the melody being the highest most note of the chord), and then moving down to (in the right hand: B/D/F- B/D/G - B/D/F - C/E (change chord to Am)) - in the way you get some texturre in the right hand also.

And usually when playing the melody, it's often palyed louder than the rest of the accompaniment; so when you are playing the melody make it louder;

2. Decide on the accompaniment style
There are many ways of playing chords, such as:
a) broken chords (ie arpeggios)
b) chordal , block chords
e) a mixture of both
d) right hand chordal, left hand broken chords...
and so how do you decide?
well, it's all about the song.
think about it - do you want the song to have long, flowy accompaniments, or do you want it stately? for example, a song like "your song" (elton john) will have quite an arpeggio-like accompaniment because it is a rather flowy piece - whereas a hymn would have stately block chords. it often depends on whether you want to accentutate the beat - whether you want the strong to have a strong beat or not - whether you want it stately, or you want it flowing. if you want it flowing, then play more broken chords, arpeggioes, to make it seem like the sense of time is elastic and, that, it diminishes the 'count' of the beat since every beat is divided into so much more; if you want it stately, however, play the chords at regular intervals, on the beat. jay chou for example is a good example, since his songs such as 'feng' or 'an jing' all have right hand chords that are played on the beat for the stately effect.

3. Decide on the rhythmic accents/emphasis
this is relevant in R n B songs for example: sometimes weird accents accentuated with a chord adds to the excitement of playing an R n b song on the piano. for example, jason derulo's "whatcha say" has much syncopation - if you hear the song, the drums are very syncopated and irregular - and a good piano player will be able to recapture the irregular syncopations of the song by mimiking the drums on the piano, by playing, for example: boom, cha, - boom - cha - cha - cha.....(how to explain rhythms, oh well) - it's really about mimiking the drums, and the beatboxes, for example, with a piano.
if it's jazz, for example, then there are the different accents as well: one example is chick corea's spain - where there are leading beats (accents before the main beats) - syncopations, etc. basically, feel the beat, and move your hands with the beat and you'll be fine.

4. Decide on the chord voicings.
chord voicings are very numerous: often when its a major chord, you have the choice of playing (1-5) with the left hand or (1-3) or (1-3-5), and the right hand will fill up the gaps, usually maybe with (1-3), or (1-5), or (3-5).... and the choice often depends on what the song needs. for example, jay chou's feng starts off with a (5-1) on the right hand, x 4, for the first chord, before it changes to a (1-5) on the dominant chord for the next 4 beats.
to put it simply:
Feng (C)
C | G | F | C| F|.....
thats the verse right...
so hows the chords played:
its something like:
on the C chord it's
(Left hand) C - E -G ; right hand is playing G-C (c being the highest note)
before moving on on the G chord to:
(left hand) B - D - G; right hand is playing (G - D) (d being the highest note)...
and moving on to the F:
(left hand) A - C - F; right hand is playing (F - C) (c being the highest note)...

but either way the entire notes make up the chord; but you could have so easily voiced it so many different ways. you could have simply voiced it:
C - E - G: right hand playing C - E, with e BEING the highest...
or so on.
so really it's a matter of preference; but usually the trick is the song. it is supposed to fit the song, so if the melody line is: C C C C G C D D D D E D G (that is feng, btw): then jay chou's instincts is to play the c as the highest, since the c note forms the melody line; and in the next chord, it's to play the d as the highest note. so most of the time the song will determine the voicings, but of course, creative freedom allows us to play anything so long as it sounds good. so try what fits! one of the tricks, though, is not to have too much movement between chords, since, it's nice if the notes flow to each other nicely, as though the piano was a choir, and it's nice if the voices move smoothly from one to another rather than jumping all over the place.

5. It's about the touch
the touch is very important: most amateurs play all the notes the same way, but then there are many things you can do to a piano. while unlike a guitar/violin - ie you dont control the strings, you can do a few things: control the timing of the note, the loudness of the note, and the quickness/fullness that you hit the note. so, follow the melody line, make the melody line sing. most of the time, a singer will not sing all the notes in the same volume, so vary your piano playing the way the singer will vary the loudness/softness of the melodic line. and another trick is to use little 'slurs', which are little piano "pull-offs", ie one note is quickly transferred to another note to give the impresion that that note is leaning to the other note.
another trick is to play the notes together, one at a time, but leaving the last note on as the next note hits the keys - so you get a little blurring effect. (of course, just a bit is good).
sometimes you want the gentle touch for a gentle song, so try to smoothly feel your way into the keys for that effect.


That's all for now. i'll write more when i think of more things.
thanks!