6 Ways To Improve Your Accompaniment Skills On The Piano

By Matti Carter

Learning how to play accompaniments on the piano is important if you are performing live with other solo musicians or bands. If you are just getting started, you may be wondering what is the best way to approach learning this skill. Here are 6 things you could do to improve your accompaniment skills:

1. Learn Different Types Of Chords

Learning how to play different chords on the piano will massively help you improve your accompaniment skills. Playing with only major and minor chords is fun, but it will start to sound boring after a while. You could also learn the 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th and 13th chords. On top of that you could learn the diminished and suspended chords. These chords will give you a great foundation for pop and jazz based accompaniments.

2. Learn How To Sight Read Chord Symbols

Knowing how to sight read chord symbols is a great skill to have, and doing so will help you become better at accompanying. Chord symbols are easier to sight read than standard notation, since they are written using letters and numbers. Knowing the different chords, and learning how the logic behind chord symbols works is required to become good at sight reading them. Accomplished accompanists will be able to read the chords from any sheet music that they get. This skill can help you play in bands, where you have to learn the chords of a song quickly.

3. Learn How To Invert Chords While Playing

Inverting chords will make accompanying easier and save you a lot of time. First, study what chord inversions are and how to form them, then start practising how to apply them to your piano playing. While accompanying using chords, you should always know where to find the closest inversion of the next chord. You do not have to play with inversions all the time during accompanying, but knowing how to find them quickly is a massive advantage.

4. Learn Different Accompaniment Styles

Learning how to accompany using different styles will prepare you to play different kinds of songs. You should practise accompanying styles for different genres of music. You should also know how to play accompaniments in different time signatures and tempos. You can practise different accompaniment styles by playing along to different styles of music. Creating your own accompaniment styles is also a good idea. This will improve your creativity along with your accompaniment skills. It will also make your accompaniments sound unique.

5. Practise Playing Along With A Record Or Backing Track

If you cannot practise with a band or musician, playing chords along with records will help you with your accompaniment skills. Backing tracks and records will improve your ability to play songs in the right time, and give you more confidence to play live.

6. Learn How To Improvise

As an accompanist knowing how to improvise can be helpful. Even though you are not performing as the soloist of your band, you could still apply improvised solos to transition parts in the music. This will spice up your performances, and give you more options while accompanying.

About The Author:

Matti Carter is a composer and piano instructor based in Tampere, Finland. He also writes instructional articles and publishes them online. If you are interested in taking piano lessons, or want to ask a music related question, feel free to contact him.