How to write piano parts

[James Ford]

I play guitar and drums, but when it comes to keys, I’m very much out of my element. I also have only a rudimentary knowledge of music theory because I’ve always been more of a “feel” player. Despite that, I’ve been working on a ballad I wrote that features piano extensively, along the lines of Cold (the band). The problem I’m having is I have a melody line, but that’s about it. I created the melody line on my own but used EZ Keys to create the chorus and bridge. Trouble is, I like the chord progression, but the actual chords themselves don’t feel quite right. I’ve toyed with EZ Keys’ chord finder wheel, but all it’s done is confused me further. Also, for the verses I only have the melody line, no chords. Every chord I’ve tried underneath it sounds either too bland or too “out there”. I guess I’m just wanting to know how piano players write parts. Or at the very least what’s the going rate for a piano player to help me write this damned thing…lol.

EZkeys version: 1.2.5
Operating system: macOS Mojave (10.14)

MacOS (Mojave)
Studio One 4
Superior Drummer 3/EZ Drummer 2

Topic

[Jack 007]

There are two software ‘assistants’ that come to mind; PGmusic’s band in a box, and maybe plugin boutique’s Scaler … ??

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Thanked by: James Ford

[Donald Jonovic]

Band in a Box is definitely a useful tool for accomplishing what you’re trying to do. It’s certainly become antiquated as a sound generator, given all the great stuff coming out from Toontracks, etc., but it’s a treasure trove of instrumental tone, style, harmony, even lead ideas.

EZkeys version: 1.2.5
Operating system: Windows 10

[Jack 007]

Donald Jonovic wrote:

It’s certainly become antiquated as a sound generator ….

not really if you have the latest version, and some midi (piano) super tracks are quite on par with EZkeys, be it that there are not as many styles as with Toontrack’s expansion packs ……. and you’ll need a decent VST plugin like Halion Sonic SE (free).

EZkeys version: 1.2.5
Operating system: Windows 10

[John]

BEST ANSWER

James, I read over your questions and the replies so far, and I’m not sure if I can help but I’d like to offer my own response – I’m a basic skilled guitar guy and I’d say a beginner keyboard player.  I use a synth, an Alesis QS7 MIDI, input into my DAW, Studio One 4 Pro, with the Presonus Studio 2/6 USB interface.   My strengths though, are as a writer/composer and I’ll never be a super-skilled performer but I’m just smart enough to know how to use the incredible software tools here to put together some pretty good compositions.  It’s a bit difficult to convey everything using just text here and no video tutorials or screen shots, but I’d like to give you hopefully some useful thoughts if I may.

By the way, since I bought into EZKeys a couple weeks ago, I’ve become so addicted that I have not had to use my MIDI synth directly yet – and I’ve already composed 4 complete songs using EZKeys and EZDrummer2 in fact,  adding just some bass and some light strings (using my synth for that, yes) and then the vocals.  Ref EZKeys, I have found to my delight, that I don’t even need to have my DAW loaded in order to compose – I simply open the EZKeys stand-alone, hit the browser, begin scanning through the various genres & categories of intro’s, verses, chorus… and I can go from start to finish and build my entire piano track and save it, ready for import into my DAW later on.   But in my case, I already have many songs written that I never got recorded – so I am simply unloading melodies already finished in my head, now onto piano tracks.  Can’t tell you how much EZKeys speeds up the process, especially when I have a day job and the music creation is my hobby/passion.

But I think you’re really asking more along the lines of the creativity aspect, and I’d like to get to that.  Look, so you play guitar and drums.   With the guitar skills you’re already well equipped to compose in EZKeys – you just may not realize it.  Cause that’s the incredible strength of EZKeys, it takes the need to actually “perform” the piano-playing away and allows you to just CREATE.   Let me illustrate with an example melody that I trust we all might know,  the basic tune of “Amazing Grace”?   Visualize you’re playing a basic chord rhythm on acoustic guitar – in C.   I’m at work but, I can visualize it I hope, enough to describe a basic chord sequence of  C:

C         Em                F                    C                      C                Em               D
Amazing Grace,  how sweet      the sound     that saved   a  wretch  like me……

This is enough for us to look at…..  so, you have your melody in your head… and there are chords that you know SHOULD be needed somewhere in all that fancy piano playing,  that have to support your track.   (I’m assuming you want to use piano predominantly in your song and not mix with a guitar track, but either way you can combine those sounds if you want or use pauses in one instrument or the other, depends on the sound you’re going for).

OK so, you said you kind of get this far but when you try putting some chords together they don’t “feel” quite right.   OK.    I’m assuming that you began your effort by opening up the Browser, and searching through however large of a EZKeys library you have – even the default EZKeys MIDI pkg gives you a lot of good options for ballads – I use ’em extensively.  A tip – although I don’t do country per se, I have found a wonderful lot of patterns inside the country straight 4/4 section of EZKeys MIDI.   There’s something to keep in mind I think, with doing this – look for phrases that give you a nice ballad feel of piano “notes” that go “in and out of”  piano chords.  In other words, treat the editor like you’re standing beside a real guy (or gal!) who will actually play what melody you’re creating.  You don’t want him/her to just simply pound chords.  Remember what it’s like to try a new song on an acoustic guitar – you don’t play that “melody line” note by note – you play the chords, and if you’re not strumming you’re picking out little notes here and there that emphasize that melody line but staying within a certain “chord progression”.  This aspect is important when composing original songs, because you want to vary from anyone else’s work and yet there’s only so many chords in popular music.

There is an aspect that I find very different between guitar and piano writing, personally.  When I play a basic rhythm acoustic guitar song, I don’t strum I prefer mostly fingerpicking (and I use a 12-string a lot) and there are also some “extra” notes that I try to “toss in” as I play a rhythm part that sort of adds a bit of color to the melody.  There are some songs then that I also do a bridge on, where I play a bit of a melody line before going back to the next verse and I’m back on rhythm.  Maybe the difference I hear, is that with piano it seems there are so many more of those “extra” notes that float around going outside of the basic chord and at times can be even a bit discordant, but then in EZKeys you bring in the next chord or phrase and it brilliantly comes back in together and your ear just goes “ahh!”.  That’s part of this editing process.

So it seems you’re able to get the process of locating the BEST piano “loop” or phrase and bring it in to your editor, and then you’re working with a melody line in your head while you’re looking at it in the chord chart/circle right?   I wanted to compare the process you’re going through with what I do, let’s say for instance the amazing grace example above.  You know you can play those few chords on guitar, but what’s different in EZKeys for piano – you MIGHT have grabbed a phrase that reads instead, more like:      Cadd9      Emadd11    Fmaj7         and so on…..  is this the point where you’re saying “I like the chord progression, but the actual chords themselves don’t feel quite right”?

Here’s the thing – and don’t worry about any particular key, take the key of C that most of the EZKeys are in, because it’s easiest to work with and once you get the phrase edited to conform to YOUR OWN original melody then you can always transpose it and save it into your song project….   so use just your ears to listen to the first chord and if you can match up your melody line to begin in C or whatever other easy (basic) chord, then just use that as a starting point and go from there.  Play around with that circle and especially, OPEN the Details section on top, and do this for EVERY chord that you check.  Go one by one.  Practice with whatever the first one is,  say it’s Cadd9,  and turn OFF the “add9”, until you can hear a basic “C” only.  THEN use your ears and play around with adding 3, 5th, 7th, 9, 11,  but not all at one time  LoL  turn on each one, listen to see if that’s what you really have in mind that better matches your own melody… and proceed through the options.   Sometimes you may not have the correct BASIC chord.  That’s why I suggest starting with that first, turn off all those little “extra” notes and hear just the basic chord.  If that is not the chord you need for that measure or beat or lyric, then go to another.  But if you play guitar, this will come natural to you!   Just visualize your guitar and see what basic chord you would have used, and try THAT one from the chord circle.

The really nice thing about EZKeys is that you can custom-build your OWN song melody from all these pro-quality phrases and by the time you finish modifying an 8-measure phrase sequence, you might not even be able to recognize it from the original one you dragged down from the browser!  On the bad side, you might not ever be able to locate it again……!   I have forced myself therefore, to go slower than I’d like to, and I open up a text file beside the EZKeys stand alone window, and I begin with my Intro, and I log it down on paper:

“Intro – I used 8 measures”
“I used EZKeys MIDI, Country, Ballad Straight 4/4, Intro variation 02”   
I modified the original phrase to this sequence:
     Cadd9       Fmaj7        Dmadd9      Gadd11     
“note:  I’m documenting this all in the original key (C) but ultimately I transposed to “D” to fit my vocals better”.

(on and on, so for every song I write, I have at least 2-3 kinds of different sheets of documentation.
I also use various guitar loops, so I also carefully document where on my 1TB drive I have all these many hundreds of loops and which 3-4 I used.)

I also write it in a certain way if I broke apart 1 measure and made it 2 chords,  I’ll write for instance   “Cadd9 & Dm7″   to show that’s all 1 measure.
Laugh all you want but for each song I write now with EZKeys as part of it, I produce a sheet I call my “EZKeys Mapping” and I write all this stuff out.
The first song I did when I bought EZKeys – I went to town, build an entire song track piano part, and never documented where I got each phrase from.  I figured there’d be some easy way to locate it afterwards.  Not so!  Ha   If I ever wanted to go back and rebuild it – I’d have to go from scratch.   There is an option to “locate in browser” but all that points you to is where on your drive the EZKeys saves your song projects, and that’s basically with whatever random filename you might have saved it under.  So, just food for thought on that issue.

Final point, you mention also that in your verses all you have is a melody line, no chords.  I’m just guessing here but, perhaps you built your verse section by using the  EZKeys MIDI “Basic” section, where it gives you a single chord and none of the usual “rolling chord/notes” that most of the other sections use for style?   There are times when you do want to build something by note, but your song’s piano track will want the sort of chord progression patterns that you find within the styles that come with the EZKeys pkg or any one of a number of add-ons that can be purchased separately.  I can’t stress enough too, that the real “effort” if you think of it like that, is in this “initial browser selection phase” as I call it.  You have your own melody in mind.  You have like, tons of options but – which one to choose?   Well, you seem a lot like me, you play by ear, you know what your melody line sounds like in your head… as you listen to phrase after phrase, try to find which one has the sort of rhythm to it that you want.  Not a straight single chord, but a nice-playing section that seems to fit the basic style you want.  This is the step I spend probably the most time on, because this affects a lot of what you do throughout the song’s piano track.

In fact, I’ve done a song where I barely used 2 or 3 different patterns because I was able to modify just a couple variations so much that Intro, Verse, Chorus, and Ending were all possible just by re-writing the chords I needed to match MY melody line, but it kept the nice flowing piano-playing style.  And that’s the beauty of it.   But if I DID want to create a special piano melody line as a section within the track, it would be my easiest method to just fire up my Alesis QS7, practice the part I want a few times until I can play it close to correct, and then simply record that as a separate track inside my DAW project.  Then use the MIDI editor to clean it up a bit, before either transposing if needed, and then converting to audio track.   Does that help at all?  I’m sure with this kind of tool, there are many ways creatively to get to the same end result.  I’m just hoping that by explaining a bit how it goes for me, maybe it will help you to not give up and to try further to get your melody into your desired piano part.

Oh, you also asked about the possibility of a live piano-player to do a recording for you.  Yep, there are such things of course, and there’s a particular place I go to for specific parts I want to have done “live” that are far better than I can do.  They are at:   http://www.airgigs.com   and you can find pro vocalists, piano players, guitar players, even mixing and mastering – anything you need, and if you search a bit and listen to their sample demos, you can find some truly outstanding artists who are very, very reasonable – under $100 for numerous pianists for example.   If you decide you need to go this route, it’s a very popular option that a lot of us songwriters use.    OK, sorry this is so long but if any of it can help you or anyone else on here, it was time well spent.  Best of luck to you – EZ Keys is an awesome product and a truly great creative tool!
~ John

PS   nope, I do not work for Toontrack and no one bribed me to say good things about their great product EZKeys! I just love it!!    :))

EZkeys version: 1.2.5
Operating system: Windows 10

using both CW Sonar and Studio One 4 DAW; Win 10 OS; commercial audio loops as well as MIDI, EZDrummer and EZKeys; Presonus Studio 2/6 I/F; Nectar2 Production Ste; iZotope Ozone for mastering.

[Jochen Reulbach]

The less you know your stuff, the more you need to be able to hear your stuff. And the more you are able to hear your stuff, the less you need advanced theory.

In the past I had satisfying results by just giving EZkeys the bass line. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work 😉

It has been my experience that sometimes it is better not to deviate too much from the simple major and minor chords. Especially in the early phase of song writing.

If you are hardly experienced in playing piano and you are looking for some kind of a sophisticated chord progression I think you will need one of the following three things:

• luck
• improvment of your skills
• somebody else who has the necessary experience and skills

My advice is to give EZkeys what you have and then listen to the suggestions. EZkeys can do your work within certain boundaries. The pre-built EZkeys MIDI patterns can match your creation within certain boundaries. And how can a MIDI pattern, that follows its own line, match an explicit melody? The answer is either not or just by accident.

If the guitar is your #1 instrument then act like you were sitting at the campfire and find the right chords on the one instrument that you are familiar with! Because then you have a self-contained genuine concept which you can apply to EZkeys.

Well, that sounds a little bit like “I, Robot” – limited answers and right questions 😉 But isn’t that exactly the way it works?

License transfer fees countervalue is $ 2,250.00
(done...)

So my anger about the Toontrack license transfer fee introduced in June 2021 is not entirely unfounded...

https://www.toontrack.com/faq/transfer-of-license-and-multiple-installs-important-information/

[John]

Joe, I agree with what you’re saying in essence, “EZkeys can do your work within certain boundaries.”   And I believe that as we learn those boundaries better we can capitalize on the features that EZKeys excels at, freeing us up from us having to play & record complicated performance pieces while permitting an expression of our original melody lines.

I wasn’t sure I understood your comment regarding MIDI editing though, “And how can a MIDI pattern, that follows its own line, match an explicit melody?  The answer is either not or just by accident.”    I’m sure I’m not the only one who drags a MIDI sequence over to my DAW after making my chord changes (and I also transposed into a more singable key for me), but then I did some further note-level editing in the DAW in order to add a pattern of my melody line.   And it’s by design, not by any accident.   There are times when you do want a few notes from your melody line while the piano also is playing the rhythm.  I consider that this is the same thing as when a guitar player does both a rhythm part and adds a few notes of a melody – I always love to hear that effect.  But if your point is that you can’t do that within the current EZKeys editor, then yeah.  It requires that you drag it into your DAW to do that part.

I actually had a perfect example of this point, so I’ve posted a song over on the community board just now,  to help here.  The song is called “Ten Years From Now” and I just put it together last night.  In particular, I want to illustrate just the 8-measure Intro pattern that I used.   If you listen to just that much, you can hear the piano part for measures 1-4 is pretty much untouched from the stock version phrase.  Then at measure 5-8, I did MIDI editing at the DAW, and I took a portion where the piano was playing some other bit of melody line, and I modified it to fit my own melody line.  It’s just a few notes, but it makes the Intro more unique to the song, and gives the listener a peek at the melody that begins at the verse with the vocals.   So to clarify, the fact that EZKeys is in MIDI form, permits the making of modifications beyond just the chords in the EZKeys editor.  You can use the MIDI editor in your DAW to go further, greatly adding to the originality of the sequence.

Because EZKeys is such a powerful tool in stand-alone mode, I’m hoping they’ll add this MIDI editing function right in the EZKeys editor for a version 2.  I think that would be a great enhancement, to be able to do all that in a piano track even before having to open the DAW!
All the best –
John

EZkeys version: 1.2.5
Operating system: Windows 10

using both CW Sonar and Studio One 4 DAW; Win 10 OS; commercial audio loops as well as MIDI, EZDrummer and EZKeys; Presonus Studio 2/6 I/F; Nectar2 Production Ste; iZotope Ozone for mastering.

[James Ford]

Thank you so much for this highly detailed response. Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you. It boggles the mind how similar you and I are in our approach to music. Reading your response, I could see myself giving the same answer. Most of your points were very helpful, and i will let you know how it all turns out!

MacOS (Mojave)
Studio One 4
Superior Drummer 3/EZ Drummer 2

[Johnbee1]

I usually write the chords first and then write the melody on top of that progression, so it’s hard for me to imagine having a melody without chords.  If I were in your predicament I guess I would chart out the melody you have as best I could and try to figure out what key it’s in, then experiment with different chord structures and articulations.  You might come up with some interesting combinations.  Leave your mind open to anything and don’t tie yourself down to one particular style.  Your melody might adapt to several different styles.

John B.

EZkeys version: 1.2.5
Operating system: Windows 8.1

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Thanked by: James Ford

[Mark Peters]

John: You have probably figured this out by now, but if you right-click on a midi sequence in your song at the bottom of the screen, one of the options it gives you is to locate that phrase in your library. Superior Drummer does something similar, but the phrase finder in EZKeys is a wonderful feature.

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Thanked by: John

[John]

Mark;  yes you’re correct about the right-click and location, but I’ve found that this only works when you are still in the segment’s original structure.  once you start making changes to it, then it loses whatever linking is built into the sequence.   That’s what several of us had mentioned, regarding losing the ability to “track back” that segment.

For example, I might work with a phrase in the editor and CUT 1-2 chords off, and COPY several chords from another area and then PASTE them in the sequence that I want.  I might transpose the whole sequence I end up with.  At some point I find that the Locate function no longer works.  So, my work-around is to take graphic snapshots as I go – once I have built an entire Verse or Chorus part for the track for example.  It’s  a tedious step, but it has already proved to be a useful addition to my working notes that I keep for each song project.  Thanks though, for the response!   Happy recording!
John D.

using both CW Sonar and Studio One 4 DAW; Win 10 OS; commercial audio loops as well as MIDI, EZDrummer and EZKeys; Presonus Studio 2/6 I/F; Nectar2 Production Ste; iZotope Ozone for mastering.

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Thanked by: Mark Peters

[José Miguel Bloise]

I’d really like to have the possibility of adding and substracting individual notes and/or chords, meaning doing some light editing without having to work the MIDI patterns in your DAW. Kinda whhat you’re able to do with the drums in Superior Drums v. 3.

One can dream, isn’t it?

EZkeys version: 1.2.5
Operating system: Windows 10

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Thanked by: Henrik Ekblom

[John]

agreed!  I work so much in EZKeys stand-alone mode, it’s become a composing addiction.  But even when I’ve completed an entire song piano track in the solo mode, I still have to take it over into the DAW to do what I consider essential edits that take the more generic melody pattern and tweak it to the unique melody that I’m writing, on a note-by-note basis.
I made the suggestion elsewhere on here that this would be a great feature for an EZKeys 2.0,  to build in at least a Lite MIDI editor right into the solo program!   It’s a great dream….!
John D.

EZkeys version: 1.2.5
Operating system: Windows 10

using both CW Sonar and Studio One 4 DAW; Win 10 OS; commercial audio loops as well as MIDI, EZDrummer and EZKeys; Presonus Studio 2/6 I/F; Nectar2 Production Ste; iZotope Ozone for mastering.

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Thanked by: Henrik Ekblom

[James Ford]

So sorry I haven’t responded before now. This is fantastic advice that I will definitely be using. You’ve pretty much nailed everything on the head. Again, thank you.

EZkeys version: 1.2.5
Operating system: macOS Catalina (10.15)

MacOS (Mojave)
Studio One 4
Superior Drummer 3/EZ Drummer 2

[Author]

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