Strengthening Your Intent

Diving deep into your music to find unique ways to convey your message.

In this lesson, I’ll be sharing one way that I’ll work with material while I’m writing. I heard a free jazz song that had an interesting section. The piano part was played in a way where the chord progression was arpeggiated up and down freely, creating a rolling, cyclical pattern that had great breath to it. I decided to find a way to use this as inspiration.

First, I came up with a series of chords that had the feeling I wanted for this song.

The next step was performing the chords in the style that had inspired this section. I familiarized myself with the notes of each chord until I could play them in an arpeggiated way, freely and naturally, up and down the keyboard. This accomplished getting that rolling feeling I was after. I layered two tracks, one with a midi piano and one with a real piano.