Accompanying Myself

I never really have the time to sit down and learn how to play a bunch of songs on the piano but I recently had an urge to learn a song and did it. My cousin is amazing at playing the piano by ear. She can listen to a song and pick out all its chords and after a while of feeling her way around and watching a tutorial on YouTube she can play the song. Whenever she comes over she has to sit down and play on my piano because she only has a key board at home and the sound is completely different. She started playing the song Unfaithful by Rihanna and I could not contain myself. I love that song so I begged her to teach me. After some time and practice I learned to play it. Everyday when I got home I just wanted to play and play it. My brother would yell at me and tell me to learn a new song but I still played anyways. I can’t explain it but when I listened to myself play the song and I began to sing along and accompany myself it was like I finally relaxed. I get so stressed out from school, sports and what not but all the stress melts away after sitting down and working at a song. I love when I get a chord wrong for the sole reason of fixing it and hear the notes fit perfectly together in harmony. I would love to have an unlimited amount of time so I could sit down with a piano teacher all day and learn how to read sheet music fluently so I could take a look at the paper and play song after song. Unfortunately I do not have that kind of skill so I have to learn the slow way song by song on my spare time. It is such a luxury to be able to accompany yourself so a goal for myself in the future is to formally take piano lessons so I can fulfill this dream of mine.

I have been playing the guitar for the past 6 years. I feel very fortunate that I am able to accompany myself when I sing. When I am listening to the radio and I hear a song that I like, I write the name down on piece of paper and immediately set to work on figuring out the chords so that I am able to play it on my guitar. Recently I taught myself to play, "Fly Over States" by Jason Aldean. As I sit down and strum each chord, I become immersed in the beautiful harmony and I can not help but sing along. Being able to accompany myself while I sing, gives me a freedom to harmonize and change some of the notes, adding my own little twist to each verse. I believe that I sing better when I accompany myself because I am able to anticipate the next note and adjust my dynamics to match the melody. If I begin to play the guitar louder, I automatically change the volume I am singing at to match my accompaniment. I believe that this is helping to improve my dynamics. In chorus, it is not as important to sing with an accompaniment because we have the rest of the choir to harmonize with. This allows us to work on being able to listen to the other voices in the room in order to figure out each note, rather than depending solely on the piano. However when I am alone, I feel as though I sing better when I am able to accompany myself. When I am stressed or upset, all I have to do is strum my guitar and start singing along and it feels as though a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Through slowly picking each string and watching as my fingers change positions to form each chord, I am able to clear my head and calmly decide how to handle situations.