Playing Vocal accompaniment

[panos]

Glad to hear your good news Adam!

Left hand is the melody? hm...
Left hand(usually) is playing chords and chords are always have the basic notes of the melody.
chords+melody are always going together no mater if it is a piano playing or a keyboard playing or whatever genre of music.

If you have the left voice ON,while someone is singing or if you play the melody with your right hand (pretty much the same thing),
then some notes which are contained in both the melody and in the chords they will sound more "emphasized" than the other notes which might not be a good thing when the left hand voice is at the same octave as the right hands melody.

I don't know if that is what you saw and if our fine musicians here agree with me but these are good news anyway   

[pjd]

And it didn't sound half bad.  I think with some tweaking, that could be a way of generating a backing harmony line, when needed.

Hi Adam --

I've been known to give the melody to the left hand, especially with cello. I've also been known to flip things the other way and to play bass clef ("left hand") whole or half notes with strings in the high octaves. The music we play has a lot of slow descending bass lines and that often creates some nice descending string lines in the high register, too. These tricks play off the acoustic piano and guitar which are the other instruments in the group.

Whatever gets you through the night, it's alright.    -- pj

[mikf]

Adam
Seems like you are making progress. I am not sure what you mean by 'the lh voice was the melody'. I think that was either just coincidence or how it sounded to you. The left hand voice should be playing the chords that drive the accompaniment, not a melody line. I don't know what voice you are using in the LH, but I would normally make sure it was a voice that sounded good on chords, - piano, electric piano, organ etc,  - and also a voice that changes smoothly with an element of sustain, so the changes are not too abrupt. I tend to favor electric piano type voices in the LH for these reasons, although strings can also sound good, if not duplicated in the RH. You can also just silence the lh voice as you found out.
On playing the melody line in the RH, one little trick is to play some of the melody notes but hold them. You will start to hear how if you play the main melody notes as the vocal follows the exact melody, it sounds like a harmony line. What you are really doing is playing the melody note in that bar that happens to land on one of the notes of the chord. Sometimes even if the chord changes, the notes can be the same, eg in a chord sequence that goes-
C -Am -F -C over 4 bars , the note C can be held over the 4 bars. Or more interestingly, you can hold it for the first 2 bars, then slide to F for a bar, and down to E. This works great for a string line.
Have fun.
Mike   

[Lee Batchelor]

Thanks for the free lesson, Mike! We need more topics like this. After all, this forum is about "all things Genos." That includes how to play the darn thing, not just pushing the right buttons, and designing styles and voices !!

[mikf]

Not just a Genos Lee, all Yamaha arrangers, but your point is well made.
Mike

[acparker]

I think there is some confusion over what I did.  I played the cords with the left hand, and the melody with the right hand.  I used the 'ensemble' feature of the Genos (and on the Tyros 5), set on Lush Strings.  That's the feature where the Genos (or T5) takes the harmony, and splits it into 4 parts, based on the harmony settings.  In that mode,  the Genos uses all four voices -- Left, Right 1, 2 and 3 as Voice 1 - 4 in that order.  Voice 1 usually carries the melody, and the others are harmony lines.  I turned off Voice 1 by turning of the Left Voice, leaving just the harmony lines.  Does that make it clearer?

In other words, when using the 'Ensemble' Feature, Voice 1 is the melody, and that equates to "Left" on the Part ON/OFF section.

Adam

[mikf]

That makes sense.
Mike

[markstyles]

Some great comments here..  Yes, play 'open chords'. You want to complement, not compete with the singer.  sometimes slow ascending/descending notes can work.  When doing a cover songs, I ALWAYS go to Youtube, and listen to different versions of the song.  I make note of the strong/weak qualities of each person/band's upload.  If the voice has space in the melody/lyrics  you might consider a 'call-response'  don't get too mechanical with it.  Find singers/musicians you like (that have a similar quality to the song you're doing).. 

I sit and listen repeatedly, making as many notes as I can think of..  Sometimes you might  want a 'bland' sound to accompany the singer (so as not to get in the way)..  If the song is right, you might want a sound that does call attention to itself.  You might 'echo' the melody as a response a couple of time (You'll never find - Lou Rawls - piano responses) That was a perfect device of call-response.

Each song is different.. you might consider different techniques for melodic ad'libs. so as not to sound the same..  Remember the voice melody is the important factor.  so you don't want to outshine.   

If you have a full version of the song to practice on, (with the singer's voice), practice, ad-libbing, soloing etc. record it, and listen back..  That is one of the greatest teachers, plus your  ability to objective analyze what you have done.