Tips on accompanying someone on the piano
Whether you have a friend who loves to sing and has asked you to accompany them on the piano, or you’re looking to have fun accompanying some other musicians, it can be difficult to know exactly how to approach this different side of piano playing. It’s one thing to practice and perform on the piano by yourself, and another to have to play while also taking into consideration what someone else is doing.
Despite how daunting it might first sound, we’re here to give you some tips to hopefully ease you into accompanying on the piano:
Keep Listening
It may sound obvious, but when you’re accompanying someone, your ears need to work extra hard to keep track of any singing or playing of the other person. Everyone will have a different style of singing or playing, of pausing in between notes and adding emotion to a piece.
This will require you to adapt your own playing, and it’s something you’ll only discover once you start practicing together. So instead of focusing just on your own piano playing, make sure you actively listen to what the other person is doing!
Work together
The best thing about playing with someone or accompanying a singer is working together to bring that piece of music to life. If your audience can only hear your music or struggles to hear any of the notes you play, this will remove any of the joys of two or more people expressing their talents from your performance!
During practice, try to spot if your playing is not as audible or too loud, and adjust so that when you’re performing, it’s clear that you’re working together. However, note that this doesn’t mean you can’t have moments where one of you takes over the stage and the other waits in silence. Just don’t let those moments be the whole performance.
Don’t compete
The last point nicely leads us to another problem that can come up when accompanying someone on the piano: competition. As you play with others, you’ll learn that everyone has different preferences when it comes to playing or singing, and your practice should be a time to determine who’s doing what. If you can’t come to an agreement, it’s only going to result in a confusing performance.
For example, if you’re accompanying a singer, you should let their voice focus on singing the melody while you focus on the harmonies. It’s a great way to avoid competing over who plays what, and make sure you don’t both focus on the melody while no one else does the harmonies!
Know all major scales
Of course, the best way to be a great piano accompanist is to know what you’re doing on the piano. If you only learn how to play pieces in one scale, you’ll be more limited in what you can do with your accompaniments, and could create some awkward situations if you’re suddenly asked to play something differently!
So strengthen your knowledge of all the major scales to become a more confident piano accompanist, and also have fun playing the same pieces in different keys.
We hope that this blog has made you feel more confident in trying to accompany others on the piano, and that you’ll have a great time playing with others!
