Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Piano solo or accompaniment only?

I have a few books of sheet music with guitar tabs, 1 staff for vocal, and 2 staves for piano. I'm wondering if the piano music is for accompaniment only or can it be used for piano solo (essentially just ignoring the vocal part)?

Like the one below, for example.


If I'm looking for a piano solo arrangement, should I avoid these kinds of sheet music?

Typically for a solo you'd work the melody in somewhere. As you can see from your example, the melody is already played in full by the treble clef piano accompaniment line.

There's no hard rules for writing an accompaniment or solo. Generally playing roots/5ths (like your example) in the LH and chords and or melody in the RH (like your example) is a good starting point. So a music sheet like you've got is a great starting point for working out an composition of your own. After that though just follow your ears.

^Thanks. So I take it that if I want to play a piano solo I would need to make some tweaks on the sheet music I posted earlier? Unfortunately I'm not yet in the position to be figuring out a composition on my own, so this means I would have to look for a solo version somewhere else.

You don't need to tweak anything on the music that you posted - just learn to bring out the melody. In this case it is the little finger, right hand, which is probably the easiest to do. Think of more weight on that finger and less weight everywhere else and see if you can make the melody stand out.

Sam

If you can read and play what you see on the two bottom clefs, left hand for Bass clef and right hand for treble clef, then what you have may work fine. It might be a little low on the keyboard so you may have to move the right hand up an octave. Also ... without seeing the rest of the arrangement I cannot tell if the piano part contains the melody of the tune or just an accompaniment to a singer part ... probably the latter. If you play through it a bit you will know if the melody is in there.

Mari, I don't know how you can read that!!! If you can, that's great. I've tried and there is just too much on the page.

If you think about it as chords + melody rather than just a splotch of 20 notes it's quite manageable.

Yes, though you can make do with it.

You can ignore most of it. A strong note reader would just play the lower treble and bass clef. A chord reader would probably just look at the guitar part.

Looks like the melody is also in the piano part, so you could just use the piano part for your solo. If you can read chords the easiest would be just read the chords and melody (guitar and vocal parts only) and make use of it as a lead sheet.

So a few options, however the arrangement is for piano, guitar and a singer and is not designed for piano solo. If you can find an arrangement for piano solo, you'd likely be better off.

Music for accompaniment takes several forms. Melody, sung, at the top, accompaniment is on the 2 staves beneath, and may, or may not reflect the melody either completely or in part. Sometimes you can get a piano version for solo, but you may lose out somewhat on the backing quality.

Fun, isnt it?

Thanks everyone. That made sheet music make more sense to me, and it's very helpful for making future purchases I'm not advanced yet to play the sample I put up either way, so I will have to shelve it for now.