Damien Rice - 9 Crimes

 

I advice reading the post 'Using chords to see and simplify note relations' before going ahead and learning this song to help you better understand the structure and learn a wise piano lesson from it. Then try and look at the song and see how difficult you find it after that story, when I tell you that this whole song is played using the very basic ‘broken’ pattern: “down-up”.

Using a 1,5 technique with the left hand (left hand plays the ‘1’ (root) and the ‘5’ of each chord) and using the voicings (with extensions) as indicated with your right hand.

For Am(add9) the right hand sometimes plays the 2 (=9) and 3, sometimes the 1 and 2. The song starts with a succesion of 1, 2 and 3.

 

For F the 1 and 2 of the chord are played with the right hand

 

For the C chord the 1 and the 3 (‘c’ and ‘e’) are played with the right hand.

 

For the G chord, also the 1 and 2 are played with the right hand.

 

To play the pattern, start at the lowest note of the voicing in your left hand (the root note on all chords), and ‘walk’ all the way up to the highest note of the voicing in your right hand. In other words: play the notes of each chord in succesion (after one another) constantly starting at the lowes note in the voicing and ending with the highest note of the voicing.

Try to look at what you play and ‘see’ (understand) that you are indeed playing the chords Am, F, C, G (although not the whole triad with your right hand) with an extension here and there.

Easy, right? Not? Learn and practice your chords and patterns!

Questions? Remarks? Show me how you play this song! Please leave a comment below!
I'm also very curious which tutorial you'd like to see next!

Begrijp je niet wat hier gebeurt en wil je dat wel graag?
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About Coen

Founder of Piano Couture and creator of the Hack the Piano method. Coen is a musician, reader, writer, web-designer, eater and traveler. Find him at CoenModder.com

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