How to Vamp on the Piano

Hi, this is Cliff Wallik Greenberg, an instructor here at Rockon Studio. Today I'm going to teach you how to vamp on the piano. A vamp is when you stay on one chord or one progression of chords over and over again. And what it creates is the listener is trying to figure out when is it going to change and they don't know when it's going to change. Uh, and it allows the other musicians in the band to evolve their parts as well. So, let's go to the piano and I'll show you what I mean.

One of the most popular vamps uh done in music is uh Miles Davis. He was the master at it. And so I'm going to show you what a vamp is. So you notice I'm playing the same chords over and over again. And if I was with a band, the rest of the instruments would be joining in one at a time while continuing to play the same motive. Uh to make your vamp more interesting, we can add in more notes and more harmonies and more different rhythms uh as the vamp progresses.

And so the listener will really be thrown and won't exactly know when things are going to change. So let's go to the piano. I'll show you how it's done. Okay. So now we're going to take our vamp and we're going to go and add our lefthand notes in. And to make it more interesting, as you see, I'm starting with the right hand and then I'm going to bring in the left hand. Sometimes in the beginning of a song when a musician is vamping, he will add in scale tones and other patterns to create even more interesting melodies and interesting harmonies.

So, let me show you how that's done. Okay. while keeping our vamp going. Oops. And we add in our left hand. Now, sometimes we can change change our notes to create interest while keeping the same rhythm. This is Cliff Wick Greenberg from Rockon Studios and you've just been shown how to vamp on the piano.

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