Pop and Classical Tunes

In this next section we’ll be doing a lot of stuff—most importantly, playing some real tunes! We’ll learn about arpeggios and apply more triad voicings to a couple of classic pop songs: “Wonderful Tonight” and “Walk of Life.” Then we’ll look at two famous classical pieces by Clementi and Satie, and discover that the chords and scales that we have learned so far are also found in classical music… who knew? First up, we have a great pop song from the 1970s, “Wonderful Tonight.” We’ll get familiar with the melody, and then add some basic triads in the left hand. Then we’ll learn about arpeggios and develop some new patterns from the left-hand triads. Note that there’s an 8-measure intro melody before the verse begins:

Remember those slash chords we talked about in the last chapter? Well, we have several D/F♯ chord symbols in this song. This means that we need to place the D major triad with F♯ as the lowest note. So you’ll notice that in these measures we have used the D major triad in first inversion, so that the F♯ is on the bottom. For all of the other chords, the root is placed on the bottom (i.e., the triads are in root position).