I’ve finally discovered the point of Andrew Lloyd Webber. I’d rather have teeth pulled than listen to much of his music (OK - I quite like Evita), but it’s great if you want to practise your piano sightreading.
Last night I grabbed an old book of showtunes and spent some time running through stuff from Phantom of the Opera and one or two of his other, er, ‘entertainments’. Notwithstanding that I had to grit my teeth a bit, they really got my brain working and the whole thing felt like a really good sightreading workout. What makes Lloyd Webber’s style so good for this?
- He changes key a lot. Playing a sequence in one key then moving into another, but playing the same patterns, is good for your brain and good for your versatility in terms of being fluent in lots of different keys.
- I can’t deny that he writes strong melodies. Sightreading around a good tune is more satisfying that crunching along without being able to hear the ’shape’ of what you’re playing.
- He uses a lot of open chord shapes (or, at least, his arrangers do..) which fall naturally under the hand.
- The left hand parts use plenty of arpeggiated, mobile bass lines (think Memory) that force you to think as hard about your left hand as your right.
So give him a go. I find Disney songs - especially the more recent ones - are also good for this kind of sightreading practice, perhaps because quite a lot of them have been inspired by Lloyd Webber’s style.
While you’re practising your sightreading with a copy of Cats (or whatever), you can also listen out for one of his harmonic idiosyncrasies: using the tonic chord as the first in a progression, followed by the dominant, while retaining the tonic note as the bass. So, in C major he’ll often start on a C and move to a G, keeping a C in the bass. It’s a bit of a cliché these days, but play around with it - it shows how you can achieve some interesting effects with fairly minimal effort when playing about with chords.
