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Hear and Play Salsa Piano 101: Salsa Basics

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to play Salsa & Latin styles, look no further!

Salsa Piano 101 uncovers the basic rhythms and fundamentals you need to get started the right way. You’ll learn the secrets to playing the classic montuno pattern along with tons of Latin-based chords and progressions! From bass lines, chromatic walk-downs, and passing chords to clave rhythms, fill-ins, and harmonic movements, you’ll get it all in this comprehensive 2-hour course. Click here to learn more | Buy now

God bless —

And since we’re releasing Salsa Piano 101 on Wednesday, October 1, what better time to share it than now.

I’ve scoured the internet high and low looking for some of the best salsa entertainers in the world. In fact, we have 3 volumes of these collections but I just thought I’d share one of them today.

If you’re into Salsa, you’ll love having this convenient playlist all on one page for you. If not, you just may be converted after watching a few of these performances below.

Enjoy…

Hear and Play Salsa Presents - The Best of The Best Vol. 1

(Don’t forget to order your copy of Salsa Piano 101. Don’t miss out.)

Hear and Play Salsa Piano 101: Salsa Basics

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to play Salsa & Latin styles, look no further!

Salsa Piano 101 uncovers the basic rhythms and fundamentals you need to get started the right way. You’ll learn the secrets to playing the classic montuno pattern along with tons of Latin-based chords and progressions! From bass lines, chromatic walk-downs, and passing chords to clave rhythms, fill-ins, and harmonic movements, you’ll get it all in this comprehensive 2-hour course. Click here to learn more | Buy now

Until next time —

Martha Munizzi has already fused Gospel, Latin, and R&B styles in songs like “Glorious” and has traditional church folks everywhere singing and clapping to her rhythms!

If you like what you hear and want to learn how to play salsa music by ear, see below…

Finally… The Secret is Out! Now You Can Unlock The Power Of Professional Salsa Secrets That Are Guaranteed To Help You Spice Up Your Playing In Minutes Not Months!

If you want to learn how to play Salsa & Latin styles, don’t miss out on our Piano Salsa 101 course!

Hear and Play Salsa Piano 101: Salsa Basics

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to play Salsa & Latin styles, look no further!

Salsa Piano 101 uncovers the basic rhythms and fundamentals you need to get started the right way. You’ll learn the secrets to playing the classic montuno pattern along with tons of Latin-based chords and progressions! From bass lines, chromatic walk-downs, and passing chords to clave rhythms, fill-ins, and harmonic movements, you’ll get it all in this comprehensive 2-hour course. Click here to learn more | Buy now

Lately, I’ve been having a good time talking about minor keys, scales, and chords!

(If you’re just now catching the blog, I’d recommend eventually going back to the last 7 or so posts to catch yourself up).

Today, I’m going to show you how to actually use one of the minor scales we’ve been talking about in real-life situations.

Theory is great! It helps you to understand the “what” and “why” behind things. But I’m going to show you how it also allows you to systemically pick what scales to improvise with over certain progressions. It’s not guesswork. There’s actually systems behind a lot of it.

First, you’ll probably need to review this post on the salsa progression I’ll be reusing.

I’ll repost the video below but the in-depth explanation will be found at the page above.

When you’re ready, watch this short clip:

Jeff Goodkind, the instructor in our Salsa Piano 101 course, is basically playing only 3 unique chords in this progression:

C minor
C + Eb + G + C

F minor
F + Ab + C + F

G major
G + B + D + G

He doubles up on the keynote by playing octaves. So you get a “C” on the bottom and on top, for example.

You actually strike those two octave notes first and rebound with the middle notes.

So for the C minor chord, it’s like doing this:

C + C
Eb + G

(The two C’s surround the “Eb + G”)

And you apply the same pattern to the other chords.

This part is better observed by watching the clip above.

Once you’ve mastered it going up (from C minor to F minor to G major), you just do the same thing coming down.

The whole thing looks like this:

C minor
C + Eb + G + C

F minor
F + Ab + C + F

G major
G + B + D + G

F minor
F + Ab + C + F

C minor
C + Eb + G + C

But this is review.

Here’s where I’m going with this.

Out of all the corresponding chords I’ve taught you, this progression should point to one. Let me explain…

First off, it’s utilizing the 1st, 4th, and 5th tones of the scale.

However, the 1st and 4th tones are minor and the 5th tone is major.

When looking for a scale to use over a particular progression, ask yourself this question:

“What possible scales do these chords come from?”

What scale naturally creates a minor chord on the 1st and 4th tone and a major chord on the 5th tone?

Let’s go into our toolbox and recall some of the chords we’ve learned from scales:

C major scale (triads):

1st tone - C major
2nd tone - D minor
3rd tone - E minor
4th tone - F major
5th tone - G major
6th tone - A minor
7th tone - B diminished

(No matches here except for the G major on the 5th degree.)

Let’s keep going to see if we can get closer…

C natural minor scale (triads):

1st tone - C minor
2nd tone - D diminished
3rd tone - Eb major
4th tone - F minor
5th tone - G minor
6th tone - Ab major
7th tone - Bb major

Hmm, we’re getting closer because the 1st and 4th tones are minor chords in this scale. But the 5th tone is not major like the progression we’re learning above. We do know, however, that we can get away with playing a C natural minor scale over these first two chords.

Better yet, we could take it further and play modes of the natural minor scale. In other words, when we’re on the C minor chord, we’d play notes of the C natural minor scale from “C” to “C” (just like normal). But when we get on the F minor chord, we can actually keep playing notes of the C natural minor scale but from “F” to “F” (rather than from “C” to “C”).

So that gives us a totally new scale to work with. To be exact, the “F dorian” mode (…I’ll make sure to talk about the minor scale modes in future posts. Don’t worry, there not much different from the major scale modes).

F dorian
F G Ab Bb C D Eb F

(You can look at it two ways: the notes of the C natural minor scale from F to F or simply the notes of the Eb major scale from F to F. Why? Because our C natural minor scale basically comes from the Eb major scale so by playing this same scale from F to F, we’re essentially still playing the Eb major scale… just changing our frame of reference just like we did to create this C natural minor scale from the Eb major scale. Again, I’ll reserve more space for this on a later).

But again, we’re not all the way there because we still have to consider the harmonic and melodic minor scales. They just may give us a closer match.

Remember, we’re looking for the 1st tone to be minor, the 4th tone to be minor, and the 5th tone to be major.

The natural minor scale gave us two matching chords (the 1st and the 4th chords) but it didn’t really give us a match for the G major chord on the 5th degree.

(And we may never find that match but this is the process of elimination that can help you to find the right scales to play over progressions until you basically internalize what to do in various situations).

C harmonic minor (triads):

1st tone - C minor
2nd tone - D diminished
3rd tone - Eb augmented
4th tone - F minor
5th tone - G major
6th tone - Ab major
7th tone - B diminished

Wow! I think we’ve found something.

Let me isolate just the 1st, 4th, and 5th chords of this scale:

1st tone - C minor
4th tone - F minor
5th tone - G major

By golly! It looks like we’ve found our progression.

So this let’s me know that I can really play around with the C harmonic minor scale over this progression.

Truth be told, the C natural minor and C harmonic minor start out the same way. They only differ by that raised 7th degree at the end. So that’s why the natural minor scale can basically be played over the 1st and 4th chords because it’s essentially the same as the harmonic minor scale at that point. However, when you get to the G major chord on the 5th tone, that’s where things may clash and the raised 7th comes in right on time!

Here are some other ideas:

1. You can either play the C harmonic minor scale or the C natural minor scale over the 1st chord (or notes of it since you probably won’t be able to fit in all 7 tones).
2. When you get to the F minor chord, you can play the C natural minor scale from “F” to “F” over this chord. Or you can mess around with the notes of the C harmonic minor scale trying to somehow use the “B” to connect to the G major chord that’s coming next.
3. When you get to the G major chord, it’s obvious that the C harmonic minor is the match because it incorporates all the notes found in the G major chord (the natural minor doesn’t do that). You can even experiment with playing the harmonic minor scale from G to G if you want. The idea is to have fun and see where your creativity takes you by knowing the right notes to include in your scale, licks, and tricks.

Side note: I know I haven’t talked about the chords of the melodic minor scale yet (it’s coming soon), but let me just share them below without any explanation… for now, at least. This will show you that the melodic minor wasn’t as great of a choice as the harmonic minor scale for this progression because it actually has a major chord on the 4th degree and that may clash.

C melodic minor (triads)

C minor
D minor
Eb augmented
F major
G major
A diminished
B diminished

(But more on this later).

I hope you enjoyed today’s lesson!

Hear and Play Salsa Piano 101: Salsa Basics

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to play Salsa & Latin styles, look no further!

Salsa Piano 101 uncovers the basic rhythms and fundamentals you need to get started the right way. You’ll learn the secrets to playing the classic montuno pattern along with tons of Latin-based chords and progressions! From bass lines, chromatic walk-downs, and passing chords to clave rhythms, fill-ins, and harmonic movements, you’ll get it all in this comprehensive 2-hour course. Click here to learn more | Buy now

Until next time!

The order link for Hear & Play Salsa Piano 101 is now live! You can order online by clicking here. Otherwise, phone lines open up at 8am pacific / 11 am eastern. 1-877-856-4187

Click here for more details about this course

Enjoy these instructional clips from Hear and Play Salsa Piano 101 - “Salsa Basics & Fundamentals”:

Related blog posts:

Now you can play salsa without learning any new chords

Hear and Play Salsa Presents - The Best of The Best Vol. 1

Don’t forget to mark Wednesday, October 1, 2008 in your calendar or call 1-877-856-4187 to get it out of the way today!

All the best,

Jermaine Griggs

Because I was sitting in a conference session, I didn’t have much time to talk about the clips — so what I want to do today is actually break down my favorite of the four.

(Not that I need to because Jeff Goodkind does a wonderful job explaining the minor “1-4-5″ progression, but I just want to add other insights based on things I’ve talked about in the past on this blog).

So basically, if you know your major and minor chords, you can play the salsa piano progression demonstrated in the clip below…

He’s basically playing a 1-4-5 chord progression in the key of C.

Normally, that’d be:

C major - F major - G major

But he’s changing the C and F major chords to minor chords:

C minor - F minor - G major

(These are actually chords from the harmonic minor scale, which I’ll write about a little later. Unlike the natural minor and melodic minor chords, the 1st and 4th are minor and the 5th is major… but don’t worry about knowing this for now).

Now, what’s important is the style in which he plays these basic major and minor chords:

C minor
C + Eb + G + C

F minor
F + Ab + C + F

G major
G + B + D + G

He doubles up on the keynote by playing octaves. So you get a “C” on the bottom and on top, for example.

You actually strike those two octave notes first and rebound with the middle notes.

So for the C minor chord, it’s like doing this:

C + C
Eb + G

(The two C’s surround the “Eb + G”)

And you apply the same pattern to the other chords.

This part is better observed by watching the clip above.

Once you’ve mastered it going up (from C minor to F minor to G major), you just do the same thing coming down.

The whole thing looks like this:

C minor
C + Eb + G + C

F minor
F + Ab + C + F

G major
G + B + D + G

F minor
F + Ab + C + F

C minor
C + Eb + G + C

And once you know your basics and fundamentals and have added enough chords to your musical vocabulary, you can pretty much play any style you want.

(Of course, you’ll need to learn the rhythms and nuances of the new genre, but the chords will be very similar to what you’ve already played… and this is proof).

Hear and Play Salsa Piano 101: Salsa Basics

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to play Salsa & Latin styles, look no further!

Salsa Piano 101 uncovers the basic rhythms and fundamentals you need to get started the right way. You’ll learn the secrets to playing the classic montuno pattern along with tons of Latin-based chords and progressions! From bass lines, chromatic walk-downs, and passing chords to clave rhythms, fill-ins, and harmonic movements, you’ll get it all in this comprehensive 2-hour course. Click here to learn more | Buy now

Until next time!

If you’ve always wanted to play Salsa piano by ear, then look no further…

Hear and Play Salsa Piano 101: Salsa Basics

If you’ve always wanted to learn how to play Salsa & Latin styles, look no further!

Salsa Piano 101 uncovers the basic rhythms and fundamentals you need to get started the right way. You’ll learn the secrets to playing the classic montuno pattern along with tons of Latin-based chords and progressions! From bass lines, chromatic walk-downs, and passing chords to clave rhythms, fill-ins, and harmonic movements, you’ll get it all in this comprehensive 2-hour course. Click here to learn more | Buy now

I’ll be back :)