Gospel Arrangements 1

Learn how to create an arrangement for Amazing Grace. Re-harmonization and improv techniques are also covered.

In this lesson you'll learn a cool arrangement of the classic "Go Tell it On The Mountain" while also learning about harmony, shout choruses, gospel and contemporary feels along with bassline creation.

This classic song covers how to re-harmonize the song and improvise over it. I’ll also teach the arrangement note-for-note. Some of the concepts we will cover is more re-harm techniques like dominant motion, related ii’s and tritone substitutions.

Using a lesson request from a student, I created an accompaniment lesson on a gospel version of You've Got A Friend. In this 2-part lesson I will show you the rich gospel chords and how to 'fill the space' using a more gospel/jazz style. In addition, you will learn some nice transition chords. These are chords that move use smoothly between the larger I-IV-V chords. While not an easy lesson, there is something here for all levels. In part 2 we will cover 'gospel grooving' where we take a simple progression and really groove on it.

In this second part of the You've Got A Friend lesson, we will learn how to create the ending groove section, how the harmony works and how to create a groove step-by-step.

This Andraé Crouch (July 1, 1942 – January 8, 2015) classic Soon and Very Soon was written in 1978 and features a lot of rich gospel piano techniques. You’ll learn the entire song and techniques like how to play gospel walk ups, syncopating the bass pattern and other ideas that you can incorporate into your own piano arrangements.