Neo Soul did not simply invent an entirely new set of chords. A more useful way to understand it is that many of the harmonic ideas already familiar from R&B can be expanded, rearranged and given more freedom. The chord may become richer. The voicing may become less obvious. The movement between chords may become […]
You need to start recognising sound. Which chord feels settled? Which one feels unresolved? Which voicing sounds warmer? Which top note creates more tension? Does the next chord feel like a natural continuation, or does the movement sound awkward? These are not questions that can be answered entirely by looking at your hands. Your ear […]
A chord can feel warm, dreamy, tense, unresolved, dark, open or surprisingly delicate. Sometimes two chords that appear closely related on paper can create completely different emotional reactions when you hear them. That is part of what makes Neo Soul so attractive to keyboard players. But where does that color actually come from? It is […]
Because there is an important difference between having access to harmony and actually being able to control it. A MIDI pack can give you a progression. A chord plugin can suggest another. A piano roll can let you move every note individually. But when you begin understanding and playing harmony yourself, those tools stop making […]
The chords sound like chords rather than music. This is one of the most frustrating stages of learning Neo Soul because the obvious solution seems to be learning even more harmony. Usually, that isn’t the real problem. What makes Neo Soul feel fluid is not simply which chords you play. It is the way harmony […]
So naturally, you might assume that the skills you develop are useful mainly when you’re actually playing Neo Soul. But one of the biggest advantages of learning the style is that many of its core skills are highly transferable. The harmony connects naturally with R&B. The chord vocabulary overlaps heavily with jazz. The ear development […]
But access to information creates a new problem: What should you actually learn, and in what order? That question matters more than it first appears. Neo Soul brings together rich harmony, chord voicings, voice leading, rhythm, ear development, movement, musical judgement and influences from R&B, jazz, gospel and soul. If all of those subjects arrive […]
But there is another reason Neo Soul is such a valuable style to learn: It exposes you to an enormous amount of modern harmony in a musical context that you can actually hear and use. Neo Soul sits at the intersection of several harmonic traditions. You hear influences from R&B, jazz, gospel, soul, funk and […]
If you’ve decided to learn Neo Soul piano, one of the first questions you may ask is: How long is this actually going to take? A few months? A year? Five years? Watch an experienced Neo Soul keyboard player and it can seem as though you’re looking at the end result of decades of musical […]
At first, that approach seems logical. Neo Soul is known for rich harmony, extended voicings and colourful chord movement, so naturally you start collecting minor 9ths, major 9ths, 11ths, 13ths, altered dominants, diminished chords and increasingly sophisticated shapes. And for a while, it works. Every new chord feels like progress. Your vocabulary grows. Your playing […]
