Playing the Piano Part from Van Halen's Right Now
The main riff in "Right Now" sits around Fminor with some chromatic movement. Eddie Van Halen used a Yamaha CS-80 and sometimes a Minimoog depending on the track, but for most piano/keyboard players you can nail it with a basic electric piano patch or even a clean synth lead. The original tempo is roughly 112 BPM. If you slow it down to 75 BPM for practice it starts to sound mechanical, so try to stay closer to 90 when you're learning it.Right Now Van Halen Piano Tutorial
Here's what the main part actually looks like. Play F#m, then D, then E, then back down. The bass note goes F- D - E - D, with your right hand hitting a mixture of Fminor pentatonic shapes and some bluesy passing tones. It's not a complicated progression, but the articulation is where people mess up. You need a slightly compressed attack with the sustain held just long enough to let the notes bleed into each other without muddying the low end. I spent about three weeks trying to get this to sound right on my home studio setup. My problem was that every time I recorded it through a guitar amp sim, the low-mids became a wall of mud around 400 Hz. I ended up cutting 400 Hz by about 4 dB and boosting 2.5 kHz slightly, then adding a fast compression at 4:1 ratio with a medium attack to let the transient punch through. That's the closest I ever got to the record tone. The chord voicings are important too. Don't just play block F#m chords. Try F#m7 without the root, then Dadd9, then Em7. Leave the bass guitar to handle the root movement. That's what makes the original sound open instead of crowded.
There's also a short solo section about two thirds through the song that uses a descending Fminor blues scale over the same F#m - D - E progression. It's mostly eighth notes with a few double stops thrown in. Practice that section with a metronome on beats 2 and 4 only, otherwise you'll rush it like I did every time I tried.
Where to Find a Lead Sheet or Tab
There's no official sheet music Van Halen published for this, but you'll find decent arrangements on Musicnotes and Songsterr. The transcriptions are usually within a few notes of the actual recording, which is close enough for most purposes. If you want the exact synth patch, Eddie was using a preset he called something like "Bright EP" on the CS-80, but any Rhodes or DX7 electric piano patch will work if you dial in the right brightness. The main thing to keep in mind is that this song lives or dies on feel. It's straightforward enough that any intermediate player can learn it in a weekend. The gap between sounding adequate and sounding like the record comes down to dynamics and how you voice those chords. Spend time on the voicings first, then worry about the tone.
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