Open-Voicing With Broken Piano Chords

Good morning. This is Duane. Today I’d like to talk about open-voiced arpeggios – broken piano chords. You know what an arpeggio is. First you know what is an archipelago: a series of islands. Arpeggios is really the same thing. It’s a series of notes that together form a chord. In other words, here’s an open-voiced arpeggios. Now a regular arpeggio that’s not open-voiced would be every contiguous note, like if I broke up the C chord like that. That’s just a regular broken chord or a regular arpeggio. If I stretch it out that’s called open voicing. I’m playing the same three notes but I’m leaving the middle note out, playing the root, the 5th, and the 3rd. Now in 4/4 time you would do this: one two three four. In other words, you’d hit that note again: one two three four. If at your piano, do it with me. One two three four, one two three four. Now obviously some of you have much bigger hands than I do so it’s going to be easier. Some of you have even smaller hands I suppose, so that will be a little more tricky but you can do it. You may have to use your pedal to jump off that note to get up there. I hope not, but it may be that you have to do that.

Now if the song you’re playing is in 3/4 time it’s simply one two three, and then you repeat it: one two three, one two three. Let’s say you’re playing in 4/4 time. Let’s say your second chord is A minor. I’m playing the A minor chord but an open voicing. See that. The first chord was C. Now I let the pedal up and play A. If the next chord is D minor, D, A, F, A, C. Exactly the same principle. G … That chord progression I just played was … It’s called the “Blue Moon” chord progression or the “Heart and Soul” chord progression, or the “We Want [inaudible 00:02:24]”. There’s lots of names for it but it’s widely used in music so I just thought I’d use that as an illustration. Again, in 4/4 time. A minor, D minor, G, and so on like that. Whatever the song is, it applies to all songs.

I guess that’s all you need to know about that. Now you just push your pedal down as you play the low note. You press your damper pedal, the pedal on the right, and keep it down as you play all the notes of the chord, but then let it up before you start the next chord and push it down on that bottom note. Down up, down like so. Sometimes you’ll have two chords in a measure, though. What do you do then? You have to do what you have to do. You’d just play two of the notes. Say you had two beats of C and two beats of A minor. Then you’d simply go C, A minor, D minor, G minor, G [inaudible 00:03:43]. That’s all there is to it.

Now sometimes you have four-note chords such as C 7th. When you do that, if you’re a beginner you just leave that out for now. Later you can use what’s called a hand-over arpeggio and get the upper intervals like that. If you had C 7th I would probably do it that way. By the way, I was playing them in quarter notes, 1 2 3 4. If you wanted to play them in eighth notes, then you could go 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Just toggle between the two top notes. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and A minor, D minor, G, and C.

That’s it for today. Hope you enjoy this little tips. If you’re not already signed up for these, be sure and come on over to playpiano.com and sign up because they’re all free. Thanks. Bye bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

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You’ll learn piano chords galore and how to apply them when you play piano – major chords, minor chords, augmented chords, diminished chords, 6th chords, 7th chords, 9th chords, 11th chords, 13th chords, suspensions, alterations and more. Chords are the “missing link” in most piano lessons and you can learn them all easily. Learn piano playing and music theory at the same time – it will make your progress faster and you will understand music like you never have before.

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVaAJDXid9s&feature=youtu.be

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