Right Hand Piano Technique #3 – Playing 3rds Under The Melody

Good morning, this is Duane and we’re in a series about right-hand piano technique. Right-hand arranging techniques. We completed the left-hand arranging techniques some time ago and then Christmas came along.

I did a bunch of Christmas videos so now we’ll get back on track. We have done two right-hand techniques so far. One was just a single finger playing the melody in a single finger like that. By single finger I don’t mean…don’t do that. Use all your fingers but play the melody just as a single note and try to make it stand out over the left-hand.

You always want to make the left-hand stand, I mean the right-hand, melody stand out over the chords. You see that? Make the melody stand out over the background because that’s the part that people remember and sing of course; the melody.

That was style number one and that’s simple except it’s not simple to make the melody stand out over the chords. You want to make sure to emphasis that right-hand, okay? I don’t mean play it loud I just mean to play it more distinctly than your left-hand. Okay?

The second style we took up was playing the same melody but in octaves. Playing two of the same notes. Two “A’s,” two “B’s,” two “C’s” like so. And we also taught that sometimes you can click the notes.

In other words don’t…you should always play them together, exactly together like that, except when you choose not to. Then when you choose not to you can play the bottom note before the top note and hear that little click? That click comes from hitting the bottom before the top note.

Use your damper pedal by the way as you push down the note but let it right up as you play the next note. I’m pedaling on every beat there. Pedal. Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal, okay? Listen. I’m playing together except in certain notes I will hit the thumb first to give it that click sound.

See that…so just certain notes hit the bottom note before the top note. Okay? Style number one was a single finger. Style number two was octaves, that’s called parallel octaves, by the way.

Style number three that we’re going to cover today is called parallel 3rds. Between…any two notes on the keyboard form an interval. If you have three or more notes that’s a chord. But if you have two notes that’s an interval. So that’s an interval of a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth. Eighth is also called an octave, isn’t it? Okay?

There’s different kinds of intervals. In other words there’s a major second and there’s a minor second and so on but it’s not our purpose to get into that today. I have other videos on that. Okay?

My purpose today is to simply put a 3rd onto the melody. If that’s the melody I’m going to put a third under the melody note. Now notice that I use my thumb and third finger and then my second and fourth.

I could use my third and fifth except I’m going higher so it’s probably not a good choice I probably want to move back to first and third. Second and fourth and then coming down I probably want to cross over like that. Okay?

That’s if you’re just starting out that may be a little bit difficult but you can work on that over time, okay? There’s different ways to finger it. I’m not saying that’s written in stone but that’s one way to do it, okay? I’ll play both hands. You could echo that.

Notice that…that melody there goes right up the C-Major 7th chords. I don’t see any need to play third. You can if you want to do that it’s okay but I’m just pyramiding up the chord. Next chord is D-Minor 7th, and I can parallel that up, too, okay? Let me start again so you can see it in context.

Now watch this pyramid: that’s a D-Minor 7th pyramid and then back to 3rds. And, too, you don’t have to play it this octave. You might play it up here this octave sometimes for variety. Sounds nice up there. I like it.

Okay, now sometimes notice I did this. That’s called a turn. I was on A and F and then I- before I went down to G and E I went up to the notes above it, B and G and then back down. Gives a little emphasis to it at that point. You don’t have to do that but that’s an option.

Notice there when I hit that B-flat I slid of G-flat to G. That’s another thing you can do if you want to. Don’t do that too much but once in a while you can slide off one of the notes. Either the top note or the bottom note it doesn’t really matter it’s just you’re looking for that click sound again like we did in octaves. They offset. Offset octaves.

Hear the little click? Those are different fillers and that’s not our subject to talk about those right now. By the way you don’t have to play all the way through a song in 3rds or in octaves or single notes or anything. You can mix these things up. Play for a while in 3rds, play for a while in octaves. Play single finger and there’s lots of other styles that we’ll talk about, too.

There’s block styles, there’s chord styles, and there’s…and I’ll show you how that works later on but that’s a separate technique. So far we’ve done three right-hand techniques. The single finger, the octaves and today, the parallel 3rd so see if you can get a handle on those to some degree and then tomorrow we’ll take up another technique for right-hand improvising and arranging.

Excuse me. Right-hand improvising and arranging and we’ll see you then. If you haven’t already signed up for our free newsletter be sure and do that because it’s loaded with this kind of thing. I don’t want you to miss anything so go on over to: playpiano.com and sign up for that if you haven’t already. Thanks, see you tomorrow. Bye-bye for now.

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