How Can I Create Fat Chords With My Smaller Hands?

Good morning. This is Duane. Today I’d like to talk about creating fat chords with little hands. If you have small hands like I do, there’s a way to get a bigger sound. I wish I could play a 10th in my left hand. I wish I could play that. I’d love to be able to do that. A lot of people can because it has a beautiful, big, resonant sound, but I can’t reach that. What I have to do with my left hand is this. I have to roll it, whatever the chord is, but I do it rapidly. I pushed the damper pedal down as I play the bottom note. Then I pivot onto my index finger and go up to the 3rd – or you can call it a 10th if you like. It’s root, 5th, 3rd. Do that for a while and you get the feel for it. Root fifth 3rd 5th 3rd. That’s a good arpeggio style, too, because … You see that? It keeps that continual bass sound. If you have small hands and you can’t reach a 10th, then I suggest you roll it like that.

In the right hand, I can play an octave but that’s all, and even an octave sometimes it depends what’s in between the octave that it makes it difficult to play. I know a lot of people can’t even reach an octave comfortably. What can you do? What you can do is play the entire chord and put in a color tone of some sort such as a 6th. If I play that, see I’ve got a big sound without a wide stretch in either hand. I don’t have a wide stretch in my right hand. I don’t have a wide stretch in my left hand. I roll the left land and I play the chord notes under the melody. For example, that’s a C chord, so I put G and E under it, if the melody’s C, of course. Then I also put in a 6th usually. Sometimes I lay my thumb across the 2nd, too. I have the 2nd, the 3rd under my thumb, and then the 5th, 6th, and the root. I’ve got the whole C chord: the root, the 3rd, and the 5th, plus the 2nd and the 6th. It’s also known as a C69 chord, 6 and 9. You get a big sound that way. There’s two ways, if you have small hands, to make it bigger.

Let’s say the melody is G. I’m going to put in the notes E, which is a chord note, and then I’m going to put in a 2nd or a 9th, then a major 7th. I can even play the 7th and the 6th at the same time. I was going to say another way to do it is to run it quickly up the keyboard. See, that makes it sound a lot bigger. Notice that my left hand, after I roll that 10th, then I come up and play the chord in my left hand. That’s the C69 chord. Let me do it slowly. Roll chord, roll chord. In my right hand I’m playing. Now in [contact 03:42]. You can get a fairly big sound. It’s probably not as playing an octave filled in. I wish I could do that comfortably; I can’t. You use the ability that the Lord has given you and go with that. Use the chords you were dealt with. That’s a couple ways to make a big sound with smaller hands.

If you enjoy this kind of thing, come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for our series of videos. They’re all free and they’re all on YouTube. We’ll see you then. 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!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbpZuq9Ub4&feature=youtu.be

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