Block Chord Style Piano
Block Chord Style Piano
Good morning this is Duane and today I’d like to talk about a style that’s referred to as a block chord style piano. Actually, there are several block chord styles. You could play like this [piano playing], that’s a block style. Another kind of block style is like this [piano playing] where you play the chord in the rhythm of whatever the right hand melody is. If the right hand melody goes [piano playing] like I just played then you’d play the left hand at the same time [piano playing].
Today I’d like to talk about a kind of mellow block chord style where you play the chord under the melody, whatever the tune is but your left hand plays the melody too. For example if I was playing the C scale [piano playing] then I might play it like this [piano playing]. You see my left hand is playing the melody but it’s kind of standing out over the right hand. Let me put it into a song here [piano playing]. You see part of the time I was playing that block style that you can’t use it through a whole song of course but you can use parts of it.
Let’s take a close look at that part that I used [piano playing]. You just need to focus on that. The melody is [piano playing] just ring out C-A-G-A-C [piano playing] and the chord is G minor seventh [piano playing] so I’m playing all the G minor seventh chord after that A my left hand is playing the melody [piano playing]. Now the chord changes to C seventh, now the melody is going to go like this [piano playing] so my left hand follows along [piano playing] and I kind of set the table [piano playing]. Now I have a pause so I can [inaudible 00:02:38] [piano playing].
I used a straddle there then [piano playing] and then maybe a black [piano playing]. The point is whatever the melody is you play the left hand melody too so it’s a two handed melody [piano playing] see that but under the right hand you’re playing on the chord [piano playing].
Along with that style you have to play a low note once in a while to establish the root feeling or you can go into some other style. As you notice I did with this from the second I didn’t use a block chord style I just played the chord progression that existed at the time, which is interesting declension by the way. You start to redeminish then we’ll add minor seventh and then you can call that A minor I guess except it’s got an F in it so I call it an F 9th [piano playing] and then an A flat minor seventh [piano playing] and then minor seventh [piano playing] and then after that eventually home to F.
My point is that block style, the right hand plays the chords under the melody, left hand plays the melody and you want to make that left hand stand out whenever you can.
That’s it for today. Maybe tomorrow we’ll take up another kind of block style that’s different than that but it’s still called a block style. We’ll see you then and if you haven’t signed up for my newsletter be sure to do that. Go over to playpiano.com, lot of good stuff over there so we’ll see you there. Bye-bye for now.