Broken Chords – Arpeggios – The Key To Playing Rapidly On The Piano

Good morning. This is Duane, and today I’d like to talk about the importance of learning to play broken chords – arpeggios. You’ll never really play rapidly until you learn to break up chords, because a lot of music, most of music is made of broken chords of some sort. What I was just playing were broken chords. But if you’re a beginner, I suggest that you start with a chord that you know, like the C chord, and just simply break it up from the bottom, and just gradually speed up. By that, I don’t mean in a few seconds, like I just did. But play that for 5 minutes each day until you can play it faster.

You might use different fingering. I’m using 1, 3, 5, but you can also use 1, 2, 4, because that frees up another finger for a larger chord, a 4-note chord if you want to, in other words. I play this kind of thing all the time, those runs. To do that, you have to have a 4-note chord. But start with a 3-note chord. Just break it up. Then break it down. Whatever the chord. See, all I’m doing is playing broken chords, and yet it kind of sounds, starts to sound, taking on a character of its own.

Okay, now, I’m going to show you … You’ve seen me play rapid runs, of course. I’m going to show you a piece that my granddaughter plays. This is her playing this song. She would never be able to play it at that speed if she didn’t know how to break up chords. This is just a little admonition that you learn to do this kind of thing. What the song is made of is broken chords, such as a C chord, E minor chord, and so on. She is just moving from one chord to another. Okay, so here’s Elisabeth – she is in her early teens, so if she can learn to do this, so can most of you – but it does take lots and lots of practice!

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UCUl4hR_cI&feature=youtu.be

Here is an article in Wikipedia on Arpeggios if you want to explore further: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_chord
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