Even Beginners (& People With Little Fat Hands) Can Use Cascading Waterfall Chords!

Here is a transcript of the video if you would like to follow along:

Good morning, this is Duane, and I have a confession. I have very, very poor technique. I’m not very coordinated. My hands are kind of fat and short. You should have long : light hands and long fingers to play the piano, but mine are kind of short and stubby, and so when I play something like this:

[Duane playing]

People ask me how in the world do I do that because I have very, you know, very poor technique as compared to other pianists, but it’s a very simple technique actually, and I would like to show you about a technique that I call cascading waterfall chords.

You take any chord you want. Let’s say that you want C6, and a C6 chord. I find it best to put it in second inversion. There’s a C6 chord in root position, the root, third, fifth and sixth. I like it to start in first inversion, although second inversion, any inversion is fine because you’re going to use all of them, but what you do is you come up high in the keyboard, high in the keyboard. I start higher, but I don’t think you can see my hand way up there, so I’ll start right there. What you do is you break up the notes one at a time like that.

[Duane playing]

So even with short stubby fingers. I can do that.

[Duane playing]

You might just get the feeling of doing that, just take four notes:

[Duane playing]

Play them rapidly like that. At first, you may have to start like that. I know I did. Then, gradually we’ll speed it up. And then you can use your damper pedal too to hook those notes together. So after you break up a chord like then, it’s just inverted down one inversion. In other words, turn that chord upside down so you’re playing the same note but upside down and break it up, and then again.

[Duane playing]

See there’s the C6 chord in root position. And here it is again, this time in third inversion, second inversion, first inversion, root position :

[Duane playing]

Okay? Now, it’s good to get a base playing on the left hand to support what you’re doing in the right hand. [Duane playing – inaudible 00:02:21] I use the treble like that. Hear the [Duane playing – inaudible 00:02:26].

[Duane playing]

: Arpeggio going up, and when you play the arpeggio going up, you’re doing the same thing, just playing a C9 there and just going up slowing. So the key is to just do it very slowly at first and then just gradually speed it up. That’s basically all there is to it. Now, some chords are easier than others. I’m picking an easy one. I’m kind of a lazy guy, so I’m doing an easy one, you can do it on any :

[Duane playing]

That’s an F9 and 7 chords, a little harder because you have a confluence of black notes and black keys and white keys, but it can be done, okay? There’s people that can do this oh so much faster than I can, but you know, that’s : you can start where you are and just work up your speed gradually.

Oh, another thing I did sometimes is I let with my left hand. Let’s say you were playing a C6 chord, okay? Well, I’ll play a note out of the C6 chord before I break up the right hand note. That’s the note in the chord, right? And then I play the next note of the chord.

[Duane playing]

Pretty much the same thing there, okay? That was sloppy. All right, so that’s your tip for the day. Now, there’s a lot more good stuff like that over at PlayPiano.com, so come over and try it, and we’ll see it tomorrow with another little music tip, piano tip, so we’ll see you then. Bye-bye for now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZzym5y0cEE

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