Can You Use a ‘2 by ‘2 Chord Breakup? (Also Known As “Chord Straddles”)

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

Good morning. This is Duane, and today I’d like to talk about the 2 by 2 chord breakup, also known as “chord straddles”. It’s for the right hand.

I want to tell you a little story. Back maybe 20-30 years ago, I had a piano studio called Piano University, where I.d. Have 100 students a week come in. There were two other teachers and we’d teach some music theory and techniques, and all that. But I also have a friend here in the Rogue Valley. I live in the Rogue River Valley, which is a beautiful valley in Southern Oregon where the Rogue River winds through. And it’s in the valley between the forest, a bigger lake on the east side. And a wonderful lady named Patty McCoy lives here, too. Patty McCoy is one of the great jazz pianists in the world, no exaggeration. And she’s a personal friend of mine that lives about 2 miles down the road from me. And I was over at her house one day, and I was watching her play something. And she was doing this kind of thing.

[piano playing]

That kind of thing. And I said, “What in the world is that, Patty?”

And she said, “I don’t know.”

I said, “Well, what are you doing?”

She said, “Well, I’m doing that.” [piano playing]

And so I said, “What is that? What’s that called?”

And she said, “I don’t think it’s called anything.” [piano playing] She said, “I’m just taking a chord like F major 7th, and playing two notes and then two more notes.” [piano playing]

And I said, “Well, so you’re straddling the middle note, right?” [piano playing]

She said, “Yeah.” [piano playing]

And so I took that idea and I went back to the studio, and I started teaching it as the straddle. And subsequently, lots of other piano teachers have picked that up. Now it’s kind of come into common usage. It’s known as the straddle. But it should be named the Patty McCoy chord straddle, because it came from her.

In any case, I’d like to share that with you today. And it’s very useful. You can do it on any four-note chord, particularly 7th chords. That makes it easier to do.

Let’s take D minor 7th. Okay? [piano playing] What you do is you take two notes out of that D minor 7th chord and you leave one note out. So you’re straddling that middle note. Then you play the other two notes like that. [piano playing] Just practice doing that for a while. Two, two, two. That’s why I call it 2 by 2. [piano playing] Two by two, the two by two straddle. [piano playing] And we can move up to the next series of white notes. [piano playing] That’s the E minor 7th. [piano playing] By moving up it’s F major 7th. [piano playing] And you can combine those. [piano playing]

It’s not a hard technique once you get the hang of it, but at first it’s hard to get into your fingers. So again I recommend you just take any chord [piano playing], take C major 7th, say. [piano playing] And just play two notes, then the other two notes. [piano playing] And just play back and forth. Rock back and forth until you get the feel of it. [piano playing] After you get the feel of that then you can maybe invert down. [piano playing]

Okay. Just one of the many techniques you can add to your repertoire. It’s called the 2 by 2 chord straddle. Classically, the Patty McCoy 2 by 2 chord straddle. Patty McCoy, by the way, her stage name was Pat Moran when she traveled, and she played with all the great jazz musicians you can name, including the great bass player who died when he was 24, Scott Lafaro.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you, the derivation of where the straddle came from. So that’s it for today. If you liked this tip, come on over to PlayPiano and sign up for a series of piano tips. We have one most every day for you. Come on over to PlayPiano and sign up for it. See you then. Bye-bye. Thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UwPzGyyv14

If you would like to hear Patti play, here she is playing on Easter Sunday at Andre Crouch’s church:

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