Chord Straddles: How To Straddle Your Way To An Exciting Piano Sound!

Here is a transcript of the video, in case you would like to follow along:

Good morning. This is Duane. Today I’d like to show you how to straddle your way to an exciting piano sound. First of all, let’s define what chord straddles are. You can take any three-note chord, let’s take D minor, and you can straddle it by leaving the middle note out.

Leave the middle note out, but then move to another inversion of the D minor chord.
(Duane playing examples on the piano)
For example, I’m playing the root and the fifth of D minor, and leaving the third out, the F. Okay? But now I’m going to play the F with

The other note of the D minor chord, A.

You see that? That’s called a straddle, because you’re straddling the middle note. It’s like you’re on a highway and you’re avoiding the white line there. Okay? You’re straddling it. Let’s do it on the C chord. It may be easier to see.

There’s a C chord. Okay? If I play the root and the fifth, then I can go to the alternate note, the note I’m not playing, the third and the fifth down here.

So I’m always leaving one note out. Okay?

And I can go down the keyboard or up the keyboard that way by leaving the middle note out. Okay? Let’s do that on a four-note chord. Let’s take C minor 7th, or C 7th.

Let’s keep it major, keep the white keys. Okay? So I can take two notes of the four,

And then play the other two notes.

Okay, you recognize that from the middle part of Over the Rainbow. Okay? So you can take any four-note chord and straddle it. There’s a D minor 7th chord.

You can even do a 9th chord, like five different notes.

Let’s take … I’m playing two of the five notes, and then two more.

Like so. Let me illustrate.

You see, I went from the D minor chord and straddled the D minor 7th, and then just took it up the keyboard like that, and then I played another chord just illustrate it.

Okay? So you can take any three-note chord and make a straddle out of it, any four-note chord, make a straddle out of it, any five-note chord, make a straddle out of it. Now let me give you an illustration. I’ll play an actual song. Let me think. How about Moon River?

I did a straddle right at the beginning.

I was playing a four-note chord there, which is a C major 9th.

Playing the C in my left hand.

See that?

Took the C chord.

That’s a different kind of thing.

That was a five-note run that I took up the keyboard like that.

Here’s a straddle.

Oops. Forget how the song goes.

And then you can do it again and play the song. Now, I played way too many straddles, because I was illustrating how to do a straddle. But in an actual, if I was actually playing Moon River, I wouldn’t use that many straddles, because it kind of … It was just too much. So use it in moderate. But it’s a wonderful tool. So that’s how to straddle your way to an exciting sound, exciting piano sound.

If you like this kind of stuff, come on over to PlayPiano.com, and sign up for my free newsletter on chords and chord progressions, and tune in again, same time, same station, tomorrow and I’ll probably have another video ready for you on YouTube. That’s it for today. Bye-by for now

Here is the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0AOZpSHT7k&feature=youtu.be

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_chord
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