Two Hand Piano Chord Formation To Create A Big Sound

Good morning, this is Duane, and I’d like to ask you a question. How many fingers do you have? Oh, good answer, good answer. How many chords, how many notes are there in a chord? Well, you can play basic chords with 3 notes, can’t you? So I would like to talk today about Piano Chord Formation.

A lot of people play the piano just using those 3 chord notes, like they might be playing (playing piano, “Love Me Tender”) or if they play the blues (playing piano), they use the 3-note chord. That’s fine when you’re getting started but why stay that way? You have 10 fingers. Instead of playing “You’re So Beautiful” like this, why not use the chords in both hands.

In other words, you have 10 fingers, so you can play the notes of the chord in one hand and in the other hand too, can’t you? A variety of ways to do it. How many notes do I have here? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8…8 out of 10, that’s not bad. See what a much bigger sound it has? Particularly if I had a low root-5th down there first. It gets a big sound.

Even when you go to a single note, notice in the left hand, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, I’ve got a 6-note chord in the left hand. Let’s count them, the chord notes here, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…just 7 there, probably 7 there. By the way, when you play 7 there, you can also echo an octave higher, can’t you, if you’ve got time. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1. Then you’re ready to go again.

Now, it’s easy for me to say that but that’s not easy to do because you have to learn the extensions to chords, don’t you? In other words, once you learn the basic triads, you have to learn the 6th, that there’s a 6th you can add and there’s a Major 7th you can add and there’s a 9th you can add and there’s a flat 7th, a dominant 7th you can add, there’s an 11th, and there’s a 13th, and so on.

It takes time to accumulate all that knowledge but still that ought to be your goal, to aim in playing 2-handed, big, full, 2-handed chords. Of course, I don’t mean all the time. Sometimes it’s nice to play delicately, but when the occasion calls for it, it’s nice to be able create a big sound if you need to do it.

Okay, that’s my little sermon today. If you enjoy these little things, come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for my free series of videos like this. Thanks. We’ll see you there. Bye-bye for now.

***For lots more good stuff on piano playing come on over to my website at https://www.playpiano.com and sign up for our free piano tips – “Exciting Piano Chords & Sizzling Chord Progressions!”

Here’s a great little book on chords and chord progressions on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Piano-Chords-Chord-Progressions-Exciting-ebook/dp/B0076OUGDE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404158669&sr=1-1&keywords=piano+chords+duane+shinn

Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjSg0qgWS6M&feature=youtu.be

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