Piano Runs and Fills You Can Learn To Play

Good morning. This is Duane, your headless piano teacher, and today I’d like to cover two or three of the piano runs and fills that great pianists use. Now they use many, many kinds of runs, and we’ve cataloged those runs and organized them in a course that we sell, but I’d just like to show you some of those, just a few of those as I have time in this short little video.
One technique that great pianists use is called a straddle.
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You know that there’s a three-note chord called a triad. That’s a C triad. Well, if you leave out the middle note, and just play the outside
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The bottom and the top, that’s called a straddle. It’s like if this was the white line of a road, of a highway, you’re straddling the white line, so your right foot is on the right side, and your left foot is on the other side. You’re straddling it. Okay?
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And it gives an open voicing sound, and that’s what we’re after. Now, as we turn the chord upside down, from here to here
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We do the same thing. We leave out the middle note. So we’re playing now the third on the bottom and the root on top and octave higher. If we invert it again, we play the same chord, but we leave the middle one out again, so we’re straddling
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All the time. If we go up another inversion, then instead of playing C, E, G
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We’ll straddle it and play C, G.
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I’m going to come down
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I suggest to learn the technique, you just take two inversions
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Like the root position, you use your thumb and your third finger perhaps, and your second and your fifth on the next inversion
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And just practice going back and forth between that
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Until you can do that easily. Now you can do four-note straddles as well. And what you do
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On a four-note straddle is you play two at a time, but you’re always straddling one.
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It’s like there’s four notes in that D minor 7th chord, so if I play two
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Straddling one, and then two
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Straddling one. See that.
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Now in actual practice
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See that? Okay, that’s how you would use a straddle in actual practice. Now, another kind of run that pianists use is even simpler than that. It’s called the two-one breakup, and
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You just play the two top notes of a chord, and then use your opposing thumb
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On the bottom note. Two one
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Then invert it up,
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Two one, two one, two one, two one, two one, two one, two one
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Two one, two one, two one, two one, two one, two one, two one, two one,
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Two one, two one, two one, two one, two one, two one, two one, two one,
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Okay? Now you can do that with a four-note chord. You’d just do three one.
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Three one, three one, three one, three one, three one,
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Three one, three one, three one, three one, three one, three one, three one, three one, three. You see that. Okay. Another kind of run that great pianists use is called the tremolo fired run. They start with a tremolo. You know what a tremolo is.
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It’s a shaking of notes. Let’s take a G 9th chord and voice it
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With a 7th. I’ll play the G down here in the left hand.
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Probably play an octave, but you can’t see my bottom note.
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But anyway, you get the idea. Playing a G octave.
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And in my right hand I’m voicing the G 9th chord with a 7th on the bottom,
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Then the 9th, and the 3rd, and the 5th. Okay.
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Now, I tremolo that. I shake that, okay?
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And you can do it on any chord. Let’s do in on B flat.
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On A.
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B flat, and so on.
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Now let’s come back to G just for simplicities sake. Okay? Now as soon as I start shaking that
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Then I break it up from the bottom up.
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And then tuck my thumb under and do the same thing in the next octave, and the same thing in the next octave.
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And go as high as I want.
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I don’t want to get out of camera view there.
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See I’ll just do it three octaves now.
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See that?
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You just rapidly run up and down the keyboard by tucking your thumb under that
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Like so. Okay? And again, you can do it on any
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Any chord
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Okay. That’s called a tremolo fired run. And in actual fired practice, they don’t use the tremolo long. Say you’re playing along.
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You see that? The tremolo just got started,
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Then it shot up. It fired off that run like so. But you didn’t tremolo long. Now there’s occasions where you might use a longer tremolo
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But not too frequently. Usually it’s just a little
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Tremolo, and then up the keyboard and back down. Well, that’s just three of perhaps 70 or so runs and fills that are cataloged by us here at Keyboard Workshop. So thanks for being with me. If you like these free tips and video, then subscribe to our free newsletter, which comes about every three days by email, called Piano Chords and Progressions Newsletter. Go over to PlayPiano.com. That’s all one word, PlayPiano.com, and sign up for it. And it’s free. And we have a lot of courses you can buy as well, including a course on runs and fills. But you’re certainly under no obligation to do that. So, thanks for being with me, and we’ll see you again soon. Bye bye for now.
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Here is the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXT3AhdNlKM
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