How To Use Right Hand Piano Chords When You Improvise

What about right hand piano chords? Can I use them when I improvise on a song?

Click on this link to watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJFxG-xRHPk&feature=youtu.be

Good morning, this is Duane and we’ve been doing series on How To Color On The Piano Without Crayons and lately we’ve been talking about improvising using chords. We said that all melodies, the melodies that you make up to improvise are made out of either scale notes or passing tones such as chromatic tones or broken chords. For example, if I play the C6 chord I can just break it up like that or any inversion, I can come down it, go up it. That’s one thing you can do, I’m talking really to beginners, of improvising here. If you’re more advanced this doesn’t apply to you because you already know what to do but a lot of beginners don’t know where to start. I also suggested that you use the rhythm of the melody as a basis, don’t just wander but take a rhythm such as is found in the melody. That’s the rhythm, so when I improvise I can use different notes but the same rhythm. See that? I’m using the rhythm of the melody.

We also said in additional single notes you can use intervals and last time we took up thirds and we said we could use sixths. I’m playing the bridge now, I switched from thirds to sixths on my right hand so you can switch back and forth between harmonizing intervals such as thirds and sixths, you can use others but don’t use them too frequently because thirds and sixths are the harmonic intervals. Today I’d like to take up using block chords on the right hand. We’ve been playing chords on the left hand but we can also just play block chords on the right hand to improvise, we don’t need to play a single finger if we don’t want to. We don’t need to play a third if we don’t want to. It’s nice to have all that in our arsenal but here’s another tool in our arsenal, playing block chords on the right hand and so on.

Feel free to make up a melody but then put the chord progression under your melody of the right hand. For example, if the chord’s C6 and you use the notes of the C6 chord they can be any inversion of course and then when you get to the next chord which is A minor seventh, you could play that in any inversion. The next chord is D minor seventh, you can play that in any inversion, the next chord is G seventh. You can also combine that with grace notes like we talked about and so on, like so. Use block chords as well as single finger notes, grace notes, and thirds to start to improvise. Tomorrow I’m going to add a seventh to the chord and we’ll get a bluesy sound and I’ll show you how that’ll kind of transform the entire sound of Blue Moon or any song if you add a seventh and get a bluesy sound as a result. I’ll look forward to that tomorrow, meanwhile, if you haven’t signed up for our free series of videos, go on over to PlayPiano.com and sign up for those. Hope to 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
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