Parallel & Contrary Octaves in Piano Playing – How To Use Them

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Duane: Hello again. This is Duane with some more good stuff you really ought to know.
Today I’d like to talk a little bit about parallel & contrary octaves in piano playing. Sometimes you’ve probably heard me in my teaching do things like this.

[Duane playing piano.]
Or
[Duane playing piano.]
Or
[Duane playing piano.]

That sort of thing. Those are parallel octaves that you’re hearing there. What’s going on is that the left hand is playing an octave and the right hand is playing an octave and they’re going in the same direction. That’s what makes it parallel.

They’re basically a third apart. Another way of saying is a tenth apart. In other words if I play C and E together that’s a parallel third. But if I take that E and move it up an octave that’s called a parallel tenth. If I play the C in octaves and the E in octaves that’s a parallel octaves in tenths.

[Duane playing piano.]

You could say it in thirds if you play your hands close enough together because my thumbs [inaudible 00:01:19]. What you’re hearing right now.

[Duane playing piano.]

My thumbs are only a third part and yet the rest of it, like it’s a tenth from my little finger to my right hand thumb and it’s an octave and a half from my little finger to my little finger. So it depends on where you measure from. In any case you know what I mean.

Now when can you use these parallel octaves? Whenever the chord moves up a fourth you can do it. For example if I’m moving from C to F I can simply walk up in tenths or thirds.
[Duane playing piano.] One, two, three and I land right there. That’s in 3/4 time.

If I was in 4/4 time then I’d have to start on B too wouldn’t I? [Duane playing piano.] One, two, three, four one : so it’s just a matter of timing because you obviously can’t get to where you’re going until it’s time to get there, so you want to delay that.

Another thing you can do is do it in triplets. In other words if I went one, two, [Duane playing piano] triple it, I could do it all on the third beat there couldn’t I? Or all on the fourth beat if I played it in triplets.

[Duane playing piano.] Triplet and then I’m there because I’m breaking the unit of time down into three segments.

You can also do it : you probably wonder if I can go down. Yeah you can. [Duane playing piano.] See that.

[Duane playing piano.]

In fact that’s a good exercise. Just go up and down. [Duane playing piano.] Go down. My left hand’s going down from C down to G. My right hand’s going E, D, C, B. [Duane playing piano.] Now I’ll go right back up. [Duane playing piano.] Where you came from. [Duane playing piano.] Just do that in a whole bunch of keys.

[Duane playing piano.]

Just get used to that. Of course there’s many varieties to that. There’s offset octaves.

[Duane playing piano.]
Or
[Duane playing piano.]

There’s a lots of rhythmic varieties to that obviously. Another thing you can do is if you’re going down a third you can do it in triplets or take all three beats if you’re in 3/4 time. But you have to do it chromatically. In other words not scale. See this is scale [Duane playing piano.] we’re talking about. We’re just walking up or down the scale. But if you go down a third or even if you go up a third for that matter you’ve got to do it chromatically.

[Duane playing piano.]

Like so. For example my left hand’s playing [Duane playing piano] C, B, B flat, A and my right hand a tenth above that [Duane playing piano] E, E flat, D, C sharp. You see you’re landing on the 7th chord or the A chord. [Duane playing piano.] You’re going from C to A. [Duane playing piano.]

Now you could do the same thing if you’re going up to say E flat.

[Duane playing piano.]

Just the opposite of coming down. So experiment with those parallelisms in octaves if you would. You can do it in thirds first [Duane playing piano] just to get the feel.
[Duane playing piano.]

Get the idea then use both hands and spread it out to octaves.

Now you can also do contrary motion. We just talked about parallel motion so far. Contrary motion is nice too because it moves in opposite directions, for example.
[Duane playing piano.]

If your target is C. If you’re going to the C chord you can go up from G [Duane playing piano] and down from F [Duane playing piano.]. If that’s not appropriate, in other words if you’re on the G 7th chord you may want to play [Duane playing piano] G in your left hand the beat before that and then get together on the next beat.

[Duane playing piano.]

So you’ve already played the G in the left hand and then you come in on the F in your left hand on beat 1. [Duane playing piano.] There’s lots of uses for these kinds of thing.
[Duane playing piano.]

Woops I tripped.

[Duane playing piano.]

Contrary and parallel octaves. Just more of the good stuff you really ought to know. Experiment with it. See what you can do with it. Get what you can out of it and let it hatch down in your subconscious mind. You’ll come up with some ideas and you’ll start noticing things like that. That’s the way it is with music. You get these little bits of knowledge tucked away and they work on you and you start noticing things in other music and then ideas come to you in the middle of the night and you get up and say, “Oh yeah I could do this.” You may not understand it very well now but just put it away and let it hatch.

So we’ll see you next month as we explore a little more good stuff you really ought to know.