Yes – you can play fast piano runs too!

Good morning, this is Duane. Today, we’re going to have a very short lesson about open-voiced octave : I’ll say open-voiced lightning piano runs. I call them lightning runs because they’re lightning fast up or down the keyboard and they’re open-voiced. That is it’s not the full chord. We’ve covered full chords before running like that up and down the keyboard. That’s a four-note chord that I’m running up and down.

We’ve talked about that, but today, I’d like to talk about open-voiced. By open-voiced, I mean usually an octave or a seventh like that. That would be voicing in fours. For example, if you’re playing the C-chord, you might have your right hand voiced in fourths. Your left hand is playing a low root in fifth. Your right hand will play that chord. Then, you run up the keyboard like this and maybe back down if you have time, like : and on with the song.

This is the point I want to make, those open-voiced runs. I’m playing a C-chord I think. I start with a C-chord, a C on top. Under the C I have a G and a D. That’s called open-voicing. Open voicing because you’re leaving out other parts of the chord. It’s probably a C-sixth-ninth chord. In fact, it is. When I come up with the left hand, I’m going to play a C-chord with the sixth and the ninth. That’s what I’m playing.

Then, I run that up the keyboard like that rapidly. I’ll do it slowly, and then gradually speed up. Again. If I come down, then I take the same path down that I went up. Now a little faster : or you can just go up one octave and come back down. That’s a lightening strike too, although, I had more time than that so I think I probably ought to go up two octaves. The next chord I was playing was the E-flat octave, so I’m using an open-voiced octave there. That’s an octave E-flat and I’m putting in a fifth in-between.

You get the idea? It’s open-voicing either a four stack or an octave stack. If that middle one was G, I’d probably play like that, G with a ninth in-between it. Slowly now : G-D-G, thumb one, G-D-G. Open-voicing fourth : D-G-C-D-G-C-D-G-C. it’s just a matter of flipping your hand over quickly to get to the next octave. Notice my thumb comes under. When you play it fast, you can’t notice that but the thumb does come under to get to the next octave.

Okay, that’s it for today. It’s called open-voiced lightning runs and you can use them in a lot of the songs. Don’t overuse them of course. Like lightning, it’s a lightening strike, then you go on to other things. Thanks for being with me. If you enjoy this kind of thing, come on over to play piano and sign up for our free piano tips. We have something like this for you almost every day and I think you’ll like it. We’ll see you there. Bye-bye for now.

Here is the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM-gjay-ECE