Technique for playing chords

Many of you have asked me to put up some tutorials for playing the piano. Like I said, I'm no expert. If you listen to my first song "papa kehte hain" and the most recent one, "main agar kahoon", you'd know what difference practice can make. Same keyboard, same player, no offical keyboard lessons - but 1.5 years of time between both the songs, which is long enough for practice.

To play a song,

1. You need the notes - you have them here
2. You should hit the notes with the right tempo - keep practicing
3. Strike the chords - hardest part, if you really choose to play chords

This post addresses task #3 above.

Again, there are two ways to play chords, if you consider an electronic keyboard:

1. Hitting the chord keys all at once and turning the "accompaniment" of the keyboard to ON,
2. Playing the keys using rhythmic patterns.

#1 is the simpler of the two. Again, co-ordinating the left and right hands requires practice. Rhythmic patterns are harder to play. When I get the chords (left hand) right, I miss out on the notes (right hand) and vice-versa. So, I choose a keyboard style and play the chords using method #1 - this gives the effect of playing a pattern, without the actual finger movement.

After researching on the Internet, I picked up a technique using which chords can be played at ease, with minimal effort. Presenting it below, with pictures..

Lets say you want to play C-major followed by A-major in succession..

C-major:



A-major:




C & A one after the other:





Notice the left most red dot and the right most green dot. That's the entire span of keys your fingers should move across to play both the chords.

Instead, if you confine yourself to just one octave like this:

C-major:




A-major:



C & A:




Now look, your fingers just need to dance on 7 keys. Do you see the reduction in effort? That's the way I play!

Ideally, when you play a chord, say C-major; you should start with the root note that is C. Hit the 4th key from there which is E, and the 7th key from root, which happens to be G. C-E-G is the sequence. But, as per the technique shown above, you play: G-C-E. There is a difference in sound between the two, because in the 1st case an upper scale G is used, while in the 2nd, the lower G is played. Minor difference, but for time-pass players like most of us, that's pretty much acceptable.

So, dear piano-enthusiasts, try this out.. I'm sure you'll be more comfortable with chords henceforth.

Reference:

An animation from chord house