Basic Piano Lessons In Chords

People learn things in several ways. Perhaps the most effective way, however, is by doing it. The same is true for learning piano techniques. When you want to improvise in your playing, you do it. Piano improvising doesn’t mean learning strict practices to create an arrangement, rather quite the opposite. There shouldn’t be anything to restrict your imagination.

Musicians learn to arrange by merely arranging, and improvise by improvising, which they do time and again. It's purely a game of trial and error, and you shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes as you hone this skill. However, there are some things you can do to lessen the learning curve. Learning to improvise needs to be a systematic process that involves keeping those that work and abandoning those that don’t.

Piano improvisation starts with basic piano lessons involving the use of chords, and there are some things that can help you understand piano improvisation. Don't look at these things as hard and fast rules, but rather treat them as points on a roadmap that guides you through the immense world of arrangement and improvisation possibilities.

Many people have discovered that by getting acquainted with piano chords, they can go through the “backdoor” of piano playing. By learning the proper use of basic piano chords, they learn to play chord-style quickly, and are able to take pleasure in it so much so that they are inspired to become skilled in reading music and continue on to master traditional sight-reading.

The first step to take is to learn as much as you can and acquaint yourself with everything you can learn about chords and how they work. When you understand piano chords and the chord symbols that correspond to them, you can learn how to integrate these chords into different patterns. Becoming familiar with piano chords and chord patterns will help you with all aspects of your piano playing. They are also considered to be simplest way to play and the easiest to enhance playing.

Study and learn a number of various playing patterns of major, minor, augmented and diminished chords, like open voicing, upward inversions, arpeggios, boogie bass, western bass, Alberti bass and swing bass. Find a course that helps you through these techniques and teaches you how they can be used.

Practice some right hand fillers, such as octaves, grace notes, tremolos, runs, twangs, turnarounds and runs. Also make a point of going through pre-arranged sheet music. Local music shops will have a lot of music books that contain arrangements suitable for your experience and ability. Learn how to read and play through these in depth. Seeing what other people have done with different pieces of music will help you appreciate the art of arrangement, show you some new techniques and most importantly, show you what is possible using basic chord patterns..

Try various musical styles, such as country-western, blues and ragtime. Begin to build a CD library of different musical styles, not just one that focuses on a specific music style. You can also buy sheet music that lets you experiment with different styles. When you understand the basic elements of the different styles, you will learn to arrange any song in any particular style, and you will learn to be able put in a few elegant touches to any arrangement.

You can also use the web and look for piano resources to learn all you need to build on what you already know about chords. When you learn to play a few piano chords, you’ll discover how to apply them more to your piano playing and before you know it you’ll be improvising!

Are you interested in learning to play the piano with a "chord" system?

We HIGHLY recommend Secrets of Exciting Chords and Chord Progressions as an excellent chord and progression resource. It has lessons on all major, minor, diminished and augmented chords.
Click here for more information.
Vitis the Exciting Chords and Chord Progressions website.