The Best Way To Practice Chords

chords are where it's at they're the best now in order to get good at playing using chords so that you can do fun stuff like this [Music] all kinds of fun stuff you need to practice them and sometimes practicing chords and triads can be very boring and not exciting at all and we avoid it so i thought it would be really great to put together a little practice routine where we explore the best way to go through practicing chords in a given key so that you know all the ones that are going to sound good together so you can build dexterity and speed in your fingers and you can really really gain confidence um with chords so we are going to be playing around with this concept in the key of d major today so step one for this routine you can pick any key after you've watched this and apply it to any key but step one is know your key signature so in the key of d we have d e f sharp g a b c and d so you need to really really really think about those notes which i like to refer to as ingredients there are ingredients for today um they're going to be what we create with so we've got two white keys a black key white key white key white key black key white key whatever you need to do to make this feel like second nature think about it basically one sharp one sharp two sharps total so step one learn your scale next we are going to be practicing my favorite exercise which i call the claw and what this does is it teaches us all the chords that belong to the key of d and this is where it gets exciting because you can mix and match these chords to create amazing songs and if you work this into your daily practice routine you're going to learn every single chord there ever was so start by creating this claw shape on the first note of the scale you're working on so d skip a note and now we remember we have f and our key signature so we have an f sharp and an a let me do this both hands you can do it one hand at a time and then we're going to move to the next note of the d scale and create that same shape that stack of thirds paying attention to our ingredients do we need to use a sharp note here we don't so we've got that minor sound and then we've got this one's fun because we have two sharps they both are joining us here it's another minor f sharp minor g here we have an a major and i know what notes to press because i'm jump i'm just thinking about those scale tone ingredients um that we talked about the beginning i'm just playing notes that belong to the scale the key that i'm in i'm having to concentrate right because there's those two sharps i have to really think about what keys i can press but this is really good practice so take your time with this and use your metronome and spend a few minutes warming up um i talked you through it and we played it slowly but you should be about here you can use the pedal if you like that's what i'm doing it's good pedal practice and it kind of adds an extra a little bit of flair to your playing once you're confident there you can play them in broken form and i must say that it could take a while for you to get comfortable there and you might be playing them very slowly this is part of a practice routine the whole point is you're going to be practicing and building these skills so don't worry if it takes you some time and you can't match that temple right away you will get there then play them in broken form and a really good practice is to say the chord names out loud as you go it'll help you to remember them so i'll say them for you so we've got d major this one's a crunchy one this is c diminished this is b minor a major g major f sharp minor e minor and d major so in in any scale any major scale you've got a major minor minor major major minor diminished then major so that's the pattern so now what you've just done is you've established that you know all the chords in that family you know how it feels under your finger so if you want to mix and match any of those chords you can [Music] and you can play around and see what kind of fun combinations you come up with you can even include some inversions if you're ready for that and you can build up chord progressions so that's the final step of this little exercise routine so number one is you pick a key signature and you play the scale so you really gain confidence number two is you practice that claw exercise solid and broken up and down until it feels like second nature and try to memorize and name those chords as you go through them then the third thing is is challenge yourself to create one or more progressions so that just means pick a couple of those chords that you've just practiced and add them together in a way that sounds good to you and play them on repeat and that's what we're going to call a chord progression and that's the final stage and it's going to really encourage creativity so for me today i'm thinking the minor let's do the minor six one two three four five six and then the four which is g and then the one which is d and then the five which is a i kind of like how that sounds sounds like a bunch of pop songs we've all heard so i'm playing the chord in my right and i'm just playing the shell of the chord this fifth in my left and then this is where sort of the fun and creativity can kind of begin and you can work more on that dexterity element by playing these chords in like a broken right now it's sounding more like a song so you've just taken what could have been something really boring and tedious to practice and you've created a very musical experience for yourself and you could work both hands together if you wanted again i'm using the petal just to kind of add some extra pizzazz to this and i'm sticking with root position chords so i'm not even into inversions here but it was fun and it sounded good and then tomorrow when i sat down to practice this i could work on increasing my speed a little bit and i could pick a different progression entirely maybe work in some inversions if i wanted to so this concept this sort of routine idea could take up i don't know 10 15 minutes if you wanted it to and you're learning theory stuff and you're building dexterity and speed and all kinds of great keyboard related skills and you're flexing your creative muscles so i feel like this covers all the things um it's one of my favorite practice approaches so i hope that you enjoy this i hope that it helps to make you better at playing chords and gives you fun moments at the piano comment below let me know what you think and we'll see you around [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Pianote

Views: 586,056

Keywords: pianote, lisa witt, how to play piano, beginner piano lesson, easy piano, piano tutorial, piano chords, chord inversions, chord progression piano, beginner piano chords, piano chord progression, practice chord inversions, how to practice chord inversions, practice chords piano, practice chords, how to practice chords, best way to practice chords, easy piano chord progression, piano lessons for beginners, how to play piano chords, piano chords for beginners, piano chord

Id: gBvFGkwqWEI

Length: 7min 23sec (443 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 09 2020