10 Exercises to Improve Your Piano Chord Playing

1. Intro: Hey, and welcome to my course on ten Exercises to improve your piano chord playing. Whether you're playing in a rock band, whether you're a composer or an absolute beginner just exploring the instrument, understanding harmony and how to play chords at the piano is very important. While I'm going to be going into great detail of each exercise within each of the classes to follow, I'm also going to be supplying PDFs to help make sure that you can approach this material from various angles. Whether you want to be reading, whether you want to be just watching a video and copying what I'm doing, you will have plenty of options to make sure that you fully understand the exercises and can execute them yourself. Some exercises will be more simple where we really focus on challenging your ability play major and minor chords in different patterns. We're going to be talking about modulations and putting those into exercises. I'm also going to give you some more advanced technical material like arpeggios. So whether you want to understand theory of modulations, whether you just want to get good at the basics of major and minor chords or whether you really want to challenge your fingers with some of these flashier sort of arpeggios, this course is going to have something for you. All of these exercises, I consider to be beginner friendly, but they will take you up to the intermediate level. So I would say this course is really well suited for people that aren't super advanced, but rather exploring up to that intermediate level on the instrument. While the first couple exercises start off really basic. We do progress in terms of that level as we go. Now, the class project for this course is really simple. What you're going to do is you're going to take your favorite exercise from within the course. You're going to record yourself playing through the exercise, and I'm going to evaluate not only your technique, but just generally your approach towards that exercise. I'll be honest, it's less about me evaluating your submission and more about you proving to yourself, this is the class that I liked the most. If it's the class on arpeggios, then maybe you should take your exploration of arpeggios even further within some other courses ahead. If it's an exercise on modulations, maybe you're a theory buff, maybe you're a composer to be, but it'll help you start to explore what sort of pianist you are and what your pianistic style is. I'm making that a word. We're using it. So there are some fun nuggets of theory in this. There's going to be some great application. Your fingers are going to be challenged, your brain is going to get bigger. We're going to go in through great depth of each of these ten exercises. And I truly think that there's something. As long as you're at the beginner or intermediate level, there is something for everyone within this course. So do make sure that you go through the course in great detail, and, of course, feel free to explore various classes multiple times and don't forget to download those PDFs as they are quite helpful. Alright, enough of me talking about the course. Let's start to dive in. I'll catch you in the first class. 2. Class Project: For this class project, we're going to keep things relatively simple. You're going to take your two favorite classes from this course, and you're going to be performing the exercises while filming yourself. I also want you to either on video or as a written description, explain why those two exercises resonate with you the most. The idea of this project is just to get you applying the material, allowing me to give some feedback, but also telling yourself in a very honest what techniques you enjoyed the most so that you can start to understand a little bit more about the stylistic direction you're taking as a musician. Now, once you've recorded your video, you can upload it to YouTube and share a link with me so that I can access the video, give you some feedback as to what you did well and areas of improvement. Now, you can take your YouTube link and simply put it within the course description, and also feel free to add in your extra notes within that description as well, too. The video recording doesn't have to be fantastic. Just use a phone or whatever device you have to record yourself, playing through that exercise so that I can hear and see things clearly enough to be able to give you some feedback. Now, don't forget to wait until you really feel in the zone. You don't want to force something like this and record it on a day where you're not feeling nimble with your fingers or sharp with your mind. You'll notice I always have a coffee on the side. I'm not doing these videos unless I feel ready, so I'd recommend do the same. So that's it for this course project. And, of course, if you have any questions along the way, please feel free to reach out. Have some fun with it. I'll catch you in the next class. 3. 3 & 1: All right, welcome to the first exercise three and one. Let's get talking about it. What I'm talking about is semitones, moving cords up or down by three semitones, and then in the opposite direction, retracting by one semitone. So we're going to start with three up, one down. We're going to be applying this to chords in a moment. But first, I want to show you the pathway you're going to be taking as you're navigating through these major or minor chords. Starting on C, we're going to move up three semitones. So C sharp, D D. There's up three. Now back one. U three, down, one, up three, down, one, up three, down, one, up three, down, one. And now you're gonna move up three, and you're actually passing the octave. We started on C. You'll notice we're actually a little bit above C, so that when you go down one, you resolve onto C. So again, it looks like this. Okay. Now we're going to apply major chords to each of those notes. So for now, let's take our right hand thumb and play through that same pattern that we just created, up three, down one, up three, down one. Watching the right hand thumb, we're now going to apply it. So we're starting on C, and then we're moving through the pattern that I just showed you. Now, this does require you to know your major chords, and later in this class, your minor chords. If you don't know your major and minor chords, I can put them within the attached PDF. But ultimately, this whole course is more of an intermediate level course. If you don't know any chords, go into my courses on chords and chord progressions, where you can learn the basic major and minor shapes, inversions, so on and so forth. These exercises are unique ways to apply the chords to get you to that next level. That being said, let's go for it. We're starting on C major. You're going to move up three to E flat major, down one to D, up three to F. Down one to E, and you continue on this way. Again, I'm just aiming my right hand thumb for each of those notes within that pattern. Once you've got that, the final step is putting it hands together. It sounds like this. This is just a fun way to break up your chords, so you're not practicing them chromatically every time, or maybe by shape, all whites, all whites, all whites, white black, white, white, black, white, white, black, white. This is just going to mix things up quite a bit more. It's also a great way to practice scales. This idea of C major, go up three E flat major, down one to D major. You could transpose songs using this method. It's really just a great way to jumble up the exercises that you're working on. So that's the up three down one. Now that we've reached the top, this C major up here, we're going to change it to C minor. Then we're going to go down three up one with minor chords. Again, before I play the full exercise, we could just start with identifying what is the sort of pathway look like for this down three up one pattern, starting on C, down three to A, up one, down three to G, up one, down three to F, up one, down three up one, down three up one. Again, we pass our octave by a semitone and pull back in to that octave. So we're starting on C, finishing on C. Now at the right hand thumb, same pattern. Once you have that, you'll apply it with minor chords in the right hand. C minor A minor. B flat minor G minor, A flat minor F minor, F sharp minor E flat minor, E minor D flat minor, D minor, B minor and C minor. Lastly, you put it hands together, and it sounds like this. It's a very cinematic sort of sound. If I play around with chord progressions where my left hand is outlining these chords, I'll create a bit of a melody in the right hand. Listen to how it sounds. And you can just keep going like that. There's something very dark and mysterious about that sort of sound. So the full exercise looks like this, starting with majors up three down one, and finishing with minors down three, up one. Here it is. That's the full exercise. All your major chords are covered. All your minor chords are covered. It mixes things up in a fun, different way, and it's a nice, easy starting point for this course. Hope you enjoyed this class. Don't forget to check the attached PDF, and I'll catch you in the next class. 4. Contrary Motion: Next, let's talk about contrary motion. When you're playing something like a classical piece, especially Baroque music, there's a lot of contrary motion. This idea that the right hand might be moving up as the left hand is moving down or vice versa. You could think of it like outward or inward motion, as opposed to parallel where both hands are moving in the same direction. Now, we're going to build upon the major and minor chords from the last class and work with major seventh and minor seventh chords. Again, I'll supply a PDF with all the major seventh and minor seventh chord shapes. But quite honestly, it is assumed at this point you should know those or at least quite a few of them so that this more intermediate level course is something that you feel comfortable with. Let's start with major seventh chords. We are going to be playing these chromatically, moving up one semitone at a time. So F to F sharp, G to G sharp, so on and so forth until you reach the top. I realize I started this a little high. I think down here might work a little bit better. So what we're going to do is we're going to start with our pinkies on this first shape and work inward, outward, and once we reach the pinkies again, we'll pause on those notes. Next shape. Next shape. Continuing And you do this for all 12 chord shape. This is something that eventually you can play a bit longer. You can really dive into this pattern. I'll show you as soon as I'm done this year, then you're back to see. So you could play with the pedal down something like this. Okay. So that's for major seventh. I do want to mention that you might kind of recognize this pattern a bit. If you do this pattern with a major or minor chord, plus a semitone above, so a flat six above the chord, you get these sort of marvel sounds or stranger things. It sounds like this. So that's E major plus a semitone above. More Marvel, if I play something like this, which is minor plus a semitone above. Again, it's quite marvel. I think this one is more sort of mysterious sounding. So you can see how it has that sort of cinematic sort of sound. But ultimately, this class is going to be about major sevens and minor sevens. That's just sort of a little extra nugget that you can work with. Now for the minor sevenths, we're actually going to start with our thumbs this time. I don't think this sounds better. I'd still prefer this inward motion to start, but I think it's important that we try both types, so they're both available, and they might be available to you on other chord shapes. But for the minor seventh, since we're starting with these thumbs, a tone apart, it's a better example than doing the major seventh where we'd be starting with a semitone apart. So for minor seventh chords, you're starting with the thumbs, working out, and then back in. And triple, triple, three, four, and you continue this way. Starting with the thumbs each time, prep the shape, then let the fingers do the work. You need to pretend you're going to play blocked. Like you're about to play all the notes together. Then let the fingers do the work. So notice I'm at this shape, then I apply the pattern. And then you reach your top, which you can play one more time if you'd like, or just block it. That's the exercise. Major sevens are in and out. Minor sevens are out and in using contrary motion. You can apply contrary motion, either of these types to pretty much any chord shape. It sounds better with four note chords. And at the same time, you're going to be learning these minor seventh and major seventh shapes with that much more confidence and depth. I hope you enjoyed this exercise on contrary motion. Don't forget to check out the details in the attached PDF, and I'll catch you in the next class. 5. Basic to Dominant Modulations: For our next exercise, we're going to be working with basic chords, major or minor, turning them into a dominant seventh chord and then resolving down a fifth to continually go through these fifth, fifth, fifths until we've recycled through all 12 keys. Now, if you don't already know your dominant seventh chord shapes, although it's recommended having gone into this course, what I will recommend is that you check out the PDF, where I'm going to give you all of the dominant seventh chord shapes that you're going to end up hitting within this exercise. I want to preface with saying, I had mentioned down a fifth, down a fifth, down a fifth. If you keep moving down fifths, eventually, you run out of notes really quickly. So quite often, what pianists will do is they'll have a note which goes down a fifth. And then instead of going down another fifth, they'll go to this destination in this case, F to B flat, but they will move up to the B flat. And then they'll move down a fifth. Up a fourth down a fifth, up a fourth down a fifth. It's the same set of notes as if you keep moving down by fifths, but it keeps it in a more narrow range on the piano. Now, remember to go down a fifth. You're moving seven semitons down. It is recommended that you know all of your fifths. To be honest, they're almost all white to white or black to black. You're thinking of the outside notes of major and minor chords. But when you reach this fifth B flat to F, and B to F sharp, they're diagonal. They're a little bit more complex, but usually a fifth is white to white or black to black. But again, you can think of it like seven semitones or the outside notes of a major or a minor chord with no note in between. So the exercise is quite simple, but it's teaching you a lot of little things, seeing fifths, working with dominant seventh chords, and understanding how they modulate, how a dominant seventh chord wants to resolve. So let's say we're in C major. I'm going to play two C major chords, hands together. I'm now going to turn it into a C dominant seventh chord. Now, where does this take me? Down a fifth to F major. Gonna play F major twice, then F dominant seventh twice. This time we're up a fourth. B flat major two times. B flat, dominant 72 times, down a fifth. E flat major, E flat, dominant, A flat major to A flat, dominant continuing through F sharp, to F sharp dominant. This one takes us to B. We're starting to get a little bit low. I think we should be okay. We got E to E dominant, A to A dominant. D to D dominant, G major, G dominant, and then finishing back on C. Now, another thing you're going to get out of this exercise within this class is that dominant seventh chords, yes, they like to fall a fifth, but they can resolve to major or minor chords. So we're going to do the exact same thing, but with minor chords this time, changing into the dominant sound, and then we're going to resolve down a fifth. Here we go. It's going to sound like this, C minor two times to C dominant, continuing on F minor to F dominant. Just listening, we'll continue through. It sounds like this. We're back onto these whites B, two E. D, we're almost there. G minor, G dominant. B to C minor. Now, what's cool about this is you can start to fuse the exercises. Like, if we took the contrary motion exercise and we applied it with this one, I do have to add an extra note to my chords so that my minor shape has four notes and my dominant shape has four notes. But it would sound something like this. So C minor C dominant F minor. F dominant. And it continues on. The whole point of me showing you this is that as composers, let's say I'm in C minor, And then we want to move somewhere else. We can use these sort of modulations to extend passages within our compositions and just generally create a bit more intrigue for the listener and take them on a harmonic journey. So what I was doing there was I was playing something in C minor, and then eventually I changed my C minor to a C dominant, which took me to F minor, and that's what we've learned from doing this exercise. So again, watch out for the attached PDF, and I'll catch you in the next class. 6. Minor to Minor 6 Modulations: Let's talk about minor to minor six modulations. Just like in the last class, we played major or minor chords that turned dominant, and then that took us to a new destination. My favorite modulation, at least as of right now, are these minor six chords. Minor six chords aren't found everywhere. They're a little bit more seldom than some of the other chord shapes. But in a minor key, you will find them built off the four chord. So for example, a minor. Is all white notes. If I took any of the three minor chords from A minor, so A minor D minor and E minor and added one extra note on top from that A minor scale, I'd get A minor with an F on top, D minor with a B on top, or E minor with a C on top. A minus extra note is a semitone above as well as E minor. But D minus extrane is a tone above. So in a minor key, there's this unique spot where we find a minus six chord. This would be a minor flat six, by the way, so we're not calling this a minor six. A with the semitone above, E with the semitone above. Those are minor flat six chords, but the minus six is found specifically as a four chord within a minor key. So if this four chord is associated with A minor, taking us back to a one. So when we play a minor six chord, it wants to fall by a fourth. Kind of like dominant chords falling by a fifth, but the minor six chords fall by a fourth and more specifically to minor chords. In the romantic era, they would have also potentially fallen to major chords. But for now, I just want you to focus on this minor environment. It's a great starting point for understanding these chords. So, again, in the attached PDF, you're going to be able to find all the minor six chord shapes. But really, you're just taking a minor chord and adding one tone above the top note. Similar to the last exercise, we'll play each chord two times, and then we will develop it into the minor six chord two times. So in other words, C minor twice, C minus six, twice. And then we're going to resolve it down a fourth. It ends up sounding something like this. C minor, C minus six. G minor. See how soft that transition is to G minus six. Now we're going to go up D minor to D minus six to A minor. A minus six to E minor. E minus six to B minor. B minus six to F sharp minor. F sharp minus six, down a fourth to C sharp minor, C sharp minus six. A flat minor, to a flat minus six, E flat minor to E flat minus six, B flat minor to B flat minor six, F minor, to F minus six, and then back to C minor. I think at some point in that exercise, I went up twice instead of down. But the idea, again, is to zig zag your way down. It doesn't have to be exactly a zigzag. The idea is you're just trying to stay in, like, this meaty part of the piano. If you keep moving down down down too many times or up up up too many times, it gets too extreme. So if you want to move down twice in a row or up twice in a row, it's fine. Just try to stay in an area of the piano where harmony is richest, so the middle two quarters or like the middle third of the piano. So that's it. Like I mentioned, it's a pretty simple exercise, but it teaches you the shapes of minor six chords. It teaches you how you can use them to modulate into a new key. And part of the reason this works is because if I'm in A minor and I have all white notes, and all of a sudden I play this A minor six, this note is not from A minor, but it's a very closely related key. It's the minor key with one sharp. Right now, in A minor, I have no sharps, no flats. So a good place to transition to is another key with a similar number of sharps and flats, maybe just one sharp or one flat. So when I play a dominant chord like a a minor to a dominant, that takes me to D minor with one flat, a smooth transition. When I play A minor to A minus six, it takes me to E minor, a key with one sharp. Another smooth transition. If you're interested in these types of modulations and want to take them much, much further, I have a whole class on harmonic modulations. But for this course, I really want to make sure that you're comfortable with chords on many levels, so I wanted to include a couple of modulations along the way. Don't forget to check the PDF, and I'll catch you in the next class. 7. Minor ii V Modulations: Next up, we're going to be talking about minor 25 modulations. In jazz, specifically, we have this chord progression, 251 that we see all the time. I'm not saying 251 isn't in other genres, but jazz has really made it so that 251 is the thing of jazz harmony. So, for example, if I'm in C major in jazz, I'm going to want to be adding an extra skip. At least, I'm going to want to add some color. So as a very bare minimum, we would play seventh chords on every key available within that scale. Now the seventh chord was a B minus seven flat five, sometimes referred to as B half diminished. Now, this shape is new within this course, so I'm going to include all these shapes within the PDF, but this is it. It's a minor chord plus a tone below the octave, and then we take the fifth and flatten it. So this was a minor seven. We flatten the fifth, hence the term minor seven flat five. But in a major key as the seventh chord, we actually don't see it all that often. Where we usually end up seeing it is in the related minor key. So for now, I'm just going to use natural minor to show the first bit here. But if I go through A minor, all whites and add those extra skips, what you'll notice is that having started on A, now my B chord, B minus seven flat five is the two chord. And in jazz, we love 251. So we're going to play two built off of this B in this case, so minus seven flat five. Now we're going to go to the five chord, which actually doesn't want to be true to the natural minor key. It doesn't want to be all whites in this case. It would prefer to be dominant seventh. And then as we discussed before, in our modulation using dominant seventh chords, this wants to fall a fifth. It's a minor 251, so we will resolve to a minor one chord. In other words, two is minor seven flat five. Five is dominant seven, and one is minor seven. So if I'm playing a chord like C minus seven, and let's say I'm playing a whole song that's in C minor. If I change this C minor seven to a C minor seven flat five, what is its function now? Well, now it's functioning kind of like a two chord of some new key. In this case, C minor seven, going to C minus seven flat five, it's now functioning as the two of B flat minor. So it becomes a two, five, and then down to a one. Now, this is kind of leapy at this point, two, five, one. So for the five chords, we're going to use inversions. So our two chord looks like this in this example. Our five chord is F dominant seven, which has a C and an E flat. So if we go back to the two, we'll see we already had C and E flat, let's just change the other notes to F and A and then resolve to our one. So it ends up looking like this. Two, five, one. And then if I flatten the fifth on this one, it's a new two, inverted five, down to a new one. So we're going to go through the whole exercise. Because you're only modulating down a tone, you don't have to worry so much about this down a fifth, up a fourth or any crazy zig zags. We're also using inversions to smooth things out. So it'll always kind of feel like you're in a little pocket of notes slowly moving down the piano. So, yes, this is another way to modulate. We're including 25 ones in a minor key. We're starting to introduce inversions a little bit more. And again, we're talking about another unique modulation. Let's go through the full exercise, which is included in the PDF. Make sure you check it out. Let's jump in. Here we go. See minus 72 times. Now let's play minus seven flat five inversion of the dominant. B flat minus 72 times, continuing on. This is all in the exercise, so I'm not gonna overt this time. Here we go. And that takes us back down to C. Now, the issue here is we didn't hit all 12 keys. We hit six keys because we're essentially modulating down one tone at a time. And like our whole tone scale, we only encompass half the notes. So the other half of this exercise is now to start on C sharp minor seven and go through the same type of process. So here we go. C sharp minor 72 times, flatten the fifth invert, and down a tone. Same thing. And to G, flatten the fifth, invert, to F, flatten the fifth, invert to E flat. Couple more keys are almost there. Well, a couple more cords, I should have said we're there. Back to C sharp minor seven. So there it is another exercise where we're covering a lot of different types of chord shapes within one exercise. We're working with inversions and some unique modulations that you might not have already worked with. That's it for this exercise. Check out the PDF, and I'll catch you in the next class. 8. 6 & 1: Next up, we're going to expand on the first exercise I gave you. The up three down one or down three up one is now going to be up six down one or down six up one. We're still going to use major and minor chords. You're welcome to use any other type of chord shape you're working on. If your teacher introduces a new type of chord, let's say, an alter dominant chord or something to that effect, try applying it with these sort of chaotic movements of down six, up one or up six, down one. This is just overall a great way to explore new shapes. Instead of giving you new shapes, we're going to break up and lineate these major and minor chords. So majors, we're going to say will be one, three, five. From there, we're going to move up six down one, up six, down one. So if we just take this idea of starting on C up six is a tritone away. Now, on your first chord shape, up six is actually just a semitone below the top note. It's a great reference to be able to quickly find up six. It also works for down six because up six and down six is the same note. It's the tritone. So what I'm saying is on the majors to move up six, you'll look a semitone below the top note. Later, when we get to the minor chords, and it's down six, that same trick works. It shows you what the down six is going to be. So take a look at your top note. Go down a semitone, and that's outlining where your destination is down six notes. So again, I'd recommend that you kind of go through the pattern first and see what that looks like. You're going to have to start a little bit lower for this exercise just because it spans so far with these greater distances of six semitones, as opposed to three. But that being said, I think, at this point, you'd be able to go through and double check what up six down one looks like for you. Get learning that. And then also when we get to the minors, reverse it, so it's a little more simple of just a single note to start, then apply the chord shapes, then apply the lineation. So all that is to say, start with one finger, get through the exercise, then play the major chorus, see how that works, and then you're ready to jump into the full exercise, which we're going to get into right now. It sounds like this. And I'm actually going to start this one quite low. I'm going to start down here. It's broken, so it's not going to sound too thick anyway, but here it is the full exercise. So here it is, the full exercise. And then you would reverse that for the minor chords. However, instead of one, three, five being the applied fingering, we're going to try fives, threes, then ones, which sounds like this. And again, we're going to start up quite high. Then we're back to C minor. So this one, again, it's actually a bit tougher, I think, to kind of aim, starting with the pinkies because pinkies are just a weaker finger and we're used to using thumbs as a great sort of guide for many shapes based on the different chords that we know. So it does require you to move your hands quite quickly to this next shape. Don't feel like you're sort of fumbling into each note one at a time. Get the shape settled, like you're about to play it altogether, but then let the fingering apply. Is true for anytime you're breaking up a chord shape, as you get more advanced, you'll be able to sort of figure out the notes a bit more on the fly. It allows you to pick up a little bit more speed. But overall, being able to jump to that next chord shape, imagine you're playing it blocked, but then apply the lineation or the broken sort of fingering. That's going to be the best way for you to get started with this exercise. So again, another way to shuffle the deck, so you're playing your major and minor chords and learning them that much deeper previously, we had broken up four note chords with our contrary motion exercise. Now we're breaking up three note chords as well, too. Of course, feel free to continue to explore different ways of playing this exercise. Maybe each one gets played four times. Now it's starting to sound a little bit more compositional, and you can eventually translate these sort of exercises into your own compositions. That's it for this exercise. Don't forget to check the attached PDF, and I'll catch you in the next class. 9. Rock Out Voicing: Alright, let's get talking about the rock out voicing. If you've ever seen this symbol in rock and roll, it's the rock out symbol. Fingers two and five in both hands. We're about to play a bunch of four note chords, and for every chord that you're playing, I want you to make sure that you're playing your pinky and finger two. This is common anyway, even in a major seventh shape. Generally, you have the option of finger three or finger four, but one way or another, you're playing two and five. Also true for minor seventh chords, where we're generally playing a finger four. Again, two and five are right there. Also true for dominant seventh shapes. And I'm going to give three different versions of this exercise using major seventh, minor seventh and dominant seventh shapes. Now remember, all of these shapes are going to have a finger five and a finger two, so we should be able to hit the ground running with this one. For the major sevenths, we'll be going up chromatically. For the minor sevenths, we'll be going down chromatically, and for the dominant sevenths, we'll be resolving them down by fifths or as discussed before, down a fifth up a fourth. For major seventh chords, we're going to keep it really simple. You're moving up chromatically. C to C sharp, D to D sharp. We're going to play blocked. It sounds like this. Prepare the whole chord and then just press fingers two and five. Look at that really simple spread voicing. We'll call it a spread voicing. It's very much a spread voicing hack at this point. But as you can see, it gives you all four notes of your C major seven chord, and it's spread out quite nice. So again, now C sharp, I prepare the full chord shape, only play two and five. Same with D, the two and five. Go through each major seventh chord shape with these twos and fives, and that's the full exercise. Now, all this is going to be outlined in the PDF. Make sure you do check it out. But there it is. A full exercise for the major seventh chords. Now let's go to the minor seventh chords. Let's start up a little bit higher. Again, we're prepping the shape like we're going to play the whole thing, and then just applying the twos and fives. From there, we're going to start to move things down chromatically. Take your time with this. You're just watching to move semitones. Ideally, though, you want to be thinking of the full chord and then just playing the twos and fives. If it's hard to engage just those fingers, don't worry about it. They kind of should be tough at this point, until the muscle memory is there to help you, this is a new feeling. Take your time with it. Make sure you check out the PDF if you're stuck on any of those shapes. Lastly, we're going to be doing the dominant seventh down by fifth or when we need to moving up a fourth, which takes us to the same destination as down a fifth. It would sound something like this. C, to F, B flat, to E flat. A flat to D flat. Sharp, takes us to B, E, takes us to A, D, takes us to G, and then we're back to C. I'm going to play C major seven to finish. So that's it. Major seventh, minor seventh, and dominant seventh chords covered with your rocko voicing. I hope you appreciated that exercise. Don't forget to check the attached PDF, and I'll catch you in the next class. 10. Blocked Line Cliché: Next up, we're going to play some blocked line cliches. There's a bunch of different types of line cliches. You can picture them sort of like these minor chords where the top note expands up or a major chord where the top note expands up. What we're going to be playing is a full four note version of a chord. So root, third, fifth, and octave, then we're going to be moving the top note down by semitones. Once we've reached a dominant seventh shape, then we modulate down a fifth. Or, again, if we're out of space, up a fourth. So it sounds like this. Four beats on your first chord. You're gonna have to separate the left hand down an extra octave, or your thumbs will be on that same middle note. It's okay. Don't worry too much about that. So we have four beats on C major, four note version. Two beats down a semitone, two beats down a semi tone. So the top note after you've played four times on the first shape, lower the very top note to semitone for two shapes, and then down a semitone again for two shapes. Now, this is going to be really important that you don't move down too low, even starting on this C here, we only have maybe a couple chords below before it starts to sound pretty bad. But here is the full exercise. I'm going to start up really high so I have some wiggle room. So let's get it started on C. Creating a bit of a pulse to keep it interesting. The C dominant takes us to F. Keep it going. B flat. E flat. Take your time on these transitions. Some of these shapes can be a bit tough to D flat F sharp to B to E. A to a D almost there to a G. G dominant takes us back to C major. So this is just another way of thinking of these dominant modulations at your top note. If you're in C major, it could start to come down by semitones, and once you reach that B flat, now it takes you into a new key. Now notice I tried this in a broken way. Again, the whole point is to start to combine these ideas, make them your own, and have those new ideas that are fused find their way into your own original music. So that's it. For this class on blocked line cliches, make sure you check out the attached PDF, and I'll catch you in the next class. 11. Rising Bass Dominant 7th: Alright, let's try out this rising base dominant seventh exercise. Again, we're going to be kind of working in a modulated environment. This isn't a course on modulations, but if I want you to try this out in all 12 keys and we're working with dominant chords, it just makes sense to take you down a fifth to that next key. You could try this chromatically. You could try it moving in whole steps. It's really up to you, but the modulation is going to work out more organically. Having said that, here's the exercise. You're going to play a C major chord in the right hand and an octave in the left. Let's play the chord two times. And now we're going to change it to a dominant seventh chord. And we're going to put the third of that dominant seventh chord in the left hand. This is a trick Beethoven and a lot of classical composers used a lot because now the destination from C dominant seventh is F, right? This left hand is sort of acting like a magnet pulling us up to that F. So while I like to think of that falling down a fifth kind of like gravity, I also think of semitone attractions, kind of like magnets and metal. So it sounds like this. We get C major two times C dominant two times with a third in the left hand to F. A dominant with the third in the left hand. B flat. B flat dominant with the third. We're going to drop this time. E flat, E flat dominant. With the third in the left hand, I'll be quiet. It continues on the same way. Almost there. And then you're back to see. The point of this is just to show you that you can start experimenting with what notes you put in your left hand. It doesn't always have to be the root. And especially when you're doing these dominant modulations, you might want to consider putting the third into the left hand, which will pull you up a semitone. And this also works with minor chords, moving to dominant because when you take this flat three and move it to the major third, there's a big shift happening in the sound. Let's really reinforce that shift with the left hand. So within a composition, I'll just play something small for you here. I might sound something like this. So that was just off the top of my head. I'm sure you're going to find this a lot in the wild in classical and romantic music, but feel free to try applying it to rock, pop, hip hop, electronic music. That's one of my favorite things to do is to take some of these classical tricks and bring them into electronic music. It's happening more and more, so find a unique way to do it to make it a style all of your own. That's it for this class, and I'll catch you in the next one. 12. Flashy Arpeggio: For our last exercise, let's get a little bit flashy with the sound of an arpeggio where we're using both hands to play an arpeggio that we're going to move around chromatically through major chords. Now I want to be clear, this doesn't stop at major chords. You can literally use any chord shape to do this. So for now, I'm just going to show you with major, and then you can apply it to whatever chord shape you prefer. Here's how it goes, and feel free to do variations of this. Once you get the concept, it's very flexible. You play C major in the left hand. Broken, moving up or ascending. The right hand does the same thing one octave higher. Left hand is going to cross to the root. Later, you might want to change this note that you're crossing to, but the root is a great starting point. Now, your right hand is going to start to come back down through those three notes as your left hand crosses back over and moves down through its three left hand notes. So it sounds like this. The petal and now a bit faster. We're going to move through all 12 major chords with no fancy pattern. We're just going to move chromatically, but now you have the ability to do these up three down one, down six, up one, whatever pattern it is you want to choose to apply new exercises with, you can totally do that now. So we're starting on C major. I'm going to start a bit lower. Here's the exercise. So there's a few other variations I'll show you right now, but I want you to feel free to get creative with how you variate exercise like this. So we could go a couple of times. Maybe two times and then move around through our chord progressions. We can also choose to take the top notes and move them around a bit. What if we played a C major scale where our first cross is C, or second cross is D? This might be a great exercise to help you with your accuracy on these crosses. It would sound like this. Now you can start to take this idea of moving around these top notes and create a bit of a melody. So I'm keeping the right hand in the same position. So after I get the left hand and the right hand going, I cross, and then moving down through the right and back up. So it's This works well with triplets, which is what we're using triple triple triple triple triple triple, a triple electriple You can also try this with four note shapes, like a dominant chord, where you're just moving up and then down. So a fun little flashy arpeggio without the cross or it the cross. You have so many options. Once you get used to this feeling of strumming up and down and incorporating a cross, really, again, I'd recommend that you try to make an exercise like this your own. But for now, I'll supply the PDF so you can get the basics and then do your own thing with it. I hope you enjoyed this course. I had a great time sharing some of my favorite court exercises with you. Don't forget to practice the material many times. Come back to these classes as needed, and hopefully I'll catch you in the next course. 13. Outro: Congratulations on finishing this course on ten exercises to improve your piano chord playing. Every pianist needs to feel confident playing chords. Pianists and guitarists, you can't separate harmony from this instrument. So I think it's really important to have a lot of angles of viewing chord playing to improve your technical ability, your theoretical understanding of chords, and not only practicing them within live applications, like a song, for example. You want to make sure that when you're learning a new song, you have some exercises that help you hit the ground running so that these various shapes and these various technical ways of playing chords don't get in your. Don't forget to practice the material many times on your own. I would recommend going through the whole course, each exercise multiple times, but also bring it to your teacher. Any piano teacher should be able to take any one of these exercises and not only help you improve them, but also help you understand how they apply to the material that you're learning, whether it be a pop song, a song by Beethoven, whatever it might be, these exercises are fundamental shapes in the theory that you're going to learn will apply to the songs that you're learning. Now, don't forget to review the class that outlines the details for your class project. I want you to submit your class project so that not only can I help you evaluate it and improve it, but also so that you can understand which of these classes resonated with you the most because at the end of the day, that's going to help you explore what your piano style preferences and help you develop in the right direction as a pianist. Feel free to sift through the courses that I've created, see if any others resonate with you and then slowly improve those building blocks that'll help you stand as a musician. So one last time, congratulations on finishing this course. Thank you for taking it. There's a lot more courses to come. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope that it helps you develop, and I'll catch you in the next course.