Techniques. Some of them are more useful than others. Especially when it comes to piano playing. What you’re about to learn is a special way of forming chords at the keyboard that will have you playing chord piano in no time.

It’s called the open position chord and it’s exactly what its name implies – a chord structure that covers more than 2 octaves of the keyboard and uses both hands right away.

The open position chord (or OPC for short) is not an easy chord position to master at first, but once you get it in your hands, you’ll be well on your way to playing chord piano.
Let’s take a look at how we might go about learning this new technique. Take a look at my free piano lesson “Reflections in Water.” Here we have 4 open position chords in the Key of C major. You’ll notice the play button along with keyboard diagrams. Listen to the OPC and notice the sound. It’s quite modern isn’t it?

Now take a look at the keyboard diagrams and familiarize yourself with this chord. Once you get a feel for this chord structure you’re left with how to use it. This is the fun part! What I did in the lesson “Reflections in Water” is simply to play the OPC’s and improvise melody using notes from the C Major scale. That’s it! That’s all that’s required to create your own unique music.

You see, learning the OPC makes it all the easier. Because you have such a wide note spread between your fingers, it allows you to make “more” music so to speak than if you were to use triads or closed position chords.

Even the audio part where I just play the chords is musical. Many of you want to learn how to play piano using chords. I suggest starting with the OPC because it gives you instant satisfaction on the keyboard!

Amazing Grace for piano is a popular song on the internet. In this piano lesson we will learn to play this song with melody and chords without the use of sheet music. We will start by finding the note C.

The note C on your piano is found on many places on the piano keyboard. C is always to the left of two black keys on the keyboard. Let’s find the middle C on the piano.

The middle C is often called C4 as it is in the fourth octave of an ordinary upright piano or grand piano. It is sometimes called the keyhole C as it is at the same horizontal position as the keyhole on some pianos.

In this piano lesson we will call it C4 and the C to the left of this note we will call C3 and so on. We will now continue this piano lesson by learning the song Amazing Grace. Let’s take a look at the lyrics to the first verse:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see

We will play this song in the key of F-major. You don’t need to know exactly what this mean but it still is in F-major anyway.

We will start with the first line:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

Here is the notes to play to this line:

C4 F4 A4 F4 A4 G4 F4 D4 C4

In this piano lesson we will use a type of piano tab that doesn’t indicate the length of the individual notes. You will probably figure out this by yourself as you know the melody!

I feel confident that you are able to do this!

Let’s continue with the next line:

That saved a wretch like me

C4 F4 A4 F4 A4 G4 A4 C5

We will now take a break in this piano lesson and amuse ourselves with three piano chords that you can play with your left hand as you play the melody with your right hand.

The first piano chord is called F-major or just F and it is played with these notes in this song:

F: C3 F3 A3

The next chord is Bb-major. It is played with these notes:

Bb: D3 F3 Bb3

What is the note Bb3?

Well, the ordinary note B3 is immediately to the left of the note C4. Bb3 is the black key immediately to the left of the note B3. Okey?

The third and last chord we will use in this piano lesson is the chord C7. It is played in the following way:

C7: C3 E3 Bb3

If you want to use these chords in the song I recommend that you learn them by heart first. Now we will continue with the piano lesson.

I once was lost, but now am found

A4 C5 A4 F4 A4 G4 F4 D4 C4

We finish this part of the piano lesson by playing the last line of lyrics.

Was blind, but now I see

C4 F4 A4 F4 A4 G4 F4

Our piano lesson on Amazing Grace is completed as far as the piano melody is concerned but if you want to use your left hand to play the chords as you play the right hand melody you’ll find the bonus text here:

I will notate the melody as I did before but at certain places among the notes I will place the piano chords you already have learned after a slash.

When you see a note with a slash and a piano chord after it you are supposed to play the note and the chord at the same time.

Here is the Amazing Grace melody with piano chords:

C4 F4/F A4 F4 A4 G4 F4/Bb D4 C4/F

C4 F4/F A4 F4 A4 G4 A4 C5/C7

A4 C5/F A4 F4 A4 G4 F4/Bb D4 C4/F

C4 F4/F A4 F4 A4/C7 G4 F4/F

That’s it! I recommend learning the Amazing Grace melody with or without chords by heart. You will then have access to it whenever you will find a piano or keyboard to play.

We’ve all heard pianists who make us drool with musical jealousy when they play, using a tool box full of lighting-fast runs and clever fills that have us clamoring for more.

I well recall hearing Errol Garner play “I’ll Remember April” when I was about 14. I had no idea a piano could be played like that, and I was absolutely fascinated by all the interesting and exciting runs and fills he added to his improvisation of those standards.

If you’re anything like me, you would love to learn how to “fill up the empty spaces” with scale fragments, chords, broken chords, and so on. Techniques such as 8th note runs , 16th note runs, 32nd note runs, triplet fills, and many combinations thereof — some so fast you can’t even see which notes are being played. Techniques such as “cascading waterfall runs”, the fabulous “pro straddles”, the exciting “tremolo-fired runs” and lots more. Learning how to “fill it up” with runs and fills would certainly take your piano playing to the next level.

After listening to countless pianists in all genres, I compiled a list of six types of runs and fills that they often use:

1. “Cocktail” runs –The lightning fast runs used by the great “show” pianists. One hand runs, two hand runs, open-octave runs, tremolo-blasted runs, cascading waterfall runs and more. Made famous by such names as Eddy Duchin, Carman Caballero, Liberace, etc., but also used tastefully by many others, such as Roger Williams and many “pop” piano players.
2. Embellishments — Mordents, inverted mordents, trills, turns, tremolos, grace notes, glissandos, etc. These are the “finesse” techniques that give your piano playing class and grace. Virtually NO amateur piano players use these, so the pianist that learns these is putting herself or himself in a class usually reserved for professional pianists.

3. Piano tricks — How to make your piano sound oriental, or make it sound like a drum or a music box? A bell? Latin? Country?

4. Evangelistic runs — These are the octave runs and fillers used by the great gospel pianists of past and present such as Rudy Atwood and other evangelistic piano players.

5. Jazz & blues runs — Using the “blues scale” up and down the keyboard, blue note-crunches, slides, etc. These runs are very useful not only in jazz and R & B, but also in “black gospel” (I hate to use that term because it sounds racist, but people use it to describe a certain type of gospel music, so I reluctantly use the term…but only in that sense of the word), fusion, and many rock-pop songs. 6. Fillers galore — Filling up an empty measure with a counter-melody; creating an intro; creating an ending; developing “turnarounds”, plus chromatic fillers, fillers based on the Dorian and Lydian scales and other “church mode” scales used by contemporary jazz and fusion artists.

It is exciting for any pianist to picture himself or herself playing those LIGHTNING FAST runs up the keyboard and back down in time for the next chord, or playing CASCADING RUNS down the keyboard for a WATERFALL of wonderful sounds, to say nothing of using mordents, inverted mordents, trills, turns, tremolos, grace notes, glissandos, fillers galore, cocktail-piano runs, plus gospel-style runs as well as “blues runs” based on the blues scale!

Is it worth the effort to learn some or all of these techniques? It certainly has been for me, but every pianist will have to make that judgment for himself or herself.

Understand basic major and minor chords on the piano.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

In this lesson I explain how to use major and minor 3rds to build major, minor, dominate, and diminished chords! Please go check out my website and sign up on my forum. Join the music community! www.howtoplaypiano.ca
Video Rating: 4 / 5