Chord B-E-G

A “chord attack” occurs when you play a sequence of notes as chord. For example, say you had to play the quadrulplet, C-G-E-G in the left hand. If you practice this slowly and then speed it up gradually, you will eventually hit a “speed wall,” which is a speed that you can’t pass because stress builds up. To break the speed wall, you would have to play the quadruplet as a single chord, C-E-G. A “chord” is a combination of three or more notes that blend harmoniously when played together. You will then go from slow speed to infinite speed! And that’s why it’s called a chord attack.

Let’s take a closer look. Examine the passage blow:

In the right hand, the passage begins with the triplet, E-G#-C#. The fastest way to play this sequence is to play it as chord, along with the corresponding fingering. When you play a chord, there is zero delay between the playing of notes, so you are playing the notes infinitely fast. Chord attacks are a great method to enhance speed and velocity. You can use then wherever you find a series of notes that can be played as a chord.

Now that you can play a chord very fast with the chord attack method, what happens if you want to slow down? Firstly, you can play the chord while moving the hand up and down at the frequency at which the chord or quadruplet should be played. Try between one and two times per second. Experiment with your movements by varying your bouncing hands, and remember to adjust your wrist, arm, and finger movements as well. If you begin to feel tired after a while, you might be doing something wrong, or you haven’t quite figured out the technical movements.

Basically, practicing the up and down movement over and over again until you do not feel tired is necessary. And if you feel tired by practicing the motions with chords, you’ll definitely have a hard time with quadruplets.

But how should you move? This depends on your own body and level of comfort. You need to find the most efficient motions that personally compliment you. Try keeping your fingers very close to or touching the keys as you increase your speed, and get your whole body involved in the movements. This should definitely include your shoulders, your upper and lower arms, and of course, your wrists. Don’t play from your fingertips, use your shoulders and arms.

How will you know when you’ve done it? When you find that you can play the chord or quadruplet softly, relaxed, and without tiring, then you have definitely made great progress.

Remember that you need to play the notes as perfect chords, meaning that all notes should land one after the other, no stops, delays, or flub; note after note, infinite playing. Without this, you won’t acquire the accuracy needed to play them fast.

Practice the bouncing hand motions slowly. This is the best way to work on acquiring accuracy. Accuracy will improve faster when you practice them slowly.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Practicing chords can solve a lot of problems in piano practice and improvement. I’ve found some great resources for chord practice, even if you barely know a thing about chords.

The Talking Chord Chart

The first is The Talking Piano Chord Chart, which gives you some great virtual piano lessons, allowing you to see and hear each chord and how they are formed. You’ll know everything about major, minor, augmented, and diminished chords in no time. If you use this chart right, it’s quite likely that you can learn up to 48 different chords in a matter of 15 to 20 minutes.

Power Piano Chords

The second is Power Piano Chords, which gives you 39 separate lessons on piano chords. When you study and practice enough about chords, you can actually improvise in your music and even write your own arrangements, because you’ll understand how certain notes fit together to create desirable sounds and harmonies. I advise you to check them out soon!

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I’m going to give a little introduction on how you can use chords in your piano practice. You know the song, “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” right? Well, this song is made up of 3 general chords. That is, C, F, and G7.  These letters are the names of chords and also the names of the root note in which each chord is constructed. The C chord has three notes: C, E, and G. The F chord has the three notes: F, A, and C. Finally, the G7 chord actually has 4 notes: G, B, D, and F.

In standard notation, which many of us pianists are used to from reading sheet music, these notes are normally written in the bass clef with corresponding stems and rhythm values. In chord style, there is no bass clef, and the left hand is written with letters and chord symbols. You can find this type of notation in jazz or popular music, or even in certain piano books which are usually labeled for “Piano – Vocal – Guitar.” Basically, if it’s not a classical piece, it mostly likely has some form of chord style notation. Pianists who are very experienced in chord style piano and theory can actually look at a piece of music with no chord symbols, and still figure out which chords correspond with the piece.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

First off, play the C-F-G7-C chord a few times, and then try to experiment with making up your own progressions. You can plan them out on a piece of paper, or just play around on the piano. If you create a new melody and are able to play it with your chord progression, you are actually improvising. If you’d like to learn more about chord style piano, I recommend getting a book specialized on this topic, such as You Can Teach Yourself Piano Chords by Per Danielsson. Once you know the basics, you can move on to some different and slightly intermediate books, such as books on jazz or improvisation in piano.

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