Piano music

Ah, broken chords. The sound. The cascading pattern of chordal notes. It’s beautiful. There’s no doubt about it. And this technique is one of the easiest to learn. After all, all you need to do to create it is have a chord under your fingers and be able to “break it up.”

What do I mean by break it up? You’ve probably heard of solid chords. This is when all tones are heard at once. For example, if I finger a C Major triad and play all three keys at once, I’m playing a solid chord. But, if I break this chord up into it’s 3 notes and play them one at a time you get a broken chord.

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Jazz is known as being one of the only styles of music created in America, though it is a mixture West African and Western music traditions. Jazz’s began in New Orleans, around the 1900 s, but its roots can be traced back hundreds of years earlier when slaves who were brought to America developed spirituals and blues in order to communicate with one another and express sadness, desires and religious beliefs. The music was passed along orally with each new generation making their own unique changes to the songs, which were often of a call and response form and unaccompanied by musical instruments.

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Ah… the arpeggio. A miracle of cascading notes that produces a beautiful sound on the piano. To most it’s a mystery how it’s created. But to those who understand chords, it’s just a matter of practicing until the pattern is mastered.

Now, the arpeggio can be used either in the right or left hand (or both together) but it’s usually the left-hand that takes up this amazing technique. Let’s look at how one might use an extended arpeggio pattern to create an improvisation.

The first thing you need to know about most left-hand arpeggios is that they usually start below the middle of the keyboard. Most pianists begin their run below middle C and there’s a good reason for this - bass

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You want to learn piano and play it now, but you don’t want to spend years at it. Understandable. You’re going to love this. It’s something called the ostinato technique and with it you’ll be able to improvise and create your own unique piano music right away!

An ostinato simply means repeating pattern. It’s used in all types of music and is perfectly suited for the piano. Why? Because it’s easy to create with! For example, let’s look at one of my free piano lessons, “Winter Scene.”

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So many piano students worry about playing notes correctly. They think about timing, dynamics, velocity, and so on.

Yet these same students are dying for the ability to feel something real. That spark of creative energy that enervates and refreshes the spirit.

Poets know of this feeling as do painters and other creative people working in their respective fields. But what about music? Surely, we’re not meant to spend months and sometimes years learning how to play other peoples music. Yet this is exactly what is being done in schools and Universities around the world.

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