Archive for November 2011
Open Position Piano Chords – Perfect for the New Age Style
The Open Position Chord (OPC) allows you to create a vented sound. A sound that is open, literally, as opposed to the closed triads taught in most course books.
The OPC covers more than two octaves of the keyboard allowing you to create without moving the hands around too much. Perfect for the beginner and advanced player. New Age music in particular has an open quality that is created in a number of ways. The first way is by the chord choices used. Most of this music is in a Major Key. The sound is pleasant without any dissonant tones.
The second way is how the chord is played or voiced. The OPC voicing gives you the ability to separate the chord into three different parts; low end or bass note, middle notes, and high or melody notes. With this configuration you are able to make more music than if you were just playing a triad in your left hand and playing melody in your right.
It also allows you to play in counterpoint. When you are improvising with the OPC, your fingers will automatically begin to create a countermelody. How? Because you already have six tones underneath your fingers to begin with. Just by moving your fingers over the keys in different rhythms, you begin to have harmony with melody.
It allows you to play piano with both hands together right away. This is entirely different than the way most pianists learn how to finger a chord. They are usually taught triads first fingered in the left hand then in the right and finally both hands together. Is this music making? Of course not.
The Open Position Chord allows you to use both hands together to create solid chords, arpeggios – pretty much anything you can imagine. This chord structure allows the complete beginner to sound like a pro faster than any other approach. Why? Because you are already using seventh chords – the foundation sound for most modern music today. It’s used in Jazz and contemporary instrumental music about 90% of the time. After you begin to play the OPC as a seventh chord, there’s no end to the possibilities.
Double Barre Chords (A-Based)
Double barre chords are, arguably, the single most difficult family of chords for beginning players to master. This is self-explanatory – to some extent – given that most new guitarists find trouble fretting one barre – let alone two. Further, the second barre in these chords requires you to put your ring finger in a very awkward position (until you get accustomed to it). That being said, let’s see if we can make this difficult challenge any easier.
As I implied in the title, these chords are based of the open chord for A Major. To play a double barre chord, at its lowest point on the neck, you first need to barre your index finger across the bottom five strings of the first fret. Then, you need to use your ring finger to fret the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th strings (counting from the bottom) of the third fret; the same strings you would press for a normal A major chord – just moved up by a fret. To accomplish this second barre, you need to use the area between the tip of your ring finger, and the first joint, to press those three strings and then elevate the finger off the high E string (using that same first joint) so that there is NO contact. This will be very difficult at first but is not as impossible as it will feel initially!:)
Incidentally, that double barre chord you’re fretting is a B flat (or A sharp) Major Chord. Like all barre chords, you can move it along the neck to create new chords of the same quality, e.g. you could move it up by one fret to play a B Major chord – and another fret to play a C Major chord. For reference purposes, these are the chords you would be playing if you used this chord on each fret – starting with the B flat chord I just used as an example (on the first fret).
Bb, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, Ab, A, and back to Bb again.