5 Interesting Ways to Play Chords on the Piano
1. Why Learn Chord Patterns? 🤔
Much of music can be understood by the chords and melodies that make up a piece of music. This means that if you are writing your own music, writing an arrangement of a piece of music, improvising or playing from a chord chart, the chords you choose and/or the way that you play those chords can have a massive impact on how the piece of music sounds and feels.
There are many ways that you can play chords, but one of the most frequent requests I get is for some interesting chord patterns to help vary the way that the chords sound. However, its important to understand that you can play any combinations of the notes that make up a chord and each player will prefer different patterns and associate them with different effects.
So, here are some chord patterns that you can try and adapt! For each pattern I will provide an example using 2 different chords so you can see how you can use it for whichever chords you happen to be using.
2. The Standard Pattern 😐
One of the most common patterns to use when playing chords is the following left hand pattern.
The reason that this is such a great pattern is because of its versatility. Many players that write arrangements for pieces of music will use this pattern in the left hand to create a bed of sound for a melody in the right hand to sit on top of. The idea here is to play each of the notes ascending and then play them descending again.
You can travel as far up and down the piano continuing the pattern beyond what is written to fill out as much of the texture on the piano as you like.
This pattern can sound very ballad-like if played more slowly and softly or it can sound big and broad if played quicker and with a little bit more emphasis.
3. Big and Epic 😱
A more striking pattern that you can use is this left hand pattern where you play the lower three notes first and then jump up to play a four note chord.
Unlike the first pattern, this pattern allows you to play each of these thicker textured chord shapes with much more impact while still being able to fill out quite a large range of the piano by jumping up to play the chord above. The import thing to note here is that you will want to keep the sustain pedal held between the lower chord and the upper chord to make sure that the full thickness of the sound is heard.
If you want a more impactful sound but you don’t want it to sound quite so thick, then you can always remove the middle note from the lower chord and the highest note from the second chord.
4. Warm and Comforting 🤗
This left hand pattern is one of my personal favourites (probably because I’m quite sentimental!). Here you have a choice of either playing the three notes as a chord (if you can reach), or playing each of the notes one after another.
Taking the middle note from the chord and placing it an octave higher up like this means that the notes from the chord are a little more spread out, this gives the feeling of space. The middle note of the chord is also the note that gives the chord its tonality (major/minor) so having this note at the top of the chord highlights the tonality and makes the chord sound very warm.
If you want an even sparser texture but you want to retain the warm quality of sound you can also take out the note in the middle of this pattern.
5. Thin and Twinkly ✨
For a more tranquil and twinkly sound you can use this pattern played together across both hands.
This will sound much more thin and twinkly if it is played softly and much higher up on the piano. The reason that this sounds more thin textured is because the lowest note in the chord is actually not the root note, you are playing the middle note of the chord at the bottom. Doing this makes it sound much less stable. The notes are also much more spread out (much like they were in the previous pattern), so the sound will be much more sparse and wondrous.
If you want to add a little more stability back to this chord, you can play a low root note (C in the case of a C major chord) and hold the sustain pedal just before playing this chord higher on the piano so that the low note acts as a bed for the chord to sit upon.
6. Sparse and Distant 🌓
Following the theme of getting more and more sparse and thin textured, here you can play this pattern as a chord across both hands.
In this version of the chord, the left hand isn’t playing the root note at all and its added into the top of the chord by the right hand. Doing this along with (once again) keeping the notes fairly spread out, we get a much more sparse and distant sound, particularly when played softly and higher on the piano.
You can also play this lower down on the piano to create a warmer sound. Having the notes spread out like this allows the sound to not sound so muddy and clustered when played lower on the piano.
There are many ways that you can play chords and I suggest playing around with the notes from the chords to see if you can find unique patterns that you like the sound of. A good way of deciding if you like a pattern or not is to use it for each chord in a chord progression rather than trying it out with just one chord in isolation. This can be from a song that you like or just a combination of chords that you like the sound of.
Building a catalogue of chord patterns that you can use can make your playing come to life and give you a range of effects and feeling that you can use in your music. So try them out and see what you think!
Matthew Cawood
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