Today I'm going to help you understand what piano arpeggios are. Why they're an important
part of a pianist tool set. And then give you 5 levels of arpeggio exercises to start
practicing so you can get your hands dirty and start mastering them. As a bonus at the end,
I also want to give you some tips on how to play them with control and how to play
them quickly. So arpeggios - what are they? Let's say we're in the key of D Major - D,
F sharp, A. This is an arpeggio. You can also do it like this - by adding the root note at the top,
so D happens at the bottom but if we put it at the top that can also be an arpeggio. Let's get
some terms out of the way as well. In a D Major arpeggio D, F sharp, and A. Even though these are
separate notes but the idea is we want to think about them as a single entity. It's kind of like
let's say - a Dad and a Mum and a kid. Even though these are individual separate homo sapiens, we
can also think about them as one family unit. So this... even though it's three notes, we can think
about them as one unit. And if we repeat them - let's say in 1 octave, it might sound like this...
In two octaves it might sound like this...
Which is basically the notes repeated in the higher register. The 3 reasons
as to why I think piano arpeggios are quite important in the piano player's
tool set - firstly it's that they appear in music. So I'm just going
to do some improv here. So just look at what my right hand is doing...
So it kind of sounds like well I was playing a whole bunch of notes there but the way I actually
thought about what I played was I was just playing four entities four families of chords
or arpeggios you don't have to know what these mean yet but what I was playing was chord one
chord three chord six and chord four in the key of D major you can hear that this little thing I
played it sounded like a decent piece of music so arpeggios once you learn them you can apply
them and play them within music second reason is that they help us to learn about chords as I
was alluding to before I was playing a bunch of notes there but to the beginner here they might
think wow you're playing so many notes can I can I learn note for note what you just played but what
I want to try to teach you today is to actually not think about them as individual entities but
families families or arpeggios so for example what I just played there I used four chords or
four sets or arpeggios we have the first one which is D major d f sharp a D major and then
we also have chord three which is F sharp a c okay that's chord three and then we have B minor
b d f sharp and then lastly we have G major g b d I was basically using those basic chords
or basic arpeggios to create something kind of nice reason number three is that it's just also
a great technical exercise to do so even if not for the musical and artistic and beautiful reasons
sometimes just practicing this is just a good thing to warm up your fingers build some strength
and dexterity before we get to the exercises I hope I've convinced you that playing arpeggios and
knowing them is a really important thing within a piano player's tool set let's keep it really short
level one is the basic arpeggio so if we're staying in D Major level one sounds like this
starting try to run it through ones and then maybe upgrade to two times
or maybe four times so you're gonna do one two three five come back down the same way
real easy and then for left hand you're going to want to do five three two one
the left hand is a mirror image of the right so it has obviously very different fingerings
when you're playing at this level it's very important you do it in a
very controlled manner that is very in Tempo so don't do something like this
you want to try to keep it in beat because keeping a beat shows that you have control
over when each note is executed so use a metronome either use this one use a phone
app a lot of beginners find it hard to keep and beat so sometimes it's really good to have
something like this my sound Brandon metronome watch that allows me to feel the beat on my body
really allows me to know if I'm actually keeping in beats as I
just showed you there once you've done right hand and you've mastered that
and left hand you've mastered that it's now time to put them together
level two is a two octave arpeggio so it looks like this
so this is where if you need to play all these notes if you need to play all these notes with one
hand obviously you're going to run out of fingers so we need to have a very smart thumb tuck after
the third note so thumb tuck to play one on the D so that you can finish and come down the same way
left hand looks like this
turn over we're three
and once you've mastered those obviously now try hands together
lots of people can do one octave but when they try to do two octave suddenly it throws
them off so try to really spend time on this one level three is to take it even
further so four octaves now common beginner problem when people try this one they often
kind of lose track of where they are they might do something like this like [Music]
wait where was I again how many octaves have I done so it's really important when you're doing
four octaves to know exactly where your start point and your end point is so let's say my
right hand if I'm starting here I need to proper calculator first that's one round two rounds
three rounds four rounds and I'm gonna end here foreign two three four Mountain come back down
left hand same thing third one fourth one peak of the mountain
and obviously then try hands together
foreign
as these levels get harder you're going to find that it's harder and harder to keep in time so
when you're first learning the notes obviously Tempo is not something you can achieve right
away but as you get to learn the notes better I want you to try to play them in Tempo in beats
not some parts faster and some parts slower everything very very consistent very very smooth
now level four this one's very interesting this one sounds like this oh
now what's happening there sounds really beautiful this one I really love this one so this one is
where the right hand is playing our four octaves as usual but left hand instead of starting on the
same note as the right hand which is D you're now going to start the left hand on the F sharp
so it's playing the same thing but it's just kind of starting in a different spot so instead
of starting on D you're going to start on this F sharp and play the same thing as you would [Music]
bit of a brain teaser they're going to be playing different notes at any one time but I really love
this one sometimes I like to even put pedal with it just so it sounds extra beautiful
let's move on to level five which is a four note
arpeggios so so far we have done three Nord arpeggios and we've repeated it
across octaves now we're going to do four note ones which looks like this
so this is where you're gonna play also the bottom Nook at the very top so the bottom
note here is D we're going to play the D also at the top and in our next one we're going to do F
sharp a d and because we had F sharp at bottom we're going to play F sharp at the top two so
a at the top and D at the top so we're just adding kind of like one more note to each block of notes
so fingerings for right hand are one two three five and this one we're gonna have to use our
thumb on the black notes I know in previous videos I've said thumb doesn't really go on the black
but this time it's necessary one two four five and then we have one two three five one two three five
foreign
some people in that third block they like to use four here rather than three so see which
one's more comfortable for you if whether four or three for that F sharp in that third
pattern this one whether you prefer three or prefer four I tend to use them interchangeably
I like to practice with both so I can use both left hand looks a little bit like this
for all these arpeggios I recommend you to start first slowly and then
try to increase the speed every now and then
a great tip I have for you for playing arpeggios with more speed and control is
to do this variation I call it the preparation variations it's where you do this so play the
first notes and prepare these notes before you even strike them so that means rest
your fingers already on the key prepare them okay play the next one and prepare the rest
look this one's already on there that's already on there they're all ready to go
so what I don't want you to do is something like this like kind of like one by one
figure that figure the notes out as you go this is a very uh beginner way
of playing the professional way of playing is always early preparation
so you kind of need to be your own teacher when you do this exercise
play the first note and prepare the rest and only when you've
ticked off and you've prepared the other ones do you then play them
I hope I've given you something cool to practice let me know in
the comments how you go catch you in the next piano tutorial foreign