hi everyone Scott Houston here. Hey I want to answer a question that I get
quite a bit about having problems accurately jumping from chord to chord.
I've got a little exercise that I think can really help solve that. And really
quickly at the very beginning if these videos help and it's something you're
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give us a like if you're seeing it somewhere else. So let me dig right in. Now a
question I get a lot are people that say you know I understand fully that in you
know I need to be jumping around with my left hand and we need to just go from
chord to chord whenever the chord symbols change and so it's pretty simple
at the beginning, however, I'm having a real problem with the accuracy of
jumping from one chord to the next - ie my target practice kind of stinks and
I use that term target practice a lot cause that's really what it is at the
beginning it's just the ability to kind of plunk your hand down exactly where it
needs to be so I've got a good little exercise. It's incredibly non
creative but it'll just solve things and till you spend I don't know three, four
minutes doing this every day for a week or two and you ought to be much better
at getting your kind of target practice down at the very beginning. So
let's jump to the piano shot so here we are let's say we're just going to do all
this with major chords at this point they called it a major triad right so a C
chord this is middle C on my piano so a C chord right C E and G it's that
position this kind of triad they call it a major triad and I don't really care
what fingers you're using frankly I mean, kind of a traditional fingering is
this it's pinky middle finger and thumb and I'm holding my fingers back
just so you can see it better on this video I don't really play like that so
yeah don't be imitating that right so the issue is just being able to say
well you know hey I came across the C chord okay got it and then you're
playing something in your melody line and then you come to the next chord
symbol and it's an F chord and you think oh! and you pick up your hand oh! oh! got it
right or more often you'd pick it up and go ah! ah!
oh they're right it's kind of messy process so you just need to be able to
get very accurate with your target practice to go and nail it right so here's
my suggestion and this is just a mechanical little exercise so here we go
step one of the exercise is to just go every note at a time all the way up the
skate all the white notes and back down again don't you tuck your fingers away
the way I am it's no need to do that okay so the idea there you're just
getting used to keeping the same hand position and moving it one key at a time
right and speed is not the huge effort here it's incredible accuracy you just
absolutely want to nail it down you've got to get your brain really connected
with how far away every key is from another key a piano key that is right
all right so step one was every single note okay
now step two is skip one note every time so you'll play C then you'll
start it on the E and of course these other notes follow
like they should be it's like you've got your hand in a cast right and then we're
gonna skip one more note play G chord one more to be diminished so that's
going up is C E minor G major B diminished and again you don't need to
know those we're just keeping the same hand position now going down just
move up to the C then the A minor the F and the D minor
so again don't worry about if you don't know what those chords are yet just
physically mechanically do this starting on the C, E, G, and B and then going down C, A
F, D do that you know four or five times we're not talking half an hour here
we're talking few seconds okay like that now so we've done right we've done every
note we've done one skip now we're gonna skip two notes in between so we're
gonna jump from a C up to an F on this one play C, F, B that's a B diminished
but root note is B then to go down play C G D minor so this one is...did I do that
right yeah I did that one right sorry I talked myself out of it so C F E C G again
we're jumping a distance of it's a fourth is what it is but we're skipping
two white notes between the jump every time alright so we've done every note
we've skipped one note we skipped two notes finally we're gonna skip three notes and
go to what's called a fifth so one up to five so this last pass will be C to G
all right and then I would play D minor just back to G and C so that jump now
you're making that full jump of a fifth so that's pretty much it gang
how's that for not very creative but I'm telling you what that'll do is just nail
down each one let me repeat it really quickly now here's the summary of
what I want you to do just one right after the other okay so we're gonna
start out every note and again the key here is to try to be incredibly accurate
not incredibly fast and by the way please do look down at your hands
there's no reason to not look down at your hands so that's every note now
start skipping one note do that a couple times now we're gonna keep moving on
we're gonna skip two notes going down
you're getting this target practice just burned in your brain now finally go up do the whole fifth
like that so if you just sit and do that you know maybe spend I don't know what
is that three minutes four minutes just do that every time you sit down to play
if you're having trouble with this accuracy and I guarantee then when you
start coming across you know other chord symbols you'll just be able to play hey
I'm going from a C to an F to a G you'll just play you know you can just call
them out and your hand is more you know maybe you're playing a...that's called a one six two five but
whatever it is just all this this target practice jumping around yeah I think
it'll be a lot you know more accurate for you so again not a very interesting
one but should be very helpful and once you do that you know as you just
start playing a little bit more it just gets so much easier cuz your brain just
starts kind of blocking in the physical part of oh that's exactly this distance
on a piano so I hope that helped and again if you like these videos and maybe
you're looking for a little bit more I would hope that you might consider
checking out my online method we have thousands of students that are
having a ton of fun and if you want to do it there's a really great way to get
involved you can just kind of dip your toes in the water for free by taking an
intro course so I'll put up this slide here and I hope to see over there trying
out the free intro course see if maybe we're a good fit in either case as
always have fun playing piano