Canon Piano ChordsTHE MUSICARTA CANON PROJECTMODULE FIVE – BROKEN CHORD PATTERNS
This is Module Five of the Musicarta Canon Project, a series of free online piano lessons which shows you how to play a chord sequence freely and put together your own unique Canon performance from easily-mastered musical components. To get the most out of this module, you need to have done all the things detailed in the ‘Preparing to learn’ sections of the first Canon Project module, and have completed Modules One to Four of the series. Don’t skip this vital preparation! Use the Quick Links in the table, right, to catch up.
We move forward with the Canon Project by playing all three treble notes from Module Four with the right hand alone. The right hand Canon chords are fingered in the four pairs you have already learned to ‘see’. |
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You see that a ‘next-door note, next-door finger’ principle applies. Fingers 5 and 3 always fall to 4 and 2, with the opposite in the last pair. The thumb always plays the bottom note.
Fingering is important! It can seem irrelevant and a chore, but slow yourself down enough to pay attention, because fingering is what allows you to play the notes you want to hear. In the long run, fingering is liberating.
Play the right hand triads, correctly fingered, plus the bass line, over one of your backing tracks.
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The fingering numbers in most written-out music are tiny – even smaller than the examples here. You have to train yourself to pay attention to fingering suggestions.
Notice the voice movement diagrams (VMDs) between the chords. Use them to help you remember how the chord tones move.
The letters above the chords are chord symbols. You learn about chord symbols in the next module.
You need to know this new arrangement of chords and bass line well, before going on to the great-sounding broken chord patterns below.
Revise your bass line fingering
As your performances get more complicated, it’s essential to have at least one hand you can rely on. Pay attention to the bass line fingering – keep trying to find a fingering that suits you and will ‘come automatically’. Play the bass line again from these familiar diagrams: |  |
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Right hand broken chord patterns
Next, we are going to break up the right hand triads into their bottom (B), middle (M) and top (T) notes and play broken chord patterns.
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Don’t play the whole note chords – they are just there so you can see where the BMT coding comes from. Practice this until you can play it comfortably. The BMT coding for this pattern is: C
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Try to play the broken chord pattern, with a bass line, from just the BMT sketch.
Here is another broken chord patterns for you to play. The BMT coding for this pattern is:
The music shows a mixture of the chords and the BMT coding, but you will play the broken chord pattern all the way through. Listen to the audio and play out the whole example.
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Continuous right hand broken chord patterns
The broken chord patterns above give you time move your hand to the new fingering group – the next pair of chords. To play continuous broken chord patterns, you have to adjust the fingering slightly to ‘keep the fingers coming’, like a caterpillar track, so your hand can creep continuously across the keyboard.
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The BMT coding for this pattern is:
The BMT coding for the next pattern is:
Try to play the whole chorus (8 bars) from just the BMT sketch.
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Take time out to enjoy your accomplishment. Rehearse all the patterns, experiment and get comfortable with your broken chords before going on to the next section.
Other one-hand triad patterns
See if you can play these treble parts from previous Canon Project modules with just the right hand.
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Combine the thirds with a broken chord texture – it will be like TBMT TBMT from before but with thirds instead of single ‘T’ notes.
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Listen to what the bass does in the audio performance file: it plays two notes per bar. Both notes are roots – the name note of the chord – but an octave apart, and the bass ‘bounces’ between the two notes.
If you can’t play the new bass with the right hand variation given, play it with plain chords first:
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It doesn’t matter if you don’t play the bass line exactly as written as long as you play two roots per chord.
If you can’t put the bass line variation and the new right hand part together yet, play the new right hand part with just a plain whole-note bass line:
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Finally, find the right hand chords an octave lower. The chords will be written in the bass clef, using leger lines, but the chord shapes and note names are the same – just an octave lower.
Canon96 Audio: CPA_M5_14 MIDI: CPM_M5_14
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Find the chords in the new place and rehearse them a few times.Now, listen to this audio clip. It’s the chords you’ve just found played with a slow rock ballad feel. The left hand plays two bass notes per bar, on beats one and four.
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Try to play this variation by ear from the audio clip before studying the music. The MidiPiano performance will give you more help.
This is the end of Module Five of the Musicarta Canon Project. When you’re ready, go on to Module Six, where we start looking at chord symbols. Or take a break and click up to the Musicarta home page for an overview of all Musicarta’s free online piano lessons.
