Six Piano Broken Chord And Arpeggio Techniques You Need To Know

[@lawrencetaylor4101]

Thanks Bill, I can't wait to start diving into your books.

[@JoseVGavila]

You made my day!. Just these days I was feeling like my pop piano playing, based on chord music sheets and melody by ear, was stuck due to the left hand monotony. Now it has got a full new path of improvement ahead. THANKS !!!

[@BillHilton]

You're welcome, Jose - glad it helped!

[@lawrencetaylor4101]

Merci for this, Bill. This is a looker for several months in the future.

[@lawrencetaylor4101]

I saw this when I first started playing the piano, and thought I was better than I was. I had to put in the time, and John Thompson helped a lot. But I have Volume 1 and 2. But stark reality meant that I went back to Volume 1 several times. But it's helping me to really be musical. I have a teacher who is supportive of my decision, and sees progress. I think that it's time to tackle Bill's books. I noticed that Bill assumes a basic foundation, and I can understand his logic. He's like a Secondary school teacher.

[@shadowboxsw]

Love it Bill, especially since I over use technique #1, it’ll be good to add more variety

[@BillHilton]

Remember to check out my books - How To Really Play The Piano, Seven Studies In Pop Piano and An Introduction To Cocktail Piano! Links here: www.billspianopages.com/how-to-really www.billspianopages.com/seven-studies www.billspianopages.com/cocktail

[@arthouston7361]

Thank you for the inclusion of the virtual keyboard, Bill. It helps me to confirm and visualize what your hands are doing. This is grist for the mill....you are giving me more to stretch my goals.

[@BillHilton]

You're welcome, Art!

[@fabiancosster2992]

I am very happy to visit your chanell its amazing i didnt know about it keep posting videos like this keep doing the good job GodBlessing for you and your family

[@BillHilton]

Thanks for visiting!

[@saishyam3249]

Hi Bill!, Your tutorials have been very helpful in my piano journey, thanks a lot!.

[@BillHilton]

You're very welcome Sai - give me a shout if you ever have any questions/suggestions!

[@zacharygabriel5221]

Hi Bill, very useful video. Would you consider a brief follow up to discuss the options when the harmony changes within bars. Thanks.

[@BillHilton]

Thanks Zach! Yes, I've actually got another arpeggios vid coming up soon, dealing with a few issues that come out of this one (arps in the right hand, complex chords, etc.). Since this one has been popular I'll probably do it fairly soon.

[@coloaten6682]

Really useful, thanks Bill! I started to learn Canon in D yesterday. I always wondered why it was so popular with beginners but never investigated why. I looked at the sheet music and it was instantly obvious why, for a few reasons, but 1 being the LH. It starts off simple and gets progressively more difficult so it's just what I needed, just like this video, so very timely :)

[@Kinnnnnnnnn1]

i have been practising this recently. When you actually play it, the effect sounds better than the scores😀

[@coloaten6682]

@@Kinnnnnnnnn1 Awesome! Good luck with it, David :)

[@BillHilton]

You’re welcome, Col! If you ever want any feedback, just post a recording or video somewhere, or email me one, and I’ll get back to you with some thoughts. Same goes for you, David. Good luck practising, both of you!

[@coloaten6682]

@@BillHilton Thanks Bill, I really appreciate that!

[@moreskacarvalho227]

Thank you for this video. The explanation is done so well, it was very helpful.

[@BillHilton]

You're welcome, Moreska!

[@angelaalves9530]

Awesome Bill! I'm struggling with what to do with lead sheets (besides block chords) and what to practice to get better at it. Will add these patterns and messing around to my practice routine!

[@BillHilton]

Glad you like them, Angela - let me know how you get on!

[@patriciaann6380]

Really enjoyed this Bill as per normal 😊 x

[@BillHilton]

Thanks Patricia - more on the way soon...!

[@alaindubois1505]

Thanks, Bill. Coming from hideous electronic organ methods, with horrible block chords of the left hand, this video shows how much exercising the left hand with arpeggios is necessary to transition to better keyboard playing. I really appreciate how you abbreviate these. Having both the higher keyboard display shows well the notes played, while your hands show the fingering crossovers. Now we can see why organists need two keyboards if playing left-hand block chords that must be in a higher range and may interfere with lower notes of the right hand. Not playing an acoustic piano with a sustain pedal myself, does the sustain pedal sustain all the notes played by the right hand as well as the bass notes? Is this a problem? What are the three pedals used for? [I'm getting a semi-weighted keyboard for my VSTi/DAW software, and hope to emulate the acoustic piano.]

[@BillHilton]

You’re welcome, Alain! Yes, the sustain basically sustains every note on the that you press on the keyboard until either you release the pedal or the notes die away naturally. The right pedal is sustain, the left pedal (the “soft” pedal) makes it easier to play quietly, and the middle pedal’s function varies by piano manufacturer: sometimes it sustains all currently depressed notes, or acts as a super-quiet “practice” pedal. Generally you can manage without it - I never use the middle pedal on either of my pianos. Does that clarify things for you?

[@97rhymes]

Thank you for that, appreciate it.

[@BillHilton]

My pleasure!

[@eobias]

Wow the virtual keyboard is a much needed upgrade!

[@BillHilton]

Thanks Eric! I have kind of mixed feelings about it - it’s useful for showing notes clearly, but I think it can also be distracting for some, and clearly it can’t show things like finger technique. I don’t want to overuse it, because I think it’s important to steer people away from thinking that playing the piano is simply a matter of pressing the right keys in the right order, but if I can get the balance right I hope it can make things clearer!

[@Taichistretchingspace3479]

I hunted for this because I wanted to improve arpeggio speed in Pack Four Pop Study in D ..good news that I am improving but that piece depends on fast and smooth arpeggios..worth the effort …thanks

[@BillHilton]

You're welcome, as ever, Ron! How are you getting on with it?

[@Taichistretchingspace3479]

@@BillHilton great - changing my whole perspective - answering a lot of questions and helping me to understand how pop music accompaniment is written and played- beyond my dreams. Thanks Bill.

[@mrjourney2299]

really love it❤

[@onimisilovesonmusic4548]

Very useful..thanks

[@BillHilton]

You're welcome!

[@danpangil]

Thanks😊

[@S24W2]

Thanks Bill. Regards Shane

[@BillHilton]

You're welcome, Shane!

[@wertiepensus7961]

Really nice, totally made my day !! Btw, what is the name of that keyboard.

[@BillHilton]

Thanks! It's a Nord Piano 2 :)

[@deacondeacondeacon]

Perfect timing! Just as I'm starting to cover arpeggios in my lessons 🙂

[@BillHilton]

Excellent - hopefully I haven’t said anything daft that your teacher disagrees with 😬 😂

[@Rikiko722]

Do you have any tips for playing large arpeggiated chords that reach over a tenth? I can't find any videos or information on them. I play them slowly as broken arpeggios to practice with a lot of wrist movement but when I try to play them as chords I cannot get them to sound smooth whatsoever and I often lose control of dynamics and evenness of each note.

[@ebiparker9989]

Unexpected love from India

[@BillHilton]

Back atcha from North Yorkshire, Ebi!

[@ebiparker9989]

@@BillHilton thank you for your's teaching Our master💞

[@zekiyezeynepsahin9449]

Thank you Bill. I am an early intermediate piano player. I can follow the lesson, but I know I have to repeat the patterns so that they become habit. Will you demonstrate them in slow motion? I tried to slow the video, but then the quality goes down..

[@BillHilton]

Point taken, Zekiye - thanks very much for the feedback! Deciding the speed to demonstrate these things at is a constant headache: whatever speed I pick, for some people it will be too slow and for others too fast. Right now, the KZbin speed function is the best way of dealing with it, but I realise it's not perfect :(

[@cindybleier7339]

i like to purchase your paperbound course of How to play cocktail lounge piano please. Thanks Bill

[@BillHilton]

Hi Cindy: I'm afraid that right now "An Introduction to Cocktail Piano" is only available as a PDF download. I'm planning to produce a printed edition for release in 2022, but right now it's digital only - very sorry about that! Is there anything else I can help you with?

[@OneStepToday]

what about the left hand Passacaglia stride broken chords.

[@virajlawale9384]

Thanks I wanted to ask, Can arpeggios be more advance than this ? Bcoz i can play the last variation you showed and i want to progress much more

[@BillHilton]

Yes, definitely, Viraj, in a few different ways. There's the obvious one of tempo - a faster arpeggio is clearly harder to play, but also has a different musical effect (listen to Debussy's "Clair de Lune"...). But then you can also do things like building dyads (pairs of notes) in your arpeggios, or using polyrhythms - e.g. two in the right against three in the left, which is a really common thing in late Romantic piano music (listen to Brahms' late piano pieces) that has carried over into quite a lot of pop piano. Does that help?

[@Abd-Elrahman_Esam]

what if my right hand is a melody not chords ? how can I fit Arpeggios with a melody when melody is changing it's notes continuously ? thanks so much

[@pradeepkumarpanda7626]

Hi Bill, I like the 2nd technique. But you missed mentioning another easy technique, I find helpful - root, fifth and 10th for 3/4 and then back to 5th for 4/4. Isn't it?

[@BillHilton]

Sorry I missed this when you first posted it, Pradeep! Yes indeed, 1-5-10-(5) is a very good one!

[@Stevethesearcher]

Thank you Bill for this. I was asking you about this in the last video you did. However at the risk of seeming ungrateful I was hoping that you were going to cover right hand arpeggios that occur near where you would play the melody in the upper octaves let’s say C4-C5 range. On another note for some bizarre reason comments were not showing on KZbin on my Laptop. I went to Twitter and other people had noticed it.too. Strangely though comments were working on my iPad. I just mention this in case you noticed it.

[@BillHilton]

No problem! In the original plan there was a bunch of sections about right hand arpeggios, but I split them off when I realised it was going to wind up being a 40-minute video. I'm going to reorganise them with some additional material and create another tutorial from them in a week or two - watch this space for that. Re: comments, everything is working fine for me at the moment. I know YT seems to have had some server load issues over the past few days (this vid took about five times as long as usual to process) so possibly it's related to that. I'll keep my ears pinned back for anyone else noticing the same problem, though - thanks for the headsup!

[@Stevethesearcher]

@@BillHilton Thanks Bill. I appreciate your reply. You have been very helpful with your replies. At this point i am going to declare my interest here. I actually don’t play Piano. However I am a song writer who writes my own music. Basically I program all my music from drums to bass to keyboards, strings you name it. Most of my work is done in the Piano Roll where I literally draw in the notes myself. The thing is if you don’t understand the way the Piano is played it is very hard to program it and make it sound realistic. I have a pretty good ear for music and I can usually program a lot of stuff by ear. However I just can’t seem to program arpeggios at all. From my situation I want to be able to program piano arpeggios along with programmed drums and bass. So I will have a steady drum beat and a bass playing the bass line of my song. Then I will usually have a pad sound over that. A pad is just a music programmers way of saying s long sustained note.usually a root note an octave or two higher than the bass root note. Ok that’s all well and good. However you need some more rhythm over that and a piano or guitar arpeggio nicely fills in the space. So I guess by that logic I want to arpeggiate the chords that a keyboardist or pianist would play in their right hand. I don’t have to worry about the left hand so much as there is a bass playing in the background so I am approaching it differently to the way a solo piano player would because they have to do play the bass with their left hand. Anyway that is the reason for my interest in this topic. Just to finish off I am a long term subscriber to your channel and also am very interested in the theory aspect as well.

[@BillHilton]

@@Stevethesearcher That's really interesting, Steve - I'll certainly bear all that in mind when doing the next lot of stuff on arpeggios. Out of interest, what other topics might be useful to you, in terms of theory/piano performance/whatever? I've occasionally had in mind to produce more stuff for people who are doing production-type work and DAW-based songwriting, so any perspectives would be very welcome. Either let me know here or drop me an email: billhiltonmedia at gmail dot com.

[@Stevethesearcher]

@@BillHilton Thanks Bill I really appreciate that. I will send you an E-mail with the title Steve Arpeggio questions. Have a nice weekend!

[@bobby3eb]

couldn't catch the notes on the 3rd progression :(

[@BillHilton]

Try slowing it down, Robert - the option to do so is there if you dig around in the settings, lower right of the video screen (the little cog icon).

[@sessawian5676]

Kindly please play in slow motion..I'm unable to catch up.. 😁

[@BillHilton]

You can actually slow the video down, using the KZbin speed function - just click the little cog in the bottom right hand corner to bring it up!

[@maywong8253]

Too tough for small hands

[@ianadegbenro4709]

Should have gone into a minor chord on the last B major

[@jarobi9534]

Sorry Bill, but suffering through an ad every few minutes isn't worth it. The most I've ever seen. Unsubscribed.

[@BillHilton]

Sorry to see you go, Jarobi! Unfortunately, I have to make a living, and these days this is what I do for a living. Unless I lock all the videos away behind a members-only paywall - which I don't want to do, because I'm acutely aware that there are a lot of learners out there who don't have a ton of money to spend - then I have to rely on advertising revenue (KZbin's, and my own promotions for my books etc) to make a living. If I turned ads off and went back to working full-time on non-musical stuff, I'd also have to go back to the days when I only posted four or five tutorials a year. Hey-ho: I realise I can't please everyone. Good luck finding what you're looking for elsewhere.

[@muizzy]

No. Don't. Gonna abstain from this video, purely because of the excess of clickbait.

[@BillHilton]

Sorry Muizz - it’s an arms race. I have to pull the click bait lever a little, or I lose out - big time - to those who pull it really hard. Also I find producing tacky thumbnails oddly satisfying.

[@coloaten6682]

@@BillHilton I know what you're saying Bill....it seems everybody is producing videos with stuff that I "Need" to know. Often I prove to them that I don't need to know, by not knowing :) . When it's people like yourself who always produce quality I tend to not get hung up on the actual title, more just a case of picking out the key words.

[@BillHilton]

@@coloaten6682 Cheers Col! It’s a tough one, really, because my natural instinct is to be quite “does what it says on the tin” - in fact, if you look back a year or two, that kind of plain style is exactly what I used. These days, though, the competition among new videos has become very intense, and since this is what I do for a living now I have to do what I can to stand out. The trends can’t run like this forever, though: what interests me is the way we’ll be doing this stuff in five or ten years’ time, assuming the internet hasn’t melted by then...

[@coloaten6682]

@@BillHilton Hopefully, eventually, people will start to ignore the click bait-y titles that many use and be drawn in by the constant quality of the good channels. I tend to look at the number of subs a channel has before I spend much time watching the content. Having said that though, there are some hidden gems with very few subs, so it is hard to stand out.