Professional Pianists and Spread Position

You may have noticed that if you've watched professional pianists performing, even when they're improvising, they often have a spread position in the right hand. They're often covering an octave.

Advantages of a Spread Position

There's an advantage to doing that:

• If you've got your hand spread instead of in a close position,
• You're covering more notes, which gives you more notes at your disposal.

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Introducing Spread Position Triads

Let's look at these spread position triads from the beginning. So far, we've mainly played three-note triads. We're now starting to add more four-note shapes with the root, top, and bottom.

Inversions of Triads

• First Inversion:
  • Will have the third on top and bottom.
  • Notice my fourth finger, I've adjusted the fingering.
• Second Inversion:
  • Will have the fifth on top and bottom.

Get used to arpeggiating those as well. For instance, in Green Dolphin Street, you might want to practice all of those in root position but also practice the inverted shapes so that you're really flexible and can play the triads in any position.

Fingering Tips

Think about the fingering of some of these inverted shapes. For instance, with the E triad in second inversion:

• I'm using 1, 2, 3 (Thumb on the root, thumb on the fifth).

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Important Broken Chord Exercises

Now, let's look at some really important broken chord exercises. A broken chord is when you go up each of those inversions in turn.

Example: F Major Exercise

Let's do the same thing on E.

• Notice in the second shape, the first inversion, I kept the thumb on the white note.

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Practicing around Blue Dolphins

Remember, when you're playing around Blue Dolphins, not all the chords are the same length:

• You've got two bars on E flat,
• Two bars on G flat,
• But only one bar on F and E.

You have to adjust accordingly.

Simple Improvisation

Let's try a simple improvisation with that easy bass line and work on how we connect these arpeggios together.

Count: 1, 2, 3, 4.

One of the things I was trying to achieve was to join each chord by a semitone.

• Notice how I made the connection at the bar line just by going from G to G flat.
• And then I did it again.

Instead of playing the same shape, I went up the first one and down the second, and then again. So every time you can make a semitone connection like that, it's going to be effective.

Forward Motion

What I just played didn't have any forward motion. All the changes from one chord to the next were at the bar line. Now, let's do something similar but with some forward motion.

Count: 1, 2, 3, 4.

That's always going to be effective as well.

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Implementation of Techniques

So, those two devices:

• Connecting by step at the bar line
• Using pickups with forward motion

Try to implement them in many different situations. You should always get a good result.