3 IMPORTANT PIANO ELEMENTS

Rocks, gravel and waves are to the Zen garden what chromaticism, broken chords and leaps are
to the pianist. The inherent lack (of mastery) of any one of these elements renders the other two
somewhat useless.

Chromaticism is in fact quite a complex study if you wish to go all the way but for this article, it is
enough to understand the following logic: Major scales are built from the twelve available notes in
the familiar chromatic scale, which has been around for centuries, and contain seven notes.
These seven notes do not create
a chromatic scale because they
do not contain only semi-tone
intervals; the interval pattern is:
tone, tone, semi-tone, tone, tone,
tone, semi-tome (or whole, whole,
half, whole, whole, whole, half-
step).
Although I often call major scales
the DNA of the piano/jazz, since without them, nothing is possible, we could call the chromatic
scale the nucleotide of the major scales.

Due to the tuning system used, each note forming the chromatic scale just happens to be the
same 'pitch' above or below the next note on our instruments. This interval is called a semi-tone;
when they are all lined up, it just happens to create 12 pitches which we just happen to label C,
C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B. Of course, they could be labelled as flats in the opposite
direction.

When one wishes to play a note outside the major scale, one enters the world of 'chromaticism'.
When reading music, such notes are highlighted by a sharp # or flat b or natural ♮ symbol and are
known as accidentals.

In practice, being able to play chromatically, meaning one note after the other, is incredibly
important. So much music from the last 200 years at least has involved chromatic movement and
pieces often demand chromatic runs in both hands, sometimes starting on different notes which
can really confuse the conscious mind.

Spend a lot of time playing with the chromatic scale; however, do not just try to become the fastest
full-length chromatic scale executor the world has ever seen but break them down into bite-sized
phrases. C to F# and back again, or Ab to Eb and back again. Try chromatic runs using intervals,
meaning each hand starts on a different note.

Liszt's priceless (yet free) technical exercises collection has pages and pages of intervalic
chromatic runs. Also, try them using unnatural fingering, just for a beneficial work out. And as
always, do all of these with your eyes closed and Find your Natural Limit... then work at pushing
it.

You would be hard-pushed to find a piece of piano music which does not involve broken chords
played in some way. Usually in the lower register or requiring use of the left hand to provide some
kind of accompaniment to the melody in the right hand, broken chords come in two basic forms: in-
octave and multi-octave (arpeggio) and may vary only in speed of execution and direction
(ascending/descending). An exceptionally important element to playing the piano, broken chords
must be mastered with all chord types and in all twelve keys.

This sentence, "in all twelve keys", gets chucked around a bit too often but for chords, you simply
must do it because as you acquire repertoire and work through progressions, at some point, you
will have passed through all twelve keys whether you liked it or not (!) so get used to them in the
early stages so that you may thank your past Self (and a teeny tiny bit, me) in the future.

If you search for an official meaning of the word

'leap', as used in musical theory, you will not find one definitive answer. There are steps and
skips, whereby the former is the interval of a second or less (C to D or Db, for example) and the
latter anything larger than a minor 3rd (C to Eb or above); then there exists an octave which is a
leap, too, but you would do well to follow my additional rule which I believe should be added to
music theory literature surrounding the word 'leap' itself. See what you think...:

One has a step and a skip as described above and which are, in the purist sense of the word,
leaps. One then has an octave which, as may already be realised, is the third kind of 'leap'. So,
what about anything which is a minor 9th or above (outside an octave)? At the moment, it must be
called a 'skip' because it's a leap above a minor 3rd but the octave acts as a barrier. I dislike this
set up of terminology.

If I may, name only this interval (b9) and above as a 'leap', for the octave and within already have
their own designated terminology whereas the b9 and beyond do not. For anything of an octave
interval or less, let them be named 'jumps'.

Would one argue against a leap being further than a jump? I don't believe so...

Spending time with all jumps: steps (minor 2nd and second), skips (between a minor 3rd and a
major 7th) and octaves is of course part of one's technical exercise regime at the piano but leaps,
as you now understand, involve jumping beyond an octave and appear quite often in music yet are
often disregarded during practice sessions. Do not let this be the case for You.

I hope that this article has given you some food for thought and that you are now able to focus
your piano time in a manner more beneficial to your natural progress and on the elements which
matter most.

Understand that pianism is quite simply a blend of chromaticism, broken chords and leaps and
that, just as with the Zen garden, if one element is missing, the other two suffer in their
lonesomeness.