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By Noel Prashanth Published on: Mon Apr 25, 2022
To illustrate the difference, play the C Major chord triad 1-3-5 with all fingers at once – that’s a block chord. As opposed to this, if you play the chord one finger at a time 1-3-5, then it becomes a broken chord. A series of chords in a block/broken chord format is referred to as accompaniment, or more informally, comping.
Founder of The Skelly Project and a sought-after keyboardist for many popular bands, your teacher is an accomplished musician and Grade 8 from Trinity College London. Passionate about music early on, he started performing at the age of 9, and was a quarter-finalist on India’s Got Talent Season 7.
If you’ve read the previous posts, you would be familiar with the concept of chords, which are nothing but a group of notes played together. Now we explore the concept of block chords and broken chords on the keyboard, and how they can be used for something referred to as accompaniment.
To illustrate the difference quite simply, play the C Major chord that you’re already familiar with. When you play the triad 1-3-5 with all fingers at once (like you’re used to), that’s a block chord. As opposed to this, if you play the chord one finger at a time 1-3-5, then it becomes a broken chord. We’ll be using this to demonstrate something called accompaniment in this lesson. It is informally referred to as comping by musicians.
When you listen to popular songs, you would have heard the pianist or keyboardist play a series of chords in a block/broken chord format – that is what we refer to as accompaniment. We’ll now learn to play a very simple accompaniment using 4 beats in a bar.
1-2-3-4 is basically one bar or also referred to sometimes as a measure. Let’s use a metronome for this exercise and the C Major triad in block chord format. We’ll play the triad for 4 beats in a bar, which means you press down and lift on the 1 and the 2 and the 3 and the 4, of every 1-2-3-4 bar.
Now let’s add in the F Major chord to this exercise – play C Major on the first bar and F Major on the second bar. We’ll also use the left hand as a guide, to hit the root of the chord that you’re playing with your right hand – that means C (left hand) for the C Major (right hand), and F (left hand) for the F Major (right hand).
Next, incorporate the A Minor and G Major chords to play C, F, Am, and G. This is a simple accompaniment that you can add to your daily practice sessions. You can also experiment with the order of playing these four chords, to arrive at different accompaniments.
In the next blog post, we take a look at a new concept called chord inversions, which is basically rotating the finger positions. Keep reading to know all about the first and second inversions of chords you’ve already learnt.
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