Scale Up Your Keyboard Skills

When you have mastered the basics, move on to intermediate lessons to get closer to playing like a pro.

1. Building a Major Chord

The first lesson in the intermediate keyboard lessons is learning how to build a major chord or create a “triad”. A “triad” is made up of three tones which are sounded (three keyboard keys pressed) at the same time. Here you will learn how to build up your skills in building a triad which is a major chord. Major chords are the basis of the tune of a piece and learning how to tune your music, building a major chord is what you need to know.

2. Chord Number and Inversion

Since a major chord has three tones, we now assign a number system where we use roman numerals in the root position so we can change the note around. This is a technique where we are able to create new notes by having experiments on the notes. A more specific discussion will be done on this lesson when you take the actual keyboard lessons.

3. Chord Progression and Adding Harmony

Chord progression is a useful technique in harmonizing songs. It will enhance the rhythm of your piece and surely sound lovely to the ears of your listeners. Addition of harmony in songs is utilizing different chords in a million different ways to be able to create a tune proper for a piece.

Adding harmony to the songs is a bit difficult because it requires studying first all the possibilities of harmonizing the song and choosing the best possible harmony we could add. It takes a lot of time and may stress you a lot, so by going through with the lessons, different methods will be discussed on how to simplify this stage.

4. Enriching the Melody

In this lesson you will learn different methods on how to make your piece sound fuller by using some chords in different inversions. Some methods may require you to study different inversions and to utilize these inversions in a piece. By using these methods you will be able to give life to your music and captivate your listeners with the tune and melody you make.

5. Intervals

Intervals are the distance from one tone to the next. You must learn how to apply intervals in a piece to be able to have proper synchronization on how you play the piece. Intervals are expressed in ordinal words and have an equivalent note distances. Notice that every interval begins in the low note “C”. This is because the low “C” note served as the most common reference used by most keyboardists. The following are the intervals and their corresponding distances:

• Second – from C to D
• Third – from C to E
• Fourth – from C to F
• Fifth – from C to G
• Sixth – from C to A (the tone above the fifth)
• Seventh – from C to B (hard tone to find and sing)
• Eighth – from C to C (interval of an octave, same tone but 8 notes higher)

This article only presents some of the most common lessons taken in the Intermediate keyboard lessons. Taking the actual lessons may be more difficult and challenging but once you finish the entire session, you may call yourself a skilled keyboardist.