The importance of learning chords in your piano lessons

I can hardly overemphasize the importance of learning all about chords as you take piano lessons. The reason it is so important is because music is largely made of broken chords, partial chords, arpeggions, and block chords. Knowing what chord is in force at any point in a song allows you to not only understand the music better, but also to add to the music as you play.

So when you look for a music lesson teacher, be sure to ask them if they teach music theory (which includes chords).

How to create piano runs & musical fills

It is exciting for any pianist to picture himself or herself playing those LIGHTNING FAST runs up the keyboard and back down in time for the next chord, or playing CASCADING RUNS down the keyboard for a WATERFALL of wonderful sounds, to say nothing of using mordents, inverted mordents, trills, turns, tremolos, grace notes, glissandos, fillers galore, cocktail-piano runs, plus gospel-style runs as well as "blues runs" based on the blues scale!

Is it worth the effort to learn some or all of these techniques? It certainly has been for me, but every pianist will have to make that judgment for himself or herself.

For the complete article, please go to http://www.playpiano.com/broadcast/2-runs&fills.htm

How Many Chords Are There, Anyway?

Lots of people wonder how many chords there could possibly be -- they hear song after song and think that there must be as many chords as there are stars in the sky.

Continued at Piano Chords: http://www.playpiano.com/Articles/29-howmanychords.htm