This is the " Secrets of Exciting Chords & Chord Progressions!" newsletter that you (or someone using your E-mail address) signed up for when you visited our site. If you no longer want to receive these free weekly E-mail piano lessons, toggle down to the bottom of this E-mail and you'll see where you can take yourself off the list. We take your privacy (and ours) very seriously, so we don't want anyone receiving our stuff who doesn't want it! ('cause thousands really do!). And by the way, we can't control your ISP  -- some ISPs filter out newsletters like this --  and if the sound or graphics don't come through, check with them.

" Secrets of Exciting Chords & Chord Progressions!"  

- Week Eight -

All The Major 6th Piano Chords

The first of the extended chords group

Click here      to hear Duane walk you through 6th chords

      Hello again, and welcome to the next edition of the newsletter. I hope you are enjoying learning about all the chords in the world -- and we're going to cover them ALL before we're done -- you'll know more about chords than 99% of the people in the world -- believe it or not, it's true.

    If you recall the first week we learned about the three chords you absolutely, positively CAN'T do without. Then the next  week we took an airplane ride over Chordland just to get the lay of the land -- the overview of the world of chords.

     Then in the next  weeks lesson we showed you how easy it is to learn ALL the major chords (there are 12 of them) and be able to play them in seconds -- not hours or days or weeks or months or years. Some people go through their entire lives not being sure about what such and such a major chord is -- and it's all so unnecessary, because you can memorize them in just a few minutes, and learn to play them in 12 seconds or less - one second per chord. I have had many private students over the years who could play them all in as little as 5 seconds -- one little gal (she was about 12 at the time) had particularly fast hands, and could play them in - believe it or not - 3 seconds!  I have slow hands with fat fingers, and yet I can play them in something like 5 or 6 seconds.

     Next  you learned how to easily turn major chords into minor chords just by moving one key one-half step -- by lowering the 3rd of the major chord.

     Then we learned inversions -- how to stand chords on their head.

     And finally, we took up augmented triads -- formed by simply raising the 5th of a major triad.

     Today we are going to learn major 6th chords. They are 4-note chords -- the root, 3rd, 5th -- just like a major chord, but you also add the 6th degree of the scale to the major triad. The 6th is ALWAYS one whole step above the 5th -- never a half step --  so they are real easy to find.

     So here is the formula:

Here's what Major 6th piano chords look like on the staff:

(Remember that accidentals carry over in each measure!)

     And here's what they look like when played in root position: (They appear in the same order as the notation above -- besides, you should be able to form them by now, since all there is to it is to add the 6th note of the scale to the major chord!)

      When you can do that you ought to feel really, really, really, really optimistic about learning chords, because you're on your way! After all, you have gone from:

    Next week we will add 12 more chords to our growing list of chords we can play by adding minor 6th chords to our stash. (Actually 48 more chords, since each 4-note chord such as a minor 6th can be inverted 4 ways -- root position, 1st inversion, 2nd inversion, and 3rd inversion.

If you're more advanced and are ready to get serious about your piano playing, then you really need to know about:

"Pro Secrets: The 36 Piano Techniques Used By The Pros!"

Each month for three years you will spend the entire month getting really good at just one technique. When you have that technique down, we go on to the next technique for a solid month, and so on. Warning: Do not take this course unless you are prepared to rehearse a solid hour a day on just one technical skill! These are serious drill tapes for serious students!

     Meanwhile, if you haven't already gone to ChordPiano.com and taken the little test I give to see if you are capable of playing "chord piano", titled " Can I Really Learn To Play Chord Piano", be sure to go there right now!

     This FREE newsletter is sponsored by PlayPiano.com -- the folks who made piano playing exciting, fun, and understandable!