hello and welcome to piano lesson number 38 So today we're going to be talking about rolled chords now uh I'm going to start talking about where you'd use them how to do how to play them how they should sound like some tips on learning them and what not so let's get started the first thing I wanted to talk about is where would you actually want to put a rolled cord well that's a good question so there's basically two spots one is if the cord that you're trying to hit in the piece that you're playing is too big for you now this might happen if you're playing rock monov or scriabin uh those two tend to rate some pretty big chords and uh if you're playing those you probably already know how to do them but say you come to a spot where you need to roll a cord or you're trying to do something and just doesn't big enough and you're wanting some advice on it so that's what the lesson's for here today kind of to explain the whole thing okay so that's one use of a r chord if you have too big of a chord like say you're trying to hit like uh like this right too big for your hand so you could do that with one hand oops usually you want to practice the big RS to make sure get just like I messed up there it's because it's almost like learning something like muscular memory for your hand there so that's one use is for a big cord that you can't reach with your hand I actually I look like I have big hands something different about me is um I actually have really really thick webbing or long webbing so if you look at my fingers it looks like they're this long right but look when I bend my finger like this my fingers actually are that long so I've got at least about an inch or longer of webbing so it looks like I have a huge Palm but my actually my fingers are like that so I'm kind of like I wish I had a big reach but I just don't I have like an average reach I can hit about a ninth and then 10th is just stretching so it's a little bit bigger than some people but but it's still not like I have Rock mon off hands and I think if I didn't have that webbing then I'd be like I could maybe H another key or two and then I'd be like yeah but anyway I always tell people I'd be a really awesome duck yeah okay anyway um so basically uh rolled chords for too big of a cord or the other option now here this is a you could do this for anything it's to give an effect or um say you're coming up to some climax right you're just playing some piece and then you're coming right up to the beginning or sorry to the end of the phrase and you want to like add something more to it so you could roll that cord um I can't think for an example off the top of my head I know there's a baiten in grade three but I don't have it my M i' have to get out the book but anyway basically if you're coming up to it's like something like that or you could be hitting a chord like like that oh actually there's a spot in my uh my P too a while [Music] ago at the end it has a rolled chord because like this just doesn't sound good well it sounds okay but I mean see how you're like listening for that last note the last note there just draws you in and it kind of gives it a more interesting ending at least in my opinion anyway so that's a little bit about R cords the two main uses for them and I'm sure you could find many other uses for them that I haven't talked about so go crazy with that now next thing we're going to do is show you what it looks like in the music score okay so the next thing we're going to do is we're going to look at where what it looks like on the sheet music so as you can see this is brahs and a flat major it didn't actually have the title printed out so I kind of just threw it in there with my own hand writing I know this is actually years ago but anyway okay so these squiggly little lines here let's zoom in okay so as you see this squiggly little line to the left of the notes right there my my finger looks all fat on camera anyway okay so the squiggly little line goes up and it's to the left of the group of three notes here so we have an E flat because there's a flat there and then we have an A flat and just a c with a staccato Above So how we're going to do that see if there wasn't a staccato then we wouldn't be holding the notes after we we would be holding the notes after it would sound like this now because there is a staccato we're going to go like this like that the difference is this is what it looks like whoops this is the difference it looks like this is without the staccato you're going to hold it this is with the staccato okay anyway so that's that's the bar the squiggly little line the roll oh I can't think right now you guys are thinking oh what is he doing anyway okay so that's that that's what it looks like now being played you start from the bottom and you go to the top so with the pedal would sound like this it sounds I'm sorry I shouldn't be changing there just like that okay I don't think I kept the viewfinder on oh man I feel like I'm doing this horribly right now I'm not having one of those good days today today's Valentine's Day actually so happy Valentine's Day anyway so that's what a roll cord looks like let's just move on to the next one okay so the next part is focusing on the raw meat of the whole thing okay so basically what we want to look for here is um the note should be going down I guess listen would be a better word so we want to listen basically for an even tone and Tempo when we roll the chord so what you can start out doing if you're not familiar with rolling cords yet this is what you can start off doing first take your hand and stick it in a blunder no don't do that do this I'm joking don't actually do that if you do I take no legal responsibility it's not a good idea unless you don't like your hand but okay anyway so um what you're going to want to do is take your hand and then turn it from side to side with your wrist kind of like you're opening a door knob and just let your fingers go down like this back and forth back and forth now listen so that they go down evenly okay and then use your arm you don't have to be too good at it you don't have to be like crazy good because you want to eventually migrate down to the piano so the next thing you'll do is you'll just do a regular just comfortable C Maj chord hopefully it's just basically C to e to G to C okay now what I'm going to get you to do is start with your thumb while holding your thumb down on C still hit your second finger down then hit your third finger down and then your fifth do it really slowly just get an aim for a nice sound right now and even this we don't want this to sound it happen like that okay just try holding it okay hold down on the notes now the next time do it like this where you just you're just playing each note and letting go as you go up in kind of look a way then what you'll do is you'll gradually speed it up it's going to take some time or maybe it might not if you're pretty experienced by the way I wouldn't really recommend this doing this until you've at least probably played for you know like a year or so well maybe not a year some people learn really Qui quickly like once you're doing like grade three level stuff like once you can do a really really easy be up piece or something like that then you can start doing it and just don't overdo it when you're starting because you might get a little bit of pain if the cord's really big and the last thing you want to get is stress okay you want to keep really really relaxed relaxing is the key to everything and everything life piano music work driving sleeping and such okay so just take a chill pill and just relax man okay anyway so we're just going to rotate from left side to the right side okay it's just like this now once you get better at that with just the wrist then you'll just use your arm too what I think of is that I'm um it's like I've got my thumb here and I'm going to draw like a circle with an arcing rainbow or something with my hand and my arm moves freely and it's uh finding the pot of gold at the top of the key like that like that uh you want to make sure what like that you're doing it even when you go faster and also make sure that no notes are sticking up like you don't want this to happen okay that would be bad or like this you don't want one note louder than all the other ones like that that would be horrible like that or rhythmically and tonally and also relaxation so notice how I'm just going over and over those three points it's because it's really important then you'll want to use Arm so it starts from the shoulder so imagine kind of like when you have garden hose or like you're using a towel to whip someone okay so imagine you have that that's sort of the feeling of what you do with your arm it's like whatever happens in your shoulder eventually gets reproduced in your arm [Music] so so you're going through the keys in a circular motion [Music] eventually so if you watch watch this the if pretend that my wrist is drying something in midair and you can see that watch my [Music] wrist I'll try to slow it [Music] down so see how my wrist draws something and that opens [Music] up anyway so using your wrist keeping it relaxed just moving through it so if you can do all that uh it'll definitely help um another couple things that you could do is say you have a big big rolled chord in the base or something right right and you just can't get say it's like hugely massive like that so what I would do is I break it down into like an Adon note kind of thing so I'd practice going back and forth between these two keys like this now once I could do that like eyes closed and blindfolded then I would go to the next two keys so trying to listen or not listen it's like really hard to describe it's like in my head I it's like I imagine that I'm not seeing anything like even with my eyes open I'm not seeing what's in front of me all I'm doing is I'm feeling the distance between the two keys kind of like with my muscle memory and then my muscles see where the key is if that makes any sense oops see I need to practice that more if I wanted to get it good it's kind of a bit of a jump but then what you do eventually if you could get it all together yeah you normally wouldn't have a r card this back this would actually be kind of ridiculous but I was just showing you ridiculous for that whole point is that if it's really ridiculous just take it one note at a time and using like um a means to like blindfold yourself so that you can't see anything and do it is good because chances are when you're rolling this you're going to be playing something else at the same time and you do not want to be going oh okay uh yeah while you're doing this okay so keep keep doing this until you have it down so well that you can like do it blindfolded my cat came to say hi yes anyway okay so I hope that's enough information for you guys take care well that's it for today's lesson I hope you enjoyed uh everything I talked about and that you found it useful information so uh keep practicing and take care see you byebye