The benefits of knowing your chords...

[omnisis]

I just started learning all my major chords + inversions about two months ago and I am surprised at how quickly my sight-reading of chords has improved since then.  For instance, I learned how to recognize first-inversion/second-inversion chords at sight.  A first inversion chord is a 3rd interval followed by a 4th while a second inversion is a 4th followed by a third.  Knowing all the chords by memory has also helped as well as knowing their respecitive black/white key patterns.  For instance C Major would be white-white-white while Ab Major would be black-white-black.  I also learned all my cadence patterns for the root position triads but not for their inversions. 

Are there any other kinds of pattern analysis things like this that would help me sight read better?  I always wondered how a musician could just look at a chord and name it  but since I've been drilling on my chords now and analyzing pieces throughly before I play I find that I can now do the same thing...


~omnisis

[jeremyjchilds]

Are there any other kinds of pattern analysis things like this that would help me sight read better?  I always wondered how a musician could just look at a chord and name it  but since I've been drilling on my chords now and analyzing pieces throughly before I play I find that I can now do the same thing...

Way to gp...now learn the 3 primary chords and the relative minor for each key so you can anticipate harmonic movement...Also learn perfect and plagal cadences in each possible inversion...Also learn all scales...that's the basics...keep it up

[ted]

While you are at it, don't stop at pattern recognition solely for analysis and sight reading. Play them for yourself in all sorts of ways and positions, remembering those ones which excite you and stimulate your imagination. If, during your listening, you hear a new one which strikes you as special, find out what it is by ear and work through it in many positions at the piano until you realise at the conscious level why it seems special.

Intimacy with this sort of thing is not a well defined task which comes to an end, but an immensely rewarding lifelong process. It is rewarding because the number of formations is so vast that the surprises never reach an end. Also, do not be afraid, because books and other people say they are "wrong", to explore and use patterns which you like the sound of personally. All inhibition of this type is destructive.

[stevie]

this is one of the arguments that defends practicing scales and arpeggios.

because when you are fluent in this most common of pianistic vocabulary, it becomes automatic and your mind is freer to concern itself with more important things in the music.

for example when approaching a fast ascending/descending scale/arpeggio, on sight try to recognise it, and because youve singled them all out and ingrained their fingerings in your subconcious finger memory, they will play themselves.

same thing with 3rds and 6ths, practice the most common figurations in a variety of keys, and they will become automatic...yeah i said that already.