Comments for open voicing

How to Form an Open Voicing Chord
by: Ido Ronen from www.piano-play-it.com

Hi Cheri,

I am familiar with the difficulty of recognizing what is the exact chord when it is played in open voicing.

It requires a lot of experience before you can immediately recognize the chord.

Here is a list of 4 steps, one by one, that will help you to understand which chord is being played:

1. What is the bass note of the chord? Remember this - you will need it later on.

2. If a note occurs twice in the chord, you should eliminate one of them.
How many different notes did you get?
If you got 3 notes, it means that you have a triad.(major chord, minor chord etc.)
If you got 4 notes, it means that you have a seventh chord.

If you are not sure about this step go to our chord course.

3. If the bass of the chord is different from the name of the chords, you have a slash chord. Otherwise, the chord is the one from step 2.

Here is an example which will make things clearer:

Which chord is written below?

An open voicing chord

Here are the steps that are mentioned above:

1. The bass is A.

2. Which notes are there?
From the bottom: A-F#-D-A-D. We have three different notes: A F# and D.
Q: What is this chord?
A: D major. (If you are not sure why is this a D major chord go to our chord course.).

3. The chord is D, but the bass is different. It means that you have a slash chord- D/A

This procedure can take several minutes at first, but after repeat this hundreds of times it takes less than one second.

Apart from this there are two main things which will help you to improve your control of open chords and inversions.
The first is practicing arpeggios exercises and other piano techniques.
The second is playing as many songs as you can. You can watch and learn from dozens of David's tutorials for popular and beautiful songs.

You are welcome to post here any other questions you may have about chords which you are unable to recognize.

Ido from www.piano-play-it.com

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