Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Exercises for harmonic voice leading (chord progressions)?

I have some piano exercise books (like Hannon, e.g.) that are great for practicing scales but I'm looking for something that has chord progressions, including inversions, and not just I-IV-V/V7.

I want to train my hands but also train my ear and hear how different chords pull to one another (I assume this is harmonic voice leading?)

Does anyone have suggestions?

Thanks

Don't need a book just do it yourself. Get fakebook of Great American Songbook tune there's all your common chord progression. Now just take the chords and sit and workup chord arrangements and using inversion create voice leading. Use color tones and basic chord subs for more varity of chords. Even just take on classic standard work up an chord arrangement, then change keys and make another arrangement. One song done in multiple keys can teach a world of info. In long run you'll learn a lot more doing it yourself than just playing the ink in a book.

Getting bored with your playing is a great teacher, it forces you experiment with new things and hear how it sounds.

I think that learning actual music is the way to learn how chord changes work. One of my favourites for that is Handel’s keyboard passacaglia in G minor. You get 8 bar variations each cycling through a descending 5ths chord progression in the G minor. You get loads of different inversions swapping from hand to hand. Much nicer to play and listen to than meaningless exercises. Highly patternised and simple to learn and play at a slow tempo.

https://youtu.be/yX6uUy1xe7s

Hi

In the Faber Adult Piano Adventures books Randell Faber explains all about harmony and melody and about chords and chord progressions . Why chords are leading from one to the other and how best to play them . This is all demonstrated in the videos to accompany units 12 , 13 and 14.. Unit 14 is on primary chords of I IV and & V . These videos can be found at Piano Aventures.com or on YouTube ( just search Adult Piano Adventures) He also shows examples of how to improvise using the chords

Putting chords into context in how they can be played and how to improvise using them will help your understanding better and build the foundation of chords to enable you to play the chord harmonies of lots of music styles

Thanks, that’s sounds promising. I’ll check out the YouTube videos when I get a chance but does that book go beyond I IV and V?

I find that IRealPro is a useful tool to practice chord changes.

You can just play along with a particular chord progression and then put it into a different key and do it again, etc ...

"Rhythm Changes" is a good choice for this type of exercise.

If you happen to use Android phone, take a look at '‎ChordProg Ear Trainer' application on it.

I think this is very hard to learn. I would suggest you need to learn about music harmony. I have been watching this youtube and did one of his online course. I found one that explained chord progressions work in major or minor keys very helpful.

Jazz Keyboard Harmony by Phil DeGreg is a good workbook for learning to voice harmonies. It's designed for college level work.

Link - http://jazzbooks.com/jazz/product/JKH

Ima DIY guy too. I say pick a song. Obviously, choose one with more than cowboy chords. Beatles songs are often quite sophisticated. Most folks i know voice thier chords for the least hand movement. Slash chords can box you into a particular voiceing too. Fun stuff! Chords are what you need, if you want to sing and play.

Hi joe

Whilst the faber Adult piano adventures book 1 concentrates on the primary chords 1 IV & V7 in the videos I mentioned, they also give a good explaination about how harmony works in practice and how to build harmonies and how to improvise with the notes of the scale you are in. the videos help put the chord progressions into context. They are definatly worth checking out .

I would also agree with the other posts, in that realy understanding chord progressions and harmoney you need to look at a variety of music pieces By analysing a range of music and seeing how they are harmonised and what chord progressions are used will enable you to be more familiur with them . This is the conclusion I have come to.