G Major

Part 1 of our thirds exercise breakdown — G major and G harmonic minor scales worked in diatonic thirds with two rhythm patterns. Practice this daily. We also cover three left-hand approaches: holding the pulse on the starting note, mirroring the right hand in thirds, or playing the scale notes underneath the thirds in the right hand.

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Turn your boring scale practice into a full workout — triads ascending and descending in F major and F harmonic minor, with speed and rhythm variations. Watch till the end for the thirds pattern on G major. Follow @NathanielSchoolOfMusic for more piano drills! Welcome to Part 2 of our triad workout! In Part 1 we formed the triads of the F major and F harmonic minor scales along with their first and second inversions, ascending and descending. Now we take those same shapes and make them musical by focusing entirely on rhythm. We start by revising one chord every two counts, then explore rhythmic anticipation — playing chords on the off-beats instead of the predictable 1, 2, 3, 4. You'll learn to displace chords to the "and" of beats, shift the chord itself on off-beats, and combine block chords with arpeggios and broken chords for variety. From there we move into quaver (eighth note) scale drills, add a swing feel, and tackle popular rhythm patterns like the tresillo, the clave and the 3-3-2 grouping. We also gamify the exercise across time signatures, starting at 8 beats per chord and shrinking down to 7, 6, 5, 4 and 3 — pushing you to change chords faster while staying in the groove. Your left hand gets a workout too: single octaves, perfect fifths (with the diminished fifth on the leading tone), broken chords, and cascading two-hand patterns. We even show how to borrow a song's rhythm to keep your practice fun and creative. Underneath all the groove, you're really drilling root position, first inversion, second inversion and even spread voicings. If you found this piano tutorial useful, do watch Part 1 and our related music lessons linked in the description. Thanks for practising with us, and I'll catch you in the next one! 🎹

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