Part 1 - Instruction and Exercises (PC Series)
About the Individual Units
Chord Prep Course - Intro and Organizer / PC-05 - This unit introduces the seond of our courses, the Chord Prep Course. In addition this unit provides instructions for printing and assembling a binder book for housing the course, including book covers, section dividers, and tables of contents.
Chord Prep Exercises / PC-10 - This unit starts with a brief explanation of how chords and chord symbols work. Following this introduction is a series of exercises based on the primary chords in several major and minor keys. The exercises are designed to help the student begin to develop the hand position habits that make chord playing possible.
In the exercises each pair of facing pages follows this pattern: The page on the left provides practice playing the primary chord triads of the selected key. These triads are limited to the blue octave so that all of the hand positions required to play the triads remain very close to each other. Limiting the notation to the blue octave group greatly reduces the distances that the left hand must move while moving from chord to chord. This makes the chord sequences much easier to play than if all were in root positions - while keeping the eyes on the sheet music. (This procedure results in playing many of the chords as inversions.) The unit ends with a chart showing the notes of the most common chords positioned in the blue octave. 20-pages
Broken-Chord Pattern Exercises / PC-12 - This unit shows how to take the left hand block chord patterns that were introduced in the previous unit, Unit PC-10, and play them in various standard broken chord patterns used for accompanying melodies played by the right hand. Several pages of examples and exercises are presented, and the unit concludes with a chart showing effective fingering of triads in root and inverted positions for both the left and right hands. 8-pages
To help clarify the sizes of the intervals on the charts, each interval is color coded to show its size. The first note of the interval is always yellow; it is the root. If the next note is a minor 2nd away, it is colored indigo. A major 2nd is blue; a minor 3rd is green, and so on as explained in the unit. All notation in the unit is shown on diagrams of the the keyboard. Standard notation and key maps are not used. Standard interval terminology is used along with an interval code indicating how many keys need to be skipped to create the interval. 20-pages
Chord Chart Patterns on Key Maps - With Interval and Scale Charts / PC35 - This unit is a collection of charts on key maps illustrating interval patterns, scale patterns, and chord patterns of various types. The notes are color coded in different ways to show interval sizes, chord fingering, and accidentals, as explained in the unit. Though the notes on the charts can be played on the keyboard, there are no exercises in this unit. 16-pages
To Part 2 of This Course
Basic Patterns of Keyboard Harmony / PC-15 (Illustrated) - This unit explains how intervals, scales, and chords work in terms of how they look and can be played on the keyboard. The unit is profusely illustrated with diagrams showing how the distances between the notes (sounds) determine the natures of the scales and chords that we play. The unit is explanatory; there are no exercises.
