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Piano exercise for sequencing right hand chords with fixed top-most note

Music: Practice & Theory Asked by scidoc on October 25, 2021

Is there a diagram of all chords with the same melody note on top? with voice leading? with 7th?

Eb G C |  E G C |  E  A C  |
F  A C |  F A D |  F# A D | 
b3 5 1.   3 5 1.   3  6 1.     

When one is playing harmony in the right hand, the melody note must be on top. The exercise(diagram-treble clef notation) requested is to practice all common chords with C on top. Above we have Cm C Am F then we move to Dm with D on top then D triad.

I currently play harmony L hand melody R hand. I would like to play shells in the left hand & harmony R hand. In order to do this from a lead sheet, one must play the melody with the pinky then the rest of the chord with the other fingers RH. I am trying to practice all chords with C on top, all chords F on top, all chords Bb on top or
stepwise C D E F# on top.

2 Answers

I don't think such an approach would be useful. Voicing and fingering will be very dependent on context. You won't need a block chord under every melody note. As @Pyromonk commented, the best exercise will be lots of sight-reading of printed arrangements and transcriptions in the style you favour. You'll find the harmony notes shared out between the two hands in various, ever-changing ways.

Answered by Laurence Payne on October 25, 2021

Here's a pattern that hits every basic triad (dim, min, maj, aug) containing the target "top pitch", but doesn't especially concern itself with harmonically functional voice-leading.

X: 1
T: Basic triad pattern
M: 4/4
L: 1/4
K: C
|[_E_GC'][E=GC'][E^GC'][EAC']|[=EGC'][E^GC'][EAC']2|[F_AC']2[F=AC']2|[^FAC']4||[^FA^D'][F^AD'][FBD'][F^BD']| [G_B_E'][G=BE'][GC'E']2|[_A_C'_E']2[A=C'E']2|[=AC'_E']4||[AC'^F']

Presumably there is a similar pattern that would work for seventh chords; however, there would be 65 chords for each different "melody" note.

(Five common seventh chords: dim, half-dim, min, dom, maj
Four of them have three inversions with the top note fixed: half-dim, min, dom, maj
Plus the fully diminished chord, for which all inversions are enharmonically equivalent
Thus, 4^3 + 1 = 65)

Answered by Aaron on October 25, 2021

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