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Brand new to piano. I’m sure there’s a very simple yes or no answer to this, but I don’t know it.

Triads and arpeggios. Do I need to practise them in every key?

Thanks in advance.

Steve

If you are really an absolute beginner, then you probably want to wait a little while.

But, yes, eventually most people learn to play the scales and arpeggios in all the major and minor keys. How far you go with that is up to you.

What you can do as a beginner is learn to spell triads and chords - a very useful skill for pianists.

Sam

My first teacher had me do the following my first year, 5 finger patterns and the circle of 5ths. You'll want a teacher or someone to watch you though, and observe your technic.

https://www.noteflight.com/scores/view/e111c3b1de6989a56c56c9358ac1b2399a4d7cc6

I've been playing for a while. I don't run through every key for warmup. Some people would run their scales starting from C, C#, D, D#, E, etc. 1 by 1. I can run through different scales by ear but usually only practice the scale of the piece I'm working on. I've been working on a Bach chorale in G. I only run through the key of G and the notes of the arpeggio: G-B-D.

At the very least practice root triads around the circle of 5ths; work your way up to I IV V root triads round the circle. It’s like memorizing your multiplication tables, you should have those down cold.

Practicing triads is pointless unless you can remember and do them instinctively. If you are having to stop and figure out each one it is a waste of time.

And unless you are some sort of musical genius there are just too many combinations to learn all at once. You have to find a way to reduce the complexity of the problem, by limiting yourself to what you can reliably remember and build up from there.

Personally I found that the triads that I learned as part of a piece of music are far more solid than just practicing a random series of triads with no context or musical connection. There are plenty of beautiful sounding chord progressions you can find out there and these will embed each triad into your musical brain much better than random practice.

For an absolute beginner I'd suggest there's no need to go anything more than keys with two sharps and flats. Anything more will just over-complicate matters.

I began nearly nine years ago with a teacher. I didn't do much in the way of scales until 18 months in, and probably no arpeggios for three to four years. I did find waiting until I was a little more experienced to be a great benefit.

I don't practice scales or arpeggios in every key, rather I concentrate on those needed for exams which can be a big workload anyway.

Arpeggios would be too difficult for an absolute beginner. Wait it up, probably 1/2 years.

Practicing triads, recognizing them instinctively will be very useful IMO. When I was a kid I discovered triads by myself and was amazed by their beauty and tried them out in all keys. This helped me a lot further on where I would be able to recognize tonality and modulations instantly, helps memory a lot.

My kind of contrarian opinion here hence is do practice triads, they are easy, beautiful and very useful.

Enjoy !

Practice is not the word I'd use. Try to get to know them in every key eventually. Try to learn to immediately "see" each scale on the keyboard. From that, the chords will follow.

I learned 100x as much about triads from learning variations of this baroque piece as I would have done from random practice. Something like this has the same chord progression repeated over and over again in the bass in different inversions. So you only learn eight triads but you know them inside out. Broken and straight.

(start at 28 seconds)

I would also add learning theory as to how they're created is very helpful too.


What word would you use? Isn't that exactly where practice gets you? You can't just "get to know them" it takes a lot of time and practice to know scales, triads, arpeggios in various keys. It's one thing to play them from a written score but a whole different level to know them very well. Maybe I'm mistaken just my take on it...

+1 on theory. It really trains your skill of juggling chords in your head.

I guess it sort of is practice, but not quite as most people perceive the term. At least what worked for me to directly train the skill was to visualize it in my head, in my "internal keyboard", away from the piano. You want to recognize the scale shapes as a visual image in your head. And then the triads will build on top of that. By doing this, I was able to get a hang of most of the scales in a few months. I've heard that not everyone can visualize equally well, YMMV.

It is practice because scales are not just to learn the notes but to learn to listen: are they connected? Any notes bumped ? Can you play Mf in one hand and pp in another? Etc.

They are a component of developing technique

Triads and arpeggios are fundamental building blocks of music composition.

If you want to be able to play music in every key, it pays to know them (both "in theory" and "in practice") in every key --

. . . but you don't have to learn them all at once.

If you're content to play music in only certain keys, you could (in theory) only practice triads and arpeggios in those keys, and their 4th's and 5'ths (e.g. for C major, just C, F, and G).

Unlike a guitar or ukelele, there's no capo for a piano.