How to Practice Beautiful Arpeggios on Piano – Beginner Lesson

Arpeggios, I know you love them. Today we’re going to go over exactly how to practice arpeggios. I’m going to take you through three different levels and they’re going to get harder as they go and what to focus on so that you become an incredible arpeggio player. Arpeggios are beautiful and I know you want to sound good playing them. This video will show you how to do just that. And if you’d like to get more videos on how to go from zero to playing your favorite songs in months, not years on the piano, be sure to hit the bell and the subscribe button because I post new videos every week.

And if you feel lost and you have no idea how to start learning the piano, you’re cruising around on a billion different YouTube videos, I highly recommend watching my free training. In this free training, I’m going to show you the exact steps that I take my students through that helps them go from zero to playing their favorite songs fast. The link is in the description below. All right, first, what even is in arpeggio? Well, let’s back up and define what a chord is. It’s basically when we’re playing multiple notes at the same time like this. An arpeggio is just when we break up those notes of the chord, instead of playing them all at the same time like this.

We hear arpeggios all the time in classical music and pop music and basically any genre. So here are some popular arpeggios that you might recognize. How about Someone Like You by Adele. Or Clocks by Coldplay.

So now let’s break into three different levels of arpeggios, easy to hard. I’m going to show you exactly how to practice them so that you actually learn piano with good technique. You’re going to play them correctly and this is going to help you play them a lot more beautifully. Level one is just a one octave arpeggio. And with all of these arpeggios, I’m just going to use the chord C major. The C major chord always has the notes, C, E, G. And here’s how that one octave arpeggio sounds. Now when you’re applying arpeggios, you really want to use the right fingerings. So finger one is my thumb, two is my pointer, 3, 4, 5. Okay. It’s really important that you do not learn it with the wrong fingerings. So with this C major arpeggio, that’s one octave. I’m going to use finger 1, 2, 3, 5. I’m going C, E, G, C. And then back down.

So some other really important techniques to playing the arpeggio well is having the most relaxed wrist ever. It needs to be like butter. I don’t know. It just needs to be so chill. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to keep moving that wrist. So if you look at my wrist, I’m even moving my arm a little bit to help me. So you don’t want to be stiff and stuck. You don’t want to come into the arpeggio and already have your fingers set. You want to use your wrist to get there. Okay? And another really great way to practice arpeggios is to do something called blocking. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to play C with my thumb and my pinky, but I’m going to play two and three on E and G together. And this really helps train me to use my wrist because I have to use my wrist when I block like this.

All right, so what did we say? We want to have a relaxed wrist. We’re going to move our arm. We’re going to block the chord. And one more thing is I really think you should focus on playing it very smoothly. So when you go from one note to the next, make sure it’s smooth. So I’ll show you an example of it not being smooth, which is what a lot of people do. Connect the notes. So when one note is going up, the next one is going down. If you focus on these things in level one, it’s going to give you a really great foundation for the next two levels, levels two, and three. Once you’ve mastered level one, we’re going to move on to arpeggios that are more than one octave. So let’s start with two octaves. That means I’m going up one more.

Okay, so you’re going to use the same fingerings, 1, 2, 3, but then you’re going to curve your thumb under. Watch that again. You do this a lot when playing scales as well. Tuck that thumb under and then bring your hand right back. Again, you have to have a relaxed wrist to be able to do this. Okay, so 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 5, 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1. And you could repeat the same techniques if you did three octaves or four octaves with your arpeggios. The same techniques apply. Play them smooth, have a relaxed wrist as you’re going. And again, you could also practice these with blocking. It’s not pretty, but it helps train that wrist because it has to be relaxed to be able to do it.

Okay, level three. I do not want you to go to level three unless one and two are easy. Okay? Level three is a good bit harder. In level three, we’re going to be moving up the C major arpeggio, and we’re going to be playing through the inversions as well. If you have no idea what inversions are, then watch this video. All right, so level three is a four note arpeggio, and it’s going to sound like this.

Okay. So again, you want to use the right fingerings for this. I’m going to put the correct fingerings in my blog post so you can find the correct fingerings in the link in the description of this video. And you can go to my blog, which will show you the right ones. I know you’re going to ask, I know you’re going to ask. Again, we’re going to focus on the same principles. We’re going to play smoothly. We’re going to have a relaxed wrist, and we’re going to practice with blocking. So I’ll show you how blocking would work on this one.

And again, we’re going to focus on having a really nice wrist and playing smoothly, not choppy like this. Okay, one last tip that you can apply to all of them that is surprisingly helpful with practicing is you can practice them in funny rhythms. So instead of just the regular one. And surprisingly, this is a trick that helps you really clean it up. And then once you play it back in the normal rhythm, which is actually easier, the whole thing’s going to feel easier and it’s going to be cleaner.

All right, so that is our three levels of arpeggios. Of course, you can add to the left hand when you’re playing them. If you need help with learning the fingerings for all the arpeggios, definitely head to my blog and I’m going to have them there. I’m going to have them for the right hand and the left hand in there. So once you’ve got the right hand, add the left hand and then play them together for all three of these. All right? And do not move from level one to level two unless you’ve mastered level one and so on. Got it?

Arpeggios are really fun. But if you have no idea how to apply them to your favorite songs, then I highly recommend watching my free training. In this training, I show you the exact steps that I take my students through that helps them go from zero to playing their favorite songs on the piano in months, not years. So you can head to the link in the description to find that too. And before we go, be sure to hit that subscribe button and the bell because I post new videos every week. All right, and I’ll see you next time.