I guess Ennio Morricone must be very popular with the ladies.
With the right D, F# and F# one octave over, show of hands, who can pull that one off on the piano?
I can just barely play the D and second F#, but if I try to get the first F# with my index I can’t do it without angling my hand and losing reach for the other two notes, I get to them but my thumb is too flat against the keys and I hit the E next to the D.
I started playing the piano again three months ago, after an eleven years hiatus, and I was not very proficient back then. Perhaps with more practice I’ll be able to get this chord later on.
Not I. Going over to the keyboard, I can only reach the E comfortably. I can do it with my left hand, though. D with pinky, F# with middle, other F# with thumb. I have what I would call probably average sized hands. The weird thing is my hand span doesn’t seem to be that different between both hands. Stretching them out in front of me, it looks like maybe I can get an extra quarter to half inch from my left hand. But that particular grouping of notes just seems to fit better under my left hand. I’m also much more used to playing tenths with my left hand (root - fifth - tenth is a common enough voicing for me.) And with the right hand, I generally don’t go beyond octaves all that often. Looks like my span is a comfortable tenth in my left hand and barely a tenth in my right hand.
I can make it. Have to scoot my hand up so that my index finger is at the top of the key, which puts my thumb in the middle of the fat part and my pinkie towards the tip.
I can do it with the left easily, the main difference is that the pinkie’s last flange is shorter than the thumb’s, so it can push down on the D without affecting the E, also the middle finger ends up in a natural position to press the first F#, unlike with the right hand the index is just out of reach for me.
That way I can do it too, but just by very carefully stretching my fingers, not good for playing.
It’s “Playing Love” by Ennio Morricone, this particular chord is about 3/4 in, luckily not in the intro!
I’ve seen some videos of other people playing it and they use a different chord there.
You piano players, with your hand independence and complex, syncopated bass lines and chords. Harrumph. We guitar types just hook our thumbs over the top of the neck and fret our low end needs that way.
I am sure I am about to let my ignorance hang me, but I have a question. First, I am not familiar with the piece, or if anything is being played with the left hand during that chord. When playing from the Lutheran Hymnal, my nephew often has to play the inner bass cleft note in the right hand, or occasionally has to cover the lower treble cleft note with the left, but that is not my question. (I am told that is because hymns are written to be sung not played and occasionally tenors are sent into alto range while basses get down low, or conversely altos go deep and sing with the guys.)
Any number of music teachers have told me over the course of years that inversions are indistinguishable from root position chords. If that is true, how different would it sound to play the D between the two F sharps? I have even heard it said that guitar players often play duplicate notes within the chord when a triad is written because they have six strings to work with and it often happens that …… ?? I don’t know how to say this, otherwise nonessential strings are already the right notes without any add’l fretting (open strings). Why not just play the D between the F #’s?
If it was possible to play the chord as written, and also play the D between the black keys-- how different would that sound from the chord as written?
Okay, the Diamondback game ended so I had the kid go play – rather try to play the chord. Not even close, not with either hand (but he is likely not done growing). Using both hands to create the original chord, then trying my suggestion—didn’t sound the same at all. I mean, I guess it matched well enough, it didn’t sound bad or disharmonic—it just sounded entirely different. Not as substantial perhaps.
I can barely get it, but it’s not playable. D-A-F# is easier, and even that’s not really playable.
Getting the lower F# requires my index finger to be almost flat and pushing near the back of the key (i.e. the part furthest away from the player). I also don’t know if I’d have the strength to play it with more weighted keys (My keys are half weighted.) It kinda hurts, worse than when I first started trying to play tenths.
You pretty much answered your own question, but yeah, any music teacher who tells you an inversion sounds “indistinguishable” from the root chord is being naive at best, tone deaf at worst. All you have to do is experiment with the inversions, as you did, and you’ll hear the difference.
For added color, try playing a 2nd inversion but take the root and drop it an octave. For example, play the A and F# around middle C, and the D below that. My favorite variation, and definitely distinguishable from a standard 2nd inversion chord.
Indistinguishable may not have been the exact word they used, but it is the intention they had. In fairness to each of them (and these are all people with four year university degrees in music), this might have been in response to my (at that time even less informed) uninformed view, my suspicious nature and mildly compulsive scruples which can be seen as overly pedantic at the least. I believe they were trying to convince me inversions are okay and they were not teaching my child any wrong technique. Each of them assured me that as long as the three notes are present in any order—the mind hears the proper chord and it serves the exact same purpose a root position chord would serve. Each of them mentioned that without inversions some famous music would be simply impossible to play (if they gave examples I cannot recall them).
I used the argument that I could hear the difference, and I am not even a musician. One of them did offer this demonstration: she had me stand on the far side of the instrument where I couldn’t see her hands and played the same piece three times (well, by the time we were done she played it a dozen or so times), well she played three different versions and asked my which version used which inversion. I believed at first that two were identical and one was slightly different, but I had to admit, not ‘wrong’. Even when I was looking at her hands, and could see she was playing it differently—they did all three sound right. She told me (and two other teachers said almost the same thing using the same words) that the ‘mind’ hears the [any Major key] chord as long as those three notes are played in any order. I suspected trickery, but had to admit it worked. I suspected other chords could have worked too, but didn’t know enough to suggest which ones. Since then I have learned that A major has a lot in common with C major. If they could be substituted for each other in certain circumstances I don’t know, but I have been convinced inversions are okay—and until last night believed they were more or less interchangeable.
Never mind- already too long.
EDIT: And I will have the kid try your suggestion once he gets seated at the piano later today.
Maybe they simply meant it’s the same chord with the same “color” or something. I don’t know. Inversions can be quite important, especially if you’re writing out stuff like four-part harmony. I mean, a G7 is a G7 no matter what inversion its in, and, with C as tonic, it does want to resolve to a C, but if you really want to hear how much of a difference it makes, play the G7 in root position, and got to a C in root position (with another C on top to keep it four notes), and then try it with G7 in 2nd inversion to C in root, and I bet the second one sounds a lot “stronger” to you.
(At the end of this I am going to end up owing you a lesson fee, I am sure.)
I will do this later, if I can get it, I will pass it on to the kid. It is a valuable lesson he needs to know (although you just killed the one insider’s- what real musicians know piece of information I thought I knew). If it is vague to me I will get someone more qualified to teach it to him. (I sit and read during his lessons, the result is I pick up a lot of theory that seems to go over his head- perhaps because I am not busy trying to perform anything. The result is that I really can’t play anything myself, I am entirely theoretical while he focuses on physically performing the tasks and doesn’t absorb the ‘why’. I am only theory and sketchy at best, while he understands NO theory.)
I mean, when I’m actually playing, I don’t think about inversions all that much. I usually just settle into whatever fits the best under my fingers and which most smoothly leads from one chord to the next, if that makes sense.
:smack: 
