Cinematic Piano, Illustrated
The chords, voicings and gestures behind romantic and film-score piano, drawn as pictures. Every diagram plays — tap Play to hear it.
How to read the diagrams
Each dot sits on a key you play. Its color is that note's job in the chord, so the same color always means the same job, whatever key you're in.
Four ingredients of the sound
Romantic and cinematic piano isn't a secret set of chords. It's ordinary harmony played with four habits.
Space
Hands far apart. Low notes wide, high notes close.
Time
Change chords slowly — one per bar, or even two. Let each one bloom.
Color
Borrow chords from outside the key. That's where the lump in the throat lives.
Resonance
The sustain pedal is your orchestra's hall. Use it on every chord, changed cleanly.
Chord shapes worth knowing
A plain triad sounds like a hymn. Add or swap one note and it starts to sound like a film. Here are the six shapes that do most of the work, all built on C (A for the minor seventh).
Spread the chord
This chapter matters more than any other. The same three notes sound completely different depending on how far apart you place them.
A low note's overtones sit far apart at the bottom and crowd together at the top. Voicings that copy this pattern sound huge and clear.
- Keep an octave or a 5th between your two lowest notes.
- Keep 3rds above C3. Any lower and they turn to mud.
- Put the melody on top, with the rest of the chord just underneath it.
Six progressions that tell a story
Loop these slowly. Tap a chord to hear it alone, or play the whole line.
The emotion palette
Start on C major, then step to one of these borrowed chords. Each carries a feeling of its own. Tap a card to hear the move.
What the left hand does
A slow chord needs motion underneath it. These four patterns carry almost every romantic piece. Hold the pedal down throughout.
Pedal like a pro
Press the pedal just after you play the new chord, not with it. Lift as the new chord sounds, press again a split second later. The old chord stops and the new one gets caught.
The notch comes after each change, never before it. Before it, you get a gap of silence. Never lifting, you get a blur.
Melody that aches
Film melodies get their pull from notes that lean against the chord, then let go.
The map and the arc
Each register of the piano has a role, like sections of an orchestra.
A piece needs a shape, too. Most cinematic pieces grow from almost nothing to everything, then fall back.
Write your first piece
- Pick a progression
Any from chapter 4. The heartstring is the easiest start. - Spread every chord
Left hand plays root and 5th low. Right hand plays the triad near middle C. - Start the wave
Left hand in the wave pattern, one chord per bar. - Pedal each change
Lift and press just after each new bass note. - Find a melody on top
Hum over the loop. Land on the 3rd or 5th of each chord at the start of the bar. - Add one lean per phrase
A suspension or an appoggiatura. - Borrow one chord
Swap the last IV for iv, or slip in a ♭VI before the final chord. - Shape the arc
Play it twice: first soft and low, then an octave higher with octaves in both hands.