Chords for Epic A Minor Sus Chord Piano Teaching Progression

Hi everyone, so I've just been blogging about _ this A minor sus chord progression that I
use with my students.
I thought the easiest way, rather than just describing it with words,
would be to show you in a very quick video how it actually looks and sounds, and then
you can make a judgement as to whether you think it would work with your students.
_ What
I teach the kids after, as I say in my blog post, the basics of triads [A] and moving around
[F]
the [G] piano, _ [N] is to introduce the sus chord.
So I've explained what it is for those of
you who aren't familiar.
For the chord progression though that I'm going to explain to you now,
we work in A minor.
So I get the kids to be able to play an A minor triad in the [Am] right
hand, _ _ _ and I always get them to use either [A] single notes if their hands are small, or
[C] octaves in the left hand on [A] A, _ _ _ and lots of right pedal, because chords sound really cool
[E] with nice strong bass notes and the pedal.
[Am] So, _ _ this is [A] starting point.
_ _ [F] Now, in order
to make this a sus [N] chord, we suspend the third, we don't play the third, instead we play the
fourth with our fourth finger.
_ _ So we have these notes here.
_ _ 1 4 5. _
_ _ Use [A#] the same note
in the left hand, A, and we're going to play two _ sus 4 chords, _ _ _ two _ A minor chords, [Am] _ _ _
_ _ _ two
sus 2 [E]
chords, _ _ _ _ and two A minor [Am] chords.
_ _ And this just [A] repeats over and over. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ [Am]
With A's
in the left hand.
[A] _ _ _ _
_ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _
_ _ _ _ [Am] _ _ _
Okay, they could do that twice if they wanted to.
Then we move the
left hand down to F, but we don't move the right hand and we play the same [Dm] thing.
_ _ _ _ _ [F] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ Down
to D, [D] _
_ _ _ _ [Am] _ _ _ _
_ [B] _ _ _ _ _ [Am] _
up to E, [B] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [E] _ _ and here I show the kids, I ask them to not change their second or fifth
finger, but to just slide their thumb in to the G sharp to give us an E major chord in
first inversion. _ _ _
Okay, and that's really good practice for them moving into the black keys
as well, and they tend to like doing that when they get the feeling for it.
[E] So the last
one on E, E's in the left hand, we do the usual cycle, but on the last chord, instead
of going back to A minor, we slide in and do E [F] major.
So the last [B] one's like this, _ _ _ _ _
[Am] _ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ and
then back to the beginning.
[A] _ _ _ _ [Am] _ _ _
[G] Now the great thing about this is that they [G#] can play it
slow or fast, they can do rhythms, interesting rhythms in their left hand, they could do
it [A] up an octave _ for one cycle through.
[N] _ _
The possibilities for variation are limitless
in some ways.
_ _ _ So I'll show you how I normally demonstrate a few different methods to them,
so I'll just run through it perhaps twice and give you some ideas of some different
rhythms you can use in your left hand.
For those kids who are naturally rhythmic, they'll
catch on to that really quickly, others find it a lot harder. _ _ _ _
And yeah, see what you think.
_ [A] _ _ _
_ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ _
_ [F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ _ [D] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _ _
_ [Am] _ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ _
[F] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [D] _ _ _
_ [Am] _ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _
_ [E] And so on.
[Am] And you can get really creative with them and you can show them [D] other things
that they can do.
So hopefully that's given you some clearer explanation than my [F#] words
might have [C#m] of what I was talking about in my blog article.
Let me know if you've got any questions.
_ [N] _ _ _