How to play thirds on a piano

Welcome, I'm Robert Estrin with livingpianos.com and virtualsheetmusic.com. Today, how to approach thirds. Yes, thirds on the piano can be very difficult because you only have five fingers on each hand, and when you're playing thirds, you have to figure out how to negotiate them. So I'm going to show you a couple of tips today. Of course, there's no substitute for practicing endlessly. As a matter of fact, the "Double Thirds" etude of Chopin, it was said that Josef Lhevinne, in his historic recording, practiced that piece for 10 years before he ever performed it. And if you ever listen to that old historical recording of Josef Lhevinne playing the "Double Thirds" G-sharp minor etude of Chopin, you can hear that he worked 10 years on that.

I'm going to show you something very simple today, just a major scale, a D major scale, and show you, first of all, fingering is critical for thirds, and you should reference Hanon or another source to find good fingering. So for example, if you're playing a scale in thirds in the right hand...that's a possible fingering you would use. Now, how do you practice such a thing? Well, one way is to practice the top legato and the bottom third staccato, so it clarifies the melody notes. Now, another little trick is you could just play the top notes of the third, leaving out the bottom notes entirely. You can also play every other note on the bottom. And you could also play the alternate notes that I just left out.

These are all different techniques that you can use to master thirds. You'll find that eventually your fingers will be very close to the keys over the position. So fingering is paramount. Practice every other note on the bottom, and this can give you fluidity. The most important thing is to have the melody notes with a fingering on top that you can get nice legato, and, of course, there's no substitute for doing a lot of metronome speeds. Once you have a passage in thirds, totally solid, slowly you could work up one notch at a time, and that's probably what Josef Lhevinne did in his classic recording of the "Double Thirds" etude. Thanks for joining me. Robert Estrin here at livingpianos.com and virtualsheetmusic.com.

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