Dynamics is loud and soft. That's the half everybody knows.
Here's the quiet half: how many notes of the chord you play on each beat. It doesn't ask you to play any softer. You just play less on some beats, and the part starts to breathe.
Last time your left hand took over the bass (it's on the blog if you missed it). This time the right hand gets some air.
Same four chords, the notes in this order from the bottom up, right hand around the middle of the keyboard:
C (c, e, g)
G (g, b, d)
Am (a, c, e)
F (f, a, c)
Left hand: the root, two octaves below your chord, on the one of every bar. Let it ring. Everything below is about the right hand.
Count four, one bar per chord, slow enough to keep the count steady, and play the chord on every beat. All three notes, every time. No pedal, and let each chord go before the next beat. That's your starting point. It's fine as an exercise, and it's where we'll take things away from.
1. Loud and soft
One and three are the strong beats. Lean into them: hit the chord harder on those two beats than on the two and the four, and make it obvious.
Then play a bar with every beat at exactly the same weight, and listen to the difference. From here on, with everything you play, know how hard each note comes out. Did you mean every one of them at that level, or did some just happen?
2. How many notes
Back to leaning on one and three. Now change how many notes you play. On the one and the three, the whole chord. On the two, two of its notes. On the four, just one. Any of them will do; to start, take the two lowest on the two and the middle one on the four.
On C: c-e-g on one, c and e on two, c-e-g on three, just the e on four. On G: g-b-d, g and b, g-b-d, b. On Am: a-c-e, a and c, a-c-e, c. On F: f-a-c, f and a, f-a-c, a.
Listen to the difference. Same chord, same four beats, the accents where they were. All you changed is how many notes you sound on each one. That's breaking up the chords: not sounding every note at once. Get the basics of it down and it's one of the quickest ways to sound like you know what you're doing.
3. Nothing at all
Now play nothing on a beat. Chord on one, nothing on two, chord on three, the single note on four, still leaning on one and three. Then the other way around: the two notes back on two, and nothing on four. Two patterns from one chord, and neither one is a whole chord on every beat anymore.
One thing for when you take this into a song: when the chord changes, don't leave that beat open.
A beat you don't play is still a beat. Feel it go by, the way a drummer keeps time through a beat he doesn't hit. A slow metronome helps: set it where you can manage, let a beat go by without the right hand, and come back in on the next one.
4. Ghost notes
The last one is more advanced, and it's where this gets playful. In between the beats, on the "and" (count one-and, two-and, three-and, four-and), touch a note of the chord so lightly that it barely sounds. Any note of the chord will do. You see your finger go down; what comes out is next to nothing.
Those are ghost notes. They're not there to be heard; they're there to keep your hand moving in time, and that alone makes the groove feel a little better. Graze the key instead of playing it, so soft that it's hardly audible, if at all. Let the ghost notes land a little loosely, not exactly on the "and", and you get more of that Billy Joel feel.
On C: c-e-g on one, a ghost note on the "and", c and e on two, a ghost note, c-e-g on three, a ghost note, e on four, a ghost note. One and three still strong. Then the same pattern on G, Am and F, with their own notes.
Then take it into a song you know the chords of. Start the way we started here, every note of every chord on every beat. Then go through the steps in the same order: the strong beats first, then fewer notes on the light beats, then a beat left open, then a ghost note or two. Play what you can play, and leave out what you can't.
The magic happens when you start taking stuff out. It's way cooler to groove with a few notes than to stumble with a lot of them.
