 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this tutorial, which is kind of a theory as well as a piano instruction, so do get your pianos out and your books out, both will be helpful. We are going to look beyond triads but without really adding new notes to the party. We are still going to take the same old three notes which make a chord or a triad as we know them. A triad is known as a three note chord. So we take the same notes to build the three note structure. So hopefully there will be a few things you did not know about triads or maybe if you already knew them, this would still be a lot of fun. So do watch till the very end, that will be awesome. So first off, let's just look at normal triads, how we form them. Major triads, C major for instance, C-E-G that we are not going to talk about in this lesson, minor triads, C-E-Flat-G, then we have our diminished triads, C-E-Flat-G-Flat, then we have our augmented triads, C-E-G sharp, then we have our suspensions, sus-4, sus-2 and that's pretty much it. So assuming we know that, I am still going to dive a bit deeper in this lesson. So before we get started, it will be nice if you could consider hitting that bell icon and turn on the subscribe if you are a regular viewer of our channel, if you are not, do follow through till the end or somewhere towards the end and if you like the lesson, do give us a thumbs up, do hit the subscribe and also leave us a comment with what you thought about the lesson. And the notes for this lesson will be available on our Patreon page forward slash Jason Zach and for just $5 a month as your subscription, you will get access to my handwritten notes, backing tracks, wherever applicable in our lessons, staff notation, MIDI files and the works. So do consider heading over to Patreon.com and check out the perks there. Let's get cracking. So the first thing about a triad you might not have known is the fact that we can take a good old chord like C major like this one and change the base note of this chord. And whenever we change the base note of a chord, we call it a slash chord. So you take C major in your right hand is a good way to start and the traditional way of playing it would be with a C base, but with a slash chord concept, you're going to find other base notes and a good way to find the other base notes would be from the triad itself. C major has three notes, C, E, G. What are the remaining notes? E and G. E is the third and G is the fifth. So you now end up playing C, E, G with a E in the base or C major with a G in the base. And this is very useful in music because if I place C triad with an E base, even though I've not added a note, I've changed the function or I've changed the purpose of the chord to not be stable anymore. It's a rather unstable entity, right? It wants to go somewhere else while if you play C major just with C in the base, it's happy where it is. So C major slash E or C slash E, by the way, where does it want to go? It would like to go to F major or maybe even an F minor, which will be played in their normal root position. So C slash E going to F slash F and then C slash G seems to again feel tense and this would like to go to the G major, which is the dominant of C major. So C, C slash G going to G major. So C slash E wants to go to F, C slash G wants to go to G. Of course, that resolves back to C slash C, which is just C major. OK, so that's the slash chord concept. A lot more on slash chords. You can check out some of our videos, which we leave you in the description. We've spent a lot of time on slash chords on our channel. The other kind of way you can make triads a lot more interesting for the year would be to spread out the chord a bit more. This can be very useful when you're orchestrating music, when you're arranging music with sounds other than the piano, maybe a string orchestra or an entire ensemble with horns and wind instruments and whatnot. You want to spread out the instruments or the notes as much as you can. And the piano method of spreading out stuff, frankly, doesn't spread much because the third is very close. And as you go deeper, it sounds really bad. So a good functional use on the piano when you want to play deep stuff is by spreading your chord. So in this case, I've taken the C major chord C and instead of playing E in the middle, I'm playing E at the top. So this is how I play my chords in the left hand. Do not ever play your chords in the left hand like this, especially so low. It's absolutely useless. So this is how you want to play it. Now, if you cannot stretch, you can always hit the last note with your right hand and then use the other fingers with the melody. There are a lot of ways to do that. Or if you cannot stretch exactly this way, then it's OK. You can still hold on your pedal and play it as an arpeggio. So spread chords sound beautiful. There we go. There we go. That's B flat in there, E flat in there, F minor, F sharp major. And so on. These are some slash chords. And when you go from chord to chord or still tried to try it, I still am playing three notes per chord, as I promised you in the lesson. D major, G minor. And the beauty of spread chords is when you play them with different bass notes. Call this a G minor with a D bass. That's a lot of weight to the sound. So as you see, I'm playing spread chords primarily in my left hand in this illustration. But you can do it even in your right hand or you could have a combination of the right hand as well as the left hand. So spread chords and slash chords are really exciting ways to bring life to the triads and use them in different ways. Slash chords change the energy state of the chord, while spread chords allow you to perform the chord with many instrumentalists like an orchestra or a string quartet or even a choir. And even on the piano and the bass clef, since the frequencies can tend to collide, we can play it effortlessly without any kind of jarring or muddy kind of sound. You won't have a sound engineer going EQ, EQ you out, so to speak. OK, guys, so the next style of farming triads, if you will, would be to not form it the traditional way using thirds. The normal way to form triads is one, three, five. But another nice strategy would be you can form it with fours. And if you take perfect fours, for instance, C, you ask yourself, what is C's perfect fourth? That would be F, C, F. And then another perfect fourth, if you grow forward. That's what we call as a quartal chord. And there are many kinds of quartal chords in music. You have a normal C quartal chord, whose formula would be in terms of scale degrees or chord degrees. One, four, seven flat. Then you have another kind of quartal chord, which will be one, four, seven. OK, that'll be we notate it sometimes with a Q plus symbol. OK, and then we have a this sort of a quartal, which is a bit Lydian or very, very dreamy in nature, if you ask me, because it has the sharp four or the tritone. So we call that sharp four Q, one, four sharp. And then a major seventh up top. So, normal quartal Q plus, quartal plus, or the Lydian quartal or the sharp four Q. OK, now, quartal chords are great to to kind of add within the same chord itself. So if you're on C. You can kind of. You can kind of. Keep the C going in your base, but you can float around with these quartal chords. So very useful chord. Again, we leave a couple of videos in the description where we've dived into the concept of quartal chords even more. And another chord, which I find very useful, especially in my well, both hands, actually, but more in the left hand will be quintal chords. So a quintal chord would be where you form a chord with fifths. Again, we are going beyond the third's notion, which is the traditional triad formation, right, which is that. So quintal chords would be in fifths and you can use it really well in the left hand, like. For rhythm like that or for chords like this. So you may have a G major going on in the band, but you could voice it with this quintal sound. So what is a quintal chord? It's a root, perfect five, and then another perfect five, or another fifth along with the fifth. So it's two fifths played together, quintal five, right? So this could imply a major chord, a major chord, or it could even imply a minor chord. So in your band, if someone's playing, let's say in this case, a G minor, that would work. It would be like a minor at nine kind of a sound. Or if the band is playing a G major, you can kind of continue to play this. And we have a lot of strategies where you can combine the quintal sound with an octave, vanilla octave, and the spread third which I showed you where you played up top, we also call it a 10th. That's your nine, your eight also known as octave, and then you have your 10th up top. So stuff like this makes for a very dynamic left hand pattern, where you float the top note, but retain the root and fifth in the bottom. That's your quintal voicing, great for piano intros if you're doing things in your right hand as well. You know, like just doing stuff like, let's say I take C quintal and A quintal, maybe F now, may want to also stretch out, practice a bit of stretching exercises and don't overdo this for too long on the piano because it will stretch your hand a bit more. So you may need to be warmed up. So if you don't warm up very regularly and you want to play these bigger stretch chords, you need to warm up before you play. So do a few warm up drills. I've done a few exercises on posture, so do watch some of those videos as well on your channel. And if you're a first time viewer to our channel, please note that there are a lot of lessons you would find on our channel homepage. You can access the videos by topic. You can also access them as playlist or you can head over to our website, nethanielschool.com and under the video courses area or under the free tutorials area, you can get a very structured learning system in place for you to learn. So let's move forward. The next strategy for voicing or to play triads in a way you might not know or in a way which is not officially printed in music theory textbooks. I think that's what this is about is you take a fifth chord. A fifth chord would be a root, a fifth and the octave on top. So that would be root, fifth, octave and this is a root, perfect fifth and the perfect octave. Now you could play that chord either in root position, D, A, D or in inversion, which is A, D, A, depending on the reach, depending on the sound or the vibe you want. And in the left hand, here's the thing. Remember, I'm not going more than three notes in this lesson. It's still chords with just three notes. So you would copy the D, you would copy the A. If you play a D, it automatically reinforces the D fifth sound. If you play an A, it makes it a very suspended sound, a very ASUS4 sound. But why not try some other notes like a D flat? Wow, now what was that? It's this to me sounds like way more than three notes, but actually it's still just three notes. We're just taking D, A, D, right hand never changed and I'm adding that B flat. So it's the base note which kind of dictates terms to the overall sound of the chord or the overall emotion. If I play D, it's a plain and simple chord, but B flat, because of the intervals it forms on top. It forms the major third, forms the major seven. So you could argue it's some kind of a major seventh chord. B flat major seventh without the F, which we can sneak in later. So you can explore your chords, your three note structures this way by just seeing what you like, you know, what goes well with that fifth chord. So if you take D, you know, that's very dry and normal. A is also okay because it's part of the chord. So you're not adding the third note, but if you do G, wow, that creates a nice G sus4 vibe, right? G sus4 or E, making another nice suspended vibe with a minor seventh. F, that's a nice deep, thick kind of sound. F major sixth vibe. That's B. That's C, forming a nice C sus, very suspended sounds. And also you get those additional minor seventh and major seventh intervals. And F sharp works. A flat or G sharp is okay. B flat is probably my favorite. Now B is my new favorite. See, wow, everything seems to sound good. So that's what I want you to explore. So even if you're diatonic to the key of, let's say D, you know, D has two sharps, namely F sharp and C sharp. So even if you're diatonic to the key of D, you can build some very nice harmonic motion or chord progressions if you will by just focusing on your left hand and making sure the right hand just stays playing a fifth chord. So you can make music maybe like this. D. Ta na D. Ta na na A. Ta na na D. G, look at my right hand, it's just there. G. Ta na na na B minor. Ta na na na D major. Na na na A. La da da da da. G. La da da da da. F sharp. Progression. So it's some kind of B minor. G. But in a way I can argue that this is a sound which is not very commonly heard because most piano players who learn in the textbook way will just stick with triads. But this is the same chord, but it just opens out new possibilities I guess. So explore fifth chords. Again, I'll leave a few videos regarding fifth chord exercises which will help you grasp the concept better in the description, check those out. And a couple more ways to use triads which I think you should definitely know and use in your music. What about bigger, jazier seventh chords and other jazz tensions, you know, those structures? We can do that with just three notes. So a good voicing strategy which I have for you would be play the root of any of the chords you wish to do. Let's say you wanna form an F major seventh. So you play, tell yourself, okay, I'll play the root note in my left hand. That's F. Now the major seventh will contain one, the third, the fifth, and the seventh. You can say bye-bye to the fifth. You don't need the fifth actually because the fifth doesn't make the sound obviously that chord. Unless of course it's a diminished chord or a minor seventh flat five. Those chords need a diminished fifth or it could even be an augmented fifth which is needed. But for chords which just need a perfect fifth like an F major seventh or a minor seventh or a dominant seventh or, you know, a minor seventh flat, a minor major seventh. All of these chords you can kind of remove off the fifth. So I could do F and I could tell myself, okay, what are the remaining notes of the chord? F major seventh. So that'll be the third and the seventh. What is the third of F major? A. What is the seventh of F major? E. So whack that all together. These three notes. I add an octave for reinforcement. It's a nice way to play F major seventh. And in the new chords you can also add a C that closes the puzzle. But this is a nice sound. And what I like about just playing the third and the seventh is you can then play it lower as well with that F, with that root. And I think again, it's a very open, it's a very open sound. And it sounds good in all parts of the keyboard. So basically you either do third, seventh or you do seventh and third. Now if you apply this concept to maybe a dominant seventh chord. Same concept, you do third, seventh flat because a dominant seventh has a seventh flat. And if you wanna re-voice that, play it lower, that would be seventh flat with the three. It's a nice voicing, a little tritone in there actually. Then if you're doing a minor seventh chord. And then if you do a, you know, that's a minor seventh with a flat three and a flat seven. If you do a two, five, one, you can move very smoothly. F minor seventh for you. B flat dominant seventh, E flat major seventh. It's just one note changes, right? F minor seventh, which is A flat and E flat. Then B flat dominant seventh, which is just keeping that A flat coming down to D. And then E flat major seventh, you just drop that A flat down to G. So again, B flat, E flat, which is your two, five, one. One more time. Two, five, one. Still using just three notes. So I have one more interesting strategy with just three note chords for you before we sign off. And that is a modal use of triads or three note chords. So what do you do is you want to get yourself a chord. You wanna get yourself a set of notes, a set of three notes in this particular tutorial to highlight or to give your fellow musicians or your audience what the mode is about or what mode are you on. A mode is basically a scale. In this context, let's just call it a scale. So if you want to, let's say showcase, I'll just show you a few modes in this lesson. If you wanna showcase the Lydian scale or the Lydian mode to someone, because it's rather different from major, Lydian has a sharp four in there. So if you wanna give people a chord which inspires them to be on the world of Lydian, you could just ask yourself which are, how do I just get three notes into play so that I get the most important ingredients of the Lydian out. And the most important ingredients of the Lydian would be the sharp four for sure, because that's what differentiates it from the major scale, that's major, that's Lydian. So a good Lydian chord would be what I call as the Simpsons chord, that one. So C, E, F sharp, that's just three notes and it would be a very nice modal chord. You can also do C, F sharp, B, that would also be a very nice Lydian sound or you can even do C, G, B, little more timid or C, F sharp, G, all these could spell out the Lydian. And then what else? Let's look at another mode. What if you wanted a Phrygian chord, which is it's a minor scale with a flat two or a major scale with a flat two, flat three, flat six, flat seven. That one, that's C Phrygian. So what's a good way to give someone the idea that you're on the Phrygian? Oh yes, totally that. That's one, two, flat, four, perfect fourth or you could even do basically anything with a two flat would do. C, D flat, E flat or you could also do that slightly timid but you're not implying the two flat but it kind of works. That works. And yeah, that's Phrygian. So Phrygian, Lydian and then if you want something very mix or Lydian, I think this would work very well for me. This can even be Dorian. So that would be one, four, seven flat kind of the quartile chord which I explained earlier or you can do C, E, B flat and even do a C sus four but I like this for mix or Lydian or even Dorian. This is also a nice Dorian chord. Then would be flat three, normal six and flat seven. So this is a decent enough, right guys? So let's just recap. So these may be a few things about three note chords which you may not have found in a traditional music textbook. I have a few as well. So when you research these books, it's always gonna show you diatonic chord theory. That's the triads. That's, you know, this, this, this, C, E, G but in the real world, a lot of the professional musicians, even the pros who play pop songs or country songs, not jazz at all, just normal music, don't play chords this way. And if you're a keyboard learner and not a piano learner per se, if you consider yourself a keyboardist, generally what happens with keyboards is in the left side of your instrument, you end up having these auto chord buttons. You just have to hold C and sometimes you have to hold literally a shape which will not work in the real world but because that keyboard instrument is made that way, your entire career will be to play chords that way which is never going to allow your left hand to grow. So hopefully this lesson gives you some insights into what the left hand can actually do or what the left hand should not do. The left hand definitely should not play triads like that, you know, so try to think beyond the box and these five methods were what I thought was a bit beyond the traditional box which is how you would normally learn piano from a textbook or from a normal syllabus and this is what is found in actual songs. So we looked at slash and spread chords, slash chords with a different base, spread chords where you take the third and push it outside the octave, it's over the octave chords. Then we looked at quartile and quintile voicing, quartile voicing in fours, quintile in fives, very useful for a lot of things as we saw. Then you take a fifth chord in the right hand and stack it up with different notes, the different note rather, in the left hand to give you a very big, rich sound. Then we looked at voicing of seventh chords where you take the root of the seventh chord and in the right hand, you look at either the third or the seventh to play. You can do three seven or you can do seven three and last but not least, we looked at modal chords where you just spell out a mode, you bring out the vibe of a mode by finding the notes or the notes which really add spice to that performance. Right guys, again, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. Thanks a ton for watching the lesson. I will catch you in the next one and before I sign off, if you haven't already, it'll be awesome if you could give the video a like, hit the subscribe button. There's a bell icon for regular notifications. We release videos daily. In fact, so you don't want to miss anything and on NathanielSchool.com, you can find more structured courses on these subjects. You can also learn with us in person. We have proper six month curriculum which you could follow at our school and that's about it. Patreon has some notes of all the stuff which we talked about. So do head over there as well and cheers, catch you in the next one. Bye.