 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. Welcome to part 2 of this series on the 251 chord progression. In this part we are going to look at how to actually play it on the piano in a very piano friendly and also a harmonically rich sounding way where the voicings are very open, spread out and very jazzy. So make sure you stick around till the end because we are going to look at all the possible options. It's a rather detailed lesson and also I'm going to show you this progression and the voicing pattern on both the major scale as well as the minor scale. Sometimes we forget to look at the minor but the minor is also used in a lot of popular music as well as classical music, jazz standards and even film music. So let's get started right away. We have the 251 chord progression first of all to deal with and we are playing it in an extended version. What I mean by that is the 2 is not played as a minor chord. It's played as a minor 7th chord. Okay and why am I playing A minor? I should have told you that earlier. I'm in the key of G major where A is the 2 minor 7th chord. Okay and then we go to the 5. It's a 251 chord progression. So the 2 will be A minor 7th which is the 7th note then the 5 will be D which is the dominant chord D F sharp A C. Okay and then end on the G major 7th voicing. Okay the 251 chord progressions used very commonly in jazz. It's come from the major scale but now playing it is a bit maybe messy or muddy and it's also tough especially for a beginner. When I started learning this I found it really tough because I've had to go from triads which is just three notes to now four notes which is now sort of making the movement of my fingers a little bit more tricky right. So there's a nice voicing technique which you could learn. I'm going to share two voicing techniques with you guys. Okay and if you haven't already head over to part one where I discussed the theory of all this stuff. Okay in some cases for some of you you may be having a few doubts or what is a minor 7th chord, what is a major 7th chord and so on and so forth. All this is covered in part one so head over there and check that out and then you can always come back to this lesson. So if I have to play this on the piano I just need to look at intervals. The intervals of any of these chords are going to be 1, 3, 5 and 7. Okay now a good way to voice it will not be to play it as 1, 3, 5, 7. You could play it in a kind of a jumbled way which makes the sound open. So I'm going to give you two voicing techniques in this lesson. I'm going to give you 1, 5, 7, 3 then I'm going to give you 1, 5, 3, 7. It's a bit more stretched out. Okay and while you learn this we need to learn it for all the chord qualities. We'll have to learn it for the minor 7th chord. We'll have to learn it for the dom 7 then the major chord and the minor scale we also have to learn it in the minor 7 flat 5 chord. Okay so in the key of G major the 2, 5, 1 is going to be A minor 7th, D dominant 7th and G major 7th. Okay so let's break down each of these chords. A minor 7th contains the notes A, C, E, G. How am I voicing this? The 1 and the 5 I'm going to play in my left hand. Okay and then the 3 and the 7 I'm going to play in my right hand. 1, 5, 3, 7. Of course it's a 3 flat and a 7 flat because in a minor 7th chord the 3 is flat and the 7th is flat. Okay so A, E, C, G. Very open right as opposed to playing it like that which is very muddy or even like this. So left hand A plus E plus C plus G. Okay so that's your 2 minor 7th chord in the G major scale moving on to the 5 dominant 7th chord. The 5 dominant 7th chord is going to be D 7th. Okay and what's the left hand rule for this lesson? Always play 5ths that means root 5th and now check out the right hand. My right hand is already played C, G and I want to make it kind of easy for myself to go to the D dominant chord. So what can we consider? I could do D here move up there and then C is already common right? C is already there for the D dominant 7th chord. So I can look at a voicing like this which is 1, 5, 7, 3. Actually in this case in the dominant 7th chord it's 7 flat. 1, 5, 7 flat 3. So repeat 1, 5, 3 flat 7 flat for A minor 7th then 1, 5, 7 flat 3 for D dominant 7th and you see that shift in my right hand at least it's just one finger C to G and then C to F sharp. So this is the A minor 7th chord. A minor 7th and this is the D dominant 7th chord. So far in simple words I hope I'm going to make it even more simpler. You take a 5th chord in the bass A, E and then either do a 3, 7 voicing which in this case is C, G or else do a 7, 3 voicing in the right hand with respect to that chord. So if it's a minor 7th it's going to be flat 3, flat 7. If it's going to be a dominant 7th chord it'll be 3 normal and 7 flat. It's a major 7th chord, 3 major, 7 major and if it's a minor 7 flat 5 chord it's going to be flat 3, flat 5 and flat 7. So you need to remember what are the notes of these chords. Write them down and then you figure out the voicing technique which from left to right is going to be 1, 5 and then 7, 3 or else 3, 7 depending on the chord. So let's just look at the next chord. A minor 7th, A, E, C, G and now it goes to D dominant, D, A, C, F sharp okay and see how smoothly it's lead and the last chord is going to be G major 7th. Now on G major 7th you have F sharp which is already common. I just have to slide the C down to B and you get a nice open G major 7th sound right there and this one might say is a 3, 7 voicing. So A minor 7th in 3, 7, D dominant 7th in 7, 3 because it's easy to play and then G major 7th in 3, 7 okay. So try this out play every chord play A minor 7th for 2 beats 1, 2, D dominant for 2 beats and G major 7th for maybe 4 counts or if you want to take your time even more do it 4, 4 and 2 bars of the last chord. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 next bar 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 or you could do it quicker change 2 beats each in the first two chords 2, 3, 4, 1 whole bar for G A minor 7th D dominant 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3 okay. So right now I started with 3, 7 of A minor 7th now I'll do 7, 3 okay. So that's A, E, G, C what did I do earlier C, G now G, C. So I'm going to do this again 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4 and those are your 3 chords and they sound really good even very low on the keyboard right. Okay that's the major 7th chord or you could take it high if you'd like okay sounds good pretty much everywhere on the keyboard right 2, 3, 4, 4 let's try it a bit lower now 4 I quite like the lower version 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 okay and that's pretty much it. So you have two exercises for every 2, 5, 1 chord progression which you need to do and it'll really equip you well while playing a multitude of songs really because a 2, 5, 1 chord progression is really popular it's used in almost every jazz standard at least it's used in gospel, it's used in soul, R&B, you know funk, jazz, blues everything right. So get used to the shape and it's a very useful go-to shape. So shape 1, shape 2 okay. Now I told you I'm not going to stop here I'm also going to show you how you form the minor 2, 5, 1. In the minor 2, 5, 1 we derive the chords as 2, minor 7, flat 5 right. If this doesn't make sense to you head over to part 1 where we break this chord down in detail. Now a minor 7, flat 5 is the second chord of the harmonic minor scale or the minor scale in general. So I'm building it off there. So if I do the 2, it's A diminished plus the 7th okay A minor 7 flat 5 then again you get the usual 5, 7 which is D dominant and then instead of resolving to a 1 major 7th which we did for the major scale you resolve to a 1 minor 7th but the voicing patterns remain pretty much the same right. It's going to be 7, 3 in some way there and 1, 5 in some way here right. So if I take the first chord A minor 7, flat 5 that's A C E flat G okay E flat actually speaking is a tritone it's not a perfect 5th. So I can't do this in my bass I have to do that which is the tritone and then in the right hand I can decide whether I want to do C G sounds beautiful or you could do G C so C G G C and now if I have to go to the next chord so if I do C G and now if I have to do D dominant from there it's quite easy A minor 7 flat 5 going to D dominant 7th which is here and then you end with G minor 7th which is the root home minor A minor 7 flat 5 D dominant 7th and you drop it down to G minor 7th so this is the minor 2 5 1 so a lot in blues actually right okay and the other shape instead of doing C G I can do G C which is the 7 3 voicing and then dominant D minor 7 G one more time next D minor 7th minor 2 5 1 would go higher okay and it's nice if you can practice this on as many scales as possible I've written it down for you guys on F major and F minor so you could try to revisit the same concepts and the same voicing techniques using some other scales and I've written all this down in a PDF file which you could download on our Patreon page so do head over there and also perhaps support our channel it'll be awesome so in conclusion in this lesson we've looked at voicing patterns for 2 5 1 progressions major as well as minor in the major scale the voicing pattern is going to be always 1 5 in the left hand even in the minor scale you do 1 5 in the left hand in the right hand you decide whether you want to do 3 7 or 7 3 and then you have to write it down so that you know whether it's 7 3 of 1 chord going to the 3 7 of the next chord or staying on 3 7 or staying on 7 3 depending on the chord progression so pretty much any extended chord or any 7th chord can be played in this open voicing which is 1 5 7 3 or 1 5 3 7 where the 7 and the 3 could either be major 7th or minor 7th and the 5 in one case in the diminished chord or the minor 7 flat 5 will be a flat 5 okay so now we move over to part 3 where we are going to do an incredible latin rhythm pattern which I have for you where we are going to just basically take the same voicing technique and we are going to build a really cool latin rhythm which is going to improve your independence on the piano we are going to look at 16th notes and get to a lot of groovy stuff which is coming up in the next part so head over to part 3 and again thanks for watching this lesson if you haven't already do hit the subscribe button and the turn on the bell button for notifications thanks again cheers see you in part 3