 Hi guys this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson I'm going to take you through a few challenges you might face when you're playing a song which is very familiar to you like Wonderful World as you heard in the intro video. Now the song is very familiar to you. You've heard it a million times right and all the chord changes are in your head. You know all the bass notes, the melody, the change when the chords are changing rather are all very very evident. You just know it's all there but yet you're not able to get it out on the piano for some reason and to kind of solve that problem you then will use chord charts. You'll use you know a jazz like a real book to figure out the charts or you do a youtube video or whatever. Now what if I were to tell you that you don't need any of that all you need is your ear and the theory of the song and how we can build that based on what you might want as you navigate through a song like this. I took Wonderful World because the changes are very interesting it's you could say it's a jazz standard so the changes are very sophisticated in that sense there are a lot of chords there's a lot of modulation it goes out of key and so on and so forth so we'll take this song and I'm just going to take the verse maybe a little bit of the rest and I'm just going to tell you what are the challenges I faced while I tried to play it and create some kind of a version which I enjoyed you know and all of the ingredients which were in my head I told myself I just want to get it out there and what are the concepts which might help me go by be it the bass movement be it the chord movement be it the voicing of the chord be it some flavors which I wanted be it some vocal changes or some melodic changes if you will so I'm just going to walk you through as we played and to kind of make this lesson interesting we are going to take a key which I'm sure a lot of you might find a bit uncomfortable myself included at times F sharp major so I took the rather uncomfortable scale F sharp major primarily to help you understand how my brain is thinking because even I am finding it a bit tricky to get through the changes I could have probably played it all on C major but I need my years and I need my theory to be on point if I am to navigate through and play it with some level of confidence and some level of correctness so we are going to take F sharp major what is F sharp major again F sharp G sharp A sharp B C sharp D sharp E sharp also known as F F sharp that's your F sharp major scale right okay so I'll tell you a few sort of road blocks which I had along the way and I'll just tell you how I navigated through it now I know the song is on the key of F sharp major which I told you and I chose F sharp major so perhaps the first chord will be F sharp and remember I've heard this song and you have also probably heard this song a million times or at least a couple of times so if you haven't heard it maybe pause the video and listen to the song and come back so first chord will probably be some variant of F sharp major the tonic so it could be I see trees of green now F sharp seems to sound quite nice there let's see which F sharp seems to work I see trees F sharp major beautiful or see trees I can you can also decide which extension I see trees maybe the major six I see trees F sharp major seventh is a lot more beautiful I like the F sharp major sixth as well but what I wanted to do is I wanted some kind of a base movement but not change the chord that was my first goal I see trees of green so what if we now look at an F sharp major with a different slash chord or rather the same F sharp major with a different root in its base so that's what I went for at I see trees of green at the word green I see trees of green I could have stayed with F sharp but then it sounds rather boring so I see trees of green so I like the same F sharp major with a B flat base which is the third of F sharp major now I could also look at that and say do I want to play it as a F sharp and then F sharp over a sharp or B flat or should I just make it a good old B flat minor I see trees of green I like that so now I have choices while I'm harmonizing and this just happened real time I just told myself I want to change the base so I see trees of green now I went to the relative minor which sounds very stable so I wanted an unstable chord that's my thought process I see trees of green I like that I like the third somehow in there now how can I produce the third I see trees of green I can make it a three minor seventh which clearly exists diatonically to the key of F sharp major I see trees of green that could be an F sharp over A sharp works perfectly well you could also go a little bit out of scale out of context I see trees of green I could do a secondary dominant if you like those sort of sophisticated jazzy sounds so that will be a B flat bass which I still enjoy but I'm trying to add it with that Jimi Hendrix sharp 9 on the top I call it the Jimmy chord tree green I see trees of green a bit spicy if you want I see all I'll keep it simple to the slash chord green and then red roses too now I think red roses now the melody goes to D sharp so immediately I feel I need to lose the tonic chord and I'll play the dominant chord which is the four of F sharp major which is I'm looking at the melody looking at that D sharp and saying what chord works with it red roses too that sounds too gospel I guess red roses I like it when you play a root where it's third is that target melody so I'm taking a B major there red roses to come back to that minus seventh I like that that makes it very R&B so those are the thoughts going on in my mind so red roses too red roses too I could come back to tonic but then I already used it so rather boring so so far this particular harmonization is going on as I see trees F sharp tonic maybe with an embellished major sixth of green with that slash chord and then going to the subdominant or the predominant four major seventh red roses too and then I'm thinking I see because it goes now to the four I see the so the two minor works really well I see them blue for me and you and even it also works for the the bright blessed day the dark sacred night now I'd like to think of something interesting for for me and you or the dark sacred night and I have no clue where to go so I'm going to try and sing something and I'm going to try and follow that and then build a chord based on what's in my head which at the time is let's just go through it first I see trees of green red roses too I see them blue I like that I see them I like that climbing effect again B is my melody note target and I'm harmonizing it with a third below or the base note which is G sharp minor I see them bloom I like that climb I see them bloom I don't want to come back to the root I see them bloom and then I want to I want to go to you for me and you I know that you is an E flat minor chord because I've heard this song also so for me and you but for me and me and you now that chord for me theoretically is it's very important to know that that's a secondary dominant chord so in my mind I'm using a secondary dominant chord which is the five of the six for me and you very bluesy embellishment as well if you want to add that in your melody in I see them bloom for me and you for me and you otherwise for me and you for me and you sounds good but diatonic and thus not so sophisticated which we're thinking oh when you actually play for me and you you'll think oh yeah whenever you play a sophisticated chord and you figure it out without the internet or charts or a jazz real book so to speak when you get it you know you've got it so it's a great feeling also when you get it on your own you know when you've derived it and it just came to you you know it's it's quite a nice feeling so for me and you but I want to go one step further I see them bloom in my mind to get me to that secondary dominant I start on the root that makes that secondary dominant even more obvious so that's what a bass player would do in a band he he or she would sort of announce the chord or give a red carpet treatment for the upcoming chord by playing by just passing and help you helping us to connect a year to the upcoming chord sort of like a linear motion between chord to chord so I see them bloom and by the way this helps me play it on any key I see them bloom I actually did this because I didn't know for me and you it was very tricky to to know that oh it's B flat dominant you know so keep that and just to prove it to you if I take it on another key A major parabara parabara you need to remember that parabara and now theory helps you so first your year gave you that little motif and that's music theory the five all of the six will go to six okay coming back to our scale f sharp I just wanted to show you that I'm still going to think the same thing whichever scale I play on if I play on C major I see them bloom parabara parabara for me and you you that's a very important strategy to get to that secondary dominant chord which is out of scale but that trick or that strategy is in my recording I've used it it's not like I've used it as a tour guide to help me study that or something no I'm playing it for you right now so it's in my performance so if I play it from the top on f sharp I see them bloom for me and you you may make a mistake it's nice to make mistakes as well so make sure you get what your year wants your year wants that and it will get that okay for me and you now and I think to myself now I my year for me to get that correct chord and I think to myself chord and I think the challenge here is the note is f sharp it's such a simple note because it's the root note of the f sharp major scale it's the one so you would think and I think to myself or and I think to myself the five works and I think the two will work and I think a lot of chords will work you know and I think a sus four of the four would work but the actual chord is and I think to myself it goes into a lydian mode which I think he wanted in that song so and I think now what gives Louis the Armstrong what am I saying should keep that so so what gives Louis Armstrong the license to actually play that D major chord now this boils down to what I call as chord trees so if you if you say f sharp is a tree and there is a tree which has multiple branches which all trees do each of the branch will be a chord so it's almost like an individual a character on a tree which is usually a monkey would end up deciding now which branch should I climb to you know and I think to myself very easy to climb branch and I think to myself and I think to myself all the diatonic branches verses and I think to myself that's probably what was going on in the composer's mind but yeah it's a very very interesting chord I and I've always had a problem playing that so how did I solve this problem so I just told myself I know my melody landing is f sharp and I think okay for me and you for me and you it ends on e flat minor which is the relative minor and then f sharp is my landing melody note right and now you tell yourself f sharp is currently the minor third of e flat minor what Louis does is he makes f sharp the major third of what major chord so you need to reverse engineer the question you may all know the notes of D major chord which is D f sharp a but if I told you what chord will have f sharp as its third note or as its major third note that would be D major and I think to myself okay and I think so it's a beautiful transition it's a semitone down so if a cheat trick if you will would be for me and you would be a minor and I think down a semitone major and I think that works but I don't think that will serve a musical objective as you journey forward with your career to to maybe make a similar modulation of your own a trick would obviously be and I think and I think and I think and I think believe it or not when I was learning this song this way I was going all over the place I never realized man it's just a semitone down but and change minor to major semitone down minor to major now that's the cheat code for the process but in the long run you need to also remember and I f sharp becomes a minor third of something and I think and now f sharp the very f sharp the root of the scale which the singer lands on will now be the major third of what D major so it's it's nice if you see my notes I've put all the possible chord trees of f sharp so you could go through it and try to learn a few more harmonization options if you want okay and now coming to the very last case what a wonderful world and again it was really tricky for me and I think to myself what water I am I initially I went to you know E flat minor then I went gospel I guess what a wonderful world which kind of works what a wonderful world but I never get this right so what I had to tell myself is I had to go back to theory and said to myself what is the most common cadence in music history that would be the 251 jazz cadence so you ask yourself what is the 251 of f sharp major the answer would be 2 G sharp minor 5 dominant would be D flat or C sharp 7th resolving to the f sharp and let's see if that work works what a wonderful world kind of works works perfectly what a wonderful world what a wonderful world and then you can color that land can add an add 9 add 6 add major 7 major 9th up to you you can color it up but I landed on f sharp so for me to get there and then I checked it with the song and I was very pleasantly surprised it was the it was the right chord so this was one of the songs in my journey as a musician which got me to which gave me that confidence to figure out chords by year as some of you might argue but I would say not just by year by singing by theory by everything so when we say I learned this by year I think we are not doing justice to what actually happened when you learn a song by year we are learning it with a lot of theory with a lot of tactical knowledge with a lot of awareness of every register of every voice and I don't know if you want to just limit it and say I oh I got it by year I figured it out by year I just got it I'm born with this stuff no I I think there's a lot of work required to do this and merely being able to read music and knowing theory knowing your chords and scales will not help you in this real world environment and you may be thinking how can you apply this to your own songs or some other music this is really important because in a real world environment these are the only survival techniques you'll ever have if you have a producer or a singer friend or a bandmate next to you they come up with a melody they throw it to you and you don't want to tell them thanks for that it's a nice melody I'll I'll just sit on this give me a couple of days and I'll get back to you you know when you've booked a jam room and you're in the room music needs to be made spontaneously and you need to have the skill to do that just like how we play sports in a in that sense you there's no that there are rules to play the sport but we never learn the sport by first learning the rules reading a huge book and then going and playing the sport no we play the sport and as we accumulate the skill we then develop the rules so music could be similar if you ask me so just to finish off the last line what did I do with the last line I was thinking of a couple of things so let's see what what sounds good or what you like so two five one what a wonderful world now the word world goes on for a fair amount of time right so what a wonderful world can do that I can just do another climb but I did that earlier so let's try some chromatic stuff the trick I had for myself here was why not I move an inner voice I've talked I follow the melody a lot I follow the bass a lot now let's get one of those internal voices and move those chromatically and see what happens you know what a wonderful world becomes a beautiful f sharp augmented chord oh I can go to my four which is the b that's one modulation that's one option what a wonderful world a semitone up f sharp to g now whenever you do stuff semitonally a simple trick theoretically is to tell yourself you're doing anything semitone Lee either think of secondary dominance which I showed you earlier but I'm a bit bored with that so instead of secondary dominance what I thought of doing was bring in a diminished chord what a wonderful world move up a semitone and now play a diminished seventh chord from g world and it in my experience it kind of always works what a wonderful world so you have two modulation options what a wonderful world diminished climbing up or the other option which was what a wonderful world the inner voice goes up and up again and so on and so forth so both those theoretical I just told myself go up by a step you know the inner voice goes up chromatically and just see what happens you know you sometimes when you resolve a chord your your brain just will do it once you know the mechanics of how to play these chords you have already heard this stuff you have already listened to this song and I'm sure a lot of you have listened to a ton of songs many times so you need to also trust your you know your your subconscious activities to to get things going you should not always have a doubt and say what if I play the next chord and if it's absolutely wrong you should you should play the next chord wrong in order to figure out the right chord which again your ear will decide your brain will do the job so just to recap let's just do the B section colors of the rainbow the colors of the rainbow you need to know your melody I like that cadence the 2-5-1 works quite well the colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky are also on the faces of people go in by now that sounds a bit monotonous because I use 2-5-1 for that first line second line also I use 2-5-1 so how do I make it interesting I'll use another 2-5-1 but the minor 2-5-1 so the minor 2-5-1 will be to resolve to the six minor or the relative minor of the F sharp major scale so are also on the faces of people going by that's the normal 2-5-1 but if you take your people go in by I want to end there so the colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky are also on the faces are also on the faces of people going by let's say I want to end there for some reason so you ask yourself what is the 2-5-1 of E flat are also on the faces of people going by that's a very easy trick to take a chord progression with a melody which is for want of a better word rather monotonous and make it a bit more shiny you know so I'm doing major 2-5-1 the colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky now minor 2-5-1 okay which is are also on the faces of people going by okay and if you are a blues improviser very cool to do blues licks over the minor 2-5-1 I don't like to do blues licks so the major 2-5-1 for some reason anyway so now when you do the minor 2-5-1 keep in mind that it's minor 7 flat 5 also called as a half diminished chord represented by that greek letter 5 are also on the faces you may have to change the word sis of faces that syllable just to align with that chord which I think is nice are also on the faces see doesn't go so are also on the faces you can do that are also on the faces you're essentially highlighting the harmonic minor of people going by okay I see friends shaking hands I could do my usual b2 b flat minor that r and b trick I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do I can do a nice climb there so many options I see but originally I think we do what's going on there six to the three minor six to the three minor so you know have some fun there I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do then they they don't they really say I love you now when you play they're really saying I'm doing my diminished trick which is go up a semitone and play a diminished seventh chord they're really saying hey you know I love you ideally you do 251 that's your bankable cadence and then it results right so a lot of the tactics going on in my mind if we were to summarize it and I think even in your mind or any musician's mind would be first of all do an abe comparison between all of your chords and then when you're doing this abe comparison you always think at the upper levels you're always thinking binary binary in the sense it starts off by saying tension or resolution should the chord be a peaceful resolution chord stable another word or should it be an unstable tense or a chord which is yearning or leading to go somewhere that's one way of looking at it binary in a binary perspective then when you are with the choice of a chord you can also say should the chord be diatonic or should the chord be non-diatonic or chromatic or away from the scale so you could make these very binary judgments should the bass go up or should it go down simple decisions to make right should I do 251 major or should I do 251 minor you know should I do this chord or that chord so whenever you make a decision with your brain I think it's best if you think at the upper levels you think in a very binary or with a very binary perspective that can be very helpful in the long run and very stress free also because it just becomes this or that and you see if you like this else choose that or choose both at some point so hopefully this lesson gives you a few perspectives to choosing chords using a year using our theory theory is almost like a sort of you're going into the jungle with a backpack and you're well prepared for the challenges of the jungle if a if you were bitten by a snake or chased by a crocodile what would you do you need a toolkit with something in it right so that if you ask me is music theory it's always the survival mode for a musician don't look at music theory as the basis of going to the jungle in the first place you're going to the jungle because you love the adventure you want to be there but to survive in the jungle it's always good to know your theory and the year training as we call it colloquially would be do you have the instinct to survive in the jungle so you may have all the tools you may have some expensive weapon to defeat an animal or whatever but do you have the instinct to do it when it comes at you that is how I would look at year training versus music theory which is why you would need both you never say I learn this by year I learn that by theory or I'll do that by notation no I'm not a fan of that I've always believed that you need all the tools all the resources available to to learn a song and when you do learn the song you should feel or tell yourself that oh I've done this and it's gonna help me play the next song a lot nicer or it's gonna help me learn the next song a lot faster or it's gonna help me make a new song using the concepts of this song so I always like to look at a future proof way of learning songs rather than I have to do this song in two days but that that's not generally how I like to go about things so that's in a nutshell how I have figured out this great song by Louis Armstrong wonderful world and hopefully this guides you through with a perspective to figure out other songs be it jazz standards or your own compositions or even a simple old nursery rhyme I guess right guys thanks a ton for watching do consider supporting us on patreon by getting my handwritten notes and midi files wherever applicable backing tracks and other resources so it's on patreon and do stay tuned to our channel for more videos we release videos very often so you may want to consider hitting the subscribe button and hitting the bell icon for regular notifications let us know what you thought about the lesson in the comments and do consider giving the video a like and sharing it with your friends thanks a ton for watching the video cheers catch you in the next one