 Hi everyone this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson we are going to look at 10 really creative chord inversion exercises right. Normally when we practice the subject of chord inversions is just a fairly boring job. We just write it down play them one by one and move along aimlessly. So what I want to do in this lesson is actually get you to make music while practicing your chord inversions right. Why not do that? Why can't the process of learning the chord inversions which is like a very you know important piano chapter and can get very mind-boggling sometimes. Let it be a lot of fun as well right. So I'm going to take two chords in this lesson through your feedback. Some of you are very happy with my philosophy of not using C major to explain everything. Some of you want C major so I thought I'll do both. I'm going to do B flat major just take that one chord show you various exercises on B flat major and then show you various exercises on C major okay and all these exercises are at different levels. I would highly recommend to stay tuned till the end of the video where I'm also going to suggest five more ways to add to these 10 exercises right. Five more approaches so if you get bored with these 10 exercises if they are over well there's more okay. So stay tuned till the very end and don't forget to subscribe turn on the bell if you haven't already let's get started right away. So the first exercise is just what we call as block chords where you hit the chord and the specific inversion four times each. Let's recap the three inversions of the B flat major chord first of all you have B flat major this is B flat D F that's what we also call as the root position where the root starts things off then we have D F B flat which is the first inversion how do we identify the first inversion the root note is at the top of the chord it's the highest note so root position root at the bottom first inversion root at the top and then second inversion the roots inside roots in the middle so root first second inversion just get used to those those are the three shapes the three piano inversions of playing any any chord so coming to C major also which we're doing two chords in this series C major C E G E G C G C E so root position C major root at the bottom first inversion C major root at the top first second inversion C major with the root in the center so exercise number one is just going to be block chords four times each of each inversion going up and then going down and then we'll also look at some accents let's get cracking so I'm going to play it for you and then explain okay so the first chord B flat because it starts with B flat is a bit tricky so you could play it like this or you could play it like this or you can jump your fingers it's fine the whole purpose is to latch on to the next one so B flat still B flat come back so we are doing root first second back to first okay if you're a pedal user if you use the sustained pedal you can hold the pedal at the end while you're shifting so pedal pedal so then you get a staccato and the legato the best of both worlds so staccato first three pedal staccato first three pedal pedal back okay and then you do this for C major inversion okay so we're trying to accent the fourth beat it's really important that you accent the fourth beat it pushes your shifting sensibilities even more okay this is the first exercise block chords the next thing is one of my favorite rhythms it's called as umpa okay so to do umpa what you do is you take the root of the chord B flat and then you take the fifth of the chord which is F and then play the chord every and or every eighth note I'll play you and then show you so next inversion next inversion back so it's root chord fifth chord root of the chord chord fifth of the chord chord then root shift new inversion so just go with that and I'd encourage you to also try and sing something even though you're just playing one chord make it fun and by singing it also improves your hand independence and independence on the piano is not only about the two hands it's about your mind being freer from the two hands right then you focus on other things like timing chord and you know what your other bandmates are doing so there's your umpa and a very small modification is waltz which adds one more chord waltz as we generally observe is a three by four song or a three by four time signature so you have three beats in a bar so I'll play it and show you it's rather easy root chord chord fifth chord chord root chord so root chord chord fifth chord chord left right right left right right umpa earlier was like someone marching with their hands left right left right left right waltz is left right left right right so how does that work left right right okay root chord chord fifth you can do it on C major and then of course stretch out your inversion C first inversion second inversion back if you like to play the bass lower feel free actually like the bass lower and if you know some other chords why not go to maybe an F fun workout right so moving forward let's do another one called broken chords with broken chords I'm going to show you this rhythm in three four I think three four will sound really nice for broken chords let me just play you the technique and I'll play you on B flat okay so B flat B flat B flat it's still B flat so how do we explore how do we explain this technique it's what I call as the out in out in out in technique okay so the outer two notes B flat in F and the inside note which is D so you go explore which fingers work it's going to change for each chord out in but the technique is the same out in out in out in out in out in out right and if you count it one and two and three and one and two and three and one two three three by four not six eight three by four one and two three and one right so that's your out in broken chord technique so let's now look at broken chords on C the C major chord pretty much symbol similar that's C major first second first you can do this with even a minor chord the fingers are just going to change okay so now moving forward let's now look at some arpeggio rhythms where we can again continue to explore chord inversions okay this if I'm not mistaken is pattern number five so you go I'll play it and show you okay so one might argue that these are triplets or you could be playing it over a 12 eight time signature I'm just going to say these are triplets one triplet two triplet three triplet four triplet down down down so you may be guessing what I'm doing I'm just going up in inversions and I'm adding the root shape at the top as well so this one this one back to root and now descend from the top note of the chord pretty much it so let's do that again root first second inversion back to root descending root descending second descending first descending root again and with arpeggios you can flip you can cross your fingers especially on the way down to get a more a more kind of legato sound right it is tough I'd leave legato to you really because legato is something tough when you're practicing inversions but you could use the pedal to achieve that you know lift and close don't hold the pedal all the time it's going to sound a bit very muddy if you just keep it held down okay so triplets again okay then you have arpeggios over three four okay so what I mean by that is arpeggios over a three by four time signature and it also allows us to add one more note to each triad even though it is not an extra note you go B flat D F and the high B flat so B flat D F B flat okay you're adding that with the pinky okay this is the pattern which I have for you one two three one two three one two three and two and so you just roll each inversion and if you're not sure which shifting yet just do one at a time for a while like enjoy just one shift or one position now change whenever confident right you can also do this on C major descending okay so you can do this over minor chords or whichever chord and like I said you don't have to play them all at once together you can just hand pick one of the inversions and just roll with that anyway when you actually use inversions in a song they are meant to link up two chords with almost the same shape together for example C major and F major C major is quite easy F major is also easy because they are very close to each other that's the point of inversions and we've done a lot of youtube lessons on chord inversions there's a playlist with quite a few lessons so do check it out we've linked it in the description moving forward so the next thing you can do is just have some fun with blocks itself play them in interesting rhythms one rhythm which I think you'll all be familiar with is the thresio rhythm right even if you don't know what the word thresio means you'll you're reminded of right tongue tongue tongue tongue tongue that sort of rhythm which is used a lot for the modern day dance songs right and general dance music in in general so you go I'll play you so what you're trying to do is instead of just holding the chord you're working on your rhythm so so that's one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and if you can get the pulse in the left it'll be great or just hold the root of the chord in the left C major one more time that's the thresio and now let's add another rhythm to the equation by swinging the music a bit so you can do and three and four and one swing music is very popular for blues and jazz so one rhythm which they use a lot is what what we call as the charleston rhythm which goes something like this which is one and two and three and four and one and two and and the and you're supposed to play choppy one and two and four and one and two and three and moving and four and one and two and three and four staccato at the end and four and one and two and three and two and three okay you could also start at the end and then land at the on beat so one and two and three and four and one right so and three and three and three you can do all sorts of charleston variations so that's about charleston on the swing and then earlier we learned the thresio which is a very common pop rhythm it's also called as a pop clave okay moving forward right so I've saved the more interesting ones for the end these use what I call as dual speed arpeggios so you take your right hand let's say you take C major chord and you play C major in a pattern of your choice maybe that now if you count this you could count it as eighth notes one and two and three and four and one while in the other hand you're supposed to play half of this speed so so you just play slower half the speed of the right hand and it provides a really nice sound because none of the notes clash with each other as opposed to it's one of the powers the piano player has you have your two hands which are very independent from each other right the guitar has a challenge in that sense because you pluck here and here you're holding the chord so you don't have that independence is what we have so make use of it so you go you could take a chord double speed there single speed there explore the inversions I'm also floating the left hand which you can also do so if you're confident doing both hands fair enough or else just hold the C okay whatever works but the idea of dual arpeggios is to get both hands to play arpeggios you can also do like four four speed here and double speed here so here you can do 16th notes basically one which is sort of the same just faster just double the speed you can then look at some interesting rhythms you can probably merge two with three you can do an arpeggio which is dividing the beat by two you can do another arpeggio which is dividing the beat by three let's see how we can build that one two three something like this one and two and three and one so you can do something like that so you find a three going on in the left and you get a three four in the right these are also known as poly rhythms now I have done a lot of rhythm lessons a lot of rhythm concepts and I have definitely touched on these rhythms and most of these rhythms as only rhythm so if you want to explore your rhythm study do check out our rhythm playlist which we've put in the description okay so the last pattern will be what I call as floating inversions where you take a chord you take okay let's explore this with just the C major chord you can do it with any chord so you go just take the top note and just wander with your last finger just wander around that just one note then so that's C going one down then now let me try one up one higher you can do it with an arpeggio or do it with blocks just one up one up one up the top note and one down the top note let's try that on B flat get a lot of these melodic options so you can even build construct like a nice song you know or a riff or a small harmonic phrase you know right guys so we've looked at 10 rather exhaustive techniques to practice chord inversions all sorts of things right starting with simple blocks arpeggios broken chords took the two hands coming together and then experimenting creatively with the floating options where you bring out the melody looking at different rhythm patterns swing rhythms and straight rhythms dividing by four triplets all sorts of stuff so I would really suggest that you practice these 10 rhythms with any chord you want or a couple of chords and then glide through the different inversions take your time with the exercise that's very important I don't think you can get all of this in one sitting so you need to take your time with it and if you are an advanced learner what you can always do is try and grow from what we've done just now the first point I would like to say is try out the same inversion which you did in the right hand also in the left hand so if you're doing a pattern like play that inversion in the left hand or maybe the same pattern right so basically do whatever you are doing in the right hand in the left hand or at least hold the chord it's good to get acquainted with the inversions in both hands if you do it with the left it'll help you with your melody playing in the right hand right the other thing is you can try out a variety of different rhythm patterns like you can just hold the chord and just see something else you know which you'd like to play and another thing which I always like to do which a lot of people end up doing when you practice all instruments be it the guitar the trumpet or even the piano is just look at the circle of fifths go ascending the circle and just play all your major chords then go descending the circle and then do all your minor chords so for example start on C now what's after C in the circle counterclockwise that'll be this way F maybe B flat or you can just do the one four five chord progression of the major scale so if you're on the key of C one is C four is F five is G so F G back to right and again if you're like an intermediate to advanced learner you can also practice this entire drill using extended harmony like instead of triads you can look at sevenths so there'll be three inversions for a seventh chord or four shapes you'll have this one this one this one you'll have to practice four instead of three which we would do if we are learning triads right so the final embellishment you can do if you're an intermediate or an advanced kind of learner is in the left hand instead of playing the root only of the chord you can kind of have an interplay a base interplay within between the root the octave the fifth and maybe the third as well so you can do so instead of just holding B flat while you do the exercise you can do you can do a toggle between the root and the fifth right add the third you get the obla de obla da pattern so basically add the fifth and the third along with the root right guys so this is pretty much it these are 10 chord inversion exercises which will hopefully take your chord piano playing to the next level and I hope you enjoy them that's the whole point of giving you these exercises so that you can actually digest chord inversions take your time it will take time but these are just ways you can practice chords otherwise what happens is to learn inversions you do it you know in a very textbook way you look at the chord you just stare at it and play it but actually you have to use it in music with some kind of an actual real world rhythm pattern so I've given you 10 real world rhythm patterns at various levels hopefully right so all the best with the exercise again this is Jason here from Nathaniel if you haven't already do consider subscribing to our channel leave us a comment with something you'd like us to do next hit the like share the video and also get yourself a copy of all our hand written notes on patreon all the exercises are written down for you so do check that out for further reference cheers