 Hi everyone this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson I'm going to talk about 10 ways to make the chords for an existing song a lot more interesting. You can call the process as chord substitution, reharmonization as a lot of people call it or just tricks to make a folk song or a pop song or a rock song or a ballad. Basically songs which are not already complex, songs which are diatonic which would have chords pretty much in the major scale. That would be if you're in the key of C major, C major, D minor, E minor, F major, G major, A minor, B diminished, C. So pretty much those seven diatonic chords. So let's say you have a song like that and we shall then look at various methods. In fact 10 methods which I've designed in this series to help you reharmonize songs. So we'll take the popular one Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen. So pretty much simple chords. I'll break down the chords in the beginning and then we'll try and reharmonize it using a variety of techniques. So lots to learn in this series guys before we start it'll be awesome if you can hit that subscribe button and the bell icon for regular notifications which will inform you of future videos which we put out riffs and lessons on our YouTube channel. So first off let's do Hallelujah with the default chords. So I'll just sing it and play you the chords. So that's C major, A minor, C major, A minor for the most part. I hear there was a secret chord, A minor, that David played, C major, and please the lord, A minor. When you don't F, D care for mute, G, into your C, G. Well it goes C like this, the fourth, the fifth, the fourth, the fifth is literally the fourth and the fifth chord of the C major scale which is F major and G major. It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, minor fall which is the A minor, six minor, minor fall and the major lift. That's the F major chord which is the four major. The baffled king composing. Now the baffled king composing, you could do the baffled king composing, you can do E minor but I think it's a lot nicer and in a lot of versions we go the baffled king composing, we leave the scale of C major and go to this E seventh chord which takes you neatly to, A minor, F major, A minor, F again, A minor. So your intro could be like a C major, A minor, C major and it's generally on a six eight feel. Most versions we hear including the original are on a six eight. So one, two, three, four, five, six, four. Let's revise that again. I heard there was a secret chord, A minor, that David played and it plays, A minor, F, na na na G, na na na C, na na na G. Well it goes like C, the fourth F, the fifth G, minor for A minor, the major live F, the baffled G, king composing E seven, hallelujah, A minor, repeat A minor, hallelujah, stay on F major, hallelujah, stay on A minor for an extra bar, hallelujah, F, C, G, okay. So that's the track. Now let's look at 10 ways to reharmonize this. All of these ways are quite easy if you think about it. They're all based on simple music theory concepts like intervals, the circle of fifths. So do make sure to stay tuned to the end of the video or what will end up being a part series. So do follow along to the entire series. We may not be able to squeeze in all the 10 parts into one YouTube video. That'll make it like a movie or something. So let's get cracking with the first method which I call or which we all call as ad chords. So what is an ad chord? An ad chord is something you add to an existing triad. So if it's a major or a minor chord, if you take C major, you can add a two, in this case the D. It's called an ad two, or you can add the F. Not so common with the F on the one chord. It's more adding the two. You could also add the sixth. That would make it a major sixth in any case or you can add a flat six, but this may not work because it's you're going to then leave the scale. So you can figure out these ad notes. So an ad note is a two, a four, or a sixth and start with it being diatonic. That means it should be part of the C major scale. So let's see what we can work out. And this is for the most part. So I'm not saying you do ad chords for the whole song, right? You just use it to spice up chords when you see fit, when you like the vibe of the ad chord and there are going to be 10 methodologies to substitute and harmonize chords. So this is just one of them. So there are quite a few and to supplement this lesson, there are notes on Patreon. There are a lot of my handwritten notes which will help you learn the song and the concepts which I use in this song very, very well. So do head over to Patreon, get yourself a copy of the notes. So you go the revised version of the chords, the same triad. C major, A minor, C major, A minor could now be revisited using our reharmonized. So this could now be revisited using the ad chord. So I heard there was a secret chord. So what did I do there? Both I did add two's. I heard there was a secret chord. That's A with a B, A minor with a B. That David played. You could now do that add six. That David played. And please the Lord, please, please the Lord. Now in some cases an ad could be used more with a suspended function. That means you're hitting it, but then it needs to come back to the triad. So if I take an A minor with an ad flat six, which is diatonic to the key of C major. So David played and it please the Lord, then it please the Lord. So you could kind of drop that F down to the E and that works really well. Let's see. I heard there was a secret chord. All ad do's now. That David played. So you could do the sus four, which is C sus four resolving to the major to third. That David played. So you're doing the sus four resolving to the major third. Then we don't call it an ad chord. We call it a sus chord. That David played and it please the Lord. So ad chords I heard there was a secret chord. Add two. That David played sus and it please the Lord, please the Lord. That you don't, that you don't. You could even do an ad four for an F. You don't. You may want to change your melody or consider or, but you don't really care for me. It kind of works because it's a suspension on the F kind of works very well for the F chord, even though it takes you a bit out of C major scale with that B flat. No, you don't really care for music. Do you? With the G, you can always do a sus four or an ad four. Well, it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth. That's an ad four. That flat six or the ad two. You can even do like an F ad sharp four. Makes it a very Lydian sound. That's G look like a flat two. If you like that exotic sound. You can get in that sharp four. Back to an ad two. Sus four. Okay, so that's how you can add ad chords. So you do add two, add four, add six. The two can in rare cases be a flat two. It could also be an ad sharp four on the four chord, giving you that Lydian vibe. The ad six could be an ad normal six major six or the major six with a flat or the major chord with a flattened six. Or you can do suspensions where you don't add, you remove the third, play the sus and then come down to the third. Okay, so that's basically about playing hallelujah using ad chords and sus chords. Right. So another way to make this chord progression a lot more sophisticated is using what we call as a chord extensions or jazz tensions, trying to add jazz tension. So I have a few tricks with regard to that because I didn't start with, you know, knowing the theory of these ninth chords and leavens and even sevenths for that matter. So I developed a few tricks are along the way while playing pop ballads or any song for that matter. So one way of thinking of extensions is a seventh and try to see if the seventh for the most part would be diatonic. So you can change every triad or augment every triad like a C major with a major seven. Okay. In some cases it can be an overkill, but another way to add an extension could be a sixth. So mostly a seventh is considered an extension. So you can play it with extended sevens. Now you may want to reconsider playing these seventh chords with a specific inversion or a voicing like hiding that seventh down below. I like that sound. It works for me. So I heard there was a secret chord A minor seventh that David played and it pleased the Lord that you don't really care for. So what did I do there? I did an F major seventh. You don't you could also add that G in making it a major ninth. We'll talk about that very shortly. You don't really care for music. That's a G seven sus four. G seven sus four works quite well. Well, it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor composing anyways, an E seventh A minor seventh, F major seventh, A minor seventh. You can do an F major seventh with a sharp four making it more Lydian. Okay. Now a quick trick to make these extensions sound even more sophisticated is if it's a major chord. So there are three general types of chords we use in songs major minor and dominant. Okay. Dominant would be the five chord generally of the scale or it'll have that seven flat in the chord. So if you're on a major chord like C major, how do you make C major more sophisticated? So a quick trick would be go up a perfect fifth from C that would be G and play G major chord with a C base. So that's like a G over C that immediately gives you those nines, levens and all those cool extensions. So it's a nice way of playing it. I think I heard there was same story with the a minor a secret car that's a minor within E on the top, E minor on the top. So A, A, B, C, D, E, perfect fifth E plain E minor, not E major that'll take you off scale. So I heard there was a secret car that David played and it please the Lord. See which inversion. So you're actually just playing triads. If you think about it, you're just playing simple triads. But with that base, the intervals change and you start gaining all the jazz tensions and all the 9, 11 and the 13 intervals, which you would have not got if you just played triads. But the ironies, you're still playing triads, thinking simple, play the base note of the chord in the left, go up a perfect fifth and just play a minor for a minor chord or play a major chord for a major chord. So now for the F same story. Now F is also a nice Lydian sound. So to get a Lydian vibe you don't really care for me, you can go up a major second and play a major chord. So F major second G, G major over F, you don't really, or you can go the other approach, which is go up a perfect fifth. Okay. And then when you're on the G care for music, how I like voicing, it's pretty much the chord root with another triad in your right hand or in the treble clef. So to get a G to sound more sophisticated, you can do, you can either go down a tone or up a minor seventh, that'll be F slash G care for music care for music, or you can go up a perfect fifth but play a minor chord instead of the major so that you remain in the key care for me. So that's what you do over a dominant. When the chords change very fast, you can just play normal triads like how it was composed. That's the jazzy one. If you don't like it, you can avoid it for a chord or two. You don't have to do it with every chord. I'm just doing an overkill to show you the concept. Okay. It's already dominant. Sounds good there. I like that C over F. So you either do like normal major seventh chords, minor seventh chords or dominant seventh chords, or seven sus fours, or you can extend it even further. So see the notes I've written down some of the extension options for you. Some of them will not sound great. Even to my ear, I wouldn't want to use this everywhere. But it's good to have the power to do it whenever you need to. You may even do it just once in the whole track, you know, or in the whole verse or chorus. But that one time you do it, people will be like, wow, what did what did the guy do? You know, so let's move on to one more sophistication for the song moving forward. So now we are going to do what I call as passing slash chord. So what happens here is you take the existing chord structure and figure out a chord in between the two chords, especially when the two chords are well, pretty much all the time. So you can go C major. Anyway, it's going down to A minor. So my suggestion to figure out these passing slash chords is study your left hand, study your base, which is going C, A, C, A. So what is between C and A diatonically? That's a B, right? So I heard there was a secret chord that which on its own sounds good, even with the C major floating in the right hand. But if you feel there's a little bit of dissonance there at that particular point, you could now ask yourself what chord has B in it. And you need to find ideally a major chord, which has B in it, which wherein B is not the root of that major chord. So G major becomes that obvious chord because G has a B in the base, right? So that what are we doing with these passing slash chords? The reason why it's slashed out, that means a triad with another note as its base as part of the same triad is so that we don't get a very obvious triadic sound. Like you don't want to do I heard there was a secret chord. Now we've actually made the G major to be an actual triad in the song, right? So I heard there was a secret chord that works in a subtle way. And it also provides a great bass movement downward to the A minor. I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the lord. And now if you want to go to F major, you have two options that David played and it pleased the lord. That's G over B, please the lord A minor. Oh, I love that chord. That's a C over E. Just makes it very brave. Oh, that's incidentally our very own friend C major, but played with an E base that chain. That's no longer to me, that's no longer C major, that's C over E. That's a completely different vibe and a completely different chord. So let's study that. That's G over B, the passing that David played and it pleased the lord. Okay, C over E you don't know if you don't like C over E to F, you can also do you can do C over G going down to F. Yeah, you can do that drop or even a G major F, if you wanted something to feel subtle. Okay, chords are very fast. But another thing you could try out, you don't really care for, see there's a semitone between F and G. This F sharp is a nice note to play, but then this needs to be harmonized with a major chord. So you don't really, D major over F sharp will be beautiful. You don't really care for music, do you? Okay, I got carried away there, but you don't really care for music. G over B, Lua. Well, it goes like this, the fourth, the fourth, you could do that. Fourth, again D over F sharp, because it's leading or yearning to the fifth G major. That's E seventh, which over or E major over G sharp, minor for A minor. I like, now check that out. You can go down. King composing. I really like that drop down. G over F. Hallelujah. I will keep doing that because I like that vibe. C over F. You can do a G major going to A as a passing. Hallelujah. I love that G over B. So passing chords will add another chord. So the definition of what I'm calling a passing slash chord is it's a major chord without its root as a base, which is used in between. So you can't just add the chord and expect time to just move swiftly. No, it won't. Time of the chord will remain. So C major will be six counts. A minor will be six counts depending on how you count it. So you have to sneak in or squeeze in the passing flavor in between the chords. So that's about passing chords. We've covered basically the idea of add chords or suspension chords. Then we looked at chord extensions, the jazzy chords to give you sevens, 9s, 11s and so on. And we've now looked at the passing flavors. Now this is part of a three-part series. So do stay tuned to the next part, which will be on our YouTube channel. And the best way to stay tuned is just hit that bell icon for regular notifications. Subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and stay tuned. Another thing which would help, I've written down a booklet with all the variations, all the extensions, the theory in detail. It's waiting for you on our Patreon. It's like an entire booklet. So that will be a great supplementary resource while you watch these videos. And if you have any questions, if you have any doubts, you could always chat about it in the comments or you can consider joining some of my live virtual workshops, courses from time to time. Courses are very regular. You can just fill up a form on Nathanielschool.com. Check out the links in the description and I will catch you in that next part. Don't forget to watch the next part. You're going to get it and it'll be quite easy for you to understand. And the good thing about this series is even though I'm talking about the song Hallelujah, I'm also suggesting that these methods can be used for any song you have to play. You can even do it with twinkle twinkle little star or happy birthday or a Bollywood song or a folk song or a heavy metal song, I think. Okay, let's move forward.