 Hi everyone this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson we are basically going to look at a bunch of ways to enrich a piano chord progression or pretty much any chord progression on any instrument. The starting platform would basically be triads. So you could take major chords, minor chords, it's pretty much it major and minor chords and what we do around that would be to build all sorts of embellishments within the chord of the chord progression. So if it's let's say A flat, A flat, B flat and a C minor or something while you play each of these four chords of the chord progression we are going to develop a lot of possibilities to kind of make the chord a lot more interesting otherwise it will just be felt like chord number one then going to chord number two and then chord number three and then chord number four. So rather than that we can journey forward from one chord to the other also to try and make the piano presence felt as an accompanist maybe or accompanying yourself or another vocalist or a band or a choir or whatever it may be. So primarily an accompaniment lesson because your right hand will be doing the chords and your left hand will be playing stuff in the bass but it could be used even as a lead practice or solo piano but in this particular lesson it's primarily to accompany the voice or a lead instrument. So before we get cracking it will be awesome if you can hit that subscribe button, give us a like, share the video, leave us a comment that will always help the video grow and you can consider supporting us on Patreon that helps our channel grow your support will mean a lot. Let's get cracking right away. Let's just take the first point on how I would enrich a chord progression that would be suspensions and what we call as cadences. So you take the same chord let's say you take the concept of going from E flat to A flat major. You can just do that maybe four times each E flat major, A flat major. You could even do it longer like E flat major four more times then you do A flat major four more times. So here's where you find the boredom right it's getting boring to play the same chord it almost sounds as though even though time is moving forward the chord feels like it's making the music static it's like there's nothing to expect over four beats or in this case even eight beats. So what you want to do while you're playing the chord is look at suspensions and cadences so suspensions would be something like the major chord add in the sus four sus four would be A flat with respect to E flat then you go G coming back to major you can do a sus two you can even do what I call as a sus two sus four. So E flat F A flat that would be sus two and sus four sus two sus four so you could add those embellishments within the existent chord which is in this case E flat so you go E flat it also sounds very melodic doesn't it. It could also follow the melody line or the melody could go something different like when the vocal vocalist is holding on to a note you could kind of glide and do these suspended movements there we go that's what we call as suspensions or suspended chords the other thing I like to do is look at cadences in music the plagal cadence the authentic cadence or any cadence which is a small two chord movement like a very commonly heard movement so if you take let's say the plagal cadence which is used a lot with the artists like Elton John and a lot of the pop rock musicians who play piano so they'll go something like this or you can go do it with pretty much all the chords so how do you form the plagal cadence you go you go to the four of E flat which is A flat and you use that as a passing chord so the chord printed in the paper is still E flat major but you add that A flat plagal cadence which is also what we popularly call in church music as the almond cadence so it's a very familiar sound a lot of people have heard it so you go so if you take other chords like B flat with its plagal which is E flat which is its fourth and then you come back and now let's try it over the C minor that's C minor with its plagal F minor and then back to C minor and then and then it comes back to A flat so if you take the progression E flat B flat C minor A flat 1564 B flat major B flat with that E flat and now C and end on back to it kind of makes the chords a lot more colorful doesn't it so let's move on to another style of embellishment which I really enjoy on the piano right so another thing I really like to do to embellish and a chord progression is rhythmically you contrast with full chords or block chords like this in this case I'm playing G and maybe C major so that's you'd be playing each chord maybe four times and then you embellish it rhythmically with arpeggios one two three four one two three four one two so what do you do at the end of the bar when ideally usually you do these fillers or these embellishments rhythmically when the singer is done with the line whatever they are singing so let's say if it's of course that was overdoing it but you get the idea you don't have to do an arpeggio over every chord you can do it here in there so that's a very nice trick to kind of embellish the chord progression so if you're working on an arpeggio pattern like something like this consistently the point I'm trying to make here is don't do the arpeggios only use it to spice up the normal chord so if the chords are played like this add that arpeggio just at the end there we go so and in this case I'm playing G major C major arpeggio coming up G major arpeggio coming up D major standard one four one five so arpeggios are really cool you should definitely try them out moving forward so the other style of movement or embellishment would just be melodic passing notes which don't annoy your melody line or your singer or whoever's playing the lead in your group so if you take a chord progression like this B minor A over C sharp bass D major B minor let this sit in first over a melody line let's say that's the melody let's say that's the tune so you see the singer kind of finished the line and then you can do something at the end on the scale something there also becomes like a nice call and response the singer is calling and the piano is responding it could even be you calling with your voice and responding with the piano could even play the last two notes or so of the vocal and that'll sound quite nice stuff like that will really help so you could even do some passing notes in between chords you know stuff like that but then your piano becomes very melodic so maybe you could use that as an interlude or as an intro or you can use it if the melody is sparse why not like sounds very melodic you're almost super imposing a melody over the chord so if you find a middle point where it's nice it's catchy but it doesn't you know overshadow the singer I think you'll be fine with passing notes so that's the third way to enrich a chord progression let's move on so what did I do there I've added some base movements earlier we added the passing melody stuff in the right hand also note you can add it in the left hand so if I take a major going to something like C sharp minor or a over C sharp base D and then E just a simple climbing progression a major a over C sharp D major E major and let's look at some bass movement basically a bass line so this is without the moving base one more time and in some cases it becomes really part of the song for example you know this song or maybe stuff like stuff like that you know so the bass line is really part of the music you know you could even build like a riff you know so base movements are really cool so what is a base movement in conclusion you have your chords and when you're going to the base note of the next chord you try to find some notes or some connecting notes which can guide you towards that right guys again this is Jason here from Nathaniel School of Music thanks so much for watching this video and do so consider supporting our channel on Patreon we have all the notes for this lesson ready and waiting for you and also for the upcoming lessons and everything we have ever done in the past as well and if you'd like to learn something with us with our school we have courses we have workshops we have lessons of various kinds we also have structured video recordings which we call as video courses which we have on our website so you may want to go to Nathaniel school.com if you want to interact with us learn with us in person and learn pretty much whatever you want to learn whether it's vocals guitar or the piano at whichever skill level I hope to see you in the next video as well you will definitely see me in the next one I guess and share the video with your friends do give it a like to give it that thumbs up thing leave us a comment with something you'd like to do in the 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