 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel in this lesson I don't know if you figured it out by the performance video This is actually a chord inversion exercise like one of the the ultimate ones if I have to say so myself It's an exercise which I developed to train Multiple facets, you know like a combination workout if you think about it from a gym perspective To train your rhythmic chops your rhythmic awareness ability to play arpeggios and blocks together Left-hand right-hand coordination and some serious serious chord inversion mastery like I don't want you to be good at chord inversions I want you to master chord inversion So that's what this lesson is about and I've chosen a very very popular chord progression as you heard It's just pop music so The chord progression chord inversions and independence Year training a little bit and a lot of rhythm patterns to go with okay I hope you're ready for this one get your keyboards out that may really help play along with me I will slow it down whenever we need to and there are some there are enough and more notes available if you want to pause the video and download a copy of notes of this lesson and His Historically, whatever we've done and in the future whatever we are going to do. It's all there on our patreon and Before we start it'll be great if you could give the video a thumbs up leave us a comment with stuff You'd like to do or learn share the video will be great And don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already there's a bell for notifications. Please hit that bell We release videos very very regularly on our channel. Let's get cracking So the exercise is basically built on a one six two five chord progression So if you take the key of G major You'll realize that the one is G major the six is E minor the the two is a minor and the five is D major so as you can see the chords are very scattered. That's G major E minor a minor D major you see it's very scattered making it very annoying to the listener and Also making it very difficult to play on the piano So first and foremost you definitely need to learn in inversions to make it sound better to make it smoother in transition and Well, it's a common concept of music theory and piano playing so what is an inversion now if you take G major like this and Then play E minor like that. These are what they call as the root positions of the two chords Which is just not cutting it for sonically or mechanically. So you want to improve that to do that you play G major and Then you move to E minor Just like that Because that's one of the shapes of E minor E minor is E G B. So I can jumble those notes Just to suit my flavor or my Requirement so I could do GbD Going to GbE. So whenever I have GbD G major. I could go GbE E minor So GbD GbE and now I want to go to a minor. So what changes there? The E stays consistent so GbD GbE A C E and now I want to go up to D major for the purpose of this exercise. So I go A D F sharp because A is common. So A C E and then I go to A D F sharp again G major GbD E minor GbE A minor A C E and D major D F sharp A. So you want to first practice playing them as block chords Just to practice your inversion movement And as you can see it's a lot easier than going In the default shapes of the chords. So this is something I found especially teaching students who've gone to another you know teacher or another Style of learning and then they come to either me one of my videos and or Nevertheless, they tend to find it a bit difficult to go beyond the root positions of chords So I would encourage you if you're new to the piano if you've played for a bit Understand that there are three positions of the chords and all three need to be given equal weightage for your learning learn all three of them Together and then learn them not as one chord Learn them with a chord progression of many chords. So if you're taking G major Figure out an inversion which goes to E minor Figure out an inversion from E minor here to go to a minor and you'll realize and my argument is you can play any chord Pretty much blindly in the same spot like for just off the top G major B flat major E flat major F sharp major C sharp minor a major a minor D minor D major B major B minor You see what's happening here The reason why I showed you without the eyes or blindfolded was to just show you that it's it's possible It's possible to move from any chord to any chord and if you can do it without looking Doesn't it help? I'm sure it'll be a lot more helpful, isn't it? So chord inversions need to be part of your chord learning from the first day So I encourage you to write this down now. I've prepared a chart on As a PDF you can download it You'll see exactly how I've matched and how I've paired these chords together and how I write it on the G scale For this chord progression for this exercise is exactly how I want you to take it forward for everything Everything you ever do with chords so when you get a chord progression Which has let's say four chords on a particular scale or key write it down in this way with proper Inversion mapping and then start playing it'll really help you It'll take you barely three to four minutes to write it down on paper with some nice colors would be helpful And then you start playing okay coming to the actual chord inversion exercise Maybe you already know your inversions, but you want an exercise. That's what's happening now. So you take one six two Five and I'm trying to combine it in two styles. So you could go arpeggio in the beginning and then The next chord will be played as blocks. So arpeggios in eighth notes one and two and three and four and one two three four one and two and three and four and one two three four Three four, that's the style So you have the eighth note arpeggio and then going into the quarter note so You see the inversions are climbing I'm just gonna brief you on that very shortly, but I just wanted to start with a rhythm first So it's arpeggio block of the next chord arpeggio block arpeggio block You could also flip that around you could do blocks arpeggio block arpeggio block Arpeggio keeps going Arpeggio Okay, you could flip that around so arpeggio block or block arpeggio now the actual problem with respect to inversions would be you go G major like this E minor with like this with inversions and blocks a minor Arpeggio D major with block now Propel yourself to the next inversion of G major. So you started here You could have started anywhere. I just started from the root. So A minor D now what happens? Propel yourself to the first inversion names are not so important just to tell you B D G so That goes to E minor this way A minor C E A Climbs to D major this way and then propel yourself to the next G major which is D G B second inversion You see I'm climbing Climbing to D and ending naturally on G. So the exercise is you start from the lower G B D And on the higher G B D if you've done that successfully without any detours or adventurous stuff along the way You've done the exercise correctly. Let me do that again and slow it down for you E minor A minor D Arpeggio still going on E minor A minor Pretty much over you may argue. Can I also climb down? Well, you could but for now, let's just go up the keyboard to the Same spot of G major but in this particular area now You may be wondering why is the left hand moving around all over the place and not also using inversions Well, you don't really have inversions for the left hand, especially down below the piano Otherwise the chord quality of the chord itself under question would change. So in the left hand, you'd want to do G for whichever position of G major you have so G and E minor always E A D G E A D So keep that in mind very important with respect to our left hand. So that's pretty much the exercise guys blocks arpeggios And it provides for a very good study on multiple scales So I would highly encourage you to practice this on multiple scales I've also written down F major in my booklet. Get yourself a copy of that where it goes pretty much the same And a nice pattern in the left hand just to keep things busy rhythmically could be You could do root and the fifth instead of just doing plonking the root and the octave you can go There's some dynamic movement I'm doing the same story on F D minor G C F D 6 So it's still a 1 6 2 5 progression ending with a dominant chord and again if you start with this F You're going to pretty much nicely end with the last FAC Remember it's arpeggios block. So your it's a combination workout You're trying to train your knowledge of switching between those rhythm patterns left hand is holding forth with a nice pulse You know all these things are happening and if you want to make something a bit more creative out of all this in terms of the rhythm on its own You can kind of improvise on the arpeggio. You can do stuff like And improvise on the block section so in the block section instead of doing Like four of them you can do Like a thresio as we call it Along with the inversion challenge So what am I doing that? I gave some gaps in the arpeggio. What was on stand and then Instead of that I did Let's the music breathe and thereby making it really stand out making it really punctuate like a normal language So that's the exercise guys just to recap. It's a one six two five chord progression I've demonstrated it on G briefly on F. The notes are there to check out. I've broken down the entire formation for you What do you have to do then it's a climbing drill So you have to keep going up and up and up with inversions until you hit the top I guess one six two five is kind of designed for that which is why I picked it in the first place And if you do this exercise well Every single inversion of every single chord is going to be mastered by you Which is a nice goal to have if you think about it So in the real world when you have an actual song hurled at you or which you want to learn You have one less problem which is chords and chord inversions you like Whatever chords I'll play whatever chord. It's just the inversions now or rather even inversions You're going to play properly. Maybe it's just going to be like the rhythm pattern or how you want to improvise the melody So as you keep growing forward as a piano player, it's important to realize that there are some things which can be mastered like chord inversions It you should be over and done with it and then move into something else another musical topic of which there are quite a few Some of which you'll find on the channel again. Thanks for watching the video guys This is Jason from Nathaniel. Don't forget to hit subscribe hit the bell for notifications Follow us on patreon head over to our website for more structured learning video courses in person classes with with me and The rest of the faculty and I will see you soon. Cheers