 Hi everyone, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, we are going to learn a few easy ways to help remember your chords by grouping them and combining them or comparing them with each other. And we are going to do it in a rather exhaustive way. We are going to do everything ranging from major, minor to the sevenths, major seven, minor seven, minor seven, flat five, diminished seven, so pretty even the augmented and the suspended. So do stay tuned till the very end. We are going to look at not how to form them, which you probably already know, or you can watch a lot of the other videos which I have done on our YouTube channel on how you can intervallically form each of these chords. But in this lesson, it's more how you can remember them and use them a lot better. By remembering just one simple thing, that each set of what I'm telling you, each set of chords or each set of data, which I'm gonna give you, are very related to each other. So if you find the relation or if you find what's similar between the two chords, then the naming and the usage and how you improvise and compose with this stuff will be a lot easier on the head. And you can get the data out a lot quicker on your fingers because your mind already knows this stuff. It can interconnect two pieces together. Before we get started, it'll be awesome if you could consider hitting that subscribe button and hitting the bell icon for regular notifications Also, my handwritten notes for this lesson as well as all the lessons we've been doing on YouTube and that we are gonna continue to do on YouTube. The supplementary notes, the backing tracks, the MIDI files will all be on our Patreon page for just $5 a month. Do consider heading over there. Let's get cracking. So I'm gonna start with suspensions or suspended chords. You would have come across them pretty often because they tend to resolve to their major and they can so easily also resolve to their minor. Okay, I've done a lot of videos on suspended chords. Do check, we leave a couple in the description. So do check them out. So suspended chords have an interesting property that first of all, there are two kinds of suspensions. There's sus4, which has a perfect fourth in them. That's C, F, G, one, perfect four, perfect five. Now the interesting thing here is when you invert this chord, when you invert C sus4, you're gonna get F sus2. So C sus4 when inverted becomes F sus2. So it's a good way to package your suspended chords a sus4 is another sus2 and they are separated by a perfect fourth apart. If you can remember that. So then if you take D flat sus4, for example, what is D flat or C sharp's fourth, right? If you're a guitar player, it's usually the next string same fret. That's how you get your perfect fourths. But on the keyboard, you'll have to just remember it. So the circle of fifths can be a very good helpful tool. So D flat or C sharp's perfect fourth would be F sharp. So C sharp or D flat sus4 equals to, or is very similar to F sharp or G flat sus2. I repeat, C sharp or D flat sus4 equals to F sharp sus2 or F sharp or G flat sus2. Sus2 incidentally is where you have a root, a major second and a perfect fourth. So let's do, build that again from the context of C. Let's start with a sus4, so C sus4 equals F sus2. What if we started with C sus2? C sus2, now when you invert this chord, you're gonna probably think to yourself, okay, maybe I should now shove the C on top. You get a very interesting sound called the quartal chord, which I'm gonna cover very soon. So if I move this downward, if I take this G here and move this bottom, I'll get a G sus4. So C sus2, if you have to invert a sus2 chord, you would do the perfect fifth sus4. So what is C's perfect fifth? The answer would be G. C D E F G, so G sus4 happens to be C sus2. C sus2, it's pretty easy to remember, while C sus4 is equal to F sus2. Sus4 to two, when you convert, it'll have to be a perfect fourth movement, while sus2 to sus4 will have to be a perfect fifth movement. So C sus2 is G sus4. And coming to the third position, so all three note structures or all three note chords or triads or any three note harmonic structure will have three shapes. Now, this retains the quality of the chord if it's a major chord. For instance, C major, you invert it, you still get C major, but that's the first inversion. You invert that, you still get C major. It's a second inversion. Now the value or the use case for these inversions is more to do with how you're accentuating the bass. So if you play C major with like this, it's still a good old C major, but when you reinforce the bass, it becomes a C slash E kind of sound, right? So this changes the context. It makes the chord a lot more unstable. Even C over G is unstable. It wants to resolve to the fifth usually or C over E, C slash E. This is a slash chord. We'll want to resolve to the F and that's how slash chords come into being because you need to make the bass dominate the sound. You're trying to change the listener's ear from the traditional triad. C major is just C that it's driven by C. It's a stable sound, but when you change it with another note in the bass, it becomes a slash chord. Okay, coming back to suspension. So the argument here is you have three shapes for every three note chord and four shapes for every four note chord, which I'm going to come to shortly in the lecture. So if you come back to the case of C sus four, you have C sus four. When you invert the guy, you're going to get sus two, which is F sus two. Now, when you further invert it, you're going to start with G and you get this open, perfect fourth kind of voicing, which again is very easy to play on the guitar because perfect fourths are very close to each other. Okay, so you get this open sound. So you could say that this is some variant of G seven sus four, but we have another name for this in the quartal department. We call this as a G quartal chord or you can just say G capital Q. So what is a quartal chord? It's a root, perfect four and a minor seventh or a dominant seventh interval. It is not, that's also a quartal chord, but we give that as a quartal plus because it has a major seventh up top. And then there's another one called sharp four Q, where the four is sharpened, but I'm not going to deal with that. We've done quartal chords in other videos. So this would be G seven sus four. People tend to call it that. However, you can also call this as G quartal. So a G quartal chord would be one four seven flat in terms of intervals. So in conclusion, a suspended chord can give you three chords if you know how to invert it and if you know what the inversions will become. So C sus four, C F G in order will when you invert it, it'll become F G C in order. So that's a sus two, F sus two. When you further invert that to the G starting, it'll be G C F, that's a C quartal. And each of these flavors, each of these chords tend to sound very different than each other, but yet they have the same notes. You kind of get three different chords for the price of one set of three notes, you know? So C sus four, F sus two and G Q or G quartal. So that's about the suspended chord and its inversions, if you will. We don't study inversions of suspended chords and these other chords I'm gonna show you. We probably should. Another nice chord which when inverted, you should definitely figure this out because it'll help you learn that chord. It'll make your life easy for that chord. That is called as the augmented chord. So an augmented chord is built. Let me take this in the case of E augmented. So root, major third and augmented fifth. You could also argue that it's a major third between the root and the third and another major third between the third and the augmented fifth. What is augmented fifth again? It's the perfect fifth going up a step. That would have made it E major. That's now E augmented, okay? So this is an augmented chord. So what happens when you invert E augmented? When you invert E augmented, it becomes another augmented chord. Namely G sharp augmented. And if you invert G sharp augmented with C, what do you get? You get C augmented. So C augmented is the same as E augmented is the same as G sharp augmented or A flat augmented. So you may ask yourself, how many augmented chords should I learn in life? Well, if everything is a trio, then you just have to learn four. You have to learn four trios and probably practice them with maybe a simple drill, maybe using triplets. Come back. And maybe what I like to do is I like to arpeggiate in the right hand and block in the left hand. Block means play together. Descend. So that's a good augmented practice because again, you're getting three for the price of one. So just remember, all augmented chords are inversions of each other. And before I move on to the other chord, the circle of fifths will be pretty helpful because if you look at, if you visualize, for example, C, E and G sharp in the circle of fifths, if you map them out geometrically, first of all, draw the circle well, use a proper circle creating device or maybe a tablet with a good app, giving a neat circle, you'll realize that there is a C, then there is an E. So C, G, D, A, E, that's four o'clock from C. So you draw four o'clock and then you go to the G sharp, which is the other side and then it joins back to C. So what do you get? You get an equilateral triangle. So if you think about it, any equilateral triangle in the circle of fifths, assuming you draw it correctly, will be an augmented shape. And these augmented chords, you don't have to just play them as augmented chords. You can even play them as major chords separated by the augmented chord interval. So this is what the film composers tend to do pretty often. So for example, you have just remember that C, E and G sharp are your pillars, those are your roots. So I can now say I'll play a C major, then go to E and play an E major, then go to A flat and play an A flat major. So it gives you a very interesting sound, a very movie-themed like sound. And see the distance or the gaps are an augmented gap. So. Now you may be thinking, what if I do this for minor chords with that augmented connection? Works pretty well. It's almost an instant way to create something very movie-themed like. Separate them by an augmented. And the next one I'm gonna talk about, the next chord which I would like you to learn the inversions of will again be very movie-themed like. That is called the diminished seventh chord. So the augmented chord is separated by major thirds, the diminished seventh chord or rather the diminished chord, first let's begin with that will be, let's, I'm taking C as the base, minor third and another minor third. So two minor thirds. Now to finish the puzzle, you can add a third minor third and you create a diminished seventh chord. Now diminished seventh chords are exactly like augmented chords. In fact, we call diminished seventh chords and augmented chords as the family being symmetric chords. Symmetric meaning when you flip them around, they pretty much behave the same. So diminished seventh, which is C diminished seventh, how do we form it again? C, E flat, F sharp, A, all minor thirds. Now when you invert C diminished seventh, you're gonna get the next roots diminished seventh, namely E flat diminished seventh. When you invert that, you're gonna get F sharp diminished seventh. When you invert that, you'll get an A diminished seventh. And now if you look at the circle of fifths, the equilateral triangle works for augmented chords for these intervals, for the diminished seventh or the minor third movement, C to E flat to F sharp to A, they're all minor thirds apart. So if you map out the shape, you'll get a square or you'll get a diamond. You'll basically get four corners. So because a diminished seventh has four. So if you visualize the circle of fifths, maybe maintain a page in your book and or maybe use the same page and have different colors for each of the squares or diamond shapes. You'll just need three diamonds basically or three squares and you have conquered the diminished seventh voicing. And the diminished seventh is a very important chord in music. We use it a lot to connect from point to point. So if you take C diminished seventh, very similar to all those four, they all have the same texture, the same flavor. So you don't, so how many diminished seventh chords do you have to actually remember? Well, three groups or three families of four augmented four families of three because the augmented chord has three notes. So diminished seventh, there we go. Now the diminished seventh chord has a lot of uses. One, which is where I want this lesson to drift towards. So we've covered suspended chords, inverted. I've showed you augmented chords when inverted. Diminished chords also when inverted. Remember you'll have four diminished seventh chords for the price of one. Now there's more you can do with diminished seventh chords. So check this out. So if I play C diminished seventh or E flat diminished seventh or F sharp diminished seventh or A diminished seventh, they're all inversions of each other. So I'm just gonna pick maybe A diminished seventh. I could have picked any of the other three. Now you can ask yourself, can this form a dominant seventh chord with some other root than any of these notes right now? So all you have to do is ask yourself, okay, there is a diminished shape in here. There's a diminished shape in here, isn't it? So what is a dominant seventh chord? It's a root and then a diminished chord. So forming, let's say in this case, F seventh. If I play A diminished in my right hand and F in the bass, you've got yourself an F seventh sound. Okay, so A diminished with an F bass, bang. You've already got a dominant seventh chord. And here's what's cool. Remember you come back to the diminished seventh flavor. You play the whole four note structure. Now you find what will make the diminished seventh dominant. That'll be F and you've got yourself an F seventh flat nine chord instantly. And here's what's really cool. You can go up a tritone. And this is what we call as tritone substitution or tritone movement in music. You just take a tritone from F. What is a tritone? Perfect five minus one. So F to C is a perfect five, minus one is B. And now you keep your right hand shape the same and just play B. You've got yourself A, B, A, B. You've got yourself a B seventh flat nine now. So that one diminished seventh chord is now giving you many dominant seventh chords. Separated a tritone apart, right? So I can take an F dominant seventh and you get a lot of options really. You can even get an A flat dominant seventh. All you have to do is pretty much ask yourself in this shape, what note in the bass would form a major third with respect to A? So A is here. What note in the bass would form a major third? The answer is F. But then you can also ask yourself what note will form a major third with respect to C? Because C is also part of this symmetric chord, isn't it? Just for hearing clarity, I'm going to invert it because I can. I'll do a C diminished seventh. Now what note in the bass will form a major third with respect to C diminished seventh? The answer would be A flat. And what's this called A flat, A flat seven flat nine. A flat dominant seven flat nine. Now I want to re-invert it here. And now you ask yourself, what note will form a major third with respect to D sharp or E flat? The answer would be B, isn't it? If I invert it further, I get F sharp diminished seven. Now you ask yourself, what chord will make it a dominant seventh? Well, what note will form a major third with respect to the F sharp? So I get all these dominant seventh chords. I'm getting an F seventh, right? Then I'm getting an A flat seventh. And I'm getting a B seventh. And then finally I'm getting a D seventh. And there's something even more weirdly cool about what just happened. You're playing a diminished seventh, A diminished seventh in the right hand. And you're forming another diminished seventh chord in the left hand. So the diminished seventh chords are probably sitting on top of everything music has to offer. Things like the diminished seventh chord, forming diminished scales, symmetric scales like the whole tone scale, the circle of fives. These are concepts which go way beyond scales. They've started scales. So you might want to look into some of these more symmetric concepts as you move forward because even if you're a beginner or even if you're new to the piano, it'll make your life easy. This is not just for piano, by the way. This is more of a general music theory kind of tutorial. So as long as you know how chords are linked with each other, how similar chords are, you'll make your life a lot more easier. You'll not have to deal with 12 versions of every chord and then shapes, voicings. You'd rather group them and package them together and the circle of fives is a great friend. The diminished seventh is a very good chord. You have to study that. We'll leave you a video in the description with some exhaustive study on the diminished seventh chord and how you can compare it with the next chord that I'm going to teach you in this lecture, the minor seventh flat five, also known as the half diminished chord. So on that note, let's now move on to the last bit of this lesson to hopefully have covered every single chord, mainstream chord out there. Let's look at the sixth chords and the seventh chords in more detail. What if I told you that every major sixth chord is a minor seventh chord? That's a weird thing to say. I'm going to prove that. And what if I told you that every minor sixth chord is a minor seventh flat five chord? Very important to know this for a lot of harmonic movement possibilities. So if you take, let's say, f major sixth, what's a major sixth chord? F major with a major sixth, namely, D on top. Very different than a major seventh, which is there. It's a major seventh on top. F major plus D, major sixth. Now the major sixth note, you just tell yourself this one thing. The major sixth note from my root is also the relative minor. Now this is where the terms and get a bit confusing. You have to understand that to form a relative minor from any major, you just go up a sixth. And what is the sixth? Major sixth. So you have minor formed with major sixth. Major sixth is the interval between the root and the relative minor's root. Example, F, whose relative minor is D. So if you take F major, take D minor. They have the same notes and the same key signature when we notate them. So you need to understand when you play an F major sixth, the major sixth is nothing but the relative minor interval. So D, if you now start this chord from D, inverted rather, and start the chord from D, I'm just gonna move the D from the top bottom. This is impossible to do. So I'm just gonna rewire my fingers. That's F major sixth and D minor seventh. You find F major sixth is a very grand, kind of positive, vibrant, bright kind of sound while D minor seventh is a more calm, melancholic, pensive sound because the intervals got restructured around the new root, which is D, which is pretty much why you feel a minor scale different than a major. Not because the scale sounds sad. It's because the intervals are sad or the intervals are different. And when are the intervals of anything going to change? When you alter the root, the bass, the lowest frequency that you're hearing at the current moment. So if you take F major sixth, you just have to remember the major sixth is its minor seventh, so minor seventh chord. So F major sixth is D minor seventh F major sixth is D minor seventh. Let's do this with a couple more options. Maybe E flat major sixth. E flat is a three flat scale. What is its relative minor? C. So E flat major sixth is C minor seventh. Similarly, C major sixth is A minor seventh. It's good to practice this exercise. Similarly, things like D flat major sixth, which I'm playing right now. B flat becomes the B flat minor seventh. E major sixth C sharp becomes the C sharp minor seventh. It's a good way to gang up those two chords, which are very common in music usage, right? Then we have the minor sixth chord. So if you take F minor sixth, a chord I really love to use, you can check out a playlist in the description. We leave you with that. It's called my favorite chords. Basically, all the chords that I use in my own compositions on a almost day-to-day basis, the stuff which I really love to work with, some of them are very mysterious and very interesting, especially when you first listen to it. You might even think those chords are wrong. Those are the chords which I tend to enjoy. So do check out my favorite chords playlist. So let's take F minor sixth. All you need to do is ask yourself the same question. F minor sixth, when you invert it, you invert it to its relative minor, which is D. But now when you play the inverted chord, it doesn't form a minor seventh. It forms a minor seventh flat five, which is also known as a half-diminished chord. We write it with a D and a Phi. The Greek symbol Phi is used to denote this chord because it's a rather weird, long name, minor seven flat five. Well, in theory, it's quite easy to understand. It's a minor seventh flat five with a minor chord, minor base, minor third. So in other words, F minor sixth is equal to D minor seventh flat five. So it gives you how many also a lot of harmonic movement. For example, I'm combining both those chords, F minor sixth, and then D minor seventh flat five because I wanted that tune. Na na na na na na na. Gives you how many a lot of motion and inspires the melody for sure. All right, guys, so in this particular lesson, we've figured out five ways to gang up or to package your chords a bit better and use them hopefully a lot more efficiently as musicians. We looked at the suspended chords and their inversions. Sus four is also, or sus two is also A, quartal. Then we said augmented chords are carbon copies of each other. Diminished seventh chords are carbon copies of each other. And diminished seventh chords, you can use that to make other chords better for your brain by adding the root which forms a dominant seventh with respect to that. And then last but not least, we looked at the sixth and seventh correlations. A major sixth happens to be A minor seventh and a minor sixth happens to be A minor seventh flat five. You can use tools like the circle of fifths with some visually appealing geometric shapes. You can make a neat set of notes for yourself. You can study my notes. Don't just look at it, try to write it yourself. And definitely an absolute no to Google images or buying these sort of charts which you stick in your room and stare at it when you wake up. No magic of any sort will happen. You have to use this stuff, practice it, stare at it every day. Yes, but stare at it and use it. Only when you use it, compose, do exercises with this content will it start appealing to you number one because the sound has to get into your system. You have to enjoy the sound and I feel once you enjoy the sound, you'll use it more and you'll remember it better. So I hope you found the lesson useful. If you did, it'll be nice. If you can leave us a comment, hit the like button. If you liked the lesson and also if you haven't already, do consider hitting the subscribe button. Turn on that bell for regular notifications and the Patreon channel will give you access to my handwritten notes, midi files, backing tracks and many more content for all of our YouTube videos. And lastly, if you'd like to do a course at Nathaniel School of Music, probably cover the basics of guitar, learn how to sing with different styles of singing, learn the piano, learn, do live classes and not just these YouTube videos, you can consider filling up a form in our description or heading over to nathanielschool.com and one of our course advisors will reach you shortly. Thanks a ton for watching the video. Cheers.