 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, I'm basically going to take you through another lesson by a great YouTuber Rick Beato. I'm sure you all know him. He teaches music theory, year training, film scores, what makes this song great, incredible channel. You guys have to check this out. He did a, like an Instagram real life, if that's the right word, where he basically played a Bach etude, a very Bach like chord progression. And I instantly, it instantly caught my ear and I learned it on the piano and practiced it on all the 12 keys. And I figured it's something you should learn. There are a lot of harmonic concepts which you heard in the intro video. What we've ended up doing is we've notated this entire lesson. It'll be available on our Patreon as well. So if you read sheet music, do check out the notation. Most of these chords, especially for a lot of Bach songs and classical music in general, is based on the idea of spread chords or spread voicing. What we mean by that is, if you take a good old D minor chord, D minor, DFA like that. What happens now is you don't play the F in the middle, especially in the deeper range because a lot of the classical music, especially by Bach, is written for the cello. So there's always a cello in the music. So if you played a minor chord like this, the default way, it may not sound that clear for the listeners here. So if you played like that, you get a lot of depth. You get the root, you get the fifth, and the third which was making the overall production of the chord very muddy, you're playing the third up top. So we also call that as a tenth interval, and there are two kinds of tenth intervals in music. The major tenth, which is like a major third, played an octave up, and a minor tenth played again, a third and octave up, but minor, okay? Great. That's the basic process and a lot about this sort of music is based on, yes, spread voicing as I told you, but also chord inversion. So you're not going to play a B-flat always like B-flat D-F. You're going to go in a lot of cases, there we go, B-flat with a D in the base. So that again creates this vibe and this really interesting sonic texture, right guys? So before we get cracking, it'll be awesome if you can hit that subscribe button, turn on that bell for regular notifications. We do a lot of regular lessons on YouTube. We also have a members-only portal on our website, NathanielSchool.com. You can also access those videos on YouTube as a member. And if you'd like to learn lessons with our faculty, with me as well, there are virtual courses at Nathaniel School of Music. So head over to NathanielSchool.com if you'd like and understand more, fill up a form. Okay, enough of sales, let's now get cracking. So I'm going to pretty much start with what Rick Beato talks about in that Instagram clip of his, which is like really short, like under a few, like a few seconds long. And I'm going to try and break that down theoretically and also practically on the piano. So if you play other instruments like guitar, bass or the violin, it would still help it because I'm talking about the theory and then we'll execute it on the piano as well. Okay, so I'm choosing to play the chords in this lesson with two hands. So I'll be playing two notes in the left hand and one note in the right hand, keeping it a bit simple. On the other hand, you could also end up doing this strategy with just the one hand, where you'll have to slide and probably use the pedal, right? Now this can be tough for a lot of players, especially if you're younger or if your hands are not stretching out, which is why I've developed a system which will be super easy for anyone to try out wherein you play two notes in this side and you play one note in that side, which is going to be the upper extension. So this will form the triad. So let me just play the progression and then let me try and explain. It'll be awesome if you get your keyboards out or your instruments out so you can learn along. I will teach it slowly and make sure that you actually get it. By the end of the video, you're playing it to some level and then obviously you can rewatch the video or whatever. So we are going to play this as an arpeggio sequence in three, four, one and two and three. Pretty much like the original version played by Rick Beato in his rendition. So you go two, three. So let me first show you the arpeggio. The first chord is our D minor played like this, D, A, F. So get these notes going, D, A, F. And then we arpeggiate it as follows. D, A, F, A, F, A, D, A, F, A, F, A, one and two and three. So don't confuse this with a six, eight. This feels to me like it's a three because there are three strong beats. One and two and three and then you could hold the pedal for additional harmonic flavor. So it's also fun to sing it, speed it up and when you speed it, focus a lot on your dynamics. So get louder, softer, jumping, soft. And when you go loud and soft, don't forget to retain the speed. Sometimes when we go fast, we speed up, maybe practicing with a metronome would help. Anyway, so this is the general vibe and the general style of the arpeggio. Now to move forward, let's look at the other chords. The first chord is D minor, spread voiced. The second chord is B flat major, where all you have to do, it's quite easy. You just move this A played by the index finger to the B flat. And you could use your index or you could sneak in your thumb there. So there we go. And that creates a B flat major with a D bass. So that's B flat over D. If this was D minor scale, B flat would be the flat six. And you could argue that that's the flat six major as a slash chord. So one minor, B flat major or the flat six major. And now the third chord is a very, very classical Bach chord. If you think about it, there's the diminished chord, which gives you that pin. That's the third chord. First chord, D minor. Second chord, B flat major, played in this three, four setting. Third chord is the beautiful diminished chord. Check that out. That's E diminished. Again, I'm playing it in the spread version, again, without the G in the bass, but playing it in my, with my pinky in the right hand. And then check that out. So then it goes to A major with a C sharp bass in the left hand. So it's sort of like your five major, assuming we're in the key of D minor. So D minor, B flat major, which is the six flat major, the two diminished. That's E diminished. And now the five major but or five dominant chord, dominant seventh with a different bass. That's A major with a C sharp. Let's do that again. And imagine a cello playing this. If you play the cello, that'll be awesome. Or even a guitar, it's on beautiful on a guitar or a bass. Okay, and let's move forward. You come back to D minor and it gets really interesting from here. Come back to the one minor. So we go to a one minor at the fifth chord. And then we do a G major, which takes us out of the key of D minor. Now why you may argue why the G major? Because it's trying to imply that we are going to a new key and that is going to be the, well, we argue G major or G seventh or G dominant is the five of which scale. So then you think circular fifths, fifths, fourths, et cetera. You'll realize that a G likes to pull to the C minor, could also pull to a C major, but this is a minor exercise. So that's why we have that G taking us to C minor. And then you have an entire key change and you have to repeat the whole drill from C minor. And then it goes to B flat major. And then it actually moves down a tone, tone, tone, tone, tone bottom. So it's almost like you're covering six scales through this entire exercise. If you practice it hard enough, which I encourage you to do, the notation is available for you. You can do this, try and do this on all scales, it'll improve your hearing, it'll improve your voicing. It's a great exercise. You guys should definitely dive in. So let's come back to D minor. So if I'm getting this right, there are six chords to play in an arpeggiated manner in a three, four environment. And let's see how we get cracking. D minor, B flat over D, D diminished, A over C sharp, back to D minor, G over B, which takes us to a scale change, C minor. And the whole story repeats functionally on the new key, C minor. You could argue it's C harmonic minor because a lot of the chords seem to be from the harmonic world rather than the natural minor or the melodic and so on. So I hope you got the arpeggio pattern because the arpeggio, it's all about that line. One, two, three. But I would encourage you, if you like to do this and kind of mess around with it, you know, let's say do it over a five eight, for example, check that out. That's what I like to do quite often. And then it becomes very progressive or prog rock or heavy metal and stuff. Then you can go, whatever, you can just modify the arpeggio. So even if you want to make it like a four by four arpeggio, I'm not a huge fan of it, but you could. So played in different time signatures. Start with your pinky always and the trick which I have to make this sound really nice is hold down your pinky, hold down the base of your left hand. The chords will sound a lot stronger. Don't go. There's a kind of a jerk there, right? So I see a lot of students who start off not realizing this very important. The lower notes of your base need, you need to hold your pinky. It'll sound a lot warmer, at least until the next chord event occurs. So D minor, you could also hold your pedal. But with the pedal, you have the additional responsibility of needing to lift it between chords. Okay, guys. So there's one more final thing which I want to leave, which Rick Beato does really well in the performance. I guess he does it very naturally, you know, or it may be a guitar thing, you know, to go from one root and glide smoothly to the next root. So what he does very beautifully in that Instagram lesson is plays that E. Now he realizes that he has to come down to C sharp. Now there's a bigger jump there. It's a jump of a minor third. So what does he do? So he does that in between D. So that's just something I caught in the lesson. So And now again, so whenever you have a gap of a minor third or a gap more than a second, then you do D, C, B. Then you repeat the procedure. So let me show you that breakdown which he does with the passing bass note. If you want to call it that, E diminished, climbing, C, passing. And repeat the same procedure on C minor. And you can go on to B flat and D flat and F sharp minor. And E minor. And we finally end with the same D minor, which we started with, but it's an octave down, isn't it? It still sounds beautiful. Check that out. It's like a low, low set of notes on the piano and it still sounds nice and impactful. So that's about the lesson, guys. It's there for you on Patreon. If you'd like the entire notation on all the keys is waiting for you there. If you'd like to revise it and research it more. Also there are some notes where I've talked about the chord degrees and the chord functions. If you'd like to revisit your theory, I've handwritten these notes. It's all there as a pack on a Patreon post. So just as a quick recap, we've just studied a six chord progression in the key of D minor and then it kind of circles downward the whole tone scale. So it keeps going down D to the C to the B flat to the G sharp or A flat to the F sharp to the E and then back to the D. Essentially a whole tone scale. And within each key, in this case D minor, we have six chords, D minor, the one minor, the six flat major, then the pain of the two diminished and then you do the dominant with a C sharp bass, very Bach-like. Back to the tonic, then the dominant of the new key. There we go, so six chord progression. Hope you guys enjoy the lesson. Let us know what you think in the comments. Don't forget to like the video, subscribe to our channel, hit that bell and do consider watching some other videos or heading over to our website for more content and stuff like that and share the video with your friends, family or anyone you like. Cheers, catch you in the next one.