 Numbers. Numbers are the solution to all of your problems. Okay, first thing's first. Let's get a couple things out of the way because I know that there's going to be comments After I explain this somebody's gonna be like you can't you can't just do that Because you've got to know how to do all this other stuff first like yeah, yeah, you gotta this isn't gonna be an overnight fix This is how to think about the concept in order to make it easier on yourself But there's other things that you got to have in place first I mean let's start with the basics like play your scales learn your score. Why why do we play scales? Well, because if you want to be able to play in any key your hands have to be familiar with the shape of each of those keys You know whether you're playing just in C or E each of those keys has a shape that your hands need to be you know Familiar with before you can easily navigate the different keys So I guess if we were to stop at just being able to play in the key play your scales But this is more aimed at okay If you've been playing your scales and you're pretty comfortable playing scales in different keys How then can you translate that to chords and ultimately playing the songs that you want to play but being able to play them in Whatever key that's what this video is about also. I want to point out before I start that this is in no way like the definitive Here's how you do it This is the the generally accepted way in music theory class that they're going to teach you like I don't really know I just know that this is how I've always thought about it. So this is what works for me So my apologies if there's some other thing that you can do or should do That's I don't know more along the lines of like a music theory curriculum So we think of numbers a lot in music obviously when we're talking about like basic triads We know that they're built with one three and five and then logically if you think about it long enough You might figure out that that's because we're talking about scale degrees one two three four five And then you could continue six seven and that'll bring you back to one an important distinction here Is that what I'm gonna show you we can pretty much talk about between one and seven because after that we're talking about repeated notes Now that's different from chords because with chords if you want to add color tones beyond the octave we call that upper extensions You know that's when you start talking about your ninths your elevenths your thirteenths your sharp fifteenths But for our purposes we're gonna consider that chord spelling to be a different sort of Approach than what we're talking about which is just scale degrees and once we get to seven we're repeating again So we'll keep it relegated to like one octave just for simplicity's sake So if we take a look at that scale and we have one through seven that's gonna correspond to chords too, right? Because we have if we start each chord. We're gonna call this the one chord. We're gonna call this the two chord three four five six Seven and that brings us back to one So the first thing you'll notice is that those chords when we just use the the naturally occurring scale tones Some of those chords are major some are minor, right? We have major minor minor major major Minor and this one is the only outlier. It's like diminished kind of so if we're in the key of C And I say well play a one chord to a four chord to a three chord the default is gonna be one Which will be major for which will be major and then three which will be minor now That can always change if it's specifically indicated that it's different But in general the naturally occurring state of those chords is pretty much going to be that you can already kind of see What's going on here? The key here is that I don't want to think C major F major E minor A minor G major. I don't want to think about that. That's too specific. I want to think one four three six five Whatever right? Why do I want to think one four three six five because say I all of a sudden want to play an E flat? Well one four three six five It's it's gonna be the exact same thing the key with numbers the reason why we want to think in numbers is because numbers are Universal because no matter what key you're in it's still one two three four five One two three four five One two three four five One two three four five. It doesn't matter whatever key We're considering to be the home base in the particular context whether it's an entire song or part of a song Maybe a small part of a song is in like a different key for a minute But whatever key at any given time that we're considering to be the home base All of our numbers are going to reference the scale tones of that key So if we're in E flat E flat is gonna be one F is gonna be two G is gonna be three a flat is gonna be four B flat is gonna be five and so on and so forth now That does not change if we go to a a is one b is two C sharp is three d is four e is five And so on and so forth so this idea of using numbers Makes it so that every key all of a sudden becomes identical in every way other than the actual physical shape of it And again, that's where scales come in you got to play your scales There's like no there's no way around it. It sucks Nobody wants to do it, but we have to do it But the idea is that thinking in numbers makes every single key identical in every way other than physical shape from there Everything that we make alteration wise is the same as well. One two three sharp four. Sure. Why not five? One two three sharp four. Yeah, you bet five But the best part about it is that I don't have to think B flat C D E flat F And then when I switch keys now I have to think G a B C D and then I want to switch keys again I have to think E flat F G B B flat A flat B flat Everything's just one two three four five. This makes life So much easier because the only thing you need to know about any song you want to play is What is the form in numbers? Does it go one four three six two five one? All right. Well, let's do that then in very basic chord structure. We'd have one four three six two Now if I were to actually elaborate that and make the chords more colorful and more melodic that right there could look like this One six two five one So that's all in reference to The C major scale because that chord sequence happened to be in C major But if we change key say now we have a two five Leading to the four so let's start all right. Let's take that apart for a second I just played one four three six two five one and now I want to play a two five to the four This sounds like a bunch of numbers sounds like a bunch of gibberish, but check it out two five To the four leading to the four. What's the four what we have? All right, so f so I guess we're changing key and we're gonna go to f But we want to do a two five in front of that so now we're thinking in a new key just for a minute We're thinking in a new key f. Let's take f one two. Okay, so there's two. It's g three four five So there's five it happens to be C. So for this brief moment. We're thinking in our brains We're gonna switch keys and we're gonna play a two five leading to the four. So that's gonna sound like this Pretty normal familiar sound, but if we add it into the original thing that we played in C We'll find that hey that sound is not That's not unfamiliar the whole thing strung together check this out That's used in so many tunes over the years But what happens if we play in a completely different key? Let's go to something wacky like I don't know G flat Let's play this in G flat six five One five to the four Same thing but but now I don't have to think of each different instance of that chord sequence in its specific terms I don't have to think C F E a D G C and then G C to F I don't have to think about that because if I do now when I go to G flat I got to think of a totally different set of names. I got to go G flat B B flat E flat A flat D flat G flat and as everybody knows musicians are lazy And we don't want to have to think about more things than we absolutely have to so instead of having to remember all those different names Why don't we just think of it in numbers and we'll call it the same thing no matter what key we're in This is the secret to playing in any key You start thinking about everything in terms of numbers and not the names Now you can refer to the same numbers no matter what key you're in and by thinking about the numbers It helps you to visualize the scale So if I think say I'm an A major and I want to say one five seven well one Five six seven and I can do the exact same thing in D flat one Five six seven So again, this is a concept that a lot of you are probably already familiar with But if you're one of those people here's something that you can try to really practice this Take a tune that you know how to play or that you like to play and play it in all 12 keys It might take you a while it might be difficult at first But the results are definitely worth it and over time you'll Slowly but surely develop the ability to think about whatever it is that you want to play and and be able to at least think through it, you know in in every different key and With enough practice pretty soon you can just do it in real time But yeah, you have to play scales and yeah, they suck, but Whatever do it anyways, but anyways, thanks for watching this video If you felt like you got something out of it hit that like button and if you haven't subscribed already and you would like to do So please do I really appreciate it Let me know in the comments if there's other things that you'd like me to touch on or explain or any musical questions That you have and yeah, thanks for watching