 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, which is a rather much requested for lesson on our YouTube channel, people have been regularly chatting and commenting with us saying they wanted some of the basics of chords or the basics of chord theory, not able to play chords well, not able to shift chords well, scared of going out of the white note scales like C major and G major and so on. This video is just to kind of break down some of these concepts and also remove some of the myths which you might have in your head as a musician and a piano player in general that we are trying to just put everything we have, at least in terms of scales and chords on an even playing field. So it's the same rules for everything, it's just a matter of which one you practice more or which one works harder in that sense. We will follow a stepwise flowchart where you're going to write down everything first before you play and this has been my strategy as a musician ever since I've had the opportunity of becoming a music teacher as well. As a teacher, we tend to write a lot of stuff for our students, so that writing culture has tended to get to me as a musician and has helped me in my own growth. Most of this lesson would be what you're going to write down before you tackle any musical problem be it scales or be it chords. Not rhythm, rhythm we have done a lot of other videos but this is primarily for you're given a scale, you're given a chord progression and you're confident about nailing it on whichever scale they give you, whichever chord progression they give you. And then we also have the challenge of inversions. A lot of you start playing chords with the root positions of chords, example that one. But then you don't play that because you think it's sort of like an advanced topic. But in this video, that's another thing I attempt to do to tell you that inversions are actually easy, you should learn them while you learn the basic triad. So if you've learned chord theory in the past, this will be a good refresher, may give you a different perspective. If you learn scale theory, the same thing. If you haven't had any idea of chords ever watch this video, I'm sure it'll help you. If you do like the video, don't forget to give the video a like, you can leave us a comment and all of this stuff which I'm going to teach you now will have a Patreon page link where you can head over and download my handwritten notes where I've charted everything out, I've given you the shapes of everything. So you can follow that for the key I'm teaching you in this video and then you can try and write it on all the other remaining 11 keys after we do one in this particular class. Right guys, let's get cracking with the lesson. So I'm going to take a tough scale. So usually every YouTube video will take C major, which I'm honestly very annoyed with and let this video signify the death of C major. Let's kill that scale right now and it's forbidden. So we are going to take E flat major. A lot of people hate it. That's what we are going to do. We're going to take the tough one, E flat major. So first off, you need to write it down like any major scale, but I'll give you a few tips while writing it down. Write it first of all in a neat round circle. Don't write it in a line. It's useless if you write it in a line. Take it from me, write it in a circle. So E flat, F, G, A flat, B flat, C, D and E flat. This will really help you visualize things. It'll help you visualize your intervals, your chords, and anything which you play melodically even for improvisation. It's easy to look at it in a circle. It's horrible to look at it in a line, if you ask me. A simple thing would be if I tell you to form triads and if it's all in a line, you'll say, OK, E flat, G, B flat, cool, F, A flat, C, cool, G, B flat, D, cool, A flat, C, E flat, cool. Now B flat, where is the third note of the B flat triad in the line? It's a failure. So hence, the circle, always circles. Now another thing you would do before, this is just to prepare you to play the chords. I'll give you patterns and there are lots of other patterns, rhythm patterns for left hand and right hand which we've done in lots of other previous and upcoming YouTube videos. This is primarily theoretically to be strong and to know exactly what you're going to be doing in each hand on the piano. So the other thing I'd like to do is focus on what I call as piano worms or scale worms, if you will. There we try and write down the scale using black note and white note visualizations. So you have E flat as black, white, white. That's E flat, F, G, A flat. Those are your first four notes, right? E flat, F, G, A flat. So and then you go to B flat, which is another black note. B flat, C, D, E flat, that's black, white, white, black. So E flat will go first four notes, E flat, F, G, A flat. Next four notes, B flat, C, D, E flat. The way I like to visualize this is in my mind that looks to me as two boats. E flat, F, G, A flat, boat number one, which we use on the water, those boats. So E flat, F, G, A flat, B flat, C, D, E flat. So you visualize these two boat shaped things. There's so many tricks when you use these piano worms and so many that I've put it all in our members only structured curriculum. So if you want to learn piano in a very structured way from the absolute ground zero, you don't even know where is F sharp, where is B. We have a structured curriculum waiting for you on our website. So you'll find it with all the respective links. You can head over to Nathanielschool.com and there's a great offer where you can get all of our content from foundation to intermediate theory, year training, notation, all for a combo offer price. So do head over there and hope you enjoy that content as well. So coming back to this one, once you've got your worm sorted out, don't play it. Try and play it in your mind. Do, do, do, do, do, do. And as you play it, use a finger and try and point out the scale. So you need to know the scale in your head. It's just like playing a guitar if you ask me. Any stringed instrument, they visualize everything. Piano is one instrument where we only see the piano. We should take some experiences from other instruments. The guitar, the saxophone, horns, violins, cellos, they all visualize. For some reason we don't. So it's very simple. So E flat major, there we go. That's the boat right there. And then you get your fingering. So I would say visualize first. Then think of fingering, index finger goes there, pinky, ring, went across. Do all that later. In fact, playing a scale ascending and descending is not the end game to be a professional musician. You can also do that, but that's not mandatory to know E flat major. There are many other ways to be comfortable with a scale. So the two ways to write the scale, one in a neat round circle, then we write it in a piano worm-like assortment. So E flat F, G, E flat B flat, C, D, E flat. Two steps, two steps, one step. So the usual whole step and half step formulae can be applied to forming pretty much any major scale. So now that you've got the scale, we now get the triads. And we follow the similar principle for triads. First of all, to build triads from the scale. Now that we wrote it in a neat round circle, you go E flat, G, B flat. So you're skipping one note and then playing the next one. So skipping E flat, scale, E flat, B flat. E flat, skipping the F and playing the G. E flat G. And then skipping the A flat and then pressing the B flat and that gets you your E flat major triad. That's how you form triads and I'm hoping the circle will be easier to form it. And when you write down your triads, I would encourage you, again, do not write the triads in a line, write the triads also in a circle. So E flat, G, B flat. And then the next chord, F minor, which would be F, A flat, C. Starting from F, skip one, play one. And then you get yourself three notes. And this lesson will stop with triads, but if you want to form your seventh chords, you can do that as well. You can do E flat, G, B flat, D. And that's a major seventh chord. F, A flat, C, E flat, which is a minor seventh chord. So extensions also can be formed easily. So triads, E flat, G, B flat, F, A flat, C. All, write them in a circle. G, B flat, D, three minor, A flat, C, E flat, which is the four major, B flat major, B flat, D, F. Then C minor, six minor, C, E flat, G. Then the seven diminished. Just remember, the seventh chord of a major scale is diminished in nature. D, F, B flat, D diminished. So then after we write down all the triads in a circle, I would also like to create the triad worms as well. You can figure out which triad is black, white, black. Which triad is, for example, F minor, which is the second minor, white, black, white. G minor is the same as F minor. So you can actually play both chords with your eyes closed because you've shaped it out to be very similar. Similarly, E flat and A flat are very similar shaped chords. As you journey forward with chords, I want you to be able to play these chords without your eyes. Your eyes should become irrelevant. Again, taking from a guitar player. A guitar player will rarely, even if you have to look at the chords on a guitar, it's very tough, right? Because you're looking at it from a very difficult view, unlike the piano where it's all in front of you. So I would encourage you to, you know, just get used to playing your chords without your eyes. It's very important. So shapes will really help. Scale shapes, now we've done chord shapes. Look it up in our notes. We've put the chord shapes for everything. The next thing you need to write would be three columns to signify the three chord types, namely major, minor and diminished. Very important because the major has a positive, happier mood. The minor has a more sad or serious mood while the diminished has a tense or an anxious or a scary mood. So why not classify them nicely? So the major chords are at the degrees of one, four, and five, namely E-flat, A-flat and B-flat. Your minor chords are at the degrees two, three and six. That would be F-minor, G-minor, C-minor. And your lone diminished chord will be at the degree seven. So seven would be your diminished chord. So hopefully that'll help you plan your chord options better. You'll know which ones to play, which are the major availability, which is a minor. There are 12 major chords in life. There are 12 minor chords in life, but when you're in a scale, the 12 reduces by 25% to three, and the 12 minors also reduces to 25% to another three. So why not know the available chords? It'll also help for your years. If you want to form the chords by year, you can kind of apply a two-step process. I heard a chord. It sounds happy, not sad. So it's probably gonna be major. I'm in the key of E-flat major. So it has to be one, four and five. Let me try E-flat. No, it's not E-flat. Not A-flat. Obviously it has to be B-flat. You won't be hunting for 12 options. You'll just be hunting for three. Or if you heard a chord, and you can predict the first chord of a major scale song will be the tonic major, which is your one major. That would be E-flat major. The next chord, if it is major, will be a trial and error of just two, the four chord or the five chord. And over time, we start relating this to our ears functionally, what we call as functional harmony, which helps us digest the sounds better and treat chords more as cadences or clusters with respect to each other, rather than point-by-point basis, where you hear a chord and you're forcing yourself to say, hey, what did I just hear? I'd rather hear a set of chords. So we've done quite a few ear training videos as well for chords, for scales, for intervals. Do check them out in the description. We've put together a nice playlist and our members-only videos are also ever-growing. It'll keep evolving with new exercises in a very structured manner. So now coming to the actual chord progression. So you know how to write down any scale. You know how to form the chords of pretty much any scale. Hopefully that is not gonna scare you anymore. Now coming to the chord progression. Whichever chord progression anyone gives you, you should not be scared. So I'm gonna take the cheesy pop one, 6-4-1-5, but we'll do it on this same scale, E-flat major. So you write down 6-4-1-5 and it's good to write down Roman numerals. Roman numerals will help you move it to any scale in the future. So you're 6. What is E-flat 6? We discussed this before, right? E-flat 6 is C minor. 6 is always minor, 2, 3, 6 minor. So 6 is C minor. 4 will be A-flat major. 1 will be E-flat major. 5 will be B-flat major. So that's the next thing you would need to write down. Write down the Roman numerals, 6-4-1-5, small Roman for minor, big Roman for major. Then under that, you write down the specifics. What is 6 for E-flat major? C minor, write that. What is 4? A-flat major. 1, E-flat major. 5, B-flat major. And then I know it'll be a bit annoying, but write down the chord circles yet again, trust me. So that'll be C minor is C, E-flat, G. A-flat major is A-flat, C, E-flat. Then E-flat major is E-flat, G, B-flat. B-flat major is B-flat, D, F. And make sure to write it in a circle. Now I'm going to tell you why that circle was so useful. The scale circle I've told you, now what about the chord circle? Each chord, if you take C minor, C, E-flat, G, it looks like it's C, E-flat, G, but if you visualize it in the circular way, you'll realize that if you start from C, you can move in this circular Q and form either C, E-flat, G. Start with E-flat, and then you get E-flat, G, C. E-flat, G, C. Start with G. And you get G, C, E-flat. And this is all moving in a clockwise circle. These are what we call as piano inversions. So C minor in its root, C, E-flat, G. C minor in first inversion is where the root goes up the octave. That's E-flat, G, C. And then C minor in the second inversion, that's G, C, E-flat. Second inversion has the root in the center. So each triad or each chord or each three-note chord will always have three inversions, piano inversions. However, if you count that counterclockwise, you're gonna get into the spread voicing territory, which is... Which is even more voicings for the chords. More on spread chords. Later, we'll do a lot more. We have done a few. In fact, we've made a video series called spread chords. Again, that'll be in the description. A lot of things will be waiting for you in the description if you want to learn further. So what you now need to do is there are four chords in this standard four-card pop progression. You write down all the inversions one below the other. So root positions of C minor, C, E-flat, G. First inversion of C minor, E-flat, G, C. Second inversion of C minor, G, C, E-flat. Same thing you do for all the other chords. So A-flat major, first inversion, A-flat major. Second inversion, A-flat major. E-flat major, root position. First inversion, G, B-flat, E-flat. Second inversion, B-flat, E-flat, G. Finally, B-flat major, B-flat, D, F. First inversion, second inversion, second inversion. Write all that down one below the other. You can also see the notes, write it exactly like that. And then we use the power of colors to match the best possible chord movement or chord transition from one to the other. So let's say I start with C, E-flat, G. The sixth chord played in its root position. Names are not so important. I'm just saying it because it's part of theory. So just know that there are three shapes. So you start with whichever shape, C, E-flat, G. And now you want to go to A-flat major. So the strategy generally while playing chords is never about playing the chord and thinking of the present. It's about playing the chord and thinking ahead in terms of the future. So you're playing C minor, but over after you've hit the chord, your mind needs to think of the next chord before you go to the next chord. Exactly like a sport, a game like tennis for example. So you're hitting this, where do I go next? What's my next move? My next move is A-flat major. There are three ways to play A-flat major. And you learn that if you move in the same line, it's gonna be very, very inefficient. In other words, the standard ways of playing chords in its root position are horrible. If you only were to play chords in that basic textbook way, you'll never get anywhere, which is why the basic textbooks have to start with C major, which is why the basic textbooks absolutely fail with the education of chords in my opinion. They're not giving you that flexibility. They are branding C major as the king of the earth, which it should not be. C major is just one of the many scales. If you ask a trumpet player, trumpet players would love the B-flat and E-flat. If you ask a guitar player, guitar player would enjoy E major, A major, G major. Guitar player may not enjoy F major so much in, I guess. You ask a saxophone player, they would love E-flat and A-flat major a lot, if you ask me. So that's the idea of scales. So every instrument has its own preference. As a professional piano player, you need to be happy playing on any of the 12. And each of the 12 are almost like different cricket pitches which you play the game on. In one ground, it'll bounce more. In one ground, it'll swing more. And in one ground, it'll spin more, like playing in India. So if you take all of your three chords, your root, first inversion and second inversions, you now have to map them. So C, E-flat, G. Would I ever want to go to A-flat, C, E-flat? Absolutely not. Why? Because A, it's a huge jump in either direction. And B, what did I say earlier? We need our eyes. Oops, I can't do it without my eyes. I need the eyes too. So what does that mean? It is inefficient. You need to be able to find a blind way of getting to A-flat major. So what's my next option? Shall I try C, E-flat, G, going to C, E-flat, A-flat? C, E-flat, A-flat. How's that? That kind of works because my middle finger can then just jump up, or my ring finger can take over. And most popular chord progressions and most good chord progressions will have at least one note in common. In this case, this is having two notes in common. So that's how you go from the root position of C minor, which is C, E-flat, G, to the inversion of A-flat major, which is C, E-flat, A-flat. You don't want to go to that or that. It also sounds bad, if you ask me. So the easier to shift inversion on the piano is also what's going to be broadcasted as the best possible sound. Unlike playing the guitar, for instance, the easiest shape is always not going to sound best. So on the piano, you have a nice advantage. The stuff which is easy to play is also the stuff which sounds the best. So it's a nice environment to be in, if you ask me. So let's journey forward. C, E-flat, G. Going to C, E-flat, A-flat. Then if you see the red arrow which I've given for you, you can then go to B-flat, E-flat, G. So you're keeping that E-flat in common. Slide down your thumb, or you can slide down your index finger, or your thumb. My recommendation is when you push your thumb to play a black note, curve your thumb slightly. And then last chord, B-flat, D, F, because B-flat is in common. And now we need to loop it. So there's nothing in common between B-flat, D, F, and C-minor. That is very likely when there are consecutive chords in the scale. So B-flat is the fifth chord, and C-minor is the sixth chord. That proves that they are consecutive. Five to six, or two to three, or four to five, or five down to four, or two down to one, and so on. So for the consecutive chords, could use the same line. And if there is anything in common between the chords, do not ever stick to the same line. You have to either go down or up in the rows. So this is how I would play it, starting with C-minor in the root position. And in the left hand, we tend to get a bit confused, especially when we are accompanying what to play in the left hand. I would suggest this may be a handful already. So let the left hand just play the roots of the chords. The roots of the chords will be the names of the chords. So C-minor is C. A-flat major is A-flat. E-flat major is E-flat. B-flat major is B-flat. So irrespective of the inversion, even if you are doing E-flat major like this, it looks like B-flat is the start. No, that's not how you think. It is an E-flat major chord in some inversion. So play E-flat down below. Then it will sound like E-flat, otherwise it will sound like a different chord. Sound like a slash chord or something. So get your bass going. Right now I am playing each chord four times. Simple pattern. Things are working out but why stop there as a student of this subject? It would be nice to explore all the possible permutations. So what if I started C-minor in the first inversion? Let's see what happens. That's E-flat, G, C. Same story. You can follow the purple arrow I guess. Hopefully I am not too colour blind. That is probably purple. So E-flat, G, C. Going to E-flat, A-flat, C. Then E-flat, G, B-flat. D, F, B-flat. So this is probably the most efficient way. Also sounds nice if you ask me. C-minor, A-flat major, E-flat major, B-flat major with the roads. A-flat, E-flat, B-flat. What if we start with the second inversion which happens to be G, C, E-flat. So you started here, started here and now here. If you go there you can follow the yellow arrow G, C, E-flat, A-flat, C, E-flat, G, B-flat, E-flat, F, B-flat, D. And strangely enough starting with the second inversion of the C-minor chord is the easiest if you ask me. Tell me if you agree in the comments which one you found easy whether you started with the root or the first inversion of C-minor. I think the second inversion works. And fingering would be a quick tip for fingering. I told you earlier with the thumb on the black curve it out a bit. If the last note of a triad is a black color note E-flat in this case use your ring finger. So that's a quick tip for playing for chord fingering in the right hand. With the right inversions you get that confidence to play it without looking and you can focus on the bigger picture of what you are now doing is this the only pattern you need to play for these chords or maybe you can appagiate it. Depending on the song for instance if you are playing with Adel Adel is definitely not going to be happy if you play in this pattern she is probably going to kick you out of the band but if you do this she may even fire her existing piano player and hire you instead or maybe even Cole play Cole play seem to like this sort of style Cole play may go this way or if you go John Legend maybe he'll go I don't like this pattern but it's there they all use it in the more annoying route and if you like to play a modern pop hit like I'm not even going to talk about these songs you know what I'm talking about you try to kind of rhythmically play so it's nice for the hands to follow the drummer to syncopate and I feel once you've got the right shapes for your chords without reading an annoying chord book or notation why do you need notations for chords is a simple question I have for you a chord is theory write the scale, write the chord and it's your job to find the inversion why do you need a book for that you need the book probably for reading classical sheet music melody, counterpoint, harmony movement in both hands you don't need sheet music for chords to prove that look at all the jazz real books which give you the jazz standards like autumn leaves or misty or fly me to the moon they never write down how you should play the chord they just give you the name of the chord and the melody yes they write so you can then play the melody improvise a little but the way you voice the chord is how you want to play the chord you have to listen to many arrangements of the song which is why I said this will suit maybe cold play that will suit Ed Sheeran that will suit some other artist and so on and so forth so that's about how you can plan, prepare and play your chord progression using the correct inversions after obviously needing to write down the scale in neat round circles using the piano worms and so on so let's now revise the lesson guys I'm pretty much going to just cover what we just talked about in the lesson so far first of all write down the scale in a neat circle and your worms, piano worms then you need to write down your diatonic triads diatonic means from the scale chords in another neat round circle and write down all your shapes of those chords then plot out all your available chords of the scale in three columns namely major minor diminished and write down the roman symbols as well and the chord symbols capital roman for major small roman for minor the degree sign like we use for in a geometry class or for temperature to for a diminished chord after that write down your chord progression which you are faced with in this example we did 6 4 1 5 write down all the inversions and then you figure out the efficient chord movement with those inversions by you know using the colors and the arrows I've written in my sheet you could do it on your own really do it for a few other scales as well why not play 6 4 1 5 as a nice assignment on all the scales or at least maybe three scales over a weeks practice or effort and last but not least I have not told you this in this lesson but there are so many lessons on our channel which will cover rhythm patterns so you can choose block chords you can choose arpeggios you can choose broken chords or syncopated patterns and if you'd like more rhythm patterns it's all waiting for you in the description you can check those out at your leisure and let us know what you think so also let us know what you thought about this lesson if you liked it do consider hitting that like button it will help the video go forward leave us a comment what you'd like to learn in the future that would also be nice for us to plan your suggestions mean a lot because it helps a person like me understand what will work best for you you are the ones who are part of our learning group so to speak and all the notes for the lesson are waiting for you on Patreon handwritten by me and you'll have notes and midi backing tracks staff notation of all of our other videos which we've done earlier and we are going to we'll continue to use Patreon as our main portal for our lessons if you'd like something more structured if you find yourself more a beginner if you want to learn these concepts in a proper environment starting from ground zero you can consider heading over to nathanielschool.com we have a members only video section where you can download a watch stream and also get your hands on books which I've written to help explain this even better in more visual ways which are possible thanks a ton for watching the video catch you in the next one cheers