 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson we are going to explore chord inversions like never before. I have an exercise for you which I call the chord wall challenge using all sorts of inversions and it also makes the usage of chords very melodic for you to compose music at the same time really master those inversions okay. So there is a lot lined up in this lesson. You have to stay till the very end. There's a lot which is going to be covered starting well pretty much now but before that make sure you subscribe to our channel if you haven't already. Consider hitting that bell icon for notifications because we are going to do quite a few more lessons in the coming days, months and possibly years. So hit that bell and all of these lessons especially this one you may want to consider heading over to our Patreon and downloading yourself a copy of my handwritten notes where I'm going to draw what I call as chord trees which will give you a very nice perspective on what chord goes with each melody and vice versa. Let's get cracking. So what I played you in the intro video or in the intro performance was basically the note C and all the chords which go with C okay. So just to tell you on that front you take C what is a chord which has C in it and in this entire lesson I'm going to take the chords we use fairly often or almost all the time rather the major and the minor chords right major minor major is one three five major third in the middle minor is one three flat five minor third in the middle. So the question now we need to first ask before we start the exercise would be what are all the chords which have C in them well the answer to that question is a huge number if you take seventh chords extensions nines sharp elevens and so on and so forth but if we just limit our study to only the major and the minor triads which are three note chords you will possibly find that the answer is not too big an answer it's just six chords why six you may argue because it's just the logic behind music if you think about it a chord has three notes so inevitably you ask yourself the question C will be the root or the first note of which major chord and which minor chord then you ask yourself the question C will be the fifth of which major chord and which minor chord because a major chord and a minor chord have the root and the fifth the perfect fifth so there we have it you get four chords right there right so you say C is the root of which major chord and which minor chord I'm sure you're you'll agree with me that the answer is rather simple it's C major and C minor because the name of the chord itself will be the root right so C the note C or the melody note C will be present in which two chords C major and C minor okay then we ask ourselves the question C will be the fifth or the perfect fifth of which particular chord or which root the circle of fifths can be very helpful in that regard so or you just know your fifths really well so C will be the fifth of what F right you take five diatonic steps from F you get to that C so you could build yourself an F major chord which has C at the top end or you could build yourself an F minor chord which will still have the C at the top end so so far we have C major C minor F major which has that C as the fifth F minor which again has that C at the fifth okay so the first four chords I think were quite easy you ask yourself C is the root of C major C minor C is the fifth of F major F minor now you ask yourself what what is the remaining note of a triad we've covered the root we've covered the fifth the remaining note will be the third so for a major chord the third will be a major third which is that's how a third sounds a major third and the minor chord will have a minor third which is with respect to C so now you kind of reverse engineer the question and ask yourself C is the major third of what musical note I repeat the question again C is the major third of what note the answer will actually be A flat right so if you take the A flat chord or the A flat major scale Sarega C will be the G of A flat or the third of A flat so A flat major will house the melody note C we have it so C exists in the A flat major triad or chord and then we ask ourselves the next question or in this case in this lesson the final question where C is the minor third of what chord the answer will then be A minor so in the A minor chord C exists as the minor third so these are the six chords you're going to get which are both major as well as minor which contain the note C you'll get C major which has C as the root you have C minor which has C again as the root then you have F major which has C at the top or at the fifth F minor which has C again at the top or the fifth then you have A flat major with C as the major third A minor with C as the minor third right so to make this a very exciting inversion challenge for yourselves you could take C first and place it with your thumb in the lowest position of the chord or the lowest voice of the chord and now just try to move through all the other chords either in random order well the order honestly can be random because it'll all sound musically exciting every order of or grouping of chords will sound really cool so I'm just going to have all those six chords presented in front now on the screen and you can just see what I'm playing okay so I'm going to do C major with C in the low low position or the base position now I want to do A flat major next but I want to keep C with the same finger with my thumb okay using inversion so what do I do so I'll do C major A flat major that's played as an inversion C E flat A flat okay also what we call is the first inversion name doesn't really matter just for your information C E G C E flat A flat what next shall we do let's do F major which can be played as C F A okay maybe let's go to an A minor C E A inversions you see the C is still here maybe let's now go to F minor F minor C F A flat maybe end with a C minor C E flat G so you have all these chords right keeping C at this at the lowest position this will be your exercise one C major C minor A flat major A minor F major F minor and back to C so you have six chords major and minor chords which have the note C in them now what you could do with your left hand could be the same thing as your right hand really if you're playing melodically anyway it will help with your shifting so you could also or I encourage you to practice this in your left hand as well and you can build a melodic phrase or anything on any scale in your right hand you know minor C minor F minor A flat back what I also like to do melodically is because any of these six chords have C in them you could kind of take hand pick two of them pair them together and that's your chord progression you know you could develop a two chord progression or two chord movement and then see what melody or what scale can be constructed using those two chords so for example if I take C major and A flat major there we go and build some music or maybe C major with F minor you actually get a nice scale out of those two chords you could say one of my favorite scales it's what we call as the mixolydian flat six scale for your information so anyway so we've what have we done so far we've tried to let's come back to the right hand for a moment so we did C major with a wall I've kind of set a wall here so this thumb will never move or rather the thumb will play all the notes or all the all the chords basically with C common C A flat A minor F F minor C minor and then you could do the other way around you could say C will now be at the top end at the top end of all the chords right so C major E G C now you ask yourself how do I play A flat major keeping C at the top there we have it A flat major come back to C major you have the two chords there F major F minor what else do we have C minor and A minor so exercise one was with C in the bottom position always exercise two now is with C in the top position always right and what will be exercise three and I guess you are guessing it right now C will be in the central position so that's in the middle you go C major C minor F minor F major A minor A flat major so you've created the wall or the consistent finger or the consistent note C in the middle so exercise one was C is at the low position you play all your chords then C is at the high position and then C is at the middle position you're going to get really tight with your inversions and in a very musical way as well because if you think about it when you're composing a piece of music like let's say right a song like that when the singer is ending uh you know this is the end when she ends there at C you're playing three chords which complement it right maybe one more there F minor so that's C minor A flat major F major very James Bond like and then F minor C minor A flat major so all of that is working with the melody C which Adele is singing at that particular point right so it becomes a very musical exercise at the same time like a really really rock solid way to master your inversion so I hope you can really try this out practice it hard and use it in your music as best as you can right so with all of what we saw so far in this lesson we've looked at it on the key or the note C I'm going to just add one more note so that we don't just hover or rely over just one one note and then build it and maybe end it there let's take another note let's say E flat this one so we ask ourselves first the same question and build it theoretically so again I would encourage you to check out the chart which we have for you the chord trees of each chord are presented in our patreon neatly for every key I've written it for every single key with the interval as well so if you take E flat you ask yourself the question E flat is the root of which two chords well the answer is obvious E flat major E flat minor then we ask ourselves the question E flat is the fifth of which chord circle of fifth so whichever technology you have to help you with you'll realize A flat's fifth is E flat so you could do A flat major or you could do A flat minor with E flat up there so you have E flat major E flat minor A flat major A flat minor then we ask ourselves the next very interesting question E flat will be the major third of who the answer will be B major now this is where you have to do an enharmonic shift what I mean by that is B major chord generally when we narrate it to each other we say B D sharp F sharp but here you have an E flat so you may get confused so please remember E flat is nothing but D sharp in disguise or something so if you take B it'll be B D sharp F sharp which is still that pivotal note E flat so you'll have B major then we ask ourselves the question E flat is the third note of minor third of which chord the answer will be C minor okay so we have E flat major E flat minor E flat major A flat minor maybe B major B major C minor also makes for very interesting thematic music you can do so what did I do there E flat minor A flat minor B major or just do E flat minor major so I'm trying my best to not change that targeted melody note but you can eventually but initially practice it like an exercise so you're seeing how creative this can get if you're a keyboard player if you have like a digital piano or a keyboard with a string dual voicing you could probably hit that on it'll sound really rich it'll sound like you know you're playing playing an orchestra you could layer it with your piano it's always a lot more fun in in my experience right so we've looked at all the chord options with respect to E flat as always you create a exercise for yourself or three exercises for yourself first keeping E flat in the left side or the low side A flat major with E flat in the bottom B major with B flat in the bottom C minor with E flat in the bottom then you do the same thing with the top minor A flat minor E flat major B major C minor see E flat was up there now where shall we put E flat the only other position left is in the middle so minor but E flat minor then A flat major but A flat minor E flat okay then a C minor hmm lastly and I would always encourage you to either sing something try to weave a melody you know pick any two chords and see how they can work together melodically eventually you need to make some music out of the exercise it starts as yes a hard working exercise but I'm quite certain that it can evolve into a lot of interesting ideas which I hope you can create right and do the exercise as always I'm available on Instagram I'll be happy to hear from you that's the best medium for students to share their work with me at the moment so you can share it and I will reshare it as they call it so feel free to do so and don't forget to download or get yourself a copy of the notes on Patreon which will not only give you the notes of this one it will give you the previous notes as well as the new notes as well and if you'd like to learn from me in person or virtually in person at the moment you can always fill up the form in the description we'll have a batch coming up and not only me you can learn from a guitar faculty the vocal faculty because ultimately we are working in the Nathaniel school of music which has a lot of offerings for different skill levels all the way from the beginners you could do our foundation course to the the very advanced of the lot who want to get into composing and production and stuff like that right guys thanks a ton for watching the lesson I will see you in the next one