 E flat major, F sharp over B flat, B major, C major, D, G, flat dominant seventh, B flat minor seventh, C minor seventh, D flat major seventh, B flat minor, E flat major, A flat major. Hi guys, this is Jason Zak from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, I'm going to teach you how to develop a natural instinct to play your chords, whether it's a triad or a bigger chord, it doesn't matter. In this lesson, we'll focus more on triads, but it could pretty much be any chord. Now, when you're developing a natural instinct for chords or any subject of music in general, you need to develop it from a theoretical perspective, from a visual or a visualization perspective. So if you observed in the intro video, I was kind of playing it blindfolded to kind of prove the point that you don't need your eyes to play chords at least, you will need your eyes to play melody, especially multiple things for sure. But you definitely don't need your eyes to actually, you know, play a chord and then go to the next chord, especially when you know your inversions, that is very important. So the process of visualization where you're trying to actually see it in your, as they say, your mind's eye will be a very helpful tool to not only figure out what to play at the current moment, but also to what to play in the future. What is the next chord? So your kind of thinking of the chord, you're shaping it out in your head and then you immediately can play it. You've already visualized it. So you have the theory approach, you have the visualization approach and last but not least in this lesson, we're going to talk about how important your years are to figure out how to help you play chords better. The years are a very important tool. So I'm going to try and look at this in a very three-dimensional way from a theoretical, from a technical and from a hearing perspective and how you can develop this natural instinct for chords. So all of the notes from this lesson, my handwritten notes are available on our Patreon page. It'll be awesome if you could head over there and get yourselves a copy. And if you haven't already, don't forget to hit that subscribe button and give the video a like if you found it useful and leave us a comment with stuff you'd like to learn in the future. Let's get cracking. So the first thing I want to mention is the importance or the advantages of inversions. First of all, a lot of people, when we learn triads, we learn them in the root position. The root position, for example, the C major chord would be C, E, G. So the root is on the left or in the lower register of the triad. Now this technique is a bit tricky when you start learning chords on the piano because then you tell yourself that the root position is the easiest in your chord vocabulary. However, it's good to start off your journey with chords by learning all the three shapes at the word go. When you have to start learning what is a chord, what is a triad, immediately I would encourage you to build your shape. So learn your root position, obviously, which is C, E, G, and then you have your first inversion, which is E, G, C, and then your second inversion, which is G, C, E. So where this can be helpful is when you're shifting between chords. Not some people look at inversions as a very academic thing, you know, why should I bother learning C major in three shapes when I can just learn it in one shape? Well, to shift from one chord to the other. So let's say you take the journey of going from C major to A minor. Now if you know the note, C major is C, E, G, and A minor is A, C, E. So if you have to play those two chords in root position, you're going to go C major, then your entire hand will either have to jump fully a major sixth to the right and play A minor, or your hand may drop a minor third to the left and play A minor. Either ways, your whole hand has to move, your whole hand has to jump and your fingering will have to reorder or readjust itself. To avoid that, you can just look at the two chords and the notes of the two chords. So C major is C, E, G, A minor is A, C, E. So if you write those two chords down, what I recommend is always writing it down in a neat round circle. So you go C, E, G. So that proposes to give you just one of the shapes. You could very well go C, E, G, E, G, C, or G, C, E. But I'm going to hand pick out of the three which I have, C, E, G. And now our goal is to go to A minor. So A minor, which is first of all the easiest of the three A minor shapes to go to when once you are already planting your hands on the C major root shape. So the A minor, you have A, C, E, C, E, A, E, A, C. Now visually you can always tell, right? C major, A minor, this is the easiest way to go. But you can also do this tactically. You can ask yourself, okay, I'm playing C major. What notes do C major and A minor have in common? To our luck, there are two notes in common, not even one. There are two notes, namely C and E. So all we have to do is jump, maybe the pinky, or if you played it with your ring, or if you played it like this with your middle on top, you could engage your ring on the top there, just removing the G, replacing it with A, and voila, you get A minor chord. And you may argue, does it sound like the raw or the correct A minor? It absolutely does. What matters with the sound of the chord is what you play in the deep end, or in the lower register, or in the left hand, bass clef of the piano. And if you were to play C major in root position, and you change the root to maybe an E, this doesn't sound like C major anymore. This is C major with an E bass. So inversions in the right hand, especially from the treble clef and beyond, do not really change the mood or the vibe or the goal or the emotion of the chord. While in the left hand, when you alter the bass to be a bass note, which is not the root of the chord, it'll drastically change the sound. So in this lesson, we'll not change the root of the chord, we'll just play the true root. So C major is C and A minor, even though I'm playing it as an inversion, C E A, I'm still able to play a good sounding, rich sounding A minor. So you adopt the same strategy as I showed you in the intro video with my blind fold on. Now if you just play without looking and just think to yourself about the chord, I'm sure at some stage you will know for a fact that there are 12 triads which are major and 12 triads which are minor. You need to invest that time or you may have already invested the time in knowing these notes. So all you have to do is compare and contrast the upcoming chord. So I'm doing C major to A minor that seems to be fine, C E A. Now let's say the next chord I would like to go to is D minor. Now I'm already on A minor, which is C E A or A C E. D minor has what in common with A minor. It's the A, isn't it? So now retain the position of this A played by the pinky finger and don't change the pinky and just figure out the other shape of D minor which has A at the top or just adjust your hand. So A minor and now D minor, yes, I'll allow you to look at your left hand because in this instance or in this style of playing which is accompaniment style, you will have to find the roots of the chord. That you can initially do by I and later on you can go by feel. So you have C major, A minor, D minor. Now I want to go to F major and wow, we are in luck. We go F is common for F major and D minor, right? Then A is also common. So just retain those two guys at the top and then drop your thumb down I guess and you have a F major. However, if you had to go from D minor to F minor, you still realize that there's one note in common here in the middle, the F and you go F minor, D minor, F minor, D minor, F minor and maybe from here off the top I want to go to A flat major. So what is in common between A flat major and F minor? That would probably be a C and an A flat, these extreme notes. So then you go just move the F to E flat and focus on your left hand changing the roots. So if you think about it, you can play every single one of the chords. You can play them all in one box or in one shape, very similar to a guitar player playing chords in perhaps the caged position as guitar players popularly call it where your hand is in one location on the fretboard and you're able to play a variety of chords using the bar shapes major, minor and what not. And most guitar players can pretty much play every single chord progression by just figuring out where the root is using the bar chord system. So coming back to the piano, you should train yourself to pretty much play any chord out there and maybe you can do a little bit of chord randomization. I sometimes am a bit geeky about it where I have this in an Excel sheet where I have kind of set up a system where I've just randomized a bunch of things. If you're interested in that, you can write to me. I can share you the Excel spreadsheet, which will allow you to randomize stuff. And what it will basically allow you is it'll just give you an assortment of how many ever chords you would like to practice. You want to do triads, you want to do seven chords is just fed into the data of the algorithm. So if you take, let's say, C major from here and now you have a chart, your next chord is A flat major. You can just jump directly C, A flat, F sharp, C sharp, A minor, maybe D seventh, G minor seventh, C seventh, D flat major seventh, maybe C sharp, minor seventh, flat five. You can do the fancier chords, of course, D minor, G minor, C major, F major and obviously you can practice in parts of harmonic interest like the circle of fifths. So if I take the circle of fifths in all major chords, that's a nice way to develop that instinct because that's going to be more real world for sure. If you do, let's say, descending circles, so C, F, B flat, E flat, A flat, D flat, F sharp, B, E, A, D, G, C, you would practice the chords either with three notes or with an additional fourth note. You can even do it with minor. C minor, F minor, B flat minor, E flat minor, A flat or G sharp minor, C sharp minor, F sharp minor, B minor, E minor, A minor, D minor, G minor, C minor. And you can also do your two five one movements. The two five one will be minor, major or dominant rather, the five which is a dominant and then the major. Maybe two five one, that'll be D, G, C, it's still counterclockwise in the circle, right? D, G, C or F, B flat, E flat or G sharp, D flat, F sharp. So this way you slowly develop the instincts and with the circle of fifths movement, whether you move counterclockwise or whether you move clockwise, there will always be a note of the upcoming chord or the two chords in question, the two consecutive chords will always have a note in common. So you'll be quite confident and it's very musical. We use the circle of fifths style of movement in almost all genres of music. So try and do that and this is a great way to slowly develop that natural instinct as I'm calling it. So chord inversions are very, very important. Now along with chord inversions, you need to also figure out simple chord shapes and this will allow you to visualize the chord in the first place. The way I like to look at my chord shapes would be if you take triads in root position, for example, major triads. Some of the major triads are white, white, white, C major, F major, G major. So that's automatically cool. Some of the major chords are white, black, white, namely D major, E major, A major. So you have a little shape going on, a kind of a mountain if you want to call it that, white, black, white. You can also do a V shape, a V shape which is black, white, black, A flat major, D flat major, E flat major. So what happens even if your eyes are not being used, you can visualize that in your mind and you'll probably do this as opposed to doing that and expecting a black note to be there when it isn't. It's a white note. Similarly here, you kind of adjust it very well in that sense and also you have some miscellaneous chords like F sharp major is all black, B flat major is a unique shape. It's black, white, white, B major is a unique shape. It's white, black, black. And same story you do for the minors. You have the family of three which is the white, black, white minors, C minor, F minor, G minor. Then you have the family of what black, white, black which is G sharp minor, C sharp minor, F sharp minor. Then you'll have some all white minor chords A minor, D minor, E minor. Then you'll have miscellaneous minor chords like E flat minor which is all black. Then you'll have the B's. The B's are always unique. Just need to remember those tricks B flat minor, B minor, there we go, very unique shapes. I've done a separate YouTube video on the shapes of chords. We'll leave that link with you in the description. And if you want a more structured approach, maybe you're a complete beginner with chords, you could consider our members only courses which will be very helpful which start from absolute ground zero which is what are the notes on the piano, what are the intervals, the theory, the scales and the basics of ear training. So you might want to consider our members only courses which is more structured. So that was chords by shapes. So chords from theory is also very important if you want to develop that natural instinct for the harmony and the movement between the chords especially when you want to do things like transpose, play on different scales, change the chord maybe because of a lot of musical reasons. You're collaborating with a friend or a fellow musician and they would like to move things. They would not want to commit to the same progression or the same choice of chords. So the best thing I would suggest from a theoretical perspective is if you're playing a song, obviously it'll have a bunch of chords in a chord progression or two. You need to first map out the scale, the available chords of that scale. So if it's A major, you would need to write down A major, there's a nice process which I follow. I write the scale in a circle, then I write the chords by their degree and you need to kind of remember that. 1, 4, 5 would be major, 2, 3, 6 would be minor in terms of triads and 7 would be the lone diminished triad which is a unique chord. So then in the key of A major, A, D, E would be major, major, major, the minors would be B minor, C sharp minor and F sharp minor and the G sharp would be the seventh degree which is the diminished. So remember chords by degree, you should also remember chords by function and you should know which is your tonic chord in the scale. So in the A major scale, A would be the tonic, the major tonic while F sharp minor, its relative minor would end up being the minor tonic which is the sixth minor. Also things like cadences can be very useful which are two chord progressions which you kind of bank theoretically and even for your year. For example on the key of A, you do 5 to the 1 which is a perfect or an authentic cadence or you go 4 to the 1, that's your plagal cadence could also do A, 5 to the 6 which is a deceptive cadence. So 5 to the 6 is E to the F sharp and then anything landing on 5 they call as a half cadence. So cadences are a very important thing to bank in your head, even the 2, 5, 1 jazz cadence would be very useful. So that's about the theoretical need or the theoretical instincts which you need to develop. The thing with music theory is you need to be fast at it. I always tell students with your year, you are allowed to take time because training your year is just for you, it's just for you to be one with the music you are listening to. I feel that the way music or music education is set up is it's kind of the other way around. People don't care about the time you take for theory, theory becomes just about mugging up and reading and you know passing exams and year training doesn't, sometimes doesn't even have an exam. We don't really have tests on that and then if we ever do in today's day and age you have these apps where it's all about speed, guess this answer in 20 seconds otherwise you get it wrong and they tend to gamify year training where you don't respect the process of what your year is up to. It's not just the year taking in sounds, it's the brain trying to process them and develop some very life for life skills where you can, if you heard something in context with an actual song like you heard a chord in a song, you heard a minor 6th chord you know, you heard that probably in the James Bond, one of the James Bond movies or maybe a minor major 7th chord. You remember it because of the context, you either heard it in a movie, you heard it in a song, it moved from there to there, it felt this way to you so that's what context means. So definitely spend time to feel the chords when you listen to them but when it comes to theory it's a matter of being on the clock, you need to handle high pressure environment so if your band mates don't like a chord which you play, you need to give them a flood of options, you need to give them 4 or 5 options and then they pick one. There could also be a choir next to you, there could be a music director next to you and in a lot of our professional musical scenarios you tend to be paid by the hour to do work so theory tends to be very very important and playing technique always follows when your theory is strong so the last thing or the last instinctive skill you need to develop is for your ears when you're listening to music and since this video is about chords, the first thing you need to do is when you're listening to a song, don't just put pressure on yourself and say I heard this chord, I want to know what that chord is not necessarily listen to maybe a set of chords our brain likes to work in sets in small packets of data so you listen to a song and you hear this chord but then after that you hear this chord and you feel that this sounds a bit more unstable in comparison with that so maybe it's one of those cadences either the authentic or the plagal in this case you do plagal this is plagal for going to one it's the arm and cadence we say in church music now you may not actually know first hand that oh it is the plagal cadence but if you guess and trial and error is a very powerful and probably a much forgotten tool in music because trial and error if you reduce the amount of tries you know your errors will be less and your brain will be very chilled out about it so you try maybe three permutations three cadences and make a tactical guess and it you just gamble on the right chord so that I like that gambling approach when it comes to figuring out chords may not be a year it just may be you're a good gambler because you know the theory you're very tactical you felt something very quick you know oh it's unstable going to stable or maybe it's sad something more pensive melancholic going to something more happier or positive that's more like a struggle now finally after overcoming that struggle you go back home I guess so arguably that's a minor chord going to a major and that that concept of thinking of chords as two or three sets maybe a 251 cadence a lot of people when we are analyzing jazz songs we are always expected to identify the two five cadences in the song book or in the real jazz chord chart book but my argument to that is why not hear the original song and feel it from the song itself identify there and then look at the chord charts and then maybe make a circle there and say oh that's where it is and so on and so forth anyway so looking at chords as a set of three or a set of two as a cadence will really help your ears digest and figure out what you're going to play this is also what we call as functional harmony or if you want to look at it in a very simplistic way you can just say I want to get chords by emotions I want to see if it's stable or unstable or chaotic or smooth whatever word you want to assign to a chord is up to you and another thing which the last thing rather for your years to really help you with chords I've done a video on harmonic ear training with just singing the bass notes I suggest you guys watch that and what you could do is when you're listening to a song forget about everything except the one foremost important thing which is the base or the root of the chord now if you know you're in the key of a major and if you sang this note to and if you know that that note is a by trial and error you know it's an a major chord right so similarly you you're in the key of maybe C major and you heard this chord that that seems to have an a root now look at the feel of the chord you're singing a what's the feel of the chord remember you're not playing it you're hearing it this time because it's years so you're hearing something which sounds a bit melancholic and a wistful minor so you're hearing an a you're in the C major scale it's quite obvious that the sixth chord is a minor because two three six are minor so eventually what happens when you are developing this natural instinct for chords you need to kind of put it all together you don't want to isolate the years from the theory or the theory from the year or you don't want to just practice technique in a very brainless way you want to put it all together when you learn your chords and hopefully that will help you become a much more tighter and a much more rock solid chord user or a chord improviser or a chord composer whatever you prefer to do with chords which may be all three who knows right I just wanted to share these things about chords because you are bombarded with subjects on inversions on theory but there are few which kind of put it all together so hopefully this video put a few things into perspective for you all again my handwritten notes are available on patreon and if you're a first-time viewer don't forget to subscribe and thanks for watching the video till this stage and subscribe because you'll get regular content regular tutorials as well as daily riffs which you can listen enjoy and hopefully get inspired by right guys thanks a ton for watching again this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music cheers