3 Simple Tricks To Transform Your Chord Playing | Beginner Lesson

You know, when you see someone just sit down and play

chord

s, maybe all they have is a basic

chord

chart or they're

playing

the song for the first time or when you see a performer who plays their songs a little differently every time. always add something in the piano part or improvise well with it. I remember that kind of thing used to seem like a complete magic trick. How do you know what to play now? I can only be honest, it takes experience, there is not a single secret I can tell. and suddenly you can play whatever you want, unfortunately it doesn't work like that, but with this video I just want to pull back the curtain a little bit.

I want to give you some practical things that you can try as a starting point, no video could teach you everything, there are an infinite amount of things you can do, from fairly

simple

levels to Jacob Coler levels, and no one knows everything, but what you should do is develop a vocabulary of things you can play starting

simple

. So if you already have a little bit of practical experience with chords and you're not sure what to do next, hopefully this video will give you a little inspiration and some confidence to get started, first we're going to need a chord progression. and to learn some simple positions for

playing

those chords as a starting point that we can then build on and play with.

I've chosen this four chord loop, this one is in the key of D minor and the first chord is D minor. chord and we're going to play it like this in the right hand just a normal root position for the left hand we're just going to play the D and the A and it's useful to call this the root and the fifth, so if you imagine In the whole chord we have the root, the third and the fifth, so we only play the outside up to the root and the fifth, and this is one of the common ways we position our left hand when we play chords.

Musicians now often refer to notes as root and fifth, for example, instead of using note names because it helps us describe playing other chords with different notes in exactly the same way. You'll see what I mean as we go, the next chord is B flat major. and in our right hand all we have to do from D minor is raise the highest note to B flat. Those two chords only have one different note between them, so it creates a nice movement and this is the first inversion position I'm playing. for B flat, the only thing that's really an inversion is playing the notes of the chord in a different order, so if I take the normal root position of B flat, I'm simply playing B flat up instead of down, I'm simply changing that B flat flat for that B flat, so it's usually good to play a combination of positions when you play a chord progression because it helps you flow through them, much smoother sounds and much more musical rather than just jumping at the root. positions, so for the left hand I'm going to use octaves, which is the doubled root at the top and then sometimes I can also play the fifth in the middle, so if there's our normal B flat chord, there's the root, there's the third and there's the fifth, so I have the root, the fifth and the root again on top, now the third in the minor chord we would call the minor third and the third in the major chord we would call the major third now it's not always necessary to distinguish between the two, so we could use the generic term third to cover both if that's all we need, so playing octaves in the left hand and sometimes with the fifth as well is a really common and useful way.

The position to practice the third chord is F major and we are going to start by playing it in the second inversion position in our right hand, so everything is fine, there is the fundamental position. I'll reorganize the notes once I get the first investment. and I rearrange the notes again and it gives me a second inversion, it's the same notes in a different order, so it's still the same chord. I still have my f as the lowest note, the root of the chord, which is also important and Once again, in my left hand I'm using the octaves and sometimes I can use the fifth in the middle and that helps create a little bit more of a sound. complete and by the way, if you can't reach an octave, it's a struggle.

Don't worry, you can play just the low note or just the root and fifth which works just as well and the last chord is a C m which we'll just play in root position again in the right hand and use the root. and the fifth in the left hand, so we're playing this the same way we play D minor and just to point out that you could also use octaves for that C if you wanted to, but that gives me a much deeper sound that you might not whenever you want, you can use octaves all the time if you want a big sound, for example, but that's a musical choice you have to make.

Now that we have a starting point for our main progression, we can look at some ways to do it. things a little more musical and start experimenting with those chords so for each thing I want to talk about I will briefly explain how it works so you understand the logic of what is happening and then I will make a demo so you can see exactly what I'm talking about. I mean and to get some ideas to get started, the first thing is to play basic rhythms and break down the notes of the positions that we have already learned, so before we start try to jump between different center positions, which can be a bit.

It's more complicated, it's helpful to start using the positions you've already learned to simplify things. We'll start by focusing on the right hand and leave the left hand doing what you're already doing, even just with these positions. on the right hand we have a lot of options that we can play with, so when I say splitting the notes and playing rhythms, I mean things like playing the chord more than once to start, something like that and then within that chord. we can do things like play the top two notes followed by the bottom one. We can also split the notes individually and select individual notes, so I hope you understand the basic logic of this.

I'm really just picking notes from the position. I'm in that moment. Now I will show you some examples. I'm going to try to do a variety of things to show you, of course, if you're actually creating a song or playing together with other musicians, you would do that. You don't want to play so many different things, most of the time you want to play something that fits the music, but this is just an example to show you the kind of things you can do. You may have noticed that I was using the sustain pedal when playing there to help make things sound a little more fluid and essentially just keeping the pedal down on each string but lifting it up and down as the strings changed if you want to learn to use the pedal with strings.

I made a very detailed video on that and I'll link to it in the pin comment below, so while I'm playing things like that, I'm improvising, I'm really using those positions as a guide, but within those constraints that I'm using. my ears to help create the rhythms and the patterns and that's just one of those things that takes a little experience and experimentation to improve that now you just want to make sure that when you do this that what you're aiming for lands on the next string on the right moment, so for example, with this we have two beats per chord one and two and and three and four and 1 and 2 and three and four and 1, so you are doing something to fill the space between the chords changes, like this that we were really only talking about the right hand.

I'll quickly mention the left hand, although I don't really want to focus on that. In this video I have other videos on rhythmic patterns between the two hands, but if you want to try with the left hand, I suggest that you start perhaps with the low note of the left hand, although you can also use the other notes, but this could be a good starting point to maybe create something. basic rhythms like this, the next thing you can try is using a combination of positions to play each chord, so to start that just means using a few different inversion positions instead of just sticking to these positions that we've been using so far.

Well, we could begin. just trying the next positions from there for each chord, so that we could use the first inversion in the right hand for D minor, the same left hand still up to the second inversion of the B flat root position, this time for F and A. first inversion for the C and that immediately gives us a different sound than we had before. It's a little higher up on the piano, a little brighter sounding, but we don't have to stop there. We could do it if we feel comfortable with some nearby places we can go. for each chord, we can mix and match and we can decide if we want to move in an ascending direction from one chord to another or in a descending direction for each chord and each time you vary that creates a different feel for the chords almost as if they are moving melodically in a slightly different way, so an example of mixing that up would be this if we played them like this once and then the second time, so what I did there was play the second two chords up. but I could have said um or there are all these different ways that you can manipulate the chords to create these different movements.

You can even try changing positions while you're on a chord and once you're comfortable finding a few different positions for each one. chord, then you can combine that with what we were doing in the last section and split the notes and create patterns in different positions. The next thing you should try is to incorporate other notes in addition to the three notes in the chord you are playing. When I say using extra notes, you can think of this in a few ways, but first I'm talking about using them in

your

broken chord patterns to help create these nice melodic links to connect the chords, but how do you know which one? notes to use remember I said this chord progression was in the key of D minor, so we'll look at the D minor scale.

Each chord we're using in this case only uses notes from that D minor scale, now other things can happen. In music we can also use other notes and we have central progressions that do other things, but this is a good starting point, so when we play the D minor chord we have these other notes of the D minor scale surrounding the notes of the chord . so you can try to use them in some way before you play the next chord and you can do this on every chord, so if you are playing B flat you have to imagine the notes surrounding that chord that are from the scale and you can find ways to use them to Going from B flat to F now, when you first start, be sure to practice the chord positions first and look at them and think about them, imagine them on the piano as a frame that you then decorate with the surrounding notes that will keep you grounded. on the ground and focused on where you are going.

Now you can make complicated patterns, but I suggest starting as simple as possible, even just with individual notes to help you explore what works and what you like. and to get comfortable with each chord now I know I'm playing a lot of things there, it's just to give you a lot of examples, but I hope you can see the logic of what I'm doing now, it's easier said than done. To do this, but it's good to start from a place where it makes sense, so I'm really just using the chord positions we've practiced as a framework and finding ways to break up those notes and occasionally using middle notes to connect.

Chords, what you can do to get started because it's hard to do in real time to start with is practice a little bit out of time, so all that means is you're on a chord and you take as much time as you need to figure it out. what are you going to do and find a way to the next chord, so on the D for example, you can do this, so I'm using the C with the chord there and then I land on the B flat, take some time to think about Pause here to think a little, so at first you can try a lot of different things to get comfortable, but one caveat is that when you're playing a real song you don't want to do too many things.

To take into account what else is happening in the song you should try to find something that really fits the music, you don't want it to get in the way of the main melody, sometimes playing in the intervals is a good approach and you should be careful that any particular note at particular times does not clash with anything else. That kind of thing takes some practice and trial and error, but you get faster with experience. Now we can also just add notes to the chord. and playing them together, which adds a little more color to the sound, for example adding this C chord to the D minor chord.

Now we can call it a D minor 7 chord by learning different types of chords and learning about numbers and things, um, in music theory. We're going to open up other options like this, but for now you can try different things and get familiar with what works for each chord, add theseventh is a good option to try, so I'll show you now if you take any of the chords we're playing, look at the root and find the no below that on the scale, then under D we have a C, you add the C and then you can do that for the B flat below the B flat is the a below the F would e add that above and below the C on the scale would be B flat, so you could play this essentially, which is seven notes along of the scale from the root of the chord, so if we're on the B flat then it's 1 2 3 4 five 6 seven notes through the scale which is a very simplified version of that to help you find the correct note for the chord of that song, of course, I have videos of proper 7th chords on the channel.

It really helps F learn about the chords the right way and I also got PDF Theory, guys, on the website, where you can get all that, which will be linked below. Now exactly how you choose to play each chord is up to

your

ears, but with practice and a little experimentation you can get familiar with a few things that you know will work and things that you like, so it's like developing a vocabulary and of course choosing things. What you hear other musicians do and things you've learned from other songs is one of the best ways to develop. that vocabulary imitation is key to learning music, so even slight variations of those things on the fly is improvising, adjusting a note, adjusting the type of rhythm, that's how a lot of improvisation works, we're linking pre-absorbed ideas in different ways.

I want to quickly point out, to avoid any confusion, that if you're playing a chord that contains one or more notes that aren't in the key, if we're using a chord here that wasn't, it had a note that wasn't in D minor. scale, then you have to factor out that note and what note of the scale it has replaced, although it can also be a little more complicated than that, sometimes you change the key, but this is just a simple example to get you started. I just didn't want you to think that you only use the notes in that scale and that you can also make notes outside the scale work, but you want to practice the easiest type of notes to use first.

I want to mention very quickly. Grace Notes. I don't have time to cover those properly in this video, but they're a really good way to inject some soul into your playing. It's not always appropriate of course, it depends on the style, but if you want to see a video on how to do that, then let me know by hitting the "Like" button and putting it in the comments below. I hope you have been helpful. Next, you should watch this video where you can learn four soulful chord rhythm patterns that I'm going to post. There's also a link below to the newsletter mailing list if you'd like to subscribe and I think next week on Patreon I'll post a demo of a different core progression than this so you can check it out too, thanks. to see