...much better to have these chord inversions in our,
let's say, musical belt that we can pull out of our toolkit at any time.
Hey everyone! My name is Jazer.🤓 In this video, I want to share with you
a chord exercise I think you should practice every day. I call this the "Smart Chording Exercise".
Let's get into it. This Smart Chording Exercise is aimed more at the upper beginner to intermediate
level pianist. You will first need a 4 chord progression. Now there's so many you can see
some on the screen here. But for this video we're going to focus on this one, which is
the F - C - G - Am. At its most basic level, this chord progression sounds like this, F...
C...
G and Am. What I was doing there was my left hand was playing just the bass notes of the chords.
So, in our example, F - C - G - Am. My left hand would just go F to the C to the G
and to the A and you rinse and repeat. Fingering doesn't matter too much for the left hand for now.
Now in the right hand of our Smart Chording Exercise I want you to be playing some block
chords. So in the example, I just played, I played them in their most basic form. So F
to the C to the G to the Am. Now this doesn't sound too bad but there most certainly is,
I think, a better way to arrange this in a way that's a bit more flowing. Let me explain what I
mean. Before, I explain how block chords can flow more smoothly to each other it's very important to
talk about something called "Chord Inversions". Let's take the C major chord as an example.
C major chord is made up of the note C, E and G. Together this makes the C chord.
However this is not the only way to play this chord. So if I look, if I just put this C
on top over here and I play this way. It's still the same combo of notes but I've just
arranged it slightly differently. Okay so this is still C major and I can also do it this way.
Also the same combo of notes, just arranged in a different way. Just to put a technical
name on these combos, this is called the "Root Chord'. This is called the "First
Inversion Chord'. And this is called the "Second Inversion Chord'. And if you go up one more time,
this goes back to the root chord C - E - and G. So with every basic 3 note chord, there are 3 ways
to play it - the Root, the First Inversion, and the Second Inversion. If you're liking the lesson
so far, make sure you LIKE and SUBSCRIBE to our channel because we have heaps of piano tutorials
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Now that you've learned what chord inversions are, we're going to use these chord inversions
to do some very smart chording. Just to recap, the chord progression we're using for this exercise is
F- C-G-Am at its most basic form. It sounds like this - F going to the C to the G and to the Am.
Now this doesn't sound too bad but we're going to do some smart chording now. which means we're
going to basically arrange the notes in a way that flows with as little movement as possible. So,
for example, you can do something like this - from the F, very slowly I can go to C in this way.
You see that? So instead of having my right hand move all the way from here to the top,
because F - A - C and C - E - G. These two chords because they have the C in
common. The C note is common between these 2 chords. I can just leave that,
sort of leave that note there and conveniently play the E and G down here. Okay, so from F-A-C...
Instead of going all the way here to place C-E-G. Why not I just play E-G-C.
Do you hear that? It's such a... it's a much more... it's much smoother sound going from,
rather than...
So this second one that I played there just feels a lot more beginner-like and not so refined as...
So going back to our chord progression. let's keep going. So F going to the C,
now going to the G. Let's see what we can do here. We can do something like this. Keep that G there.
And then go to the Am. Okay, so you could either go... Or you could go...
That also could work. Okay, so between G and Am, there are no common notes. So we just have to
either move one step up or one step down. But what I don't want you to do is something like this.
Right. That that doesn't make any any sense. It's, it's too far away. It's very unsmooth.
It's not very refined. I hope you're getting a sense of what I'm trying to teach you here. This
is what I call Smart Chording Exercise. it's where you're trying to move from
each chord to the next chord with as little movement as possible, so that the overall
soundscape is refined and smooth. So, again just to compare, the bad one was like this...
and a much better one would be something, for example, like this...
Now remember earlier in this video we said that each chord has 3 ways of playing: either the Root,
the First Inversion or the Second Inversion. Now let's try the Smart Chording Exercise,
but starting in the First Inversion for the right hand. The left hand is always
playing the same thing. It's always playing the bass note which is in our example, it's the F
it's the C it's the G it's the Am. Okay, so it's always going to play left hand.
But now with your right hand, instead of starting here like we did before.
I want you to now start here. So A, C and your F. Okay, so if we start here.
Let's see what we can do. We want to move to the C major. C major has C,
E and G. Okay look. Oh well, if you remember from previously, C is the common note isn't it?
From F major and C major. C is the common note. So, why don't we move something like this?
Very smoothly to the G. Okay now G is our common notes. This one over here is common.
So I'm just going to conveniently move this down to G-B-D.
I'm going to show you one more time what i just did there. So F major.
Moving very smoothly to the C, and very minimally to the G and then to the Am.
One more time.
As you're starting to work on this, it could be helpful to either write out all the notes
within each chord. Or maybe you can literally draw out on some manuscript paper how you want the
voices to move. Just as a starting step, as you're getting started to learn how to smartly move from
each chord to the next one. In the past I used to write these notes down on paper. But these days,
what I'm doing now is literally just improv on the spot. And I know that if you practice this enough,
you can do the same, too. Once that level feels good, let's move on now to the next one
where your right hand is now playing the Second Inversion of F major. (It) starts like that.
Okay, so let's see what we can do here together. We're going to do F major.
Let's go to C major. Well, E and G are pretty conveniently just under here. So I'm just going
to play the root of C major. Okay, so from this one, go very smoothly just to the root of C.
And now going to G. G-B-D Okay, so I'm gonna keep that G there
and just conveniently move these two down here to B and D which making G-B-D. So,
so let's play that again from the start so you can sort of hear that smoothness.
C now go into G major and now to Am.
There are two huge benefits of why you would want to get good at this Smart Chording Exercises.
Number 1 is you are creating a very refined sound. Your notes are not jumping all over the place.
They sound secure and they sound smooth. And the second benefit is that it doesn't require you to
look at your hands. Once you get very comfortable with changing between different inversions.
I was looking at the camera as I was playing that. And that's because my fingers flowed very
smoothly. I didn't need to go, for example, and look at my hands for the next chord... and look at
my hands for that next chord... look at my hands for the next chord... Much better to have these
chord inversions in our, let's say, musical belt that we can pull out of our toolkit at any time.
Now what I was doing there, if you were curious, is I was just taking those block chords
but I'm doing more of a seesaw combination.
Something interesting to try out, as well, for you. So just to recap, we learned
in this video the Smart Chording Exercise. It's where you take any four chord progression and
you try to play not just the root block chords, but try to incorporate inversions into your block
chords. So that each block moves as little and as smoothly to the next block chord. I hope you
have a lot of fun with this exercise. I think it's a bit of a brain teaser. It will make you
a very harmonically smart piano player. We have lots of other videos on this channel about
chords as well. So make sure you check out those ones and I'll catch you there.