Hey everyone! I'm Jazer! I play the piano. 🤓 In this tutorial, I want to share with you
a very simple exercise for beginners. It sounds amazing and beautiful. In fact, it almost doesn't
really sound like an exercise but an actual piece. This video is split into 2 segments. In
the earlier part of the video, I want to do some explanations on chords and chord inversions before
we get into the exercise in the later part of the video. If you want to jump straight into learning
the exercise, click on the timestamps below. But otherwise, I suggest you to watch the entire video
so you learn some music theory along the way As well. In this exercise, you are going to need 4
chords. The first chord is an E minor. E, G and B. The second chord you need is C major, so C,
E and G. Third chord you need is a G major, which is G, B and D. And the last chord you
need is the D major - D, D, F sharp and A. So just again, the four chords you need are E minor,
C major, G major and D major. Just be careful this one, there's a black note in the middle
here - F sharp. Just before we get into this exercise, I want to teach you something that will
make this sound even more epic and refined. And this thing is called "chord inversion".
Now we all know that a chord, or a triad, are a group of 3 notes. If you want some tutorials on
chords, you can click on this card over here. But let's use C major as an example. C, E
and G. This is the C major chord or C major triad. Now this way of playing the C major is called the
"Root Position". Right it's the most basic form called the root position. However, there are also
other ways to play C major so I can also instead, play this C up over here so sounding like this...
Right, this also is the C major sound. It's organized in a slightly different way but
it's still the same kind of sound. This is called the first inversion. And there's one
more way of playing C major which is then to put this E now at the top. So like this,
this is the second inversion of C major. Are there any more inversions after that?
Nope. Because if you go up again right then it becomes C, E and G which is just our root
position. But it's just now an octave higher. So far in this video you've learned that basic chords
generally have three ways of playing. There's the root position. There is the first inversion
and there is the second inversion.
The reason I'm teaching you chord inversions today is because you're going to need to use that
in this exercise. In this exercise, both of your hands are going to be playing the same notes. But
let's start by learning our right hand parts first so again the first chord you need is the E minor.
The second chord you need is the C but in our exercise instead of going down from the E minor
down to the C like this. What I want to do is to keep this E and G,
since they are the common notes, between two of those chords. I'm just going to keep these here.
And very, very conveniently I'm going to move this B up to the C up here. Listen to this.
How nice is that, right? It's, it's got this sort of a fluid and smoothness to it. So again,
it goes like this. And next C. And we're gonna go now to the G. I've used the second inversion so
it's smoother as well. How about that? Okay, so if we didn't do this, by the way those three chords
let me play what it would have been without the inversions, it would have been like this.
Now that sounds fine. But if you did it like this
,it just sounds much smoother fluid and refined. Okay so so far we've played three chords. We have
the E minor. We have the C major but we do first inversion. We have the G major but in second
inversion for smooth reasons. And then lastly we have our D major. This is just in the root normal
position. One more time - it's E-G-B. Next one is E-G-C, then D-G-B and lastly D, F sharp and A.
This warm-up video actually consists of 4 methods. To play these chords, let's go through them
together: Block Chords, Same Direction, Waves and Contrary Direction. The first way is called "Block
Chords". So you're gonna play like this - left and right hand the exact same
notes E-G-B. First, so we'll play each of them 4 times. So, for example, 1-2-3-4 and then you're
going to move to our C chord. But, remember we have inverted it so it's a bit smoother.
And next is our G, second inversion chord... beautiful. And lastly, D major.
Now for beginners this might be hard, your hands might be struggling to
sort of know which ones to to press down. You might find yourself doing something like this.
Like sort of everything is pressing down, But try to to work on it. Like
if it's too hard, maybe start with 1 hand first.
Before you move to 2 hands, so we've just done Method 1 which is Block Chords.
The 2nd Method is called "Same Direction".
So what's happening in my hands, I'm playing bottom, middle,
top. So bottom-middle-top, bottom-middle-top,
bottom-middle- top, bottom-middle-top. One more time, it sounds like this...
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Remember to give this video a LIKE as well.🤓 Method Number 3 is called "Waves".
So what was happening there was bottom-middle-top-middle,
bottom-middle-top-middle. It feels like the ocean waves. In fact,
when you're playing this try to incorporate a bit of this wrist movement as well.
Sway from left to right now to the C major chord, sway from left to right and G major chord.
D major chord...
...and repeat as you please.
Method Number 4 for playing these chords is called "Contrary Direction".
This is where they're going - in contrary motions. Okay so it's going to start from
the outer parts of the hands, going to the inner parts of the hands.
Outer parts to inner parts, and outer parts to inner parts, outer parts to inner part.
Method 4 is probably my personal favorite one. I want to give you just one more bonus
method to do this. This is probably more for the intermediate or advanced students. Or if
you've done all 4 of these and you want a bit of a challenge. Here's what it is
this is called the "Alberti Method". It's where both hands are going outer-inner-middle-inner,
outer-inner-middle-inner. So like this...
...and you will try to increase the speed as you get more comfortable with it.
So there you go. You've learned in this video about chords and chord inversions,
and why they're useful for creating a very refined and polished sound. So just to recap,
we use chord inversions so our hands don't have to jump around too much. We can easily,
and in a very fluid way, move from note to note without huge leaps. If you think about,
let's say in a triad there are three notes. If you think about each of them as an individual singer,
either of them sing - someone saying AH someone's singing OH, someone's singing AH. It's much better
to just keep these two bottom voices down here and have this top guy sing aaaAAH...
for a much smoother and refined sound. We've learned 4 methods of doing it - Block Chords, Same
Direction, Waves and Contrary Direction. There was a bonus - Alberti Method, too if you're interested
to tackle this challenge. How did you go with this exercise? Let me know in the comments below.
If you have a piano questions. Why not leave the question in the comments? We have a great
community here. ❤ We all help each other and also 90% of the content on our channel are inspired
from your questions. Have a great day practicing and I'll catch you in the next piano video.