hi I'm Scott houston Do you want to know a great secret tip to learning how to play
inversions on a piano and really getting them burned in —stick around
I get some questions fairly regularly about, "you know you talked
about when you're playing your chords all the time" because in the style
we play we really focus on playing chord symbols. we don't read standard
grand staff notation so when you're reading those Chord symbols I'll
have students say that they have a hard timebreaking from just playing all the chords
in root position and you seem to move from using inversion smoothly.
Do you have any secret? Here's a quick practice tip
super fast just in case someone watching doesn't know what an
inversion is- An inversion is simply playing the notes of a chord not in root position
ok so if you have a C Chord a C Major chord for example Here's a C on my piano
so just see a C chord in root position C, E, G IF you take that C and put it
on the top
that's called an inversion. wow So we have a C that's an an inversion of the C
I can do it again, Let's put that E up here. Hey another inversion of a C. I can do it one more time.
put that G up one octave now we are back
where we started just one octave higher right so we went from root position to very technical
first inversion and 2nd inversion back to root never ever in my life will I
talk about first and second version
instead we will call them by their scale name but anyway so we're doing this There is a point to be made that you know what? it's
If I just say, hey play a C chord It's advantageous for you to be able to mentally to be able to ...
be able to just go and that's pretty much the same thing as this and in both
hands. So if you're coming across a chord change and you're in one spot
on a piano and you see the next chord coming up you don't have to just imagine what
that chord looks like in root position you can pretty much
just slide into some in version to keep the notes closer and it's not a huge mental gymnastic exercise for you to do it
so here's my my trick for that I'll tell you where this came from it
It came from my background as a percussionist and spending hours and
hours and hours on mallet instruments like marimbas, xylophone,s vibes and stuff like that
One of the big things you do it because its target practice they'll never call it
target practice but you know what makes you a better or worse mallet player is
hitting the notes accurately and one of the things you spend a long time doing is
working through arpeggios of chords and arpeggios mean just separating the notes of a chord
You can go find another video of arpeggios that I have done previously if that would help. but the point is by just
drilling through those up and down it really locks into your brain what ntes are in
what chords let me show you a little example of what I would suggest you do
on a piano here we go
here's the exercise I'm gonna move down one yeah we're still me either so so
you're on a secret so you just want to start and you can do this hands along
and then moving in together but instead of just always playing the chord, and
moving up. All I"m doing is just continuing to invert. I'm taking the bottom note and moving
up one octave every time. this is a good thing but what I think is a better thing to do at the beginning
its to do them in arpeggios or just separating the notes like this
Like .... then mentally you go to the next one
mentally go to the next one
it doesn't really matter how you finger them just whatever is comfortable is fine
it's like a pattern recognition thing that your brain starts saying. See how I am just working my way up
Get up to a point where you're you know you're gonna get cramps in
your wrists because you are too high but we just work up a couple octaves there's no absolute
right or wrong in this but then go down and do it the other direction
i think that is an exceptionally good and fast way to get your brain
really locked into what the inversion of all the chords are; so I would suggest
doing the arpeggio version first and then after that
playing them as full chords. so we start out like this ...
big issue here that accuracy
brain really locked in the notes and the chord in all these different shapes but
then the key is you need to go back and do it in all the different keys if you
can. that's really the better thing to do, so go up and start it on a half note higher. So now you are working on all the C# chords. Then go up to the D
like that so then after you've done all the arpeggios, then you can come back and
finish it up with a ... A ha , I know what they are all separately and now what they all are together and you do the
same thing with your right hand—terrible fingering ...
then do the same thing right back down if you really get your act together
do them hands together
Then do the next one up. you know so you could just go on and make up your own variations forever
to wrap this up here's the point I want to drill home I think it's important to do
those as arpeggios separated and then do them together and I think the
combination of that is a really good mixture for the brain cement that you
need to get all that stuff locked in. you want to do it maybe do with your major,
minor chords or seventh chords you know whatever the chords are that you're
coming across regularly. you need to do that and those are just great warm up things
OI absolutely would not say to a student is that for the next three weeks do
nothing but doing that a half hour a day no no no no no keep playing the tunes you enjoy
playing keep having fun playing too but you know maybe you sit down for 10 minutes
at the beginning or end of every time you sit down to play your favorite tunes
spend a few minutes doing stuff like that and that's
the aerobics if you will that'll get you a little more fit for
playing tunes in this style.
I hope that helps a little bit as always have fun!