[MUSIC PLAYING]
All right, let's get back to harmony chords.
I love these.
This is one of my favorite techniques.
Let's take a common chord progression.
Let's see, something--
All right, we've heard--
there's a million songs that roughly have that.
And what I do is I look for places where in my lyrics--
where I can emphasize something that's going
on in my lyrics with what I'm playing in my chord progression.
But the problem is is I don't always know what chords to go to.
I don't know if you have this problem, but I've
been playing the piano for so long that I
have a tendency to play the exact same chords every time I sit down
on the piano.
I tell you what--
life would be so much easier if I was a genius.
That would rock.
But no, I'm like, oh, it's just me again playing the same old chords
that everyone hates.
I developed this trick to help get outside
of my head and outside of my comfort zone
with my chords to find interesting combinations.
Here's our chord progression.
What I will do is I will take the melody note that I'm singing,
and I will use my melody note as the basis for the chord I want to find,
so do, do, do.
Do, do, do.
All right, so let's use that note.
All right, so that's one note.
And ironically, it's the root that I told you guys not to sing.
I am playing an E note.
That that melody note is an E note.
Now, what I will do is I will go through,
and I will find a bunch of chords that uses the E as one of the chord tones.
So for instance, E would be the fifth of an a chord.
So I'll say, do, do.
Do, do, do.
So I can use it on a C chord.
E-- the note E is the third of a major of the C major chord,
so check this out.
And I'm afraid this is going to sound terrible, but we'll find out.
So do, do, do.
That doesn't sound bad.
So do, do, do.
Do, do, do.
And again, I never in a million years would
have thought to have played a C chord.
All right, let's see, this note is the minor third on the C sharp minor chord,
so do, do, do.
Do, do, do.
That works, but it's kind of boring to me.
All right, it is the fifth of an A minor chord.
Let's try that.
So do, do, do.
Oh, my gosh.
Like, all of a sudden, I hear that, and I go like, oh, my gosh.
That sounds awesome.
It's cool, and I would not have normally thought
of playing that chord so my progression-- here's
the original progression.
So do, do, do.
Do, do, do.
Here's the progression with the new chord that is based on my melody note.
So do, do, do.
Do, do, do.
The chord tones I use when I go down my list--
so I say I start with the root.
I then go to the third.
Both of them major and the minor third.
They go to the fifth and then go to the second and the sixth.
So for instance, here in this note that the do, do, do--
here is that note as the second of another chord.
Do, do, do.
Did you hear that?
How cool that second chord sounded?
That actually sounded really awesome too.
So do, do do.
Do, do, do.
So now, I have two choices.
That A minor chord-- do, do, do.
Or do, do, do.
Both of those are chords I never would have normally played,
but I looked for them using the chord tones.
So remember, you can energize your harmony--
your chord progression in your song by simply taking one of your melody notes
and using that melody note as a basis to find a new chord.
You're going to use that melody note that melody note can
be the root of a major or minor chord.
It can be a fifth of the major-minor chord.
It can be the minor major third.
It can be the second degree of a major-minor chord
or the sixth degree of a major-minor chord.
And all of a sudden, you will have an abundance of options.
And again, most of the time, these chords
that you look for-- they're going to be boring or there'll just be too much.
But you will always find one or two that's really cool.
So just stop what you're doing and go to your instrument.
Quit watching me.
Go look for some of these chords.
It's a blast.
[MUSIC PLAYING]