(jazz piano music)
- Hello, and welcome back to Chord Hacks.
We are looking at some fun and exciting ways
that you can utilize chords to create music that you love.
And to play the songs that you love.
So we've looked at what a chord is,
how to play inversions, and some fun things we can do
on our left hand, and now it's time to put all
of it together, so in this lesson,
we're gonna be looking at how to use our right hand
using root positions and inversions
while we are also playing a complementary base line
with our left hand.
So, we're gonna dive right in, and we're gonna explore
some of those scales we learned on our left hand
while we add in our chord progression using our one,
our five, our minor six, and our four on our right hand.
So I'm gonna start by just playing root position chords
on my right hand because when we add this all together,
it can be complicated, and I want you guys
to feel like you're succeeding.
I want you to get those little victories.
And the best way to do that is by starting so it's just,
it's a little bit simple.
Start simple and then build from there,
so that you can get the full benefit of the skill
before adding something new in.
So by playing the root positions in my right hand,
I'm giving myself the freedom to just get used to the motion
the feeling of how it is when it's together.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start
by playing just root notes in my left hand,
and I want you to keep in mind that you are not limited
to just playing one note, you can create rhythms
with your left hand, and I'm gonna demonstrate that.
So I'm gonna start with my one, my C,
five, minor six, and then the four.
I'm gonna switch to octaves now.
See?
Now fifths.
I can add some dynamics.
Make it fun.
Break my fifths up.
And next, I'm gonna try that arpeggio scale.
So as you can see, the sky is the limit.
Once you get the hang of playing both hands together,
you can be incredibly creative with what you're doing.
I've just shown you one approach,
there are unlimited approaches.
So explore, have fun, change up your rhythms,
change up your dynamics, play at the bottom end
of the keyboard, and then play
at the top end of the keyboard.
There really are no rules.
So, let's take a look at what happens if we start
to use inversions.
So one of the most common problems that I see
when I'm teaching is when we move to inversions,
it can be complicated sometimes for the brain to know
what chord they're supposed to be playing,
or what note they're supposed to be playing
in the left hand.
So for example, this is simple, we know we're playing a C,
so this hand plays a C.
We're moving to a G chord next.
So, sometimes you're looking at that going,
"What am I supposed to be playing in my left hand?
"My root note is no longer my root note,
"my root note's up here now."
So just keep in mind that your left hand,
at this point, can follow the name of the chord.
The chord name or the number.
So, one, five, minor six, and then the four.
So I'm gonna show an exercise that is gonna combine
some movement in this hand using inversions,
with some of the scales we've learned in our left hand.
And you'll be able to see this on your screens
or access the music for this
so that if it doesn't make sense right away,
you can go back to it, you can see the notation
if you like notation, it is there for you.
So I'm gonna start with a root position chord,
like I said in earlier lessons,
I find it easy to just start in root position,
we can creative with our inversions from there.
It creates a home base feeling for us.
And we're gonna play an octave on C in our left hand,
and we're gonna go...
We're gonna go to our five position,
so will you remember from our inversion lesson,
to get to our five chord, we just have
to do this little simple movement from here to here.
We'll do eight.
Up to our minor six.
And here's our four.
It's really straightforward.
We're gonna play some broken fifths with that now.
There's our five chord.
Here's our four chord.
And here's some arpeggios.
And there you have it.
A nice exercise that will help you get used
to playing hands together, using inversions,
using some different scales that are changing up
in our left hand.
You can approach this at any speed.
Start slow, work your way up.
And remember you can always use dynamics as you're playing
to keep it interesting.
One of the grueling things, I think,
about practicing is the repetition can get kind of boring,
and it's hard to stay engaged while you're doing something
over and over and over and over again.
So one of the things that I do is I really work
at changing up my dynamics.
I work at changing my volume,
maybe I'm gonna play legato smoothly,
maybe I'm gonna play staccato,
you have so many options for what you can do dynamically
that'll help keep it interesting.
So to review, when we're putting our hands together
while playing a chord progression,
we can build on a very simple foundation.
So what that can look like is just your position chords,
and something nice and simple on the left hand,
and you can take it from that point
to any of the inversion combinations
that we've looked at today, using any of the scales
that we've learned on our left hand,
which I don't think any two times I play a chord progression
I do it the same.
So,
right?
You can play at home following these notes,
you can even play at the same time as me,
playing something entirely different,
but using these rules of the chord progression,
and it'll sound complementary,
it'll sound really fun.
So, have fun with these chord hacks.
We'll see you next lesson to look at some ways
that we can add even more fancy scales
to create some really cool sounds.
(smooth jazz)