(blues)
- Hi.
I'm Lisa Witt.
And I'm here at Pianote today
to do some lessons on chord hacks.
So, we are going to be looking at
what is a chord,
what is a chord progression,
we're gonna be building some really fun progressions
that are going to help you play songs that are familiar
and to create songs of your own!
So today, we're gonna start
by looking at
what is a chord?
So, a chord very simply put
is
three notes
that sound really cool together.
And in this case,
there we go.
That's a C chord.
So all I've done
is I played a C,
I've built a third on top of that
and I've built a third on top of that.
And that
is a chord.
So,
what a chord progression is
is a group of chords
that
repeat itself.
So,
in this case,
we're gonna be looking at some chords
that sound really nice together.
So in any key,
there are going to be chords
that are complimentary.
What I mean by that is
let's start with C.
C is a great place to kind of
get your feet wet so to speak
when your learning things on the piano
because it's the key that doesn't have any sharps or flats.
It's really straighforward.
Your fingers don't have to do any extra work.
So, in the key of C,
we've got one, two, three, four five, six, seven
kind of different notes.
And we cap it up at the top
on the eight again.
And,
when we're playing in the key of C,
we've got
our C chord
and we call this the one chord
because it's based on the first note
of the C scale.
So, that's pretty easy to remember.
Then we've got our five chord.
So, the five chord is
is just a chord that starts
and is based off of the fifth note.
One, two, three, four, five
of that scale.
So here we go.
And that is a G chord.
So C
G
then
we're gonna play
the next chord
which is
A minor.
So we call this
the minor sixth.
Because it's one, two
three, four, five, six
based on the sixth note of the scale
and it sounds sad.
I always differentiate the difference
between major and minor by happy and sad.
This one's a bit sad sounding.
And then we have the fourth chord
which is one, two, three, four.
F
so,
we're gonna call these the big chords.
So, these chords when you play them together
sound like a song.
They sound like they belong together.
They have a really nice flow.
And I'll show you kind of
I'll put together what that sounds like.
And that's our chord progression.
So, one more time.
We've got C, which is the one.
We've got G, which is the five.
We've got A minor which is the minor sixth
and then we got F, which is the fourth.
And that is our chord progression.
So, if you're new to the piano,
it might take a little while
to get used to moving between those chords.
Because it can be challenging
as you're beginning to get used to the layer
of the keyboard.
And to get your brain and your hand
to communicate to move quickly.
Or as quickly as you need to
between the chords.
So, I would suggest in order to begin a process
of mastering this progression
that you do a design an exercise for yourself.
So I'm gonna show you something very basic.
And then you are free to kind of get creative
once you get comfortable with this.
So, I'm gonna show you using my right hand
and I'm just gonna play
these chords in root position.
And when I say root position, I mean,
it looks like this.
So it's just a stack of thirds.
The spacing between your fingers is the same.
We'll look at inversions in our next lesson.
So I'm gonna play the root position twice
on each of the chords.
And I'm gonna repeat it so I do it two times.
So,
it's super simple.
That's something you can just do over and over
until it feels comfortable.
And a good test to see if you
if you've really got this.
If you can do this while you're speaking
that means you've committed it to your memory.
You're not having to think about it.
And then,
let's not leave our left hand out.
So we're gonna do this same thing now
with our left hand.
Because a lot of people
find that it can be more challenging
to play with the left hand.
So it's good to
make sure that you're using him too.
So,
here's your C and your G
minor sixth
and your fourth
Let's do it again, one
five
minor sixth
four
then you can do them hands together.
Little bit more challenging.
Five
minor sixth
four.
One more time.
And that is how you would play
our big chord progression
using
just root position chords.
If you want
you want to get fancy,
you can also place these triads broken.
It just
it just changes the muscle function a little bit
between the fingers.
So, this is a really good way to build dexterity
while you're learning the chord progression.
And it sounds cool.
And there you have it.
So,
that is an introduction
to what is a chord,
how to play a chord progression that is familiar.
Lot of songs that we know
are based on this particular ordering of chords.
And I think it's important to note that
you can play this progression in any key.
So, if you are more comfortable with the piano
and you are familiar with all of the scales,
then you can do the same progression
starting on any key.
So for example,
I might want to start this progression
on G.
So I'll play it
using G as my guide.
Here's a G scale.
Those are our eighth notes.
And here's our one.
Then we'll go to five.
One, two, three, four, five
and we'll build our next chord
starting on the fifth note.
Keeping in mind
that the G scale has an F sharp
so you have to include that
in this chord.
So that chord is going to look like this.
The minor sixth based on the sixth note
one, two, three, four, five, six.
It's sad sounding.
And then our four
which is one, two, three, four
in this case a C.
So as you can see,
you can build these progressions
starting on any note of the keyboard
as long as you follow the rules of that key.
It's very simple.
So have fun.
Explore.
Practice playing this in C position.
And then if you're comfortable with some of the other keys,
take some risks
and have some fun playing with these progressions.
And we'll see you in the next lesson.
(blues)