Mastering Chord Progressions: Piano Techniques & Tips

[00:00:03][Music] hey what's up everybody good morning uh welcome to another piano practice along lesson i'm jordan uh thanks for joining and uh we're gonna do a cool conceptual lesson i'm excited to teach this one uh this one is mostly on oops i'm gonna hold up sorry this one is actually mostly on a chord progression that i find really useful um and really versatile for uh basically anything like whether it be you just want to find some chords to wander around the piano with in your warm-ups or practice some ideas um or if you want to learn some songs with it or if you just want to yeah kind of get some music theory knowledge in in an applied way this chord progression is kind of a mind blower for me so i call it the modern pop progression that's just the name i gave it but there's actually some lessons on this one in the foundation series at the very very final level of that so level 10 has a couple lessons on the modern pop progression and just some of the ideas that you can uh use with it so we're going gonna look a little deeper into it uh this morning here so uh it's a four chord progression i'm in the key of c minor here uh but basically it is going to be it sounds like this [Music] alright so it's a um yeah it's a really beautiful uh progression it's sounds like you can play it sort of soft like that and make it a really you know cinematic kind of thing [Music] so that's just playing around with the tones within each of those chords there and i'll explain how to do that in just a moment here or you can play it like percussively you can make it kind of like this a lot of actually like electronic uh you know edm music uses this progression in their you know big club hits so it's like [Music] you know it's it's just super versatile it's amazing how just four chords can give you so many options um to uh to make music with um there's even you know like ah i think it's it's a one direction song i think it's just called apologize um but it uses these chords [Music] so yeah there's a ton of mileage with these um hey blue spiker welcome this is your first lesson cool man i'm glad to have you here um okay so let's explain exactly what these progressions is or what this what these chords are maybe i should i'll speak grammatically correct here um so it's a minor chord progression again i'm going to play this in the key of c minor but i'm going to explain uh both the chords and the interval relationship so we're in the key of c minor that means our we're going to play a c minor chord and then we're going to play an a flat major chord i'm just demoing these all in root position right now but i'll show you the inversions in a moment so a flat so first chord c minor that is going to be c e flat and g okay uh the next chord is going to be a flat major so that's a flat c and e flat the next chord is going to be e flat major so now i'm up here so e flat g and b flat and the final chord is going to be b flat major so b flat d and f so c minor a flat major e flat major b flat major so before we get any further just because i want you to get some familiarity with these chords in their root position we are going to demo this to the click track um we're going to go nice and slow here we're going to go let's okay so let's go down to 90 bpm and because i want you to really feel how these chords just physically feel under your fingertips um we're going to play whole notes so we're going to give four beats per every chord um so one two three four one two three four so that's how we're going to play this and we're just going to do a couple passes in just root position and then we're going to show maybe some broken patterns to get that kind of melodic vibe out of it and then we're going to look into some inversions and some other cool stuff so here we go okay one two here we [Music] and go i'm sorry repeat two three [Music] c minor down to a flat major up to e flat major and then down to b flat major and if you want to make some uh you know give it some dramatic feel you can play octaves in the bass and just play these triads let's see what that sounds like c minor up to a flat up to e flat then b flat and then back down to our one chord [Music] so um that is a simple little way to get acquainted with any new chord progression just stick in the root notes um or the root position of your chords uh because uh again that's just kind of your home base and once you get to a place where you no longer feel like you're oh man what are the what are the notes in each chord what does each chord shape feel like then you can start branching out into inversions and melodies and stuff because you want your root position chord shapes to be so familiar to you that you don't even think about them you just can kind of like you can even ideally get so familiar with the distance between each chord that you can just play them with your eyes closed and that does come in time that just that's a spatial awareness sort of thing okay so um now let's stay in this root position but we're going to we're going to use this sweet octave tone thing in the left hand and our right hand is going to go [Music] so all we're doing is instead of playing our triads in our right hand as solid chords we're now playing them as broken and if you're new to new to the piano and you're new to that terminology pretty self-explanatory solid is just all your tones together broken is a sequence of the tones that make up that chord uh just sort of played in uh like one after the other so the way that i'm playing this salt or broken sequence here is i'm just going uh bottom middle top middle and then i'm switching to my next chord so there's that gives me one two three four so you remember how at the beginning of this uh lesson here we're talking about playing our chords as whole notes which we're still going to be doing in the left hand we're still just two three four one two three change two three change so we're still whole noting it in the base just to keep things nice and simple but the right hand is gonna play quarter notes uh based on those triads that means because we have four um separate notes in this broken pattern we're able to stay nice and you know uh synced up with our 4 4 time signature so it's going to sound like this so um yeah pretty simple sorry i'm tangled up in my wires here pretty simple the main thing to keep in mind with this is again the hand movements because with each tone or with each uh at the end of each pattern rather we have to sort of shift our hands because we're moving um we're still working in root position uh which is um can sometimes be difficult because now i have to move down a fifth and now i've got to go all the way up there's a bit of a hop skip and a jump situation here but just notice my fingerings and notice how i how i use mostly my thumb to kind of anchor my hand and move from chord shape to chord shape without feeling like i'm you know running the risk of getting lost here so in my right hand i'm just going c e flat g e flat so that's one finger one three five three and right as soon as i get on my e flat note here i'm gonna shift my thumb down to get into uh position for the next for that a flat chord so i'm at one three five three and my thumb's carrying all the way down to a flat for one three five three and this next jump here is probably the most uh complicated in this set of chords here so i'm gonna do a thumb tuck so my finger three is uh still sitting on c here but i need to get out to play this a f or this e flat chord in my uh in my right hand so what i'm going to do is i'm going to take this my finger three and i'm going to pass my thumb underneath this is a bit of a stretch uh if you're still learning the keyboard but you can do it just go nice and slow get that thumb underneath your hand so you can play e-flat [Music] right so it's kind of this big it's this kind of it's a it's a strange motion it's it's a little unfamiliar if you're if you're learning it but uh just go really slow and maybe just practice that that uh that shift uh a few times so i'm gonna i'm gonna just demo this one more time here and now we have a similar jump um like with those first two chords so i got to get down to b flat so and now leave my finger three there finger one or the thumb is going to just pop down to that b flat and then i'm just right back at home base so um let's bump it down 10 bpm from last time so now we're down to 80 bpm so it sounds like this okay so you can follow along with me just leave the left hand out of it for now down to b flat and with any exercise once you start to get familiar with how the chord shape feels you can start applying dynamics which is just a different way of saying louds and softs so at the end of this pass here i'm just letting my notes ring out legato style but now i'm gonna play staccato [Music] this just builds your musicality making a bit more expressive [Music] now we'll put in the base [Music] let's go back to legato so let them ring out [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] yeah so that's cool that's uh that's that's a really good way to take your basic chords which uh i don't know about you but um they can get a little old just practicing your triads and practicing your scales and all this stuff um because it starts to feel like it's not even music it's just you're pushing kind of arbitrarily pushing buttons on on this on this thing so i always like to start off practicing a new concept or a new chord progression or a new set of just ideas start off really really simple like we did with just root position triads but as you become more familiar with it uh incorporate some ideas um like dynamics like switching from the legato to the staccato style of playing as you're still learning these ideas because then you begin to see them as expressive tools in your arsenal as a musician rather than just things to practice because you've you know set your time from you know seven to eight or whatever at night and you sit down and practice the piano practicing the piano is is obviously you know it's amazing but learning to play the piano as you practice it that's like that's next level inspiration right there so excuse me here's another technique that i like to do and this is going to build your scale awareness [Music] so i'm going to still use this same chord progression but this time i'm going to be playing triads in the left hand so just like this i'm going to keep it in root position [Music] but the right hand is going to be playing scales so right hand's going to do this and repeat and we'll go nice and slow when we practice this because i know we're covering a lot of mileage on the piano here so all i'm doing is i'm staying in the key of c minor and just to review here the only black keys that we've got to worry about in this key is uh is um b flat e flat and a flat [Music] so just to walk up the c minor scale from c to c that's going to be c d e flat f g a flat b flat c and then back down so we're never going to play any notes that aren't those eight right there in this exercise but we are going to change when we start playing those notes so in the beginning here i'm playing just a straight c minor scale because my c minor chord in the left hand is kind of anchoring that tone so i'm moving up from c to c [Music] but now we switch down to a flat and we're still playing with the same chords or the same notes rather but we're going to go from a flat to a flat so here's how i play this i go it's a bit of a weird fingering situation here i'm actually starting on finger two so i'm going two three one two three one two three so a kind of easy way to get around you know if you're feeling a little confused by that fingering uh just think of it like this [Music] um just start on two three and once you get to your c note so once you get to note number three here the fingering is going to be the exact same as your c minor scale which is that's the c minor scale uses a very you know it's like kind of the original style of fingering so so so it's just one two three one two three four five um which you know all of your all of your first major scales that you learn use that fingering style so when you're going up from a flat to a flat you go two three and then boom you're back kind of on familiar territory here one two three one two three the only difference of course is you're no longer going all the way up to c you're just staying on this a flat so right other than that same fingering so let's just practice look i'll show you the the movement from those two scales so one two three one two three four five and now we're going to jump down to two two three and then one two three one two three now we're going to go up to e flat [Music] okay so that is a scale that starts on finger two one two three four one two three and now we're going to our b flat chord which again uses the same fingering pattern as e flat so i'll just walk through the scales with their fingerings one more time one two three one two three four five two three one two three one two three two one two three four one two three and now we're just going to do a quick little jump from to b flat two one two three one two three four back to the start [Music] all right so we're going to practice this really really slow um if you do have any questions i did forget to mention this at the beginning of the video but um if you do have any questions about this or you want me to slow down anything just absolutely send me an email in um or or just you know mention it in the chat here and we can slow things down or break things down a little more precisely if you're having some troubles okay so we're going to just play our scale in straight quarter notes um based on those four chords one two three four [Music] let's repeat it [Music] let's do it again [Music] okay and just like with the uh with the with the previous exercises you can try out staccato [Music] you could even try out starting your scale nice and quiet and building [Music] so that's just working entirely within the scales there's really no additional magic element there it's just those four chords and that one key of c minor that you're that you're building with um so yeah again really incredible set of chords um once i discovered these four when i was you know like kind of just starting out i guess um these were the four chords that really lit like the fire of music for me under my butt took me away from just kind of sitting down feeling like the piano was homework and it made it into something where it was like the piano is now this thing that i sit down it's a real cathartic experience just to sit down and play it so i hope you have a similar uh a relationship to these chords or some other chords maybe um that that you find really cool if you do have some chords actually that uh that you find really inspiring or or unique or even if there's a song that you're like man these chords just they work so well together send me an email and i'd love to you know check them out and maybe if you're into these kind of lessons i'll do some more lessons exploring other chord progressions and what you can do and how how i go about practicing them all right so the final thing that i want to do with this lesson here is just really quickly touch on inversions because inversions are what changes uh you it's gonna make your music way more uh subtle and sophisticated sounding and there's a bit of a mind hurdle to get uh to sort of figure out exactly what uh what to do with them but once you do it'll change your life so um going back to our original root triads here we have c minor a flat e flat and b flat and if we play them all in root position there's just a lot of jumping we got to move our hands kind of all over the place it's like a whack-a-mole situation so what we want to do instead um is take the three notes that make up those chords and look at the neighboring keys um [Music] kind of in this little region that we're playing in here and see if we can make those chords play those three same tones that make up those chords in a different order so it'll be uh way more um a easier to get from chord to chord and it'll also be sort of it'll just sound a bit more musical because you're not making these big jumps um and those sound like big jumps to the ear so check this out we have c minor here and our next chord is a flat major and if you remember a flat major consists of a flat c and e flat so actually a flat major and c minor have a lot in common with each other look at there's a c m uh there's c and e flat and g so there's really only one note that needs to be changed in order to reflect that new chord and that's going to be this top note here and look the neighboring note to this top note is a flat so instead of doing this you can now go like this so all we did was move our top note up one semitone [Music] and now we have that new chord without having to make this crazy jump um the next thing that we can do to get to our third chord in the progression you remember that third chord was going to be e flat there it is in root position so e flat consists of e flat g and b flat so we have our c minor we got our a flat major and now we got to make an e flat major chord so we already have e flat here in the middle so we're going to lay we're going to leave that as is and kind of base our movements around this common tone so remember how we needed to have a g in our in our e flat so all you got to do is move our a flat note down one semitone again and then we need to make a b flat note happen and that's just a full tone away from our bottom note in the chord here so we have c and now we got e now we got b flat right so there's our e flat chord so we got c minor we got a flat major we got e flat major and now we have our final chord that we want to do and actually this chord is going to be a root position chord again because this is just the one that makes the most sense um and the reason why is we need to make a b flat chord we've already got our b flat in the bass so right now we're in e flat position and all we got to do is move our top note down to make an f and our middle note [Music] down one semitone excuse me to make a b or to make a d rather okay so b flat d f there's our b flat chord again so again this whole position or this whole chord progression c minor a flat major e flat major b flat major and now you sound just kind of just a few simple changes in your uh approach [Music] sound way more sophisticated rather than doing this whole jumpy thing [Music] you just do stuff like this just play with the tones [Music] right [Music] so pretty simple stuff once you begin to recognize the paths that you can kind of take when you're when you're just kind of improvising again this is just a very beginner lesson but i'm going to do some more lessons on this kind of concept because once you learn how to think on your feet in front of the piano it's amazing how quickly ideas will just start flowing through your head and once you know how to work with those ideas um with your hands you're going to kind of you're going to start surprising yourself because you're going to start playing stuff that you didn't realize you had in you so let's do this let's do this exercise um i'm just gonna go back to those uh inversions and we are going to bump our metronomes up to 90 bpm so now we're just going to play quarter notes solid quarter notes of each chord so like this then we're going to do a flat then we're going to go to e flat right and repeat [Music] let's just keep this going for a little while [Music] okay so this is gonna be our last time that we do it like this then we're gonna play octaves in the bass we're gonna hold holds so here we go [Music] [Applause] now we're going to play um each of these tones broken just follow along [Music] he's playing legato now [Music] so [Music] and if you want to challenge yourself you can try playing some scales in the right hand just like how we uh demonstrate it [Music] so um [Music] yeah if there's any questions about uh this style of you know approaching the piano um please send them in because i know this is this is something just really works for me but it's it's maybe a bit of a unique approach um so if you're looking for some clarification or maybe you need a simpler entry point into this style of playing or maybe just like jordan why are you telling me all this stuff how am i going to apply this um you know hopefully the application is pretty apparent in this lesson here but if it's not uh let me know and i can i can definitely uh make my case even further so i'm just going to see if we got any questions from anybody but it doesn't look like we do um okay so if that's uh if there is no questions then i'm going to call it here and just do a little kind of improv out on these chords uh but thanks for joining if you do have questions just send them in afterwards and uh we will see you all um i guess we have another stream uh in a few days time so stay tuned for that if you got time on friday but if not we will see you all later thanks so much [Music] you