How to Invert Chords 

Ha, good question. When I watched the replay I thought that might come up. I should have made it clear that the "rule of thirds" applies to chords in root position. When something is inverted, notes can be closer together or farther apart. It actually makes it easy to tell when a chord isn't in root position. If you're looking at a chord and notes are too close or too far, that means that it's inverted.

It's been 8 years since I picked up a guitar for the first time, and only this week did I FINALLY understand chord progression. You're great Michael, thank you so much.

Dude, I'm a casual guitar player who just messes around on the keyboard alittle for fun but your videos are gonna take my piano playing to whole new level. Thanks!

That's something I'll definitely be thinking about. I'd like to try to figure out if people would be more interested in a "how to play piano" course which would include reading music, or something dedicated purely to "how to read music".

wait... where did he place the camera for the keyboard

Started your first video today and have gone down the rabbit hole since then. This video has blown my mind as far as making chord progressions sound nicer through inversions. Thank you so much.

You're the best music teacher I've come across in 34 years of learning music.

You seem to have the gift of teaching what looks complicated really quite easy to understand , that's very brilliant .

I hadn't really thought about doing one on chromaticism, but I really should. Thanks for the suggestion. I'll put it on the list.

Hey Michael, you're by far the BEST music theory teacher on RU-vid! Thank you for showing the practical application of theory. Super helpful!

Your explanations are very clear, and the way that you explain all of the terminology you use, as you use it, makes the whole idea of what you are demonstrating so much easier to digest. Really appreciate the videos

Before i found your channel i the struggle was real. With music theory and all.. your videos are soooooo awesome. keep up the good work. i watch one video, and i end up watching one after another, and learning so much. THANK YOU.

Michael, you are absolutely a great teacher. I do not have any proper musical background but I perfectly understand you.

You are explaining so smoothly and so specific.. thats great.... I am desperately looking for how to find chords for any melody that we know .. plz plz post that tutorial

Hey Michael, i have watched a tonne of RU-vid and I NEVER subscribe to things but I have subscribed to you. You are the king! As far as teachers go you are up there with the best of the best and i have learnt more music theory in 2 hours than i ever thought i would in my life and you make it so easy!

Also, fingering. How to place your hand to reach the approriate notes at the speed of the song, what's the best way. Do I have to learn all the scales, should I practice everyday? Also voicing of the different chords, should I skip the 3 finger chords and learn the better sounding 4,5, 6 finger chords. Your method of teaching theory, is one of the better ones on youtube, its really awesome. I guess if you can talk about exact things to practice on to make me abetter piano player!

Dear bro you are such a blessing to the music world. God bless you. Good job. Keep going.

@vanityaffection Good catch, I thought someone might notice that. You're right, D# is not in the key of E minor, but it's a very common note to use. It's what you call a leading tone. I'm thinking I might cover that in the next video :)

Dude, i‘m a big fan of your teaching and really appreciate what you did with your videos. A thousand thanks!

Thank you so much for all your videos. You are amazing at communicating complex topics in a simple and easy to understand way. I've played piano and guitar for years just by reading music and memorization, but I've decided it's time to finally become fluent in the language of music and you're helping me immensely.

Never taken the time to comment before because I've never felt the need, but I wanted to now purely because these are phenomenal and I would feel rude learning so much without at least letting you know, and hopefully encouraging you to do more. You explain everything so logically. Watching your videos, I would get these other questions pop up in my head, and with some crazy kind of teacher intuition you answered them immediately. Thank you so much. If you want ideas for other lessons PM me :)

your videos have helped me understand music theory better. thank you please keep making more

外国音乐爱好者表示感谢(a foreign music amateur expressing thanks)！

Ah, sorry it's not offered at your school. Although if it helps, I took quite a few composition courses where I went to school and they really didn't help that much. Really glad my videos are helping you. My advice, if you want to get good good at composing, is to do a lot of composing. Seriously, nothing develops your composition skills like writing lots of music.

You are such a great teacher..Really helpful for any novice...

Michael your presentation style is outstanding! I have learned so much through your videos. Keep up the good work!

Man. Your tutorials on this are really good. Thank you.

I can't thank you enough. Your videos are so incredible. Have you considered breaking apart contemporary pieces of music and explaining the chords and melody? I think it would be really great to follow your thought process, especially for something that is familiar. Unfortunately, though I have played piano for a long time I didn't really learn any theory except what I'm now learning from you now. So when I learn new pieces, I just kind of read the sheet music from left to right until my muscle memory kicks in. It feels naive and tedious to learn new pieces this way. It would be awesome to learn a smarter methodology that might improve my sight reading speed and finger placement. What do you usually do first when you sit down and look a fresh piece of music? Ha, hope there are not too many questions here, just really inspired by your videos! Hope you continue to make more :)

Dude, you are a great teacher! I am very grateful for what you do and thankful that I have found a teacher after many years of trying to figure this out on my own. You rock, and thank you thank you thank you for your videos.

Woah!! Very good lesson! If you're still doing these videos do you think you could explain other types of chords like 9ths and 13ths, or suspended chords? Thanks for doing these btw, they've helped me learn a lot

You bet. Glad it worked for you.

Again just like to say great stuff mate would love to see some tutorials on guitar music theory delivered in your brilliant no nonsense style also are you planing to get into modes of scales would love to see that too. Again thanks for putting this stuff up here I have looked around a lot for theory tutorials and yours are the best I have come across please keep up the good work very much looking forward to whatever you decide to do next.

Super! I dont know what kind of level of playing one should have for these videos, but I need to say, being an absolute beginner. i think there's nothing more boring and discouraging than simply learn all those simple songs and reading notes and playing note music. because I think one should understand the theory (like you are explaining) behind the music and why it works first, before starting to actually play. cause then one can appreciate the exercises and the songs in those books better. having said that, that means that for beginners your videos could do with more demo of every step and each note, you are actually talking about. eg when you talk about a key, play it at the same time. then it will be much clearer right away. other than that, I think you are doing a really fantastic job! thanks a lot!!!!!!

Ahhhh wow, thank you so much, your videos have been a tremendous help for me to understand the basics of music theory.

this is the coolest tutorial ive seen thus far

This rule is valid only when you play it without inversion, ie when the root is still in his place. If you wanna see if the rule is broken or not, play your chord respecting the order of root-3rd-5th-7th. I hope this helps you. After all, if I'm mistaken, I think Mr.Michael would give the right answer ^^

Thanks Michael , Ireally enjoy learning from you; you really keep it simple.

Thank you so much man you helped me alot may you get many blessings and luck in your journey . And please make more videos about chord progressions with key mixture

U are very good at this. Explaining and teaching can be tricky but you got that down. It would be nice if you made a video about finger excercises to make our sound smoother and cleaner. Thanks :)

thank you this really open my perspective

very helpful. As someone that previously knew nothing about music theory can you explain WHY chords work? why key signatures work? etc?

You are such a great teacher..Well Done

Thank you! Best music tutorials on youtube.

Love these videos, though I definitely preferred when you had the whiteboard up so I could see it all spelled out. Not sure if the video of you (no offence) is really necessary. Just the hands and the whiteboard seem to be the most effective.

Outstanding teaching skills. Thank you.

Very nice vid! Thank you. Going nitty-gritty doesn't ruin your videos.

wow! I so glad I came across your videos, you are Awesome teacher, inspired me to learn more! I can't wait to practice. Thanks!!

can't wait till the next video!! keep em coming!!

that keyboard looks old school i love it dude! nice vid!

Amazing! you are the best one of teaching music! It's really easy to understand!

really good stuff mike enjoying and learning from all ur vids

Your videos have been very very helpful. Thank you so much

been watching your vids, fantastic teaching ! thx for taking time!

great job on your videos!! Im really learning a lot from these basic music theory course. I was wondering if you had a video on changing key in the middle of a song or if thats even proper Xd.

I think that one might be next.

More please - this was amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic! Learning a ton with your videos.

This is all based off my own understanding of the concepts, so apologies to anyone reading if it is extremely vague or flawed :)

WOW, that was easy, thanks Michael! Great way to remember those.

Thanks for your help. Great tutorials!!

Amazing dude good job!!! I appreciate the work and effort put into helping others out

Great help ... please upload some more.. best on youtube.

Super useful!! I used GarageBand to make a nice little tune that's now a theme for one of the characters in my comic strips. c:

extremely interesting!! I can't wait for your next video!

Dude you the best teacher

thanks heaps, nice and relaxed your videos are. help me you indeed have. practice, i must go

Hi Michael!! This is a great video. I will watch it a few more times. It is very helpful. Can you do a clip on matching up left with right hand chord , for example usually it would be the a key on left hand with a c e on right hand, but i see that sometimes people play c on the left hand with c e a ( a 2 nd inversion) on the right hand . Is this considered an exception? Thanks

The fifth chord of the Emin key is Bmin, not Bmaj.

Thanks for the vid mate.

I liked this so much I shared it on Twitter...

love you lessons. how come the 5th chord in Em includes E flat ( as you play it) it should played D

Cool, inbox me if I can help in another way! I'm getting more into midi recently. My first instrument is guitar, and have recently bought a behringer FCB1010 midi foot controller to control various things without need to take my hands off my instrument. Midis a cool area to develop in! I wish you all the best!

Is there any sort of priority when inverting the chords in your chord progressions? For example would you always try and keep the 1 chord (or the 5 chord for example) in its original position and invert the next, less harmonic, chord instead? Or is it whatever fits best?

Thank you !

Life changing, thank you so much!

Thank you great videos!

More videos! More, more, more!

when do you use inverted chords in music? can music always have chords in their root position?

Sounded like the Truman show theme

I thought that the e minor key example you did, since it was a minor key, should the second chord should have been diminished? (from few videos ago) but I may be wrong..

Hi. Could you explain where the chord changes for the middle 8 of love me tender come from? the melody more doesn't change yet the chords do. How do you decide on this progression (D,F#7,Bm,D7) if the melody isn't changing?

There is a small guitar hung in the back room. Anyways, another great lesson as always. Thanks +Michael New . :)

I wish you were a guitar player, very helpful.

how was the 5 chord in E minor key b major chord? wasnt the 5 chord in the minor key supposed to be a minor chord?

thank you. muchly

Amazing content, thank you :)

hey, Great job!

amazing !!!!

Could someone tell me . An augmented c chord ( c,e,g# ) second inversion = g#,c,e Is exactly the same as a g# augmented . So which is the correct name ?

How can you use a B major chord in the key of E minor because B major has E flat, and E flat is not in E minor, so that chord wouldn't really fit in with the key of E minor, right?

I have learned more from you in a few short videos than I did in class. You have a great way of explaining these concepts. Thank you!

Thank You !

Yes, good catch. I've got a video coming up where I'll explain that in depth, but here's the short version: In a minor key, note 7 doesn't really build tension towards the root note (in the case of E minor, the note is D). By raising it a half step you get a "needs to resolve" kind of sound. I wanted that B chord to really pull the progression back to the root note, so I raised the D to a D# and made it a major chord. It's a super common thing to do in a minor key.

Hey Michael, I can tell that you have really spent some time on this. You didn't just learn music theory; but you APPLIED what you learned and experiemented with it, to make it your own. These videos are REALLY helping me understand things that I've been struggling with. The idea of things being clunky or not clunky. I always wondered how you could keep a certain tempo, but have to bring your hands an octave or two down the board. These chord progressions allow you to use finger speed instead of having to move the entire arm; and possibly even losing your place. Thanks so much! I was hoping that you could do a video on finger positions and transitions. Perhaps you did that already...but that would really help me at the stage I'm currently at.

All my life I've always defined notes relative to C, so on that last chord sequence, I heard ACE, ACF, BDF, G#BE. Or basically 6th min, 4th maj, 7th dim, 3rd maj. It seemed so much simpler when you could just do that, 'cause I can't think of an F (or maybe I should say, a relative F) as a 6th. That just seems weird to me. That chord has always been 4th to me.

He always says: I would spend a good amount of time practicing and getting comfortable with these chords Me: On to the next video! :D

Awesome! I really did have you audio engineer types in mind when I was planning this stuff out. I think a lot of theory stuff is targeted at people who grew up playing a band instrument in middle school/high school. Makes me happy that it's working for you.

I wish I'd found your channel 7 years ago.

Looking back, I really don't think I should have said "against the rules". What I meant was that when you push the intervals too far you end up doing a totally different chord. As for leaving out parts of a chord, you certainly can. But understand that it will change the sound of the chord as well as what it does musically. Leaving the third out of a major 7th chord will give it a very different sound, and it won't have the same effect a normal major 7th would have. But that's not a bad thing.

What kind of guitar is that?