Thank you for watching! Let us know if you have any questions about best practices to playing chord inversions. If you would like to claim your FREE gift, the LCSP Resource pack, and find out more about the upcoming Complete Musician online course with Tom, do get in touch with us: www.contemporaryschoolofpiano.com/contact/
Pachelbel's Canon in D major. This progression or parts of it are found all over the place. Let It Be by the Beatles, the old Burger King jingle, and lots more. I'm a bass player with 50 years of experience. We need to know all the chords in every key and every invasion everywhere on our instruments. We need to understand what each chord has in common with every other. If one is doing a walking bass line in Ab and there is an E dom 7 coming up, we need to know where we can enter that chord smoothly, often by a half step Sometimes we jump boldly into it and let the sudden change have a startling effect. We can't be stumped for a note. It takes a lot of practice.
This is the best inversion explanation I have ever seen! It really allows me to find inversions incredibly fast as a beginner. Brilliant ... Thank you so much!
This is very helpful! My piano instructor comes from an american gospel tradition and he calls this "getting it in the hands." I struggle with learning the theory becasue it is abstract and I'm very glad you talk about muscle memory. THank you!
An engineer might call this "applied pattern recognition". Those are just words, though. Your emphasis on teaching your fingers to "feel" patterns is a key insight. Excellent message, well taught, with just the right illustrations. Subscribed.
In a previous lesson you stressed the importance of planning your practice with a notebook listing aims and goals. I did and it made a real differnce giving purose ro my practice. Thanksalot.
I found your channel today and so glad I did! You "hit the nail on the head" about KNOWING the inversions and then putting them into practice!! This is my major personal problem, that is. In all my sporadic added-together years of music/piano lessons, I wish I had stayed with my lessons long enough to have been instructed in chords, their structures, chord progressions, and the list goes on and on! ha Thanks!
Love this approach. I'm a long time guitar player who now does some piano. I am amazed at how much piano players are taught with voice leading from the get-go. Not common with guitar although you learn it eventually.
Thank you for sharing your insights from the perspective of a guitar player transitioning to the piano! It's fascinating to see how different instruments approach the same musical concepts in varied ways.
This video was soooo helpful to me!!! I was ready to give up playing from lead sheets due to never knowing which inversion to use. I just couldn’t make sense of how to decide and was thinking I had met my pinnacle of my piano journey and should look for another hobby. This video has totally given me the confidence to continue on. I can actually play some of my lead sheets with very little effort. It’s like the light bulb turned on and the chords are making much more sense to me! I made myself quit having fun at the keyboard to say “Thank you so very much”. You also have one new subscriber. 😊
Fabulous!!! Serendipitous. Enlightening. Liberating. Exhilarating!!! Checking out your website and course. I am still an active lawyer at 67yo - but have a beautiful Concert Yamaha Grand Piano (‘Ludwig’) who I feel devastated has spent years quietly hoping I would sit down and play with him and make wonderful music together once more!!! Thank you.
Brilliant. Clearly explained and well demonstrated. Thank you so much. I am definitely going to check out you new 8 module Course. You are such a good teacher.
I'm thrilled to hear that you found the explanation clear and the demonstration helpful! It's my aim to make complex concepts understandable and accessible to all learners.
I'm truly amazed everytime I watch one of your tutorials. And this one is no exception. Your level of teaching is at the highest tier/ top-shelf. You approach a subject with awesome insight that no one else offers. I've spent a small fortune on half a dozen piano courses in last year so I tell myself I don't need anymore. But then I see one of your videos and think maybe one more; your tutorials are weakening me : )
That's very kind of you to say, Richard. When people have oversubscribed to courses, I'm often hesitant to recommend ours. Though our approach does have a different take and artistic/holistic methodology, when it's information overload, I appreciate it's overwhelming! You might actually benefit from our shorter one-to-one coaching programs, what we can do with students on an individual basis, goes far beyond what is here on RU-vid. We conduct detailed learning profiles first and find missing pieces and many opportunities in your own playing as well as fully optimize the info overload! Here is one of our diagnostic questionnaires, (no obligations are attached because of our waiting list) applylcp.contemporaryschoolofpiano.com/application-form-2/
Great video! I already knew much of this (having long ago figured much of that out on my own), but the notation you made with the red arrows on the chord sheets was totally new to me, something that I think will really be helpful in the future when playing from chord symbols! Thanks!
Thank you for your feedback! I'm glad to hear that you found the notation with the red arrows helpful. Visual cues can be a great aid in understanding and remembering musical concepts. It sounds like you've done a fantastic job figuring things out on your own, and I hope that these added tools will only enhance your understanding and skills. Using visual aids like these can indeed make playing from chord symbols more intuitive and efficient.
Dear Tom, it is very helpful to learn this chord inversion techniques from you. Right now, I don't know yet when I will be able to join the LCSP Masterclass but it is now surely firmly on my mind!
I'm so pleased to hear that you found the chord inversion techniques useful! They're a fundamental part of playing the piano and can really open up your playing once mastered.
I just wanted to thank you. This was a very clear and easy to understand explanation of the relationship between chords and inversions! "Finger language." 🤯
Pachelbel's Canon...I used to play it on the bass guitar in a guitar group, various voice leadings thru the changes was always within intuitive reach, it would just happen
This was too cool. I've been trying this but it isn't automatic yet, but it's easier than it was a year ago. I would use the key of C in one hand as I practiced in other keys until I got the pattern.
It sounds like you're making excellent progress! The fact that you're finding it easier than a year ago is a testament to your dedication and practice. Your strategy of using the key of C in one hand while practicing other keys is a smart way to internalize the patterns.
Great way to let are fingers feel and hear the music which can help use music theory in a useful way . This helps us chunk this down to really put hands on practice in the universe of music theory. Ty so much
Interesting to see these transitions. But another level of complexity for beginner pianist is also the fingering. How do you actually play the chords. Lifting two notes doesn't simply imply shifting two fingers.
I would suggest two options. Use the SAME fingering on each chord (1 3 5) when you feel comfortable with that you can also alternate 1 2 4 on the root chord and on the inversion 1 3 5.
Finally, someone explains it in a way I understand. Do you know if there’s an app available that will tell me what chords I’m playing on my acoustic piano please? Thank you.
I'm not aware of any software that can do that but there is great software that achieve this by digital means. I use Classroom Maestro for these tutorials. It's not perfect but it's one of the best ones on the market.
very nice lesson and a great eye opener. i have a question. you are showing only right hand for practice. but can i use tge same approch using left hand since most of the time we play chords mostly in left hand. thank you
Is there a way to make a free PDF of this type of practice? I see explanations of chord inversions/ voicings everywhere on RU-vid and the internet, but no one covers how to do this skill inside of actual chord progressions like you were showing here! thank you very much!
I was always taught that when I played an inversion, the bass would be part of the inversion - e.g you play a C/G with a C in the bass, then G-C-E, but I was taught that it would be a G in the bass, then C-E-G (or any right-hand inversion, E-G-C or G-C-E). Am I incorrect?
Yes you are right in the sense this is a classical theorical analysis, which is that an inversion starts with the bass (the left hand) in popular music notation that would be C/E as you said. This masterclass is about how to use inversions in the right hand to create smoother arrangements between right hand chord movements. Even if the bass is playing the root - we can still refer to a right hand chord as an inversion or root chord. It's just the right hand we are referring too in this case - which is where chords are often played in Popular Contemporary Piano music. Hope this makes sense.
@@contemporaryschoolofpiano Yes, it makes a lot of sense - thank you. At least I don't have to change my learning around when I play bass instead of keys! Just found this channel, and it matches very well with the way I play (except in skill level, obviously) - looking forward to watching more videos.
Question: This is hw for Berklee Online School of Music. I chose this course precisely because it focuses on chord and chord voicings ... something I know relatively little about. I can improv all up and down the keyboard, but know the names of what I'm hitting ...idk. They want me to play a 1,4,5,1 chord progression in Bb. Ok. I can do that, I know that much. But they want me to play 1,4,5,1 in Bb, 1st inversion and 2nd inversion. Online school leaves me no where to turn with a question. The numbers game is just something I don't get. 7th week of the semester ... My A average going in the toilet. Appreciate any and help.
What's your end goal, to pass the course with flying colours? To improve your theory, or improve your piano skills, to be more artistic, or more technical? Horses for courses as they say, maybe you need some one-to-one coaching to unlock something. A 1,4,5 chord progression is very learnable, but is it what you need right now? Or is something else missing. To hard to answer this here on RU-vid. p.s Regarding Berkeley, I've had students who've taken their film music courses and have thrived, but I'm unsure what program you are referring to here?
@@contemporaryschoolofpiano I appreciate you trying to answer my melt down question. I want to improve everything but I have a long history of only understanding notes. No rhythm, theory, nothing until I was 60 and then lightening bolts went off in my brain as I could already play pretty well. Now learning theory and figuring out this numbers game is changing everything again. Lesson: it's never too late. I finally figured it out and have submitted my assignment. Taking a Berklee Keyboard Method class, 1st one, to wet my feet and I knew it involved chords it would get hard for me. And it did. But huge learning curved surpassed in the last 24 hours. Was to play in Bb, in all inversions, 1,4,5,1 with voice leading chords. Also DMajor, in 1 4,6,2,1 in all inversions with voice leading chords. Figured it out and pleased and I will keep watching all your videos. Thank you so much!
@@bunnyhollowcrafts I'm always inspired by these stories,, I'm 40-something, and I hope when I'm 60+ that I will still be still improving. Music never ends. Keep it playing. Many thanks
Yes so technically an Am6 has an F# in it - so it's not the same as an F major7. But a few chords do have crossovers. C6 for instance is an inversion of Am7 and vice versa. The bass note would decide what you call it. The biggest example of this are diminished 7th because they invert onto each other. That means Cdim7 is the same as Ebdim7 is the same as F#dim7 is the same as Adim7. In this case we follow the bass. (Hey that rhymed!!)
Very very good question! Yes, to some extent. For instance, you practice a Dm7 to G7 (play the Dm7 in root D F A C, and drop the top two notes for the G7 (D F G B) that would be considered one possible universal pattern, a minor 7th to a dominant 7th, where you could use an effective inversion: BUT when you start dealing with inversions with 7th chords, all sorts of new exciting opportunities emerge, adding 9th notes becomes much easier, rootless chords and other variations are just under your fingertips, so using similar methods as we are here to think in shape, and train our muscle memory, we can start to play some very exciting chords. We cover much of this in our Complete Musician Piano Essentials Course, if you'd like to know more just contact us via our website www.contemporaryschooloofpiano.com
