(jazz music) - I'm Peter Martin, and today I'm gonna give you five easy jazz piano chords that sound great. Now the good news is you don't have to learn a bunch of jazz theory. In fact, don't learn a
bunch of jazz theory first. We're going to jump right in and play some stuff that sounds great. Because if you learn too much jazz theory, your end up playing chords
that sound like this: (piano playing) or even worse this: (piano playing) The old double root-root position. We're gonna stay away from that. Instead, we're gonna use something called Root Shell Pretty. Now these are chords that actual jazz musicians use. Professional jazz musicians,
and they just sound good. So skip the corny sounding
root position chord, let's jump right into Root Shell Pretty. These are all built up the same way, from the bottom up. We have three notes in the left hand and two in the right hand. Let's jump in. So we'll start from the bottom up: C major 7. With the root
on the bottom, that's C. (music note) Then we're gonna have the shell, which is the third and the seventh. E and B, so the third starting on C. One, two, three, that's the major third. And then, four, five, six, seven. That's the beat, a major seven. So, that's root and shell. That's everything we need
to do with our left hand. Now we're gonna add the pretty notes in the right hand. And we're gonna go with a D and a G. (piano playing) Now the D is the ninth or the second, you can think about it either way. We call it the ninth because we're gonna count all
the way down to the root. One, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight which is the octave, and then the ninth. (piano playing) And then the fifth is the G. One, two, three, four, five. (piano playing) So that sounds pretty good. Let's compare it to some root positions. (piano playing) Let's move on to our next chord. The great thing about
these, Root Shell Pretty, is that they build up the same way for a number of different types of chords. We're go through five today, but there's many more that they work on. Of course, you can go
and should go through different keys as well. So, we're gonna do a minor 7 chord next. So the root stays the same, still in the key of C, and this is a C minor 7 chord. (piano note) And then we go to the minor third, and the minor or dominant
seven. Same thing. So, we count up the same
way. One, two, three, but we're going up a minor scale now. Four, five, six, seven,
root, three, seven. Root, shell. Root, shell. Okay? Now for the pretty chords, we're gonna change it up a little bit. We're gonna use the ninth again. Remember we're counting up again. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, or second. (piano playing) Then we're gonna go to the eleventh. (piano playing) That's a cool sound right? And why is this this the
eleventh? You can also call it the fourth, but we're gonna count up from the root. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Or you can count up from this C. One, two, three, four. Same thing. (piano playing) That's a nice sound. Let's do a C minor 7 in root position. No pretty notes. (piano playing) Let's move on to our third
easy jazz piano chord that sounds great. This is a dominant seven. SO this is C7. A great chord, very useful. Starts the same way, root on the bottom. Shell is the third, the major third and the dominant seventh. So it's kind of a hybrid
between the first two that we see. Same thing with counting up: one, two, three, major third. Four, five, six, dominant or minor seven. Gives it that great dominant seventh kind of bluesy sound. (piano note) Now, for our pretty notes, we're gonna go back to use the same two that we used on our major seventh. Because they work nicely. The ninth and the fifth. (piano playing) It's a great sound, right? (jazz piano music) Nice little voicing. Again, that's the ninth. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And the fifth. One,
two, three, four, five. Root, shell, pretty notes. Let's compare this to a root position. (Peter "ehing") Dominant seventh chord. (piano playing) Now let's move on to chord number four. This one's great because
it's still a dominant chord, but we're gonna hit our first alterations. Start to get some new sounds, especially for our pretty notes. So this is C7 sharp 11. Our root stays the same of course, still on C. Our shell stays the same
as chord number three, our dominant seventh because
we got the third. Seven. Root, shell. Now we're ready for our pretty notes. We're gonna go for the
ninth, the D, our old friend. And this time, we're gonna
go for the sharp eleven. That's an F sharp. Nice little sound there right? And this is sharp eleventh because we're counting up from the root. One, two, three, four,
then we're making it sharp. So it's a C sharp. C7 sharp eleven. Now for our final jazz piano
chord, that sounds great, C7 sharp nine This is another dominant seventh chord with a nice alteration. Really gives it a nice bluesy sound. (piano playing) A little bit harsh but dominant. So useful. Sounds great. Let's build it up. Root. (piano note) Shell. (piano note) Third seventh with the dominant seventh
and the major third. And then we're gonna go sharp nine. (piano note) Which is in a D sharp. Or an E flat. Now why is that sharp nine? Let's count up from the root: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and
then we're making it sharp. So, root, shell, sharp nine, then we're gonna put a fifth on top. Because it sounds good. (jazz music playing) Sharp nine. Okay? So that's your
five basic jazz chords that you can play and learn today and start sounding good. I encourage you to try these, there's a number of other ones. A number of different ways to build it. The main thing is that
you get the concept. Root. Shell. Pretty notes. Okay? 'Cause that can
be root, shell for a C7, and then it might be two
notes on the right hand. That's a 13 and a sharp 11. That could be the ninth and the 13th. Could be the 13th and the third. The fifth and the.. Lot of different choices. I just gave you five to get started with. Now let's talk about how
we're gonna practice these. You're gonna want to eventually learn them in all keys. Couple different way
that you could do that if we go back to voicing
number one C major seven. Root. Shell. Pretty tones. You can just move up chromatically. Take your time, move
everything up half step. (piano playing) This is a piano so the shapes are a little bit different. The intervals are always the same when we go to different keys. But the shapes are a little different. It's not like a guitar where you can just shift your hand and
keep your position the same. Okay? So you can practice
these all in that same way. Minor seven. (piano playing) You can also got through
the circle of fifths or the circle of fourths just for variety. (piano playing) C major seven. (piano playing) F major seven. (piano playing) B flat major seven. We're just moving up in fourths. (piano playing) That kind of a thing. And one more way that
you can practice this, give you a little bit
of interesting thing, getting you ready for jazz
piano chord progressions. And that is to take number
four and number five, of our five chords. This is number four. C7 sharp 11. Root. Shell. Pretty tones ninth sharp 11. And combine that with number five, which is sharp nine. Okay, so this is chord number four. C7 sharp 11. That's number 5. C7 sharp nine. All I'm doing is going up a
half step in the right hand. (piano playing) You can kinda see where this is going, can be some beginning of some little bit of melodies, little bit of voice leading. Sharp, chord number
four, chord number five. Now we're going up a half step, so we're going to D flat seven. Sharp 11. (piano playing) To D flat seven sharp nine. (piano playing) D seven, going up half step again. D seven sharp eleven. D seven sharp nine. (piano playing) You'll see all this written out in the worksheet that
you can download here. And hope you enjoyed. Remember, stay away from
root position voicings. I mean, you wanna understand 'em but you don't wanna play this. (piano playing) 'Cause if you start playing that you're going to improvise like this. (piano playing) We don't wanna do that, we wanna be... (jazz piano playing) Alright, happy practicing. (jazz music playing)
