Bland Chord Progressions? Try The NEAPOLITAN Chord

hello in the NASA nice to see you the Neapolitan chord is one of the most used and best sounding chromatic chords what is a chromatic chord it's a core that contains not that are technically out of the key but the chord it's still used in a specific key now later I will give you all the practical tips to use these Neapolitan chord but since most people misunderstand how to use a Neapolitan chord or confuse it with other chords let's see how these chords comes to be understanding where these chords come from it's important so that you will use it in the right way and in the right context so here we go let's start simple let's say we play a one four five chord progression in a major in this case one is a four is d 5 is e and one is a again and the chord progression sounds this way it sounds good and it resolves really well on the last chord which is a the first chord of the key there is tension and resolution and this gives a certain kind of satisfaction to the listener the chord progression sounds complete now let's do the exact same thing in the a minor key so again I'll have a one four five one chord progression and the natural minor my chords are a minor D minor E minor and a minor [Music] the first thing you notice is that there is much less tension on the five chord the E minor in this case this is cool if this is the sound you want it's not that this sound it's illegal or not legit it's a good sound and if you want that it's great but sometimes you do want a bit more punch to your chord progression you want more tension in that core so that it resolves better when you play the first chord you get more tension and resolution from this chord progression this is why sometime we take the fifth chord not from the a natural minor but we take it from the harmonic minor the harmonic minor scale is like the natural minor scale which is abcdefg but in the harmonic minor we sharp we raise the last note of the scale which is G and we take it to a G sharp so now the fifth chord is not a minor egb anymore it's a major AG sharp B and sometimes in fact we use the e dominant 7th chord e G sharp B D this gives much more punch to the resolution listen here to a minor D minor E a minor this is great and it sounds good but now at least to my ear we just shifted the problem the fifth chord it's strong it has some tension and it resolved really well to the first chord but now the weak link in the chain is the fourth chord the D minor and again weak does not mean bad week is cool if you like the sound but again sometimes you want more you want more tension out of that chord that D minor sounds simply too relaxed we want something with more tension so what do we do in this case well one solution and the one that in a moment will take us to the Neapolitan chord it's to alter this fourth chord is D minor and alter it means simply that we're going to change one or more notes so that it sounds different but not to differ a possible way to do this is to identify which is the weak note which is the not in this chord that has the less tension the D minor is made by the North D F a the note that has the less tension in the context of the key of a it's the a note because this note it's the tonic of the whole key by definition the tonic of the key is the note with the less tension so this a note is actually a good candidate for a note to alter to change to make the D minor chord more tense and more interesting so you can do this you can raise this note from A to B flat so before you had the note D F a now you have the notes D F B flat [Music] as we can hear this B flat gives substantially more tangent to the code and makes it more interesting it still has the same harmonic meaning or if you want the same function of the previous chord but it is more tense now if we have a look at those three notes D F B flat we see that these looks like a B flat major chord that is this will be the flat second chord or if you want the major chord built on the note that is a half step above the tonic of the key not only that but this chord is in a first inversion that is to say the third of the chord which is the D is at the base this is the Neapolitan chord since usually we play this D minor chord in root position that is with the D note at the base then normally the Neapolitan coded result when we altered this chord will have the D at the base so it would be a b-flat in first inversion sometimes you hear the Neapolitan chord being called the Neapolitan six this is because in the old continua notation used in the Baroque times a chord of the sixth is simply a chord in first inversion it's called this way because the interval between the D note and the b-flat note that is the third of the chord and the root of the chord when it's not at the base it's a sixth an interval of a sixth in this case it's a minor sixth to be precise but what we care about are not names what we care about it what does the Neapolitan chord due to our progression well as you can see right now the tension profile of the chord progression is more interesting is not week as before there is no weak link in the chain anymore now you have the a minor chord being the rest chord the Neapolitan chord give in tension then the fifth chord giving even more tension and then it resolves to the first chord again so again the tension profile here has more punch than before and if this is what you want to go for it sounds great but there is more to it than that if we've write down the notes in every chord we notice a very interesting thing because you see the a minor chord has notes AC e the neapolitan cord again it's DF B flat the e taken from the harmonic minor the E major it's eg sharp B and then all these resolve again to the a minor chord AC e so you see now in the progression we have a double chromatic neighbor to the tonic meaning that the Neapolitan chord contains the B flat note which is not in the original natural minor scale and this B flat is just a half-step distant from the tonic of the scale and the E chord contains the G sharp note which is again not in the original natural minor scale it's in the harmonic minor scale and again it's just a half step away from the tonic of the key so when we play this chord progression we are playing the tonic of the key a then we are playing the note just a half step above that then not just a half step below that and the tonic again now we've seen how this code work in a minor key but of course I can use this chord in major two and it sounds great in this case again the neapolitan code is used just before the dominant chord and can we put after any other chord but it's quite typical to put the neapolitan chord after the fourth chord in the key so in a major a typical progression will be to play a which is the first chord D which is the fourth chord B flat which is a Neapolitan and an e seventh which is the dominant or fifth chord of the key [Music] notice how the D chord contains a denote the B flat chord contains a D note and the e 7th chord contain a denote and how these common denotes lead vary smoothly from the D to B flat to the e 7 and then this D will resolve down to the C sharp which is the third in a major and yes of course in this case I'm using the Neapolitan chord in root position as opposed to the first inversion because we can use this code in any inversion there is no problem even if it's more commonly used in first inversion this does not mean that you can use it only in first inversion quite the contrary this is just the basic way to use the Neapolitan chord there are of course several more ways to use it and several different sounds you can take out of those chords in the right context in the right chord progression using the right chord voicing and the right voice leaning for all these I refer you to my course complete core mastery which is not a book it's a complete video course written by guitar players for guitar players where we do all our harmony on the fretboard directly in here I do talk about the Neapolitan chord and I took about many other chords chromatic or diatonic and different ways to use those courts to create incredibly good sounding chord progression if you want to really master your harmony on guitar click on the link on the top right and check out complete chord master if you like these videos mash a net like button and don't forget to subscribe and do click on notification otherwise YouTube will not let you know when I put up a new video and if you have any suggestions feedback comments please write them down in the comments I love reading your comments this is the mazzard Xillia of mystery forget comm and until next time enjoy

Channel: MusicTheoryForGuitar

Views: 296,637

Keywords: neapolitan chord, neapolitan chord guitar, neapolitan 6th, chromatic chord, chromatic chord progression, music theory for guitar, music theory lesson, tommaso zillio

Id: K8Z6MTonoXE

Length: 10min 50sec (650 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 20 2020