How I Play Jazz Piano Chords - The Chord Stack System

in this video I'm going to show you how to turn this into this hey everybody Jeff Schneider here back again with more chord Theory and soloing tips for jazz R&B and gospel musicians now I know that jazz and R&B chords can sometimes seem intimidating with all their extensions alterations and fancy names what if I told you there's a simpler way to unlocking those chords so that you can finally get that rich colorful stank face inducing sound you've been after well there is a simpler way and it's called cord stacking but before we get into the music theory weeds here we got to do a quick story time so last night I'm with my son Harrison we're reading and he comes up against this word earthquake which is kind of a long word for him so he's trying to sound it out and I say Harrison take a look at this word you can break it up into two parts into two smaller words Earth and Quake do you see it and he's looking at it and he says I can't see it so I say here I'll e for you cover up the second half of the word with my thumb and then he's able to see just the word Earth and he reads that just fine and then when I remove my thumb he can see the other half quake and suddenly he's able to see these two words within this one bigger word now what does this have to do with chords well check this out I'm going to play the example I played at the beginning of the video here's the basic one I started with that's a 251 in the key of C major and in case you don't know what a 251 is the two refers to the chord that starts on the second scale degree of the key which is C major so if you think about a C major scale the second note of that scale is D so we're going to start the chord on D and build up using notes from the key Center which is C major let's do the same thing on the five chord there's a G7 you start on the fifth note of the scale which is G and you build up from there GB DF and then the one chord well the first note of the scale is C so we're going to build a chord off of that c by the way if you want these chord scale charts you can download them for free there's a link in the description below I highly recommend it and makes music theory so much easier I actually just got this email from somebody who said this last chord scale chart is genius thank you so much after years of sitting in music theory classes and nothing sinking in this finally made sense and is duable wow wow talk about a light bulb moment so if you want to have a light bulb moment of your own definitely check out those chord scale charts if you haven't already so now we know what a 251 is in the key of C major but when you play it with just the basic chords it sounds sounds a little bit boring so what we're going to do now is add some extensions still going to be d g c but now we're going to make it D Minor 11 going to G13 flat 9 sharp 11 going to a C major 9 chord sounds complicated right wrong and that's because we're going to break up these big chords into two smaller chords that are very familiar to you basic Triads so let's try this out first on the D Minor 11 chord we have six notes Here which works great because we can divide that into two words or two Triads a D Minor triad and a C major Triad D minor and C major two chords coming together to make this really nice thick D Minor 11 chord one of my favorite voicings let's skip over the G7 for a second we'll come back to that and let's do the c major 9 chord so check this out all right we've got C major very easy and G major also very easy put them together you get a C major n chord now we're going to make this sound even better in just a second but let's tackle that G7 chord first this one's going to be a little bit different because in our left hand we're just going to play two notes not even a Triad we're going to play the third and the seventh of a G7 chord so if you take a look at that chord scale chart again G7 you've got b as the third and f as the seven and then in the other hand in the right hand we're going to play a d flat minor chord d flat minor chord just a basic three note Triad wow that is something that is a really juicy chord I love that sound real dissonant but when you resolve it to the c major 9 chord it sounds great so you have that nice contrast between dissonants and consonants beautiful okay we've got a couple more steps that you need to know in order to really make use of this chord stack principle the first of which is inversions so an inversion is where you take a chord and you rearrange the notes to create a variation on that chord so if we take a C major chord real basic we have a c in the bottom voice here this is actually called root position this is not an inversion but when we rearrange the notes we now have e in the bottom voice so this is called first inversion let's do it again rearranging the notes now we have second inversion if we do it again bringing this bottom note and putting it on the top we're back to root position just up an octave from where we started all right so that's inversions but before we apply those inversions there's actually an even more important step that we have to cover and that is just really getting to know the relationship between the the chord we're stacking on top of the original chord so here's what I mean if we take that D Minor 11 chord we have the D minor chord on the bottom and then the c major chord on top right so there's the stack but what's the relationship between this C major Triad and the root of this chord which is D well you can think of it as a seventh up as in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 but I think it's a little bit easier if you just think of it as you're playing the major Triad a whole step down from the root so in this case the root of the chord is D what's a whole step down from d c so I'm going to play the c major Triad up here and D Minor down here and you've got that nice D Minor 11 chord let's do the same thing thing now with that G7 or the fancy version G13 flat 9 Shar 11 now remember on this G7 chord I'm playing the third and the seven in the left hand and then in the right hand I'm playing a d flat Minor triad this one happens to be in second inversion but the important thing here is to recognize the relationship between d flat as in D flat minor and the root of this chord which is G it's a G7 chord so if I play G which is the root of the chord and then d flat what's the relationship there what's the interval between those two notes well it's a trone or three whole steps so that's the formula to get that G13 flat 9 sharp 11 chord you play the third and the seven in your left hand and then A Minor triad a trone away from the root you can also think of it as the flat five or the sharp four from the root of the chord so 1 2 3 4 Sharp four also known as flat flat 5 after that we have the c major chord in the left hand and then G major on top so what's the relationship between C and G it's just a fifth C and G very simple all right it's time to combine these steps to create variations on the the big chords that we're playing here so in the initial example I played this voicing for D Minor 11 what's going on here well we've got a D Minor triad in second and inversion with a C major Triad also in second inversion very nice for the G7 chord I played this which is the seven and the third of the G7 chord by the way you can invert that as well here we have the third on the bottom and the seven on top in this example I have the seven on the bottom and the third on top and my stacked Triad on top is a d flat minor chord in first inversion and for the c major 9 chord I played this so we have a C major chord in second inversion with a G major chord in root position on top and then I did one more where I played C major in first inversion with G major also in first inversion stacked on top now if you notice on this voicing we have some nice crunch in there and I love that that that's a good thing you don't have to worry about notes that are right next to each other some of my favorite voicings have that crunch also we have overlapping Triads also not a problem okay the last piece of the puzzle is the hardest part but it's also the most important part so you don't want to skip this and that is to transpose these voicings into other Keys it's not an easy thing to do but when you break these these big chords down into smaller chords that makes it so much easier so for instance if we were going to take an F minor 11 chord we know we're playing F minor in the right hand and then we need to play the major Triad you remember this the major Triad a whole step below the root of the chord well the root of the chord is f what's a whole step below E flat so we're playing a major chord starting on that E flat E flat major F minor E flat major gives us F minor 11 let's do some [Music] inversions all kinds of possibilities here beautiful let's transpose that G7 chord so let's say it's a B flat 7 we'll stay in the key of E flat major here so a B flat 7 chord we're going to do B flat 13 flat 9 sharp 11 sounds complicated but let's break it down third and the seven in the left hand third and the Seven of B flat 7 and then what are we doing A Minor triad a trone away from the root of the chord root of the chord is B flat trione away or three whole steps is e so we know we're going to play an E Minor triad on top of the third and seventh combination there it is some different inversions 7 and three E minor Tri it on top with the root on the bottom it's crunchy but remember when we resolve it to the one chord it sounds like such a a great release so let's do that E flat major 9 chord remember we have the E flat Triad in the left hand and then a major Triad a fifth away a fifth away is B flat there it is some other inversions let's try this one Love That Let's play that crunchy B flat chord and release into the E flat major here it is so remember to download that cord scale chart it will help you immensely when it comes to transposing and if you want to learn more about how to play sick Jazz and R&B chords click this video right [Music] here

Channel: Jeff Schneider

Views: 74,309

Keywords: Piano tutorial, Jazz piano, R&B piano, Gospel piano, Triad transformation, Chord progression, Chord tricks, Triads in music, Jazz chords, R&B chords, Gospel chords, Piano chords, Music theory basics, Chord voicings, Piano lessons online, Learn piano fast, Piano technique drills, Piano tips & tricks, Piano chord inversions, Open voicings technique, Jazz harmony, Advanced chord stacking, Modern piano methods, Jazz piano essentials, Chord stacking secrets

Id: 8fOY4Z8Za6I

Length: 11min 20sec (680 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 25 2023