How to Visually Learn Augmented & Diminished Chords

okay let's talk about diminished in augmented chords the basis for our diminished and augmented chords are going to be major and minor chords and make sure that you know major minor chords because well your major chords are going to be your basis for all other kind of chords okay so we have our root we have our root we have our third and we have our fifth ok represented with these colors we have black as the root red is the third and blue as the fifth we're going to start with augmented chords or triads as I also refer to them a triad being a three note chord so I'll use that term interchangeably and chog meant means to expand or increase ok our augmented chords to create an Augmented chord you take the top note of a chord when it's in root positioning you'll move it up a half step and that's to the very next key your cord extension for an Augmented chord is going to be Aug or it'll or it'll be a plus sign okay augmented triads also consist of two major third intervals so between this note and this note is a major third between C and he is a major third between E and G sharp is a major third another way to look at that is to ask yourself what is the third of a C major chord it's E and what is the third of an E major chord is G sharp so that's another way to think about major thirds augmented chords create tension in music which also adds interest think of it visually this way we have a balloon blowing air into this balloon creating tension and all of a sudden someone does this okay releasing all of that tension so that's a visual way to think about tension and release okay here we have G major and we're gonna go from G major to G augmented we're again we're gonna take this top note raise it up a half step and we have G augmented D major raise this top note a half step and now we have D augmented this is a little different here we have the a major chord and if we take this top note and raise it up half step it's gonna land on a white key not a black key so that's one of those beginner mistakes that a lot of people make when they're trying to build augmented chords you know when you have most of the time or a lot of the time you have the fifth or the Augmented fifth on a black key in this case it's going to be on a white key so there's a augmented here we have G flat major and we're going to create an Augmented chord we just raise this top note our fifth up a half step and of course it lands on the Augmented fifth lands on a white key inversions are those things that will throw you off because that's just rearranging the notes let's take a look at that we've been working with chords in root position well what if we take this bottom note to C and we raise it up and on we have C in first inversion now the note that we're gonna augment our raise up a half-step is in the middle our fifth is in the middle when when a court is in first inversion so don't be thrown off by inversion so here we have our C major or C augmented in first inversion if we raise up the bottom note again here we have second inversion but again here's our fifth we're gonna raise it up a half step and it's going to very much well look just like what you see here ok diminished chords diminished means to reduce or make smaller the basis for our diminished chord is going to be a minor chord and we're just going to take this top note here and we're going to lower it a half-step instead of raise it like we did before diminished of the court extension for the scores is gonna be di M or a minus sign also diminished triads consists of two minor intervals excuse me minor third interval so we have our root and our minor third C E flat is a minor third E flat to G flats a minor third you can do that the same way that you did the augmented chords ask yourself what is the middle note or what is the second note in a C minor chord is E flat and E flat and G flat if a an E flat minor chord the root is a flat and the third is G flat so you can do the same thing as you did with the augmented chords diminished chords also create tension and add interest so let's loo use our balloon example like we did before we're putting air in this balloon creating the tension but instead of popping it we let all the air out of it now I know that that's the best animation that I could come up with that so it's just think of tension release tension and release going the other way here we have G minor we're going to create G diminished we're going to take this top note again move it down a half step you have G diminished now here we have F minor and this is the same situation that we had creating an Augmented chord out of the a major chord we're going to take this top note we're going to move it down but again it's not going to be the diminished fifth is not going to be on a black key it's gonna be on a white key so it's just gonna look a little different let's take a look at these augmented and diminished chords on the keyboard so you have C major ok raise the top note up which is the fifth of a half-step if C augmented f-major raise the top note up which is v F augmented G major G augmented so here we have a major we're going to raise the top note up a half step and have a augmented so are we going to this note here nope even though these other chords have an Augmented fifth that's on a black key this a has an augmented note that's on a white key so don't be thrown off by white keys and Black Keys so here we have the a major and then a augmented is not going to be this note here it's going to be this note here okay B major would be here be augmented okay also don't be thrown off by inversions here we have a c-major in first inversion that puts the route on top so what note are we going to raise up a half step here's our fifth okay that creates a C augmented but the C chord is in first inversion so don't be thrown off by the fact that you have inversions you're going to have notes are going to be in a different order let's say we have B flat major okay and that's in first inversion also so which note are we going to raise up we're gonna raise this F up a half-step and there we have the B flat augmented chord just as we did the augmented chords in an inversion let's do a minor chord C minor in first inversion what note are we going to lower down a half step this one here this is our faith our fifth C diminished B minor B diminished [Music] okay so we have augmented and diminished chords and let's just do a little musical sequence of these chords that progress and a sinned so we're going to start out with our C major chord and I'm going to play the root of all of these chords again in my left hand just to make it a little more musical so we have our C major chord okay and what we're going to do is we're gonna raise the fifth up okay create us the Augmented chord and they're going to move to the next chord which is going to be our F major chord and that's going to put us right here okay f-major for a second inversion because the root is in the middle and then we're going to raise the fifth up okay and then we're going to move from our F augmented through our G major chord okay then from G major 2g augmented okay to the C major where we started okay okay now so if you'll notice that some of these chords smoothly transition into another chord for example here we have a C major C augmented and it pretty easily will transition to the F major chord why is that because every one of these notes we're keeping the C so we're not having to move that note anywhere but these other two notes are just a half a step up below them you're removing from E to F and removing from a flat to the a so we have our see Augmented today so I just wanted to mention that about these augmented chords descending we're going to do this we're going to move from our C major alright to our C minor and then we're going to move from there to our G minor ok I'm not I could have moved to a G major but I just didn't want to do that I want it to sound a little more musical and they're going to move from the G minor to the G diminish ok and from there to C major ok to C minor all right lowering the third to F diminished because we've lowered our fifth here and then back to C so this is what it would look like [Music] used in a court regression you could you know this is I may play some throw some sevenths in here but it would sound a little something like this okay so that would be more or less a more realistic court regression that might include some diminished and augmented chords to get from one chord to the other I want to send you the five-step visual guide to learn how to play piano and keyboards with chords it's very colourful it's very illustrative and I'll also send you a free subscription to the color notes easy just click on the link in the description [Music] you

Channel: Learn Color Piano

Views: 13,682

Keywords: piano, keyboard, chords, diminished, augmented, learn, how to play, visual chords

Id: 2oVRllBi1YA

Length: 12min 38sec (758 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 27 2018