(piano music) So in this lesson I'm going
to demonstrate everything in the key of C minor. So to start with let's just
look at the notes of C minor. (piano music) So this is known as C natural minor scale, there are actually a few
different types of minor scale. But today we're talking
about the natural minor scale which has a minor 6th and the minor 7th. (piano music) And this is the key that
we're in C minor is actually the same key as E flat major scale. E flat major uses the same seven notes. (piano music) Just builds them from E flat, these two scales are
known as relative major and minor scales. Every key actually
represents a major scale and a minor scale. So today we're talking
about the key of C minor, slash E flat major. It's the same key and it's
gonna be the same chords that are found within this key. (piano music) So now let's look at the
codes which you find within the key of C minor. There are seven codes we can build a chord from each of these seven notes, and here is how they look. You have C minor the one chord, D diminished the two chord, E flat major the three chord, F minor the four chord, G minor the five chord, A flat major the six chord, and B flat major the seven chord. So if you're composing
music within the key known as diatonic music, these
are the only seven chords, or at least the only
seven triads which exist. These are the chords which
most mainstream music is made of excluding the diminished chord. This two chord D diminished, this is actually quite rarely used. So only really used in the
context of a two-five-one a minor two-five-one. (piano music) which we'll look at in a moment, but for most mainstream
popular diatonic music, this diminished chord
actually rarely gets used. So that leaves you with just six chords when you're playing within the key, and three of those
chords are minor chords. C minor, F minor, G minor, that's the one-four-five
of the minor scale C minor. And then you get three major chords, which are gonna be E
flat major, A flat major, and B flat major. And these are just the one, four and five of the relative major scale, so that's a neat pattern that's
an easy way to remember it. One-four-five of the minor scale (piano music) and one-four-five of the
relative major scale. (piano music) So if you want to write popular music, mainstream music, electronic dance music, these are the six chords that
you're going to want to use. And the first step is to get
familiar with these six chords, you want to write a few
core progressions using these chords in different combinations. (piano music) So to write sophisticated
sounding chord progressions you don't want to just
keep playing out, out, out. You want some structure, you
want this diatonic foundation. We're not getting rid of that, that is still our foundation
but then we're going to add on all of these
out of key techniques later in the video. (piano music) So the next thing we can do is add 7ths to all of these chords, certainly if you want to play in a jazz piano influenced style, you're going to want to add at least 7ths to every single chord, if not 9ths and 11ths and more. So let's start by looking
at the types of 7th chord we get when we stay within the key. So we're going to get C
minus seven as the one chord, D half diminished as the two chord, E flat major seven as the three chord, F minus seven as the four chord, G minus seven as the five chord, A flat major seven as the six chord, and B flat dominant
seven as the seven chord. So here we get three minus seven chords, the one chord, the four
chord and the five chord. We're going to use
these three chords a lot in this jazz piano style, the
five, the four and the one. And it's gonna be a blues influence because the 12 bar blues, which we're not gonna discuss here, but the 12 bar blues uses
just these three chords; the one chord, four
chord and the five chord. So we're gonna use a lot of these (piano music) in our core progressions coming up. (piano music) And then we have a couple
of major seven chords; we have E flat major seven, and we have A flat major seven, and then we have a half diminished chord, D half diminished that's useful if you want to do a minor two-five-one. (piano music) We can use that. But again it's not gonna
get used too often, and also we have a B flat
dominant seven chord, which again, isn't getting
to get used too often. So that's the final step of the basics is just to get familiar
with the seven types of 7th chords that you get within the key. (piano music) And once you've done that, you're then ready to start adding these out of key techniques. (piano music) So now that we're familiar with everything that can happen within the key, let's start looking at
out of key techniques and we're going to start
tweaking things here and there, to sort of get these out of
key sophisticated sounds. Now the first tweak that we can make is regarding the five chord of C, so that's going to be G minor. And sometimes we're
going to play this chord as of G dominant seven. And the reason we tweak
the five chord is that this switches us to C
harmonic minor scale, which is another type of minor scale. (piano music) This minor scale has a major 7th so sometimes we're going
to switch to this scale, (piano music) I'll play the G dominant seven, which resolves nicely
down to the one chord. Whereas the minor seven
chord G minus seven, does not resolve nearly as nicely, as making it a dominant seven chord. (piano music) Another chord which you
might like to change from time to time is the two chord. So we have this half diminished chord, sometimes you might want to
make this a minor seven chord. (piano music) You get this sort of Dorian sound. So the Dorian scale is the
minor scale up to the 5th, but then it has a major
6th and then a minus 7th. (piano music) So this can be a nice sound
coming from C minus seven to D minus seven. It's like Miles Davis' "So
What" uses these two chords two chord and the one
chord of the Dorian scale. So what we're starting to do here, is something that's
called modal interchange, where we're lining up scales from C and we're switching to different C scales. So with the G dominant seven chord we're switching to C harmonic minor scale, (piano music) plus this major 7th. And then we might switch right back to playing music with a
minor seven chord after it. So these are often just one chord. So one bar, and we're
just gonna switch scale, then we're gonna switch
back in to the key. Or with this Dorian
sound, it's just one chord might go from C minus
seven to D minus seven, but then we might go back into key and we'll play an A
flat major seven chord, which has an A flat, which tells us where back in the key of C natural minor scale. (piano music) The point is our default, our home is basically
C natural minor scale and all the seven cores
that we've looked at, but we could start switching it up for individual courts might go
to the harmonic minor scale, we might go to the Dorian
scale for one chord. We might also want to take
the four chord F minor, and tweak this to F major. Again that's going to
create a Dorian sound, like this.
(piano music) And this opens up more possibilities, so sometimes we might want
to tweak this four chord and make it a major chord. (piano music) And then one final chord
that you might like to use occasionally is to
take the flat second of C, which is going to be D flat and
to play a major seven chord. And this can be nice to add
in for some core progressions. (piano music)
Like this. And when we use this cord, again we're using modal
interchange which switch in to a scale that has a flat second. Do you know which scale it's going to be? Well this is the Phrygian scale. C Phrygian. It has this Eastern sound. (piano music) And this can be very effective when we're doing these core progressions. (piano music) So this is the first technique we can use to get out of scale, it's called modal interchange. And we can just use these specific chords to tweak the music out of key. So our foundation is C minor scale, (piano music) but we can tweak it out of scale, by playing a G dominant seven which gives us a harmonic
minor sound just for one bar. And then we'll come back in, like this. We can go to D minus seven, (piano music) which gives a Dorian sound. Or we can play a major
four chord so F major, which again is gonna create a Dorian sound just for one bar. And we can use this flat second chord, which gives us a Phrygian sound. (piano music) And again we're going to add
7ths to all of these chords even when we go out of key, we're still adding 7ths. That's D minus seven,
that's D flat major seven. (piano music) Now before you go to part two, I've also put together
a free download for you, which is some sheet music
specifically for composers. So I've put together my 23 sweet core progressions sheet music, which demonstrates a lot of these core progressions in action. And I'm also gonna put in
there, my chord voicing guide which gives you 24 jazz piano voicings as used by professionals. And those also going to be essential
