Simple Exercise For Practicing & Memorizing Chords

welcome back today i have a very easy and interesting exercise to help you memorize your chords your triads if you're at the stage where you're trying to get used to chords and triads and how to voice them and how to play them on the piano and even just remember how they're played then this exercise is for you it relies on the circle of fourths which is like the circle of fifths and i'll just remind you what this is if you haven't encountered it a fourth is an interval a musical interval that consists of five semitones so for example pick c and then pick count five semitones up one two three four five and here you have a an interval that is called a fourth uh let's have another example here's f let's count five semitones up one two three four five and this is again a fourth let's do it again from a b flat count one two three four five and you get to an e flat and then you can keep doing this so what do you get you get c f b flat e flat a flat d flat g flat or f sharp b e a d you can see this already g and c so we're back to c so you go through all of the notes in this way now what you can do is you can use this circle of fourths to just build out the chord progression and the chord progression we're going to play is precisely this we're going to play a c major leading into an f major then an f major leading into a b flat major then a b flat major leading into an e flat major then an e flat major leading into an a flat major and until we go through the entire circle you can do this with minor chords as well you can go from minor to major chords or major to minor chords it's actually i recommend using all of these different combinations if you're starting out now how does this exercise go well we're going to play the first let's look at one pair so we have to say the c major going into an f major so the first chord will be played in the root position with and this is the important part with the base on the third degree so this is my c major chord i have the first third and fifth degrees and i'm playing e for my base not c now for the f into which i'm going i'm going to play what's called the second inversion so my base is going to go up one semitone to f and my thumb is gonna stay on the c and my two fingers here i'm gonna go from e and g up to f and a and this is exactly what we're going to do as we climb up the circle at every single step so we have c to f let's do the next step let's do the next step is f to b flat so let's do it again i'm going to build the f triad in the root position and i'm not going to play the bass of f i'm actually going to play the third degree again which is the a so in the right hand i have f a and c and then the left hand the a and again the base is going to climb up to a b flat and these two fingers are going to climb up to b flat and d so i'm playing the second inversion of the b flat major triad in the right hand let's play it all together so you can get a sense of where i'm going now we can continue this i'm going to do just one more step and then i'm going to leave the rest as an exercise for you to figure out so the next step is b flat going into an e flat i'm going to play b flat major in the root position in the right hand and the third degree for the base so in the right hand i have b flat d and f and in the left hand a d and in the e flat i'm gonna take the bass go up one semitone in the right hand i'm gonna play this note is gonna go up one semitone to an e flat and this note is going to go up two semitones to a g and here i have the second inversion of e flat major so plate from the beginning we have now you can just play it as is as i've shown you and just go through all of the different chords and this is okay once you've mastered this you should add rhythm to your plane and the importance of rhythm is that it forces you to change chords uh it's not to practice your timing as you play but it's to practice your reaction speed so you have to change the chords on time fast you don't have time to think about it so try playing it like this and maybe do either four three or four beats per chord okay so you have this kind of thing that forces you to play it in time and change the chords really fast and you'll find that this is much more challenging than just playing the chord and then figuring out the next chord and then just changing whenever you feel like it and playing the next pair and so forth so playing things in rhythm is a very valuable skill that you should make sure you have under your belt because you're going to need it as you play these chords in real life situations again you can do this exact you can do the exact same thing with minor chords you know there's nothing preventing you from doing instead of so c minor to f minor and then f minor to b flat minor okay so you see this can go on in either major or minor chords and i think it makes practicing the chords a bit more fun because this actually sounds maybe like a progression and it's going to even help you down the road because this is the basis for the 5-1 and the 2-5-1 progression if you haven't met these ideas yet then you should know that they pretty much constitute the basis of almost all modern harmony so it's a good idea to get used to these patterns c going into an f f going to b flat b flat going to e flat e flat going to a flat and and so forth that's it i hope you've learned something interesting and i hope to see you next time if you've made it this far then i'm happy to put in a shameless plug for my sister's online jewelry store she makes handcrafted jewelry and has an online store in etsy i'll put the link in the description of the video you're welcome to check it out if that's your thing that's it and i hope to see you next time

Channel: MangoldProject

Views: 1,195,458

Keywords: Exercise chords, Simple exercise chords, memorizing chords, practicing chords, exercise chord voicings, etude chords, study chords, lesson chords, training chords, chord drill, exercise memorizing chords, practice chords

Id: inHbo-a1Rt0

Length: 9min 22sec (562 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2016