The FASTEST way to improve your chord progressions – Inversions

hello everybody today i'm going to tell you about what i think is the quickest and simplest way to make your chord progression sound absolutely fantastic and what we're going to be doing is using inversions you tell me the right way up now thank you let's go into the studio and i'll explain more right so what is an inversion that's what i'm going to explain first of all then we're going to dive in and look at exactly how you can use inversions to make your music much much more interesting give you loads more options when you're playing whether you're a songwriter a composer or whether you're just sort of comping chords along to you know a cheering song inversions can make a huge difference so in minutes you'll be able to play and write better than you can right now that's pretty cool did you notice the way i hedge because i don't know how many minutes this video is going to last yeah i thought that was quite clever okay nevermind right okay so we're going to go with some really basic stuff really quickly if you don't know the basic music theory of you know what what a scale is and how chords are then click the button and um go and catch up with my sort of music theory in 15 minutes because that'll get you up to speed so just very very quickly um a refresher here's middle c hey let's hear it from middle c uh this is the scale of c major all the white notes yeah right now if you want to form a triad you will remember that you go no one skip one note three skip one note five so you're playing notes one three and five like that that shape there is called a triad triad because it's got three notes and that is a chord of c major and it's the root the bottom note there is called the root and that's c the third one two three is e and the fifth that one is g now you can form triads on each degree of a c major scale so there's chord one or two or three chord four chord five good six good seven now we go into a lot more detail um in both that 15 minute quick music theory thing and of course in our learn music theory course which um you can find details of underneath this right so now we know what a triad is many of you know that already let's proceed to inversions who says that the root always has to be at the bottom of the are the harmony police gonna kick your door down and say put that note back at the bottom of the cord or we're gonna take you in no they're not you can take a cord like this and take this cheeky third in the middle and stick it down there an octave below that is c first impression that's all it means an inversion is simply taking a note which is not the root and sticking it in the bass yes you can do it with the fifth as well so if we just play c and e there and we take that fifth note and we put it down there that is e m c major second inversion okay and if you have if you're playing a um dominant seventh chord like that if you put that in the bottom then yes that becomes a third inversion but look so here is um c take the third stick it down there and you have a first inversion okay simples so they say okay here's another quick explanation of that right let me explain this another way and obviously the easiest way to do this is using three cars and a drone okay so here we have a chord of c major here is the root note which is c here is the third which is e and here is the fifth which is g now all we have to do to create a first inversion is to take the third this one and put it in the base let's do that now uh there now you have it ears in the base and this is a first inversion of c major right haven't got that over with now um i should say um last week i was telling you um giving some clues as to how to approach writing a great melody this week we're looking at interesting ways of spicing up your chord progressions in a week or two's time i'm going to be doing a video about melody and chord progressions and how the two come together and how you can make them work better together and the conversation which goes on between the two and i'm also going to be doing a live at some point in the near future so if you're not one of my subscribers join the family and ring click the little bell and then you will be reminded when we do that yep okay first thing you know i'm very keen on not making you learn anything you don't absolutely have to know um but you will see that knowing what notes make up a chord in the key you're playing makes your life so much easier so if you just know that a chord of c is c and g chord of a minor is a c e etcetera that's really really good now root position you can just means where the the um what note is in the bass so you can still have you can have different voicings where you distribute the upper notes in any way you like it's still in root position how are all these wonderful ways you've promised me guy that it's going to improve my music way number one you're going to be able to write a really much more interesting bass line okay let's take a basic chord progression and show you how an inversion can make it sound like a work of genius no not a work of genius sunglasses of that okay so if we're going to go chord one chord five which is g major chord four which is f major and back to uh so it's fine it's fine it's a bit bit blocky a bit performing and sleepy yeah inversions are coming to the rescue okay so what we're going to do rather than go to the root position of five we're going to go to the first inversion which means putting the correct the third in the base which is in this case is b so we're going to go from there to there already that sounds nice those two chords are better connected because this bass line is sounding smooth and swooshy okay now let's we're walking it down now what happens if we walk we want to walk it down another note to a oh is there an a in the chord of f yes there is it's the third so we can do another first conversion like that and then we're gonna walk down one more to g is there a g and a chord of c yes it's the fifth so that makes it a second inversion so now instead of [Music] sunglasses of doubt have auto engaged we're gonna make it better much better already i think anyway yeah hold it you say to yourself but i am not a keyboard player i am a guitarist do these inversions happen on guitars as well yes they do okay it's guitar time and as all of you know i'm a useless guitarist but this is just for the sake of illustration okay so if we play a c chord that is the root that's c if we want to play a first inversion we need to put an e in the bass and that's that note there so if you just play the top four strings you're getting a a c first inversion and if you add a g that note there um to the top string then you get a second inversion it's got that distinctive second inversion ring to it or you can have the first inversion by just playing the top four strings there's lots of better guitarists and we'll show you thousands of different interesting chord shapes which can give you all kinds of interesting variations on this but that is the theory guitarist you are not alone but more importantly if you play in a band who is the person who decides what uh inversion you're playing at any one moment it's the bassist this is your moment bassist you are in charge let me show you how that works in practice let's just put in a guitar [Music] okay so now if we play this in root position power to the bassists we go like this [Music] okay what happens if we try and throw in some inversion you don't want to do overdo it um and because it's actually nice to make a change and if you're always using inversions then it's no no it's not it's just kind of okay this is it's a lower version okay but it's sort of just what we're trying to do is is give it some dynamics make it sound a bit interesting and different not [Music] always [Music] okay that's one way doing it let's do another one um delete [Music] what is this box here people keep on asking it's stream deck xl which has little key switches which control um uh cubase root position first inversion of g first inversion of um back to the root position c first inversion of e i like that so what we've done then is we've gone a couple of first inversions then we've gone a couple of root positions then we've used that first inversion then back to root positions again but we could equally do you see so you should sort of mix it up and you get something which sounds a hell of a lot better good okay now let's have a look at another possible reason why you might like inversions i should say that an inversion um just means what note is in the base it doesn't mean all those are in the first root position of um c if i put the e in the base what goes on here right hand doesn't matter it's still a first inversion and that's um a second version um in terms of what notes you double traditionally with a major chord you try not to double the third so [Music] but look you know just don't get too hung off on that um just start trying to use these inversions and look for an option okay so let's go to reason two why you might like an inversion rather than keeping everything in root position and it actually allows you i've already mentioned the fact that inversions can join chords together in a much more fluid way because it gives you options which you don't otherwise have it also lets you join together much more dissonant chords i'm not dissonant but chords which are miles apart harmonically so for example if we start with a chord of c okay i can then go to an a flat first inversion by keeping um that c c a flat c e and then go to f second inversion and i get the what is a fairly standard superhero type of chord progression but what about even more distant uh distant chords so if you can take uh you remember the second fifth okay so for example c and g are next door neighbors on the circle of fifths where c and say f sharp and c sharp are like oh let's go visit auntie mabel in new zealand it's about as far away as you can possibly get it now dawns on me a casing of course if you're living in new zealand it's not particularly far if you're in england new zealand's as far as way as you can get you get the gist okay so if we wanted to go for example from c major to c sharp minor what we could do is use an inversion [Music] i like that chord progression and it's a very strange one it's going first inversion of c major first inversion of c sharp minor and because it's got that note in the root and the bass shouldn't say root which remains constant it connects the two together [Music] go to an e minor going to a [Music] c major c minor first inversion a minor second version [Music] so you can connect all these chords which actually if you were normally doing it [Music] sound what what is going on whereas you can use it it's almost a bit like a pedal so um these using inversions can help join chords together glue chords together which wouldn't normally be glued together which is a really cool thing okay um another really great thing about inversions is if you're the kind of person who likes uh loading you know opening up a kind of the edge here in songbook or something and playing through sort of photograph or whatever and um singing along as i do with my um elder daughter you just tend well if you're me you just use the guitar chord so it says well okay with why does ed sheeran always write in c sharp okay okay you're just like oh ed anyway okay so you follow the guitar chords and the rest of it now sometimes you will have noticed this c e what is this a conflicted chord which doesn't know if it's a c or an e it doesn't mean that what it means is the first note means the chord c these are called slash chords and the slash the second note uh the second note is the bass note so c e actually means c first inversion if you see c g it means second inversion basically now not all slash chords are inversions um it's only inversion if the slash second note is in the chord so for you could for example have c slash uh or b flat c which would be that i'm not in love um but that is a different kind of thing but so slash calls are effectively more often than not they are inversions so when you're playing along um just kind of using guitar chords you can just chuck in a little inversions here there and everywhere yeah [Music] beatles song which using some versions i just is that right anyway it doesn't matter but that's the gist um that you can excite your audience by doing things they don't expect harmonically and that's always a good thing pause for thought okay right um another thing which is uh really useful there are times when you want to stay on the same chord for rather longer than the audience might like they get bored very easily so you go first inversion do you see what i mean so you can prolong that c note so that people don't actually fall asleep listening to you and not having having your audience not feel asl falling asleep when you're playing is i found an advantage but not always possible uh which probably says something about my ability as a performer but there we go anyway um so this largely sort of rounds off our look at inversions so i think i've largely covered all this um i hope you've enjoyed it hope you found it useful um if you want to dive deeper into this kind of thing i do two courses one called learn music theory which is something like eight hours of this approach to learning music theory very practical very hands-on and hopefully you won't be bored but you will learn quite a lot and come out of it feeling a bit more confident about being able to make your write songs play music whatever and also how to write music which is this sort of companion course which is about how to write music it does what it says on the tin okay anyway that's all from me for this week i hope you'll join me for those future episodes which i've just flagged up and i look forward to seeing you then farewell learn music theory it's fun practical and packed with clear explanations a video course that will show you how music really works pitch keys and scales chord progressions and written notation all explained in a clear easy to understand way learn music theory quick practical and fun the way music theory should be

Channel: Guy Michelmore

Views: 69,326

Keywords: thinkspace, education, music, film, scoring, games, television, composition, composer, guy michelmore, guy, michelmore, thinkspace education, Music education, music theory, how to write music, learn music theory, music theory in 20 minutes, inversions, chord inversions, chord inversions piano, chord inversions guitar

Id: NedzMI5rLzU

Length: 20min 13sec (1213 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020