What even IS a 2-5-1 and how do you use it?

so the concept of a two-five-one is really quite simple but there is the prerequisite of understit but that's a hard word to say prerequisite of understanding a few things first and foremost number one we have to understand what numbers even mean when we're talking about music and why we use them we've talked about this a little bit before but very quickly let me just break it down a c major scale sounds like this well rather than looking at the note names c d e f g a b c why don't we just call them numbers one two three four five six seven and then this is also c so we consider that really just one again repeated this is important because what this allows us to do is it allows us to think of every single key in the same exact way so even if i'm playing an f major scale i can still think of it like one two three four five six seven and then back to one so it just makes our lives way easier when we're talking about all kinds of different keys because if we're talking about uh chord progressions or melodies it's we can talk about them in numbers and it'll apply to every key universally so that is step number one we want to think about the scale in numbers now we can think about chords in the same way so for example a c major chord is built using notes from the c major scale in this case it's one three and five so that's just a real simple c major triad that works in every single key a flat we use the one we don't use the two we use the three we don't use the four we use the five there's an a flat major triad so you can see how the numbers makes it really easy to think about everything universally with one simple code rather than having to go oh an a flat major triad is a flat and then it's c and then it's e flat but yet a d flat major triad is d-flat and then it's what is it o-o-f and then it's oh hey a-flat it's it's a lot more to memorize and think about and at some point maybe that's helpful but down the road once we want to be able to move fluidly between keys it's much easier to just think about it like one three five one three five one three five so that's talking about scales and how we build chords out of those scales now what happens if we start to talk about chord progressions in a certain key well we can still do the same thing if i'm playing a song that's overall in the key of c major meaning it's going to move around to different chords but the home base is always going to come back to c well every chord around it we can just call it by the number that it's built from so for example in the key of c well the c major chord would be the one chord the f major chord would be the four chord and move up one more and the g major chord would be the five chord so we're using the same concept of just these numbers that allow us to think universally in in every key and all we're doing is we're just applying them to chord progressions rather than individual notes so if we're talking about c major still let's play some chords and we'll just say what they are as we go so one chord minor two chord four chord five chord it's it's like i had to think about that for a second so this number system helps us to understand everything and we're gonna apply it to building chords we're going to apply it to building chord progressions and we're going to apply it to using these chord progressions and these chords in any key you can possibly think of and when you understand it all of a sudden if somebody says oh yeah 2-5-1 oh well now we kind of have an idea of what we're even talking about so just on a note basis what's what's a 2 5 1 well let's talk about c major so we're going to go 2 which is d 3 4 5 which is g and then one okay so we're going d g c simple enough well what if we turn those into chords and we do instead of the second note the fifth note and the first note what if we do the ii chord the v chord and the one chord that's kind of a familiar sound one of the most common sounds in music ever d minor g major c major two five one that's it that's the whole thing when everybody says two five one this two five one that that's at a very basic level that's all they're talking about it's j it's just two five one and you can see you or rather here you can hear how common of a sound that is and the reason it gets used so much is because it's a very effective way to wrap up something it feels like an ending it just sounds like it's it's final it sounds like it's just yeah we're coming to the end here we go yep yep yep boom there's the end so a 251 is an extremely compelling movement and by that i mean that each chord it leads very well into the next one now let's elaborate on that a little bit because we can make it so that the chords lead into each other even more check this out all i did there was i just introduced a couple additional notes into each chord but i utilized notes that would lead their way into the next chord very smoothly and these have a very fitting name they're called leading tones because they are tones or notes that lead into the next thing and i'll show you exactly what those are [Music] that motion there has a couple of leading tones now let me sparse this chord out a bit so that we're only using a few notes we're gonna in the in the bottom we're just gonna play the roots we're gonna play the two the five and then the one in the right hand we're gonna use two notes for each chord and those notes are going to be the third which in the case of the d chord is minor third and then we're going to use the seventh which in the case of the d chord is a minor seventh so we have d f and c so watch this let's go from the d chord to the g chord [Music] well our bass m our bass note moved but there is a movement up here where the seventh of the d chord led very well into the third of g one two three right because that's a half step it's such a small movement it works very well we call that a leading tone because it kind of like and now we're left hanging on this cliff and it the whole thing just really wants to resolve to the one chord now there was another note in there and take a look at what that one did it's this f okay so when we're playing the d chord that f happens to be the minor third and remember we're also using this minor the minor seventh as well when we move to the g chord watch what happens i didn't move that note i kept it right where it was but look what it is now now it is one two three four five six flat seven it's the dominant or the flat seventh of g [Music] so what was the minor third of d became the dominant seventh of g so that's what we call a common tone in that the same note works in both chords even if it has a different function function meaning in one chord it was the third and another chord it's the seventh this is another helping hand in making this motion be so compelling [Music] and now you can hear where that wants to move it wants to resolve itself and once it resolves that's a very pleasing sound to our ears because it makes sense it's a motion that feels complete now we go from here this is a little bit of tension that's a lot of tension and then we resolve all of the tension by releasing the chord back to the one back to the home base so you can see how those two notes they really one lead in one case and the other one led in the in the second change and and it and it just really drives this whole movement to resolve to the one and to resolve to the home base to a place where it feels like yeah we don't have to go anywhere this isn't sitting on a cliff it's not there's not a lot of tension there it feels very home it feels very resolved very relaxed done versus there's a lot of tension in that cord that cord really just feels like it needs to resolve so this two five one motion is a very compelling resolution tool it helps us move from this one chord building tension here and then we release that tension by resolving the cord back to the home base now this is just the start because we can take this concept and we can i mean here i'll just play some some different versions of like a 251 in this in the key of c major and you can see all the different ways all the different ways that we could uh voice it and all the different uh notes that we could bring in to add color to the to the voicings and to add you know some just some more embellishments so on a very simple level we'll start here right so that's very simple but now let's start to add some things to it and make it a little more complicated so this is setting the stage for what's ultimately gonna be like one of the most useful tools we have whether we use the two in front of the five to the one or even sometimes we just use the five now here's a really cool thing that i utilized in the video where i accompanied all the celebrities singing imagine because they were all over the place from key to key to key all i had to do was put a five in front of each new key and it felt like it kind of shifted there naturally [Music] no we can move from any key to any key just by putting a five in front of it as opposed to just going and then being like now we're in this key now we're in this key now we're in this key right you can make that awkwardness sound what did i just do i think i just went to c to uh e flat to a to g flat okay so let's do c e flat a g g flat but we're gonna put a five in front of each of them might still be a little strange but you can see how it works a lot better by putting the five in front we can go one step further now and add the two in front of each of them as well so that every single key change would be a two five one and you almost can see that like it doesn't even sound strange anymore whereas when i was jumping around just from one to one to one new key new key new key new key it doesn't really work it's odd right but watch this if we put a two and a five in front of each one [Music] it almost makes them go smoothly into each other because we're jumping from one place to a strange place but we're using such compelling motion that's begging for a resolution to a certain place that it kind of hides the strangeness of moving from key to key so this is a really handy device that composers will use a lot to navigate from key change to keychain so i don't want to make this video too long but there's so many different places that we can go in terms of explaining how this 251 thing works and how we can use it but at a very basic level this is the thing we need to understand about the 251 it is a tool that creates a compelling musical harmonic motion that ultimately results in a resolution at a home base so two five one it makes that c major chord feel complete it makes it feel like it's resolved we're home we don't need to go anywhere else there's no remaining tension it's done but anyways that's just a basic sort of introduction to what a 251 is why we use it all the time why it's such a useful tool if you have questions about this please leave them in the comments below thanks for watching today and we will see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Charles Cornell

Views: 456,689

Keywords: Charles, Charles Cornell, Charles Cornell Studios, Studios, Cornell, Piano, Piano Covers, Piano guy, piano jazz, jazz, piano lesson, piano tutorial, tutorial, lesson, music lesson, jazz lesson, music theory, jazz theory, theory, music school, music education, education, music jazz, jazz education, jazz studies, jazz school

Id: oxpKr6T_ctE

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020