Transcripts
1. Intro: Hey, and welcome to my course
on Adding Color to Cords. This is something
that you can apply to any genre of music. Of course, as we dive
more intowards the jazz, R&B, and hip hop genres, you really want to make
sure that you're tapping in to the use of
color on your chords, but it can also apply
to pop music and even genres as old as romantic and classical
music, as well. Adding color to chords
is a great way to keep your audience more
interested in your playing. Sure, basic major
and minor chords can still give you a lot of
mileage as a pop player, and it applies very well
to classical music. But as you become more
advanced as a player, you'll want to be able to
tap into these colors and really understand how
each color sounds to you. That's why within this course, I'm going to give you
some descriptive terms as to how I view each color, but I want you to
make sure that you have a little notepad or possibly just some sort of
digital note on the side, and I'm going to be playing
these chords for you in a way where you can
just purely listen to that one type of
chord and write down the emotions and
descriptive terms that you feel best
describe that color. You want to make sure
that you understand each color and how
it's applied to a ord, almost no different than
a chef would understand different flavors
and how they're going to add them to
particular dishes. As you become more advanced with your exploration of
color within harmony, you can also start to
combine these colors together to create some really interesting
harmonic dishes. So while we cover a lot of
the basics like sevens, twos, and nines, sixes, fours, we also talk about
the idea of suspending in and out of color and also how much color should you
add to a progression? Should every chord have
color? Should half of them? Should maybe only a few? These are some
topics that we'll be discussing within this course. Now, I do want to mention that not everyone hears these
colors the same way. While Cilantro might
taste fine to me, it might not taste great to you, and it's kind of the same
thing with our ears. Certain sounds, the
dominant seven, sharp nine, flat 13, to me, sounds fine. But to a beginner player, it might be a little bit too spicy on the ears, so to speak. So just keep in mind that
throughout this course, while I tell you how I view
these different colors, there's no perfect
solution to this, which is why I'm going to
encourage you to write down how you feel about each of these
colors that we're adding. There's also going to be a class project where you're going to take a four chord chord progression that
you really enjoy, and you're going to try
playing it two different ways, and those two different
ways are going to be two different colorizations
to that progression. So it might be as
simple as taking two of the chords and
adding seventh to them. Or maybe you want to take each chord and color it slightly differently based on some of your favorite colors that you've learned from within this course. Either way, it's up to you, but I want you to
understand that you can take a progression and
color it many different ways. So the requirements would be two variations of your
initial progression, both colored slightly
differently. There's also going to be
lots of information on this course project within the class dedicated to
the course project, so make sure that
you check that out. So I find myself using
colorizations a lot in hip hop, R&B, especially in jazz, but these colors
have also worked their way into
classical playing, ballod playing,
and EDM production for my own productions
as well, too. So it just goes to show
that coloring chords is not destined to be in
only a couple of genres. You can really apply it to any genre if you take
the right approach. So I hope you're ready to
learn how to add some color to your chords and better understand how those
colors sound to you. Make sure you have
your notebook ready. We're about to dive in. I'll
see you in the next class.
2. Class Project: For the class project
for this course, I want you to take a four
chord chord progression and try coloring the chord progression two different ways. So as an example, let's say our chord
progression is D minor, B flat major, F major, C major. What are two ways that we could color this
chord progression? Well, one quite simply might
just be with seventh chords. D minor becomes D minor seven. B flat major becomes
B flat major seven, F major becomes F major seven. C major becomes C dominant
seven. Why dominant? Why not major seven?
Well remember to stay true to the
key that you're in. So if it's easier for you
to play on all white keys, then maybe A minor is the
better starting point for you. In that case, we would
have A minor seven, F major seven, C major
seven, G dominant seven. I'm just staying on the
white keys in that case. We could take it one
step further and try adding different
colorizations as we go. Maybe we would have
D minor with an added two B flat major seven, F major, add nine, CSS four to C major. And these are all
different colorizations that we cover
within this course. Once you've practiced the
initial chord progression and the two colorized
variations, you're going to be
doing a recording of yourself playing those
three different versions, the initial version and
the two colorizations, so that you're submitting three chord
progressions in total. From there, I want you
to upload a recording, either audio only
or audio and video. If it is a video recording, it's best that I
can see your hands because I don't
have perfect pitch, and it really does help me
to see what you're playing. It would also be very
helpful if you could include some notes of what the
initial progression is, as well as the variations
that you've created. So if you're uploading
just audio only, you can upload the audio to SoundCloud just on a
free account and then share a public link within the course description
of this course project. Same thing goes if you're
going to upload video, you can upload it to YouTube
or vimeo and then again, make sure that you're
supplying a public link within the course description
of this course project. Now it's really helpful
to me if you also include a PDF of the
initial chord progression, as well as the two stylized or colorized variations
of that progression. This could simply be
a Google Doc that you create and save as a PDF. Pairing that with
the video or audio, I'm going to get a
really good experience of what the initial
chord progression is, what you've done with it, and then I can give
you feedback as to what I think you've
done well and possibly some areas
of improvement. Make sure that you're
doing this recording on a day that you feel
really in the zone. Put a little bit of practice into it before you
do the recording, and, of course, make sure that
you have some fun with it. It is meant to be a fun
project, not too stressful, and it's going to show
you that there isn't just one way to add color
to a chord progression. Once you know that there's
two ways that sort of unlocks the door of anytime you're playing a new
chord progression, how do I want to
treat it this time? How do I want to color the
progression in that moment? So have some fun recording
this class project, and I'll see you
in the next class.
3. Benefits of Adding Color: So what are the benefits
of adding color to chords? Well, first of all,
I want to mention you don't have to
add color to chords. You could have a full
chord progression with absolutely no color, and that very well might
have a place in pop music, classical music, and other
styles where they're not always going to expect
you to add color to chords. Now, that isn't to say that
you can't add color to chord progressions in pop
music and classical music. I'm just saying you don't
necessarily have to. So what are the benefits of adding color to
these progressions? Basically, it's just kind of flavoring cords
slightly different. What is the benefit of adding salt or sugar to a pasta sauce? Or what is the benefit of
adding cinnamon to oats? Well, really, it just comes
down to the flavoring. You don't always have to
have a lot of flavor. And in fact, if I'm playing a simple
chord progression and there's a lot of other instrumentation
happening around that, maybe my job is to
keep things simple. But if I want to
add a little bit more flavor to a
cord progression, coloring is kind
of the territory that you want to
start to explore. We know that major
generally means happy, and we know that minor generally means sad or maybe spooky. But how do we create a
cord that sounds like mystery or intrigue or valor? Well, this is where color
is going to come into play. We start to blur the boundaries between just happy and sad, and we start to realize that
we can tap into a lot of other human emotions and bring those into our
harmonic progressions. Adding color to chords is going to get your
audience a little bit more intrigued in terms of what you're
playing harmonically. And after all, captivating our audience is a
big part of what we're trying to do as
musicians, as entertainers. At the same time, as
you're starting to find more colorizations
that you really enjoy, it also kind of helps you hone in on your style harmonically. Now, personally, I really like the sound of adding
nines to chords. I really like sevens
as well, too. I don't play sixes as much
as some other players, but maybe you find that you really enjoy the sound of a six. And you can already start
to see that there's nothing wrong with you liking
sixes and me liking nines, but the idea is we both have a little bit more
of our own style. So as we're playing,
people can kind of recognize our playing
as being you or me. I think it really does boil down to those two main points. We're trying to get our audience more intrigued in our playing, and we're doing
that by introducing new colors to them that they may not have expected or maybe have not even heard
before in the past. Pair that with finding some of your favorite
colors that you enjoy playing and really honing in on your
harmonic style, I think that's where colorization
has its most benefits, some benefits for the audience, and some benefits for yourself. Lastly, if you find that your major and minor
sounding chord progressions are getting a little bit dull, that's where adding color
is going to help add some vibrancy to your
harmonic choices. So really, this is all about
experimenting, exploring, having fun, honing
in on your style, getting your audience intrigued. There's lots of benefits to adding color to your
chord progressions. And I hope that in
the classes to come, you find some sounds
that you really enjoy and can call your own. I'll catch you in the next class where we start talking
about seventh chords.
4. Adding 7's: So one of the first ways
that we learn to add color to a chord is adding
something called a seventh. In the case of a major scale, we have seven different notes, and quite often we
choose the first, third and fifth note to
create a major chord. Also in minor scales, if we were to take C minor, for example, again, there's
seven unique notes. If I was to play
the first, third and fifth note from
a minor scale, then I'd get a minor chord. You probably see
where this is going. A seventh chord also adds
the seventh note of a scale. So in a C major scale, for example, we would have C, E, G, and B, the root, third,
fifth, and seventh. In C minor, in this case, what we call a
natural minor scale, it's naturally coming
out of E flat major. What we're talking
about here is the idea that the seventh
note is a tone below the octave because
there's other types of minor scales harmonic
minor, melodic minor. In this case, we're
using the natural minor. So if I have a root, a third, a fifth, and this flat seven, now I have a minor
seventh chord. So if we take the
root, third, fifth, and seventh from a major scale, we get a major seventh chord. If we do this same process
with a natural minor scale, we get a minor seventh chord. Now we are able to
take a major chord, and instead of adding
a major seventh, we could add a minor seventh. And inversely, we could
have a minor chord. Instead of a minor seventh, we could add a major seventh. And again, just to clarify, the major seventh is a
semitone below the octave, and the minor seventh
is a tone below, and it can sometimes be
called a flat seven. So let's start by
talking about the seventh that we can
add to a major chord. So if we have a major
chord and a major seven, let's just talk about this sound and how we are coloring
the major chord. So here it is. It sounds beautiful, but
it doesn't necessarily sound more major
than a major chord. There's a little bit of tension, and that tension comes
from this major seventh. If I bring the seventh down
an octave, I have a semitone. Semitones are a bit crunchy. They're a little bit Well,
they're quite dissonant. And if I bring that back up, you can see it's a little less dissonant than the semitone. If I do this again, less
dissonant, less dissonant. So we've cured some of the dissonance of a
semitone, but not all of it. And also, it doesn't
necessarily sound more major. It has a bit of a
minor influence because when we play a
major seventh chord, top three notes are actually
creating a minor chord. So sometimes when I'm doing
ear tests with students, I'll play a major seventh chord, and they'll say minor seventh. It might be because
of that influence of the top three notes
being a minor chord. But at the end of
the day in harmony, the lowest note really
sets that foundation. So these bottom three
notes are going to be more powerful in terms of
choosing the tonality. In other words,
the major chord on the bottom is going
to win the ear over rather than the minor chord that we would have
on the top notes. So there is a major
seventh chord. I just want you to
listen to a few of them and see if you
can give yourself some sort of descriptive word for how you picture this sound. Here we go. And So safe to say, it's jazzy, it's colorful,
and it's quite common. You'll see major seventh
chords come up all the time in pop and musical
theater as well, and it just generally permeates a lot of different genres. Now, if we were to take
this major chord and apply a flat seven
or a minor seventh, now we have something called
a dominant seventh chord. A dominant seventh chord doesn't necessarily
sound finished. Now, there is one style
that I can think of where this does sound finished,
and that would be the blues. For example, the
ending of a blues. There's a dominant
seventh chord, and it sounds perfectly fine for this genre as
a closing chord. However, in most
styles of music, this dominant seventh chord is going to represent tension, and generally it wants
to fall a fifth. So seven semitones down to
a major or a minor chord. So we get C dominant seven to F major or C dominant
seven. To F minor. Now, in some cultures, this
chord would be referred to as a major minor seventh because it's a major chord
with a minor seven. And I think it's really smart to think of all of
these seventh chords as a fundamental
major or minor chord with some type of seventh. So while I totally get
behind that type of naming, in the West, generally, we're going to call it a
dominant seventh chord. So let's see what type of sound this dominant seventh
chord creates. We have a major
chord on the bottom, so fundamentally this chord
is more major than minor. But where the the
major seventh chord added a minor chord uptop. This dominant seventh
chord is adding a diminished cord uptop
a little bit sinister, a little bit smoky and
quite a bit tense. So that's what we're
adding to the cord. No, I'm not saying a
dominant seventh chord is spooky necessarily. This is still
fundamentally very major. But there's some tension
that we're adding. And again, this
works really well. Throughout an entire blues, it is like the
chord of the blues, but we hear it in
classical music, pop music, rock
music, et cetera. I'm going to play a few
dominant seventh chords, and I just want you to listen to them and try to come
up with some sort of descriptive term yourself for how this chord sounds to you. Here we go. Playing a few of these
chords back to back to me, already sounds kind
of like a blues. So when you play
them exclusively, you're going to get a bit
of a bluesy sort of flavor. But we could even find this in something as simple
as far release. Minor chord. Dominant seventh, back
to a minor chord. So again, it's used in
tons of different styles. It's major with quite
a bit of tension, and it wants to
generally fall down a fifth to a major
or a minor chord, over to our minor chords. We could have a minor chord
with a minor seventh, again, a tone below the octave. And this is referred to
as a minor seventh chord. A minor seventh
chord kind of has the same duality as a major seventh chord in
that it is a minor chord, but the top notes create
this major chord. So it's like taking
a minor sound, which we generally
associate with, like, sad or scary, but we're kind of softening the sound with
a bit of major up top. This is one of my
favorite chords. It's also a bit ambiguous. I think this is the
chord that catches students the most when
I'm doing ear tests. It feels pretty neutral almost, but at the same time, I
think it sounds pretty cool. So we have a minor chord. On the bottom and a major chord created with these
top three notes. So the words that I would use to describe this might be cool, soft, lush, kind of velvety. There's something
about it. I just want you to come up with
your own term, though. I think it's important
'cause I can give you all the
terms that I think, but it's kind of like
a flavor, right? It's like I could try to
explain a flavor to you, but you might have a different
sense of taste than I do. So I want you to come
up with your own term for how you feel
this chord sounds. I think there was
an interview where Justin Bieber was in the studio and he said
something sounded expensive. To me, this court sounds
kind of expensive. It's like you can use it
for a lot of purposes. Most people are generally
going to like the sound. And again, it's
like a minor chord, but we're cutting
through that minorness by adding a bit of a
major flavor up top. It's used a ton in jazz
and soul and R&B and funk. But if you use it exclusively, it also finds its
way into a lot of electronic genres like
house and drum and bass. If I take a C minor seven
and an F minor seven, and then maybe an unrelated
A flat minor seven, and I play it with some rhythm, you'll see what I mean,
something like this. So it ends up sounding
like it could work its way into some electronic
genres as well. Now, the minor seventh chord, unlike the dominant
seventh chord, does sound finished,
for the most part, and it depends on the style. But if we're playing
something like a jazz piece. That sounds finished
in that genre. What's really cool about minor seventh chords is
you can pretty much take any minor chord within a chord progression
that you're playing, turn it into a minor seventh, and generally, you won't,
like, offend the listener. It's still going to sound
colorful and jazzy, but appropriate
at the same time. So there's the sound of
the minor seventh chord. Let's talk about
the other one where we have a minor chord
with a major seven. So this minor major
seven, first of all, the name explains exactly
what's going on in the chord, and it is tense. It is a minor chord on the bottom three notes and an augmented chord on
the top three notes. It's expansive. It is tense. And I call it sometimes
the soap opera chord. It's like, and Johnny is in the hospital because
I broke his arm. And then it transitions
to another scene. But it's also very close
to the James Bond chord. If we take these notes
and add an extra D, That's that sort of intro chord
for the James Bond theme. Now, admittedly, I don't
use this cord very often, but I wanted to kind
of make sure that we covered all four basic bases of major with both types of sevens and minor with
both types of sevenths. But one cool way to use this
cord is if you're playing, for example, a C minor
with a C on top, you can lower down a semi tone, and then work your way down
to that minor seventh. So it's a nice
transitional chord into either a minor seventh or a minor chord based on how you want to expand or contract
those top notes of the chord. Now, I use this chord quite
a bit when I'm composing for film because as a single
chord, it's very potent. Just listen to it. It is great for transitions and scenes and when we're
trying to be tense, but imagine a bunch
of violins all playing tremolo slowing louder. This would be great
in something like a horror or cii scene. So while I wouldn't
necessarily put this within chord progressions to
replace a minor chord, it is important to
understand how it sounds. I'm just going to
play a few of them, and I want you to come
up with some sort of descriptive term yourself for how this chord sounds to you. Here we go. There it is the minor
major seventh chord. So to summarize what
we've talked about, a major chord can have
a major seven or minor seven and a minor chord can have a major seven
or a minor seven. Four types available are
major with a major seven, known as a major seven,
major with a minor seven, known as a dominant seven, minor with a minor seven, known as a minor seventh chord, and minor with a major seven, known as a minor major seven. Now, all four of these
chord types are going to be included within
a PDF for this course, where I'm going to outline
all the notes that you need to know and some suggested
fingerings, as well. Also, it might not be a bad idea to have a shorthand list, just a little note
where you write down the names of the chords that we talk about within this course, and you give yourself a
couple of descriptive terms. This is especially
great if you want to do something like
film composition or something where
each chord really has a sort of descriptive term, a function, a purpose. Because if you really
get intimate in terms of understanding how each of
these chords sound to you, then you don't need to have
a plethora of chords and a huge chord progression to get some sort
of emotion across. You can be simplistic and
just use the natural color of these chords to convey some sort of
message to the viewer. Something else I want to mention is that we talked about
taking the first, third, fifth, and seventh note from a scale to create
these seventh chords. Now, the melodic
minor, for example, might be used to extract the minor major seven chord
or something known as a mix lidian mode would
be used to create this dominant chord or extract the dominant
chord out of that mode. But the two easiest ones to
understand are the major 1357 and the natural minor 1357. And then from there, you
understand the concept, and you can start to think less in terms of extracting out of a scale and more just what
type of chord do I have? What type of seventh do I have? When I combine them? What sort
of emotion does it convey? So if you found yourself asking, what scale is a minor major
seven chord coming out of, I would say, Don't concern
yourself with it too much. This is a class on coloring
chords and really just hearing the chord and trying to understand how it sounds to you. So that's it for this
class on seventh chords, a great starting point
for coloring chords. I'll catch you in
the next class.
5. Adding 2's and 9's: Alright, so we've talked about
how chords are the first, third, and fifth note
of some sort of scale. We've added a seventh.
Now we're going to talk about adding a two or a nine. Essentially, they're
the same thing, but depending on how
you voice the chord, they can add a bit
of a different sort of flavor or emotion. Now, the two should be
pretty self explanatory. I mean, the nine
might be as well, but two is a bit
easier to understand. It's the second note of
whatever scale you're in. So if we have a major chord
coming out of C major, for example, we're adding ray
or scale degree number two. To me, this is major, but it's specifically
the parting of the clouds and the sun's
mana rays shine through. It's just very
bright and sunny but also leaves a little
bit of sort of wonder. Listen. It's a pretty safe sound to add to any major chord, but it also works really
well with minor chords. This is a little
bit more dramatic. It's sort of on the
dramatic side of minor. Here's a regular minor chord. Grave, sad, add two. A little bit more dramatic
sort of days of our lives, which is really old
show at this point, so there it is major
with an add two, very bright and sunny,
minor with an add two. It kind of adds a little
bit more major to the major and a little bit
more minor to the minor, but not necessarily
more happy or sad. It's a very specific shade
of major and shade of minor. So, again, I think this
sounds pretty hopeful, but what is the word
you would use for it? How about the minor add
two? Let's try this one. And perhaps a bit mysterious
mysterious and dramatic. I think, for me, those would be the two
words I would use. But what would you
say? Let's talk about adding these as a nine. So now we have a major chord. Here's the seventh, which is an extra skip above our chord. We can go another skip up to this nine. Now
let's listen to it. To me, this sounds a little more It's similar in terms
of adding a bit of hope, but it sounds a bit
more childlike. It's like if I was composing something for,
like, a kids show, and there was kind of a happy, heartfelt moment. I might
add something like this. Maybe, again, it's
just very, like, juvenile, but in a
very innocent way, like maybe a Christmas movie. It sounds very nice. Let's
try it on a minor chord. So, again, we have
our minor chord here. We're adding a nine. You won't be able to stretch
the nine most likely. So what I recommend
is in the left hand, playing an octave or
an octave with a fifth and then first inversion
chord in the right hand, but pop the pinky up one tone. It's pretty standard voicing. For a minor nine chord. So we're calling these
major nine and minor nine. And the seventh can be assumed, but we're going
to come back to that. In other words, you
can choose to play the seventh and the ninth. If I say major nine, you can play the seven or
choose to not play it. If I say minor nine, the same rule applies. But let's listen to
the sounds again of the major nine
and the minor nine, and I want you to
come up with your own descriptive terms for these. Here's the major nine. Now, the minor nine, Now, I hope you came up
with a couple of words yourself for how
these sound to you, but if the descriptive terms that I've given
resonate with you, then feel free to use those. So again, to recap, we have the major add two very hopeful, the minor add two, somewhat spooky and
mysterious, a little dramatic. The major add nine. Hopeful but kind of juvenile
and very widespread, so it doesn't feel
quite so close knit. It's a little bit more
transitionary and we have minor add nine,
which again, to me, is a little bit mysterious and because it's
widespread, yet again, it works really well to add
for these film transitions or to apply it to multiple instruments,
like within an orchestra. Now, we're going to bring
the seventh back in with the ninth and
with the second. But at this point,
it's going to be a little bit harder
to come up with descriptive terms
for these cords. It's not impossible, but it starts to become more complex. We're adding more
and more layers. If I said, How does
this pizza taste, and it was a meat pizza, you would say it tastes meaty. How does this pizza taste? It has pineapple in Hawaii. You could say it tastes sweet. But when you start really mixing and matching different flavors, it's kind of harder to
explain the flavor. It works the same way with cords, but we're
going to do our best. So let's start with the
Major seventh, add two. Here's our cord, adding the two. I find this cord when it's
broken feels like wandering. It's still very much major, and it's super colorful. But there's that
Major seven ad, too. I'm gonna play a
couple back to back. You come up with your
own descriptive term. How does this sound to you? Let's try the same
thing now with a minor seventh chord. Add two. It still sounds
quite mysterious. But a little bit softer. This extra seventh
on top, again, now we're adding a
major chord up top. So it's minor with a twist of major with a
twist of mystery. Listen again. How would you describe this? Again, mysterious
on the minor side, but a little bit
more light hearted. It's not like a murder mystery. It's it's a who done it. Anyway, we're gonna
talk about adding the ninth instead of the
second. Same idea. We have a major seventh
chord adding a nine. Again, very bright and sunny. But now this B, in this case, we have a minor chord
built into this. So listen to this major
chord with a nine. Very hopeful we
had that seventh. Again, it doesn't
sound more major. It still sits around that
same sort of feeling. But again, it's like, watered
down with a bit of minor. And I'm not saying it's
more sad necessarily. It just cuts through,
like, the cheesiness of overly happy or joyful. I'm gonna play a few
of those chords. I want you to come
up with your own descriptive term for them. Let's check it out.
Sounds like this. How do you think it sounds? Let's check out the minor
seven with an added ninth. Again, you can call
this a minor nine, and the seven would be assumed it's up to
you as the player. So here's the
sound, minor seven. Here's our nine. This one
to me is like velvet. It's like if I had
to go for a flavor, it's like carmel
or butterscotch. It's sweet, but it's
not like chocolate. Like if white chocolate is like chocolate for kids
'cause it's so sweet, although chocolate is
chocolate for kids, but we're just using
this as an analogy. Chocolate is a little
bit more mature. And then we get
into, like, Carmel, which is a bit
more mature again, and butterscotch, it's like, your grandma grandpa
eating butterscotch. It's just a very
mature sort of flavor. So to me, that's how I
picture this as a flavor, but as a sound, it's a
little bit mysterious, but not like, grave. It's not necessarily super sad. I'm gonna play a few of these. I want you to listen to them and describe it in your own terms. How does this sound to you? Ultimately, I would
just call it cool. It's a cool sounding chord. It's got that minor
seven. It's got a nine. It's something that I would
use if I was playing on, like, a hip hop,
solo or R&B track. And I wanted to get
people to go like, Oh, that sounds nice.
It's just a cool sound. So there you have it a bunch
of variations of how you can add a two or a nine
to your playing. Again, it can range
from hopeful to mysterious and to whatever words you've put down at this point. If you have any that I
missed and you're like, It definitely sounds like this. You have to explore
this idea of the sound. To me, it sounds bh. It sounds X, right? Whatever you've
put, send me that. Let me know I'm really curious how you guys are picturing
these sounds as well. So I want to quickly
mention that the minor major seven chord that we covered in
the last class, I'm not going to be adding
all the colorization to this chord because it's really
not used all that much. Quite a few of the sort
of descriptive terms that we use for minor can
kind of work with this, but there's always going to
be that added tension of that major seventh on this
chord minor major seven chord. I'm not going to be adding the two and the nine and later
the four and the six and all the other
extensions that we talk about this cord just
isn't used all that much. I wanted to make sure
that it was covered, but to do every variation
of that chord as well, too, just doesn't quite
seem like the best use of time for this class. I would recommend trying it out. Like, you could
play a minor major seven with an added nine, again, the James Bond chord. But you're going to
not really be using that nearly as much as
these major variations, minor variations, and
dominant seventh variations. I just didn't want to exclude
the minor major seven. So we talked about it
in the last class, but that's kind of
where it goes to rest. The dominant seventh
chord, however, is very frequently colored
with all types of extensions, sharp 11, flat 13, nine, flat nine, sharp nine. All these are going to
be covered in a class specifically on coloring
dominant seventh chords. So make sure that you check out that class where we just talk about dominant because it is a whole world all on its own. Admittedly adding a nine or a two is one of my
favorite sounds, so I highly recommend
that you explore it, try to get
enthusiastic about it. If it's not for you,
there's gonna be lots of other colors
you can add to chords. Speaking of which I'll catch
you in the next class.
6. Adding 4's: Alright, so so far, we've covered basic chords
with an additional skip, which is a seventh,
an additional skip, which is a ninth, also
known as a second. So if we just include
this extra C here, imagine we're playing a C
major scale, one octave. What we have left is
the four and the six. And in this class, we're
going to cover the four. So let's start with adding
a four to a major chord. It would sound like this. It's a little bit
too clustered and a little bit too dissonant
for a lot of people, but if you break it up, it can sound quite nice. Check it out. It sounds almost whimsical, but there is this
semitone in the middle of the chord creating
quite a bit of tension. So it's not uncommon on a major chord to
sharpen the fourth. So instead of F, we're borrowing a note from
a different scale. We're not worried about
where it's coming from. We're just thinking of it as
the fourth being sharpened. Now, if we had to say
where it's coming from, it's coming from
the Lydian mode, which is a major scale with a sharp four, but just
listen to the sound. Now this actually reminds
me quite a bit of the Simpsons chord
from the intro. But it has sort of a playful
whimsicalness to it. So there it is the four on a major chord and
the sharp four. Let's try it out on a
few different chords. I'm going to play the
four or major add four. First, so you're going
to ask yourself, how does it sound to
you and feel free to write down any descriptive
terms that come to mind. Personally, blocked. I kind of avoid with thischord. I usually kind of
strum it a little bit, and I find it helps alleviate
some of that tension. Now let's try it with the
major add sharp four. It sounds like this. It's funny because to me, it still feels very major. It's very playful
and mysterious. But this tritone, kind of
hidden within the chord, also gives it a
little bit of a sort of Gothic sinisterness to it, which Danny Offman is the composer for The
Simpsons theme song, and he basically does,
like, orchestral Gothic or Gothic orchestral,
something like that. And it kind of makes
sense. He likes to use tritons quite a bit. So he's even adding it
into his major chord. We can try the same
with minor chords. Now, a minor add Sharp four is really uncommon, so we're
not going to cover it. I'll show it. Like,
I'll play it for you, but you'll see it's not really super common. It
sounds like this. It's a minor chord
with extra spookiness. So if you do want to
try out that cord, feel free, but again,
it's not really common. But a minor add four
is super common. To me, it cuts through the
minor sound a little bit. So it's still minor, but
it's not devastating. It's not adding, to me, anyway, a whole lot of
new characteristic. It's just cutting the
difference of, like, if this is neutral territory, major is really happy, and minor is really sad. It's just taking it in so it
doesn't feel sad anymore. We can still tell
that it sounds minor, but it has some added color. I think the word that comes to mind the most would be lush, but I want you to come up
with your own term for this. How does it sound
to you? Here's a few minor add four chords. Make sure you write down how you feel it sounds as some
descriptive terms. Here it is. And again, we can play seventh chords and add
these fours, as well. So we would have Major seven
add four. Sounds like this. It's not particularly common. You'll see major seven add sharp four a little
bit more often. It has a bit more of a
characteristic to it. Again, I don't think
that adding the seven is changing the terms too much
from what we had before. But if it sounds drastically
different to you, make sure you take note of that. So major seven add sharp four now we have
all the mystery, some of the sinisterness of that tritone, a lot
of playfulness, 'cause it just kind of
feels like you're just kind of playing again, that's
the Simpsons theme, right? It's just really playful. But at the same time,
that added top note, we're adding that minor
chord so it's a little bit less major,
playful, et cetera. One more time? We can also do the
minor seven, add four. Again, we're avoiding
the sharp four for now. It's like you can hear it. You just won't play
that chord ever, but feel free to
make it your thing. We have a minor seventh
chord. Add four. It feels more dense? I don't
know that that's a term that we would use to
describe its emotion, but as a cord itself, it feels a bit more dense. And again, maybe the
word there is lush. But again, instead
of just now we have it's a little bit more towards the major
end of the spectrum. Again, we have a major cord that we're now outlining up top. Does it sound cheesy,
happy, super joyful? No, it's minor, Dense,
but not drastic. It's not super minor.
It's beautiful cord. Now, we could also
start adding nines, but I think where you're
gonna find it the most is on a minor nine add four. And again, we can
assume the seven. So we have a minor
seven chord with an added ninth and an added four. Listen to the sound. I wish I could just say, It sounds super jazzy, 'cause ultimately it does. But if we're
listening to it, it's a lot of whirlwind of emotion. I think this one is a
little bit ambiguous. You could probably hear
this many different ways. But to me, it just sounds
colorful. It sounds jazzy. It is taking on the
characteristic of minor, but we've washed out
the minor sounds so much that it's like 20% minor, 20% mysterious, 20%, this 20%, and then eventually, you get
the full hundred percent. But to pin it as any one
sound gets really difficult. Again, as you add more color, it just starts to feel like you're playing around
with the tonality, major or minor in
a way that kind of masks the original
happy or sad emotion. So there it is. In terms
of adding a ninth, I wouldn't necessarily
recommend doing a major seven, add nine, add Sharp four, you can, but these are just chords you
don't see as often. I'm trying to make sure
that this course is practical for you and
that we're not going so far down this wormhole that if you're a beginner or
intermediate level student, you get completely confused. So to recap, we had
major add four, generally not seen that much. Major, add sharp four, playful and a little bit mysterious and a
little bit sinister, but kind of a mix of all three. Minor, add four, softens the sound of the
minor a little bit. And again, the minor nine, add four, and you
can assume a seven. You wouldn't say minor
seven, add nine, add four. It just
becomes too much. So it's minor nine. The
seven is assumed, add four. And again, just very ambiguous, but very beautiful
at the same time. Maybe that's a word we could
use for it, beautiful. So again, I'm hoping that as we go through all these
different sounds, you're writing down the name of the chord quality and some descriptive terms
that work for you. The general takeaway
here is on major chords, aimed towards a
sharp four sound, and on minor chords, aimed
towards a regular four. And if you had to
choose between the two, the minor add four is going
to be much more common. So we've covered
root third fifth for our basic chords,
seventh, ninth, also known as seconds, and now we've covered four, which leaves us with six, and we'll be covering that in the next class.
I'll see you there.
7. Adding 6's: Next up, let's get talking about adding a sixth to your chords. When we say major six
chord or minor six chord, what we're talking
about is adding one tone above the fifth. Now, this interval C to A, in this case, is known
as a major sixth. And the cord major plus a major sixth is also known
as a major sixth chord. It gets a little bit
confusing and redundant, but I wanted to make sure
that I explained that before moving forward. So we
have a major chord. With a tone above our top note, a minor chord, with a
tone above our top note. This would be a major six chord, sometimes known as
major sixth and a minor six chord
or a minor sixth. Now, we can also
add a major flat six or a minor flat six. So just like with our seventh, we're going to try a major
chord with both types of sixths and a minor chord
with both types of sixths. And I want to be clear
that the word sixths is my least favorite word ever. I wish there was an alternative, but it's the proper term for it. So have fun saying that one. We're gonna start with a
major chord and a major six. This one, to me,
is hopeful, jolly. It really reminds me of,
like, being on a ranch, like it's just very it doesn't take itself
too seriously. Joyful. That major six really
does, I think, add a bit more of a major
quality to the major chord. It can be a little
cheesy sometimes, too, so watch how you use it. It works really well
as a four chord. If I'm playing C major, which is the first chord of
my C major scale to F major, which is the fourth chord
of my C major scale, on that four chord, try adding that six so you
would get C major. F major six. Watch this. If I add a six to the one, it can also sound
very beautiful. A minor six chord, to me, is the most
mysterious chord. It really is truly mysterious. And it was used a lot
in the romantic era. And the romantic era
really was trying to take the mystery out of what
makes humans feel emotion. And they explored a lot of
harmonic devices, rubato, stretching time, playing
around with the alignment of melody and harmony playing at the same time or
slightly staggered. So they were really
experimenting with emotion. And so, to me, solving human emotion really is
like solving a mystery. Let's just listen to a couple
of the major six chords, and then we'll do some
minor six chords. And I want you to
write down some terms that you feel best
describe these sounds. Here's the major six. Now, the minor six. Now, you'll notice that
on the major example, I was using a one major
six and a four major six. Sounds great using both of
those as a major six chord. In the minor example, I played a regular minor chord for the one and a minor six for the
four. It's a beautiful sound. If you like the sound of
a plagal cadence one, four, one, try the
four with a six. What you'll notice is a four
with a six is the same note that we were adding for our
ninth to our one chord. So again, to reiterate, C minor is our one chord in the C minor scales the
first chord available. And that ninth sounds great. If we go to our four chord
and keep this note on top, Wow, super mysterious. So that nine from that first
chord really does work well on a lot of other chords
that are available as well. So I'm going with jolly and mysterious for
these first two chords. Now let's break down
a major chord with a flat six and a minor
chord with a flat six. You don't see these nearly as often, but when
you break them up, they're actually used
a lot in cinema and in commercials and a lot of other styles. So
let's check it out. We have a major chord
with a flat six. We played around. It just sounds very universal,
vast, expansive. After all, it is an
augmented chord. But also, we have a fifth,
so it's kind of both. It's like a major chord and an augmented cord.
It sounds great. And a fun trick is if you play that cord ascending
and then descending, at the same time
as the right hand descending and ascending, you get It's like the
mysteries of the universe. Sounds really cool. You can do the same thing
with a minor chord. Minor with a flat six. To me, this one feels well, I'm used to hearing this a
lot in the old Batman movies. So to me, it feels very dark. Dark is a big part of
that Batman sort of feel. But it also feels kind of
lonely, a little bit lost. Let's try that same trick
where the left hand is ascending and
then descending. The right hand is descending and then ascending
at the same time. In other words, contrary motion, working inwards and
outwards, the same pattern. Now once we get into
these sort of cords, the fingering can change
based on hand size, preference, and all
that kind of stuff. You could stick with a
basic no finger three, or you can even expand up. Like, I prefer one, two, three, four for this cord, but not
everyone might prefer that. So I'll give you the fingerings that I
think work the best. But as always, I want you to make sure that
you're exploring fingerings on your own to
see what works best for you. So we had a major six chord, Jolly, a minor six
cord, mysterious, a major flat six, vast, expansive, mysterious, and
a minor flat six cord. Lost, lonely, dark, also
kind of mysterious. So don't sleep on those sixes. They are a great thing that
you can add to your chords. They always add enough
color that's noticeable. Make sure that you
play around with them enough that
you can catch them in the wild when someone else is playing one
of those chords. Usually, when someone
adds a six to a cord, I find myself going like, Oh, temporarily, like, a
little more intrigued. It's a really fun color. Have fun playing
around with it, and I'll catch you in
the next class.
8. Sus Chords : Admittedly, I wasn't actually going to include this
class originally, but I do think it's important enough that we should cover it. The reason I wasn't
going to add it is because we're not technically
adding color to a chord, we're changing the chord into
something quite different. Up to this point, we've
had a major chord with something added or a minor
chord with something added. This is a bit more
of like a substitute or a little side step. Allow me to explain, we're going to talk about sus chords. So if I have a C major
chord and I take that middle note and
suspend it one note higher, we have something
called a C sus, also known as C sus four. We've taken the third and
suspended it to the fourth. And now, the same
way we can take the third up to the fourth, we could also take the
third down to the second. And this is known as sus two. Now, when you just see sus, the assumption is sus four. Think about it if I said there's a piano suspended in the room. You wouldn't look down,
you would look up. Someone has taken a rope and pulled it up and it's suspended. So the default for
sus is SS four. We've raised the middle note up. But SS two also sounds
particularly great. So you can make
sure to try both. And what's cool about SS four, as opposed to C major Ad four
is you're getting rid of that semitone sort of cluster or crunch and avoiding
it altogether. Now, going from a SS four to a major to a sus
two to a major or any sort of combination
of taking a major and suspending that middle note up and down, sounds great. It's also true for minors. It's that classic
sus to minor. Okay. So whether we have
major or minor, the four and the two that we are suspending to are
the same notes. Because if you think
about penta scales, the first five notes of a major scale or the first
five notes of a minor scale, here's our major example. Here's our minor example, only the middle note,
the third changes. So, in other words, the two
and the four are the same, whether you're in
major or in minor, providing you're using, like, a basic major or minor scale. So let's get talking about how the SS two and how
the SS four sound. I don't think they're all that different from one another. If we take a SS four and put it in first inversion,
now we have a SS two. They're essentially
each other in disguise. It just has this light amount
of tension that floats, and it doesn't scream
that it wants to resolve. Unless you're starting from
a major and then suspend, then it might feel like
it wants to come back. But if you just
start, for example, with a SS cord, you could have a motivational
speech over this. Like, there's lots of stuff
you could put over this, or it doesn't feel like
it has to resolve. Maybe at the very end, maybe you do resolve it,
but that's up to you. So the sound is floating, and it sounds like
we're waiting. We're waiting for
something else to happen, but we're not stressed about it. If it doesn't come, if there's no resolution, that's fine, too. So I'm using these
terms for both the SS four and the sus two 'cause they're relatively
interchangeable. What I would say that you can try to play around
with is take, like, a minor chord and then
suspend it down to the two. Again, you can suspend to the fourth, maybe back to the two. I like to take that
same shape and move my left hand up a
third or down a third. Try it again back. And then come all
the way back to C. You can keep that going. It works with major
as well, too. Now it feels like a
Christmas song written by, like, the Beatles or something. Does kind of borderline cheesy a little bit
with the major sound, but I really like the
sound of minor down to suspensions
because ultimately, that sus two has a similar
flavor to when we added nine. Nine is two. The difference is, it takes away the
innately minor sound. If I'm just playing, C SS two. We can't tell if
it's major or minor. At the end of the day,
we have no third, no E or E flat in this case. So it just feels like
it floats around. So I would consider this class a bit more of like a
bonus class because, again, I wasn't
really gonna add it. We're not adding
color to a chord. We're just altering
the ord so that it does take on a
slightly different characteristic or color. So let's just listen to
a couple of Sas chords, and I want you to write down the terms that you think
best describe them. Let's check it out. One of my favorite
ways to use these is to take a standard
chord progression, and one of the chords within the middle of the progression, try a suspension on that chord. Now, generally, outside of
if you're studying jazz, you want to make sure that when you're suspending the chord, the SS two has a
tone above the root, and the SS four has a note
that is a tone below the five. For example, if I'm in C major, and I play an E minor chord, you might assume that
this is ESS two. But really, this is ESS two, and now we have a note that's outside of our C major scale. So you have to watch that
you're being true to this tone above the root
or tone below the fifth. But that being said, if we take a chord
progression like one, flat three, four, flat
six in our C minor key. Let's take the flat
three chord, E flat, and we're going to
play it as a SS two, and let's take the
flat six chord, and we're also going to
play that as a SS two. You'll notice that SS four doesn't even really
work on this chord. It's a C sharp, but there's no C sharp in our C minor scale. So try to stay diatonic, try to stay true to your
key. Here's how it sounds. You can see it adds more color. It keeps things
floating a little bit, and it just adds intrigue and a little something different so that you're not sounding
like everyone else playing basic major
and minor chords. So those are some ways that
I use suspended chords. Make sure that you try them out. Again, if you're going
for something cinematic, just play around
on that sus sound. But if you want to try
to add them within a jazzy chord progression
or a pop chord progression, I'd recommend trying it first with some of the middle chords
within the progression, and then see if you
enjoy settling down onto this floating sound of the sus chord to finish a
progression or start one. I hope you enjoyed that
class on suspensions, and I'll catch you
in the next class.
9. Coloring Dominant 7th: Alright, let's get talking about coloring dominant
seventh chords. So as a quick review, a dominant seventh
chord is a major chord. And if we go up one octave from our bottom note and
then down one tone, what you end up getting is
a dominant seventh chord. It's a major chord
with a minor seventh, sometimes called a flat seven. Now, the function of a dominant seventh chord is
to create tension. In most styles, maybe
outside of the blues, but in most styles, it's
going to create some tension. So what's great about coloring these particular chords is
you can get away with a lot. If the chord already
represents tension and the color that we're
adding is a little bit extra spicy, that's fine. So what I want you to try is take a dominant
seventh chord and play any other note that
is not in the chord. So we have a major
based chord, right? We have this E in here,
which makes it major. What if we tried to
add the minor third? Okay, we're calling
this a sharp nine, flat 13, sharp 11, 13, nine. There's all these different
sounds that you can add, and it just creates
more tension. I want you to think
of a movie where a really tense scene happens, and then it pans
to another scene, but that scene is tense, and it pans to another scene.
And that scene is tense. And then later there's a scene that ties everything together, and all the tension is resolved. While the tension building up might make us feel
a bit uncomfortable, it's all about getting
to the resolution. So we can get away with a lot
in terms of adding color to these tense chords as long as we resolve them in a
way that makes sense. Now, that being said, if
you're doing something like No soul or some style where there's a lot of these
types of chords and they're really colorful
and they're really tense, then you don't always have
to necessarily resolve it. But admittedly, that
style, I think, is for more advanced ears, where we can get really
comfortable being uncomfortable. So in our movie analogy, that might be like
a horror movie where we start with
a tense scene, and it moves to
another tense scene, and it moves to
another tense scene, and then the movie finishes
and it's unresolved. Some people love that style. Other people want a little
bit more back and forth. So all that being
said, do what you will with these cords, but
I think for the most part, how we're going to be
discussing these colors is with the anticipation
that they will resolve. So the two colors you're
gonna want to avoid, and we're going to use
a C dominant seven in our left hand would
be the natural 11. You don't hear it
very often. If you like the sound, feel
free to use it. But in terms of practicing, you're not going to get the
most mileage out of this. If you're practicing it a
bunch and you're expecting to see it in songs, you
won't see it very often. And definitely a bruiser
one you want to avoid, would be the major seven. Dominant seven with a flat one or a major seven? Well,
that's conflicted. We have a flat
seven in our chord, and the major seven is
just giving mixed signals. So we've talked about the two colors that
you might not want to practice much or even
potentially avoid altogether. Let's now kind of go back to this nine that we've
talked about before. And again, a nine is
just up a tone from the root or any one of the
roots. It's the same as a two. Think of it that way.
So we have our nine, which just listen to it as a color versus the
regular dominant. And then with the nine, it's hard to say what sort of emotion this is
adding to the chord, because at the end of the day, we're not twisting
the emotion too much. We're just playing around with tension when it comes to these
dominant seventh chords. Now, up top, we have
a minor chord that we're adding so it is kind of softening
this major bottom sound a little bit. It
just sounds really nice. It's a very safe sound, and it's not going to get
you into any trouble if you add a nine onto a
dominant seventh chord, it's almost always
going to sound fine. However, there's
also versions of a nine that we can
play around with. There's a flat nine. Just take the nine down a
semitone or a sharp nine. Take the nine up a semitone. Let's listen to their sounds. Here's the flat nine.
Here's the sharp nine. So to me, the sharpenine
is a bit spicier. Very Jimmy Hendricks
purple cord. We have the flat nine, which to me is
smooth and buttery. It is butterscotch,
especially if you resolve it down a fifth to a minor cord. Just a really nice
sound. So you can play around with all
three types of nines. Regular nine is safe. Sharp nine is kind of spicy, flat nine is a little more cool, and we're kind of
creating a bit of diminished tension with
the top notes, that is. These four top notes of
C dominant seven flat nine create something called
a diminished seventh chord, very popular in the
romantic era in classical music in tons
of different styles. It's a little more
tense, a little more mysterious and
kind of spooky, and it works really well as a color on that
dominant seventh chord. Next, we've talked
about avoiding this 11 for the most part. But let's talk about a
sharp 11, in this case. This is another spicy
sort of interval. If we listen to it, a
little bit mysterious. But again, if you listen,
like, this is by itself, you might say that sounds
kind of wrong, but listen. It sounds quite fine when
you resolve it down a fifth. In that case, I was
resolving to a major sound, but it could also work to a
minor sound, something like? So resolving is really key to
make sure that these aren't just kind of floating around
as bad sounding chords. They're not bad,
it's all in context. Next up, we're going
to add a six or a 13, same idea to our
dominant seventh chord. I'm also going to
supply a nine as well, because when you play dominant
seventh chord and a 13, it's just really high up. And when you play it
as a six, the color gets a little bit lost
within the chord. So I'm going to use a
nine to help bridge us up to that 13. It's
not necessary. It just kind of helps
with the voicing of the chord to smooth
things out a little bit. So here's our C dominant seven, add nine and 13. Let's check it out. So again, that 13 or six is giving us a little
bit of a brighter sound. It's kind of helping solidify the majorness of
this bottom chord. We're adding that law,
very bright and sunny, but we're bringing it up top. So to me, it's a bit more of
a hopeful sort of tension. But we can also take that
note and flatten it. So a flat 13 flat six, usually on Dominic chords, you'll see 13 instead
of six because we're not applying it down
here under the seven. We're usually playing
it above the seventh. That's why it's called a 13. That's why we also call
it a nine and an 11. We're thinking of these
as upper extensions. So there's our 13. Let's listen to a flat 13. Ooh, a little bit more
on the minor side. Again, kind of mysterious. A very fun tension that we
can resolve to a minor chord. It also goes to
major, but I really like the sound of it
resolving to a minor. It would sound like
this. Here's to major. Still works. So now that
we've covered the nine, flat nine, sharp nine, sharp 11, 13 and flat 13, you can start to combine them. Admittedly, you can
combine them in pretty much any combination
of two colors. You don't really want
to go past that, but some of these are going to work a little bit
better than others. Let's just take a few as an
example and test them out. What if I had a sharp
nine and sharp 11? Well, those were the two
spiciest sort of sounds. Now it's really spicy. What if we have a nine and
a 13? We tried that before. It's much more smoothed out, a little bit more friendly. We could have a flat
nine and sharp 11. We could have a
sharp nine, flat 13. And so most of these
are going to be associated with something called an altered dominant chord. Now, if you're using
a regular nine or a regular 13, it's exempt. We're talking about
altered versions of two particular scale
degrees, the nine. So if we alter it down to the flat nine or alter it
up to the sharp nine, that's part of it,
but also the five. This idea of taking the five and flattening it, same
as a sharp 11, we're taking the five
and sharpening it, which is the same as a flat 13. I'm going to go through that
one more time because I've had students kind of go cross
eyed when I explain this. The nine is easy to understand
for the most part, right? We can have a nine
floating above our dominant chord,
but if I alter it, if I change it down a
semitone or up a semitone, that's half of the criteria for an altered dominant
seventh chord. If we take a look at the fifth, it's beside our
four and our six. In other words, beside
the 11 and the 13. So if I alter this five down
a semitone or up a semitone, these are the same notes as
a sharp 11 or a flat 13. So if I combine one of these altered nines with
one of these altered fives, I get an altered
dominant seventh chord. Let's try the four possibilities
flat nine sharp 11. That's pretty cool,
pretty adventurous. Flat nine flat 13,
one of my favorites. It's very, like, royal
and rich sounding. Kind of romantic. I
really like that one. We have Sharp nine sharp 11, probably one of the
spiciest that you can have, and it still sounds
great when it resolves. Sharp nine flat 13. This is the Jimmy
Hendrix purple cord. It sounds fine if you start to kind of lean into
it a little bit. Now, the last thing I want
to mention is we got rid of the four and the seven as colors that you don't want to
play around with too much, but the idea of
doing a suspension on a dominant seventh
chord is super popular, and then you can also
color it on top of that. So if I take my C
dominant seventh, and I take the third
up a semitone. We have a dominant
seven suspended. So C sus four, in that case, or C sus. And then from there,
you can even add a flat nine or flat nine flat 13. It doesn't feel like it wants to come back to the
one immediately. It feels like it either wants
to resolve within itself, so we have something
like this suspension resolving down to
the third or, again, in the case of neosol it just changes things so you get a little bit more color out of that dominant
seventh chord. So the chords all feel like
they're kind of floating around from different
sources of tension. So we've covered a lot
of different colors that you can add to a
dominant seventh chord. But the overall message I'm trying to provide here
is that you can get away with a lot in terms of just slamming down a couple
of unrelated notes and finding some way
to understand that they have a function,
that they have a color. And at first, it might
sound really wrong, but eventually you come to
kind of agree with the sound, and your ears will
sort of mature into enjoying those particular sort of harmonic flavors,
so to speak. Something you can try is
playing major chords or minor chords in the right hand and supplying a dominant
seventh chord in the left. Like, for example, if I play C dominant seven and a D major
chord in the right hand, this is a nine sharp 11 and 13. I mentioned you want
to generally cap it at about two different colors
on your dominant chords, but that's more just
a rule for beginners. Like, if you get really
comfortable understanding a few colors and want to expand
from there, that's fine. If we take a look at
an F major chord, that's an 11 and a 13. If we take a look at
F sharp major chord, now we have a sharp
11 and flat nine. So you could make a little
list of just going through all the major chords
in the right hand with supplying a dominant in
the left and highlight what are the extensions I'm adding by playing
those major chords? You can do the same
thing with minor chords and then pick your top five. Which five did you
like the sound of the most and try applying
those into your songs. So in short, out of all of these colors you can add to
a dominant seventh chord, I'd put them into three
different categories, safe, smooth and spicy. Safe would be the
nine or the 13. Smooth would be the flat
nine or the flat 13, and spicy would be the sharp
nine and the sharp 11. So try to think
of them that way, and it'll help you
compartmentalize how these colors feel. So have some fun playing around with Dominant
seventh Cchords. They are ultimately the sound that I believe you
can color the most. You can get away with a lot. There's a lot of possibilities. So make sure that you
start with just finding one or two sounds
that you really like and expand from there. Feel free to review this class
as many times as you need. It's loaded with information, and I hope you
enjoyed that class. I'll see you in the next one.
10. Chord Voicings: Et's get talking
about chord voicings and how it relates to color. So as you get adding more
and more color to a chord, it's important that you sort of spread things out a little bit. I think of chord voicings mostly in three different
sort of widths. We have wide, standard,
and clustered. And let's talk about
all three of those. So standard would be playing a dominant seventh chord with a nine and a sharp 11 and a 13, and everything is
just sort of skips. Maybe you omit some notes. Maybe there's no fifth
in the left hand, but you're still
thinking of things in about an octave and
a half range ish. Clustered is taking
the idea of having these upper extensions and bringing them down to
where the cord is. Sounds really bad
when it's played low, but even as we get higher up, you can't get away with
too much of a cluster. You can have a few notes
beside each other, but then you might want
to start spreading some notes out from that point. Another thing worth
mentioning is if I take a C dominant seven and this
D major chord, for example, and play it all together, you end up getting a
lydian dominant scale, like the full scale. So at some point,
a cluster becomes a full scale, and you have
to watch out for that. No one wants to hear a full
scale played all at once. So with clusters, what
I would recommend doing is having a small cluster, maybe three notes,
and then starting to spread out the notes a
little bit more uptop. You can also then invert it, so we have the cluster
in the middle of a chord or even up at
the top of a chord. It really depends on the
sound that you prefer. So with clusters, what
I would recommend is start with clustering things
in the middle of your chord, and then you can also
experiment with how clusters sound on the bottom or
the top end of a chord. In the middle of
a chord, some of the tension of the cluster
sort of gets veiled, so it's a little
bit harder to hear that crunch of a few
notes beside each other. When clusters are low, there's a deeper darker energy, and sometimes it's
a bit conflicting, so you need to make sure
you're in the right range of the piano up around middle
C, I would say is safe. And when the cluster is up top, it can feel a
little bit brittle, but sometimes that's
what we're going for. Here's the three
examples back to back. I'll play the cluster in the middle and then
on the bottom, and then on the top, so
you can check it out. Here's our C minor nine with
the cluster in the middle. On the bottom and on the top. You could
also play it up here. So the cluster on top
might veil a melody. If you want a melody
note to be ringing out, it's a little bit
harder to hear. And if you're in
the wrong range, like if I'm down here, a cluster down low can sound quite muddy. So again, clusters towards the middle tend to be the
safer place to start, and it's very smooth sounding. So standard, again,
is more skips, clustered or notes
close together. And the other option would
be widespread voicings. Open voicings are a great
place to start with this, and that's the idea of playing a root fifth and third rather
than a root third, fifth. Some of the stretches
aren't possible. For most hands, I would
say, like an A flat major. Good luck reaching
that C up top. Some people can do
it, but I would say more than 50% of people cannot. So you can strum into some of these open
voicings, or, again, on some shapes, you might
just be able to make the stretch with your
left hand, as is. So now that we have
root fifth third, we need to add some
type of seventh. You can also consider adding
other extensions from there, maybe sharp 11 and a 13. But you can see our chord
voicing is very spread out. Root fifth, third,
potentially a seven or 67 for a little mini cluster, and then a fifth, let's say. So you can see,
also, we're taking a wide voicing and putting a little cluster in the middle. You can combine these types
of voicings, as well. But for now, I'd say, start
off with them quite separated so you can get used to the
feel of each individually. I'll give you one other
way that I think is great for doing
widespread voicings, and that is doing drop voicings. Take whatever chord
you have. Let's say it's a C major seven. We're going to play it
relatively high up. We're going to take the
note second from the top. We call this two,
and think of it like orchestral
trumpets or violins. The highest playing violins
are first chair violins, and second highest
would be second chair. So we're taking the
second chair violin, and we're dropping
it down one octave. We're also going to
supply a root down below. So we get this beautiful
widespread voicing, and it's quite simple. Let's try it with a
few different chords. F dominant seven. We're going to put an F down
in the base and drop two. Sounds nice. And one
more G minor seven. We're gonna put G down in
the base and drop two. So D down in between
these two Gs. Sounds beautiful. Okay,
I'll give you one more. This one is one that I
came up with, I guess. It's probably used quite a bit. But if you just play a chord
in both hands, let's say, a C major seven in both hands, I just want you to
play your pinkies and index fingers only. It's a nice, widespread voicing, and it's really simple to play. You gear up like you're gonna play both chords,
hands together, but then you only
press those fingers pinky and finger two
or index. Same idea. Get some really
beautiful voicings. So standard voicing is
where we generally start. It helps us understand
the theory. Working up in skips and creating all these different
colors as we go. And then we recognize
that we can start to kind of superimpose
things to different octaves, and sometimes they'll cluster
up a bit. That's okay. Just try to keep the clusters more towards the
middle of the chord. We can also do these
widespread voicings. The ways we've talked about is open voice in the
left hand, root, fifth, third, then
supply your seventh and any other colors up top
or potentially a melody. Drop voicings, take
a seventh chord, play a root down below it, and drop the second from the
top down into the left hand. And lastly, this trick works really well
for seventh chords. You play the seventh
chord in both hands, but you only supply the index and pinky finger notes
that gives you root, fifth, third, seventh, similar
to the open voice concept, but it's a little bit
more beginner friendly. Can it work with six chords and nine chords? Sure, it can. You just have to make
sure that you're playing a pinky and index in both hands and that you have four different notes once
you spread them out. Here's C major six. Now I have root, fifth,
third, and sixth. Now, if you want to
apply that to chords that have nines or
maybe some type of 11, it gets a little bit
tougher because you're not always going to be using
fingers two and five, but feel free to
play around with it on seventh chords
and six chords. So those are the basics
for how to voice chords on the piano.
Is it really standard? Are we thinking mostly in skips, where we can clearly
see the seventh, ninth, 11th, et cetera? Are we clustering
notes going for a bit more of an adventurous
sort of sound? Or are we spreading things out, getting a nice big lush
ballad sort of sound? All are perfectly acceptable. Ask yourself which type of
voicing you liked the most and start to explore those within your practice a bit more. I hope you enjoyed this
class on chord voicings, and I'll catch you
in the next class.
11. Balancing Color: Alright, let's talk
about color balance. And what I'm referring to with color balance is does
every chord have color? Do none of the chords
except for one have color, or are you kind of going 50, 50? Well, two of those
work really well. Can you guess which one doesn't? Generally, it's when there's
one chord with color, but the rest do not have color. So if I play something
like one, six, four, five, in C major, I'm going to color
the four chord. And to be clear, it
doesn't sound bad, but compared to
the alternatives, maybe it doesn't sound
quite as appropriate. So we would end up getting one, six, four, five. Back to one. So this feels very standard
kind of pop and then okay, we're digging into some color, and then we have
a pretty standard dominant chord to finish. But if I took 50% of the
cords and gave them color, and then the other half I
did not, check this out. And just to be clear,
I'm not referring to the dominant seventh
as a colorecord. The more you play, the
more you realize it's just sort of a basic chord
that represents tension. So the one is now going
to have a two added, six is normal, four is
going to have a two added. Five is normal dominant. Sounds like this. Now, we kind of had this expectation
of colored, normal? Oh, okay. So colored? Yep. So you've given the
audience what they were expecting and people
love to feel smart. So it's nice sometimes to give the audience what
they are expecting. Now, again, I could
color all four chords. I could have one add two. Maybe the six is minor
seven, add four. This four chord adds the two. A little flat nine
on the dominant. Kind of going for
a clustered sort of sound for most of these. So you can see now it's
expected when you hear a chord with color and
the next chord has color, we expect the color
to kind of continue. On the opposite end
of the spectrum, what if I had color on all
the cords, except for one? This is going to sound
weird again because the balance doesn't
quite feel right. No color all the way
around, totally fine. Color all the way
through, totally fine. Neo sol is based around that. 50 50 also pretty good. But when you get into this, like ten to 25% of the
chords have color, and the others don't
or vice versa, then it can start sounding
a little bit odd. Now let's try adding color
to each of the cords, except for the four cord. D I just kind of loses a little bit of the momentum of the color,
if that makes sense. We have lush color, lush color. Really standard. It feels
naked. It feels bare. We have to watch out for how we balance colored chords
with regular chords. Now, it's rare that I play a full progression with
no color these days. Generally, I'll aim towards about 50% color or
everything colored. As I'm playing jazz, it's expected that everything
has some sevens, some nines, that kind of idea. But if you're playing
pop music and you want to color your
chords a little bit, I'd recommend color
more than just one. Make sure you're
bringing a few different colors into your progression. And the other thing,
too, is when you have this 50 50 blend, it gives the colored cords
a little bit more potency. It's not potent out of
nowhere for one cord. It's kind of a push and
pull in terms of stability, normal and colorful,
adventurous. You can think of it
kind of like taste. If I taste some
delicious Indian food, and then I eat some more
delicious Indian food that is a different dish, second dish won't have as much impact because my mouth still has all the spices and the
taste from the first dish. But if I eat a saltine
cracker in between, a little bit of a
palate cleanser, now the second dish I can taste fully as it was meant
to be experienced. It's the same with cords. When I play something colorful, we really feel the color
and then something normal. So that's the palate cleanser, and then I'm really feeling
the color on the next cord. Let's get really
adventurous with that last one, but I think
you get the idea. So that 50, 50, we're kind of having some
cords with color and some without allow for
that push and pull. And I'm brought back
to the expression, the sweet isn't as
sweet without the sour, and I think it very much
applies to this class. So there it is a
quick discussion on balancing color within
your cord progressions. I hope you enjoyed
that, and I'll catch you in the next class.
12. Suspending Color: Et's get talking about suspending
into and out of color. We've already
talked a little bit about what a suspension in its most basic form is taking
a major or a minor chord, taking the third or the
middle note of that chord, suspending it up one note in the scale or down one
note in the scale. But suspensions
don't stop there. We can have something
like, for example, a nine up on the top of a chord resolving down to the root
or a nine up to the third. Alternatively, we
could have a root down into the seventh or a root
suspending up into the ninth. It's possible to suspend
into color or out of color. There was an old song that I wrote called odds and parallels, and it does exactly
this on every chord. Check it out. Here's
the progression. We have F minor nine F minor. G minor seven flat five resolving to E dominant
seven in first inversion. It doesn't matter
that you understand everything I'm saying right now, but just listen to the sound. A flat major suspending
down into a flat i version. C dominant seven plus
four C dominant. Just listen to it by itself. O. Now, the way I'm suspending each color
is the top notes falling, the top notes falling. So it has this sort of
sense of predictability. But you can start
to suspend things up or suspend things down. One of my favorite sounds more recently is
taking the color of a sus two chord and pulling
up into a major chord. I kind of has a bit of a
country or a folk sort of feel. But if you add a skip
below this C major chord, for example, we're putting
an A down into left hand. Now we have something
that's kind of like an A minus seven, add four, just into
an A minus seven. Listen to this sound. Sounds almost a
little gospel or RMB. So you can start to play around with chords that have color, resolving into the more basic
version of that chord or start with a basic chord and sort of suspend into some color. Let's play around a little
bit on the chord progression. One, six, four,
five, and C minor. Our basic chords are C minor, A flat major, F minor, G major. Let's play around with things
a little bit randomly. So I'm going to take the
third of the C minor chord, bring it down one note. Let's play a A flat major seven. And then bring the seventh
down to a six F minor, bring the top note to a nine. Maybe have a little seven that we get going in
the middle there. G seven SSG seven, G seven flat nine.
Sounds like this. Now we're adding all this
inner motion to the chords. These are sometimes called
inner voice leadings, but we're not thinking
of it from, like, a baroque or classical
perspective. We're just taking chords and
sort of sidestepping notes. If we start with a colorful
version of a chord, maybe we resolve into
a more basic chord. Or if we start with
a basic chord, maybe we add a bit of color by sidestepping some notes on the next instance of that chord. So in the last class, we
talked about having color on some chords and no color on other chords and how
to balance that. Well, that sort of
tension and release of color representing tension and release representing
a more normal chord, we can actually now do all within an instance
of a chord on C minor on playing around with some tension and then maybe
resolving that sound. A flat major seven. Same idea. More standard or spicy,
that kind of idea. So this is kind of a
more micro level of this tension and release that we talked about
from the last class. Generally, I want you to
make sure that you're playing around with
things diatonically. In other words, play a chord progression where
all four chords relate to some key and make sure
that the notes that you're sidestepping are
also within that key. So I was in C natural minor. And if I took my C minor
chord and wanted to bring this note E
flat down a note, I bring it down one note that's available in that C minor scale. I wouldn't bring it to a D flat. That's just not from
my C minor scale, and it also doesn't sound great. So if you know
your key or scale, basically the same
thing very well, then you'll know what notes
are best to sidestep to. So that's it for this class
on suspending collar, I'll catch you in
the next class.
13. Outro: So that's it on our course
on adding color to chords. By now, you should
have, hopefully, either a notebook or a digital note where
you've been taking some notes in terms
of how each of these colorizations
sound to you. While some of my opinions
and your own may align, there's gonna be certain
colorizations that you may feel sound different to you than how I had
explained them. That's why along the way, I've been asking you
to take these notes. If I say a minor chord with an added six sounds mysterious, and to you, you disagree. You think it sounds
some other way. There's nothing wrong with that. Again, it's a lot like taste. I might like spice. I might like Cilantro or pineapple on pizza. It doesn't mean that you
have to necessarily like it or experience that taste
the same way that I do. I really think this
also resonates with how we perceive harmony. If something feels a little
too spicy on the ears, maybe I have a different
spice tolerance to you. But the same thing works outside of this analogy of spiciness. It might just be
that I'm saying, I experience this emotion
when I hear this sound. And you're going, No,
Josh, I disagree. I actually experienced this
emotion. Perfectly fine. You just need to make sure
you're being honest with yourself and writing
down how you feel about each of these
colors so you know how and when to access them
within your own playing. So we've discussed
sevens, nines or twos, sixes, fours, suspensions, and also
suspending in and out of color. There's a lot of different
colorization devices that you have that you're able to work with at this point. Now, I've also
created some courses on chords and chord
progressions. If you're more interested
in terms of how one chord should move to another and creating
these progressions, I would recommend pairing this
course with that series of courses as well if you really want to dive
deep into harmony. That being said, you don't
need to take those courses, but I do feel like this is great supplementary material for some more of those
harmonic foundations. That said, if you're a more intermediate level
player that already knows how to play
chord progressions and you've been
playing for a while, and you're just
hoping to add some color to those progressions, then this course
is also for you. What I'd recommend is taking
some of the colors that you liked the most and
just starting with those. Make sure you really saturate and how those colors feel to you so that you're
feeling confident with the execution
of how to play it, but also when you want
to use those colors. Now, don't forget there
is a course project, as well as a full class that outlines all the details
of that project. Short, you'll take a four
chord chord progression, and you're going to play
it two different ways. Each way is going to be colored
different than the other. And this is just to
show you that there are different ways that we can
color our chord progressions. It really is kind of
like making a pizza. There's not only one
way to add toppings. It really depends
on what you're in the mood for at that moment. So I want to thank you
for taking this course. Also congratulate you for
getting all the way through it. I really hope that you found a couple colors
along the way that resonate well with you and that you're excited to add
to your own playing. Now, if you want to learn a
little bit more about me, you can head over to
Cook hyphen music.ca. You can check out
my audio portfolio, as well as some music that I've done for film and video games. Now, also, you can
check out some of my original compositions in sheet music form at
Cookmusic dot store. This is where you'll find
my more sort of classical, romantic and balllad
piano stylings. In case you're a beginner or intermediate level
pianist that's looking for some
contemporary music, that might be a great
resource for you. And lastly, I'd recommend
taking the information from this course and bringing it into your private
music lessons, especially the stuff that
you're most excited to explore. If you don't already have a
private music instructor, I do run a small music school of like minded
teachers to myself. They do teach virtually, and you can find out more about the school at
cookmusicschool.ca. Lastly, you can feel
free to follow me on Instagram at Let's
Cook Music or check me out on YouTube at youtube.com slash at Cook Hyphen MCC. I am trying to grow
my YouTube channel, and as I create more
of these courses, I'm going to be doing more
supplementary material that I'll post on my
Instagram and YouTube. So do make sure to give a
follow or a subscribe to stay posted on some stuff
that you won't be able to find within my full courses. One more time. Thank you
for taking this course. I really do hope that
you have a fun time adding color to your chords
and chord progressions, and I'll see you in
the next course.
Josh Cook, A Sound Experience
