Chord Inversions Make Changes Much Smoother

Good morning this Duane Shinn. Today I’d like to talk about using chord inversions to smooth out chord progressions. The last few days we’ve been talking about the chord progressions of Canon in D. You know the Canon in D how that goes, and we’ve been going through the chords saying that the chords, it’s an eight bar progression which goes one, five, six, three, four, one, four, five and then it repeats; and so on, right?

Now I transposed it to the key of “C” just to make it easier to visualize. We’ll do the same thing in the key of “C” and it’s like this. One, five, six, three, four, one, four, five and then back to one. There’s an eight bar chord progression.

Now what my subject is today, to smooth that out. I already showed you parallel tens a few days ago; how we could use parallel tens in that. Now I want to explain it. Because the first chord is “C” and the second chord is “G”. Now we could go to “G” as the root, but what I’m going to do is use a note out of the “G” chord which is “B”. Then the next chord is “A”, and of course we’ll use the “A” root. The next chord is “E” minor, but “E” minor has a “G” in it. We’re going right down the scale aren’t we?

The next chord is “F” so we’ll use an “F” as a root. The next chord is “C”, and “C” has an “E” in it. So far we’ve gone “C”, “B”, “A”, “G”, “F”, “E”; again. And now we’re going to go back up to “F”, “G”. But you see we have a smooth baseline. If you’re a jazz player you’re used to jazz lines like that. We’re creating a very smooth line to go along with the melody, and so on, okay?

We could take that down further. When we got to “F” and then went down to the “C” chord and then back to the “F” chord, we could set that to “D” as a low note for the “F” chord. Why, because what’s the minor chord that’s relative to “F” major. It’s “D” minor isn’t it? So you play a “D” minor seventh there and that would make it very smooth so you go: Then we have to go back to “G” at that point.

A little hint on how to use inversions to smooth out chord progressions and we’re not just talking about, we used Canon in D as an example, but you could use that on any song to smooth out your chord progressions.

Okay, that’s it for today. Thanks for being with me and if you enjoyed these tips come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for a free piano trips. Trips, we should take a trip shouldn’t we? We should take a cruise together. Sign up for the free piano tips and I hope to see you there. Bye, bye for now.

Here is the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAMqNbFgLSM
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