I’ve intellectually understood these chords in functional harmony for years, but it’s only now with your method that I’ll be able to FEEL them and know them implicitly. Thank you for making the world a more musical place! Subscribed!
This is a fascinating way to approach the chords in the diatonic scale -- "how it feels" -- not just that it "sounds good," but "how it sounds good." I love this! (Keyboard player here.)
Gave up playing piano and picked up guitar later in life and simply switching instruments showed me exactly what I wasn't understanding. It was this. I was trying to learn this but I didn't know what it was. I always felt that progressions evoked certain feelings independent of the key they were played in. The guitar makes key-independent patterns much easier to see in my opinion.
Hey man this is a hell of a lesson. Everything is sensible and organic. Lots of people are going to be feeling their way through harmony in a new way because of this.
Funny I just clicked to check out your vid and wow I have been playing guitar for 50 plus years and I’m now working on original songs ! This is really what I need to progress ! So thanks 👍
Merci beaucoup. I've been playing piano for two years, but had problems with musicality. Singing helped that crash, and doing what you talked about in this video really has helped me to progress to the next level. Very helpful to feel the chords.
I just got a guitar but I have been playing the lyre since last year and I have discovered that working out chords is much easier on a diatonic instrument! Forcing yourself to stick inside a single key is very helpful for focusing on the sound of each chord.
I always wanted someone that talks more about thia topic, one idea is that you make a tierlist, and give like example to practice, for example, songs that only use 2 or 3 chords the whole songs then 4 chords then chord changes in verse prechorus and chorus, and so on giving us examples to analyze
Where have you been all my life??? Help!!! I’m stuck in a music industry of sorts where most of the musicians are educated in music theory and I learned guitar when was just a toddler in the early 80s by ear! It’s been a hard life man trying to swallow theories!!! THIS IS IT!!!
One to two feels careful, hesitate, thoughtful, in-between, perhaps even, but less, sad and melancholic to me. Perhaps one-two is just undecided and it's the next chord that sets the tone.
As someone who has generally been pretty good at getting songs by ear, I can confirm this approach is super useful. The descriptions of the 2 and 3 chords were particularly well done IMO - I'd never thought about those personality traits. One thing that's harder to hear in this video is the instability of the 5 (except for the jazz digression, but then there's too much going to dwell on it). You should usually play the 5 as a V-7/dominant chord when trying to understand that instability and why the 5 "wants" to go back to the 1. Also, note that 6 ("sad home") is literally home in minor key songs. People will then call that chord the "1" because that's where you land, but the relationships described here remain as if it were still the 6. A video like this exploring how these chords feel from a minor key perspective (starting on 6) could be interesting!
I’m 56 years old just learning guitar & ukulele but have sang in choir and just started singing in a blues ensemble. Listening to you right now I am slapping my knee saying out loud “yeah right?!” When I first heard Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” on this radio📻I momentarily thought😌💭 that it was going to be Emminem’s “Lose Yourself” coming over the speakers 🔊 😂
Kind of a Bruce Lee aproach.. 'try to FEEEEEEEEEL". I think its the only way to progress, by feeling the relationship between the chords and patterns. Thank you
I’ve played guitar for about 20 years straight then less as I raised a family. Now I’m retired and trying to recapture what I lost over the years. Videos like yours helps me understand how song structures work that I didn’t appreciate as much when I was younger. Thanks for educating an old dog
Thank you for your approach to this subject. I got a lot out of it, which has tightened up my thought process for melodic improvisation. I play in two bands, and for each performance, I have no idea what we are going to play. We don't have rehearsals, and we may have a different keyboardist for each performance. I've only been playing for 17 months, and this is very challenging for me. However, as you mentioned, you get better at it the more you develop an ear for it. What allowed the traction to kick in for me was getting into the number system of the triads along with the 3NPS (three-note-per-string) system. However, it seems there is an approach to this that can make it foolproof, but I can't say I have found it yet. To me, it seems that if you can find the tonic center or what you think is the tonic center, you still need to identify the key. For example, you might think the tonic center is C, but you are actually on the 5 in the key of F major. It seems there could be a structured protocol to nail this on the fly. What I have in mind is to start with the diatonic scale to ensure it has me in the key. Then, find the notes within the scale that allow for a note progression of melody, like an arpeggio, and then play the same order in a triad chord progression. Have you tried something like this in your journey? Any suggestions along these lines that you can offer for me to explore? Thanks for sharing. You might say, Ask the musician for what key they are in before we play, HaHa They don't even know what Key they are going to be in because Pastor just Has a Song in his Heart and we Find the Tonic of His Voice and Take off. Between the Bass, Lead and Keyboadist it's a Race for the Tonic and then we Run behid the Keyboards with Melody. It's incredible bit I need to get better at it. If I don't catch on fast enough, I have to either play the Bongos or Tamberine and try to figure it it out by just slides and fills as best I can. But when I get it right with the Key, I'm on cloud 9. Can't make mistakes and enjoying the session. Anyway... Appreciate any feedback.
Sounds like some fun gigs! Definitely does get easier with time, but maybe a breakdown of how it goes for me, experientially, would help. When I'm trying to figure out how to quickly jump into some music: 1. I tune into any initial emotional perceptions: major, minor, bluesy, gospel. This includes the overall "vibe" as well as any perceived tonal center. This is very intuitional and I try to pull on every song I've heard while doing this. 2. Knowing somewhat I'm going into and how to orient (in a major key, major with some bluesy character, etc.) then I play myself a note to compare that to the key, say the thinnest E string open. 3. With enough ear training practice, that will immediately hit you as a certain context (E feels like 2 in the key, so key is D) or (E feels like a very dissonant b2 in the key, so key is Eb). 4. The trick is to keep your listening wide open. Every note and chord is context and a signal, not to mention your eyes on other instruments etc. Someone in your band probably has to lead the way and hopefully flesh out what key the melody is in. This should make it easier to hear the agreement between 2 or more people playing in a common key. This can be practiced by building in practice every day with all the sounds. If someone's phone goes off around me with an alert, I'm practicing feeling those notes in whatever context I can pick up. I know the iPhone message ding is a C, the apple email sound is F#, my microwave is a B, and my toothbrush is a Db. This turns into a raw curiosity of being musically hungry for fluency. This eventually is just an automatic way of life. There is also the power in assumption and intuition. If someone sings one note, that's 1. After a few more notes, that 1st pitch might feel like another note in the key, or maybe still 1. It's all about context. For example, if you hear a dominant sound on the 1 chord, the 4 chord is likely coming, from the thousands of songs that do that. There is occasionally ambiguity but most popular tonal music shows its cards rather quickly. To me it feels like something is in the DNA of a major or minor scale (and therefore the chords) that you can tune into, with all the notes pointing to Tonic. Also, for guitar, if it appears to be in a non-friendly guitar key like Eb, I'd practice capoing to play in D capo 1, C capo 3, etc. Much easier to hear and feel chords (plus you get more resonance) in a good guitar key. Hope that was helpful, I'll be back with more tips!
Fun Indeed, It would be cool to see how you would approach this in a video with random songs with a MYSTERY key and see some tricks to approach the correct key and then run.... It would allow for CONFIDENCE to build from there with this hurdle out of the way. I think this is my road block. If I'm wasting time with this milestone , I need to adjust what the next Milestone should be and focus on that. Thanks for any examples......
Thank you for making and sharing this. Your style of teaching is great. Now I need to watch this about 5 times. Review of 7dim chord shape would be nice.
@@WakeMikey I can tell you right now that a diminished chord is a minor chord with a flat 5th. So there's three half steps between each note. For example, in the key of C major, B becomes the diminished chord. The notes are B, E and G and the G sounds rather dissonant together with the B. In terms of feel, 7dim wants to resolve into 1 to release the tension
Very interesting. I'm a little way behind you on the curve, i think. However, I'm pleased with myself as i realised recently that i can now identify maj7 chords and also some slash chords. Example for slash chords: For some I IV V progressions, substitute the "pure" V chord for a IV/V (4th chord, over the 5th chord's root). It's a very pleasing romantic sound with a strong pull to the home chord. Try it in the key of E. It would be E, A, A/B (A major with b in the bass). I can now pick these chords out with my ear, which makes me very happy. Some other players I know think it's witchcraft, but it's not! It's experience and following the bass. Enjoyed your video. 😊
May I ask you a question: do xou call the home chord in minor key a 6? This would be logical for me, but for some guitar gurus apparently not. e.g. C = home is 1, parallel a=home is 6. Thanks for clarifying
It can go either way. Songs like House of the Rising Sun, Stairway to Heaven, Ain't No Sunshine, Bad Guy, Billie Jean, Eleanor Rigby, or We Will Rock You, I hear as a minor 1, and orient to that, simply because the home chord is all about resolving tension and it can do that firmly in minor. A major 5 chord of that minor being used, like E major for A minor, really strengthens the 'minor 1' sound. But if Am is mixed in a lot with C major chords (F, G, etc) I tend to hear it as a 6m. It's a spectrum from the '6 minor in a major key' sound to the 'tonic, one minor, resolution' sound of being firmly in a minor key (like the above examples).
@@chrisfireymusic Thanks Chris, that's also how I see it. However, in our band we got 3 languages, plus C-D-E... or French Do-Re-M.. usage, plus classical pro or jazz or just oral background, and we have to find a common understanding when we transpose whilst playing. I'd better go for the 1 to 7 system with a major as an exception for the dominant in minor (e.g. in am a E or E7)
It’s so awesome how obviously passionate you are annoy teaching music. Do you agree that there are 12 keys or do you subscribe to more of the Victor Wooten idea that there are 30 keys? Ps. There’s 12.
Our experience as a listener is that there’s just one!(maybe what my mentor Kenny Werner would say) Yeah I typically think 12, it’s somewhat trivial though. Whatever helps us music better.
A song can start with ANY chord. You can even start with notes that don't belong in the main key(s) of the song and then transition to whatever key(s) you want. Which chord feels like home and often becomes the key has a lot to do with where you place emphasis. This can be done through spending extra time on a chord, starting or ending on it, adding extra musical weight to that chord etc.
Sure, but I might put it (for me) turn up the experiential quality when you are listening to and playing tunes. Get to know the vibe and emotional quality of the most common chords used in songs and you’ll be training an intuition.
Look up easy 1,4,5 chord videos for your instrument. If you can play a group of those with some command, then you can practice this stuff, and you don't necessarily need to know much more (the specific notes, why 1 4 5 are always major, etc.) to start practicing the feel of the separate chords. If you would like to understand 1,4,5 more general, any basic harmony or music theory study / videos featuring your instrument will help there. I'll make more crash course style lessons on this too in the future.
Something to live with. You might look into why that is and test it against a lot of tunes. There is for sure ambiguity at play sometimes. There are chord progressions that don't feel much at home in any key, or maybe it feels like a few chords are "home" BUT it is strengthened by practicing on the vast majority of songs where it's much more obvious. My hope is by teaching this method you'll get a way in the door of listening in a different way and looking out for that "home" feeling in any tune. Best of luck!
@@chrisfireymusic I've been playing guitar since the mid 1970s and piano since the mid 1980s. (My focus in the 1970s was mainly songs by The Beatles and simple 3 or 4 chord style songs.) I could play the chords (in all keys with barre chords) because I took the time to train my fingers. But I noticed right up front that although I could play the chords, I did not know which chords to play without having them written down. The other students would know instinctively the next chord in the song although they would struggle to move their fingers. I could instantly play the chord but only if someone told me what it should be. There are many videos on RUclips now which tell of this "Use your ear to determine which chord to play by the feel" method. Although I can tell you from theory why this method *should* work, such as _"The dominant chord contains the leading tone and the unstable augmented fourth so it should resolve to the tonic",_ *I can tell you from 50 years experience that it is not obvious to everyone.* Unless it is made obvious as in a 12 bar blues piece which follows an exact formula or a country song in which the bass conspicuously walks up from the I chord to the IV chord, the chord will not be obvious to me. I will probably be able to tell, "OK, this chord sounds like it is diatonic because it is not clashing" but I will not know what chord it was, except by logic such as "Country songs don't usually use the diminished chord, so it's probably IV, V, vii, and if not, then ii or iii" so I will try them in that order, etc.
@@codetech5598 I'd experiment with it, it is subtle and takes time, but I think we all can make some deeper connections when we are more introspective while listening and playing, and being aware of any subtle emotional cues we get. It's important to practice this stuff too with: -giving yourself input (tagging the info as you practice chords, notes, or even listening to music you already know the chords and context of) -getting your voice involved -practicing throughout the day and allowing your ear and voice to really do some digesting with these sounds. I'll be thinking of more lessons on this topic, especially with how to practice, I know we are all different!
@@chrisfireymusic So you say its subtle? Because these other RUclipsrs make it seem like the scale tones and their relationships to the tonic note / chord should be obvious. "I will play Do and then another note and you tell me what it was. (plays Fa.) Well, obviously that was Fa because we can hear how Fa wants to resolve to Mi. It's so easy because you can feel it."
@@codetech5598 It's subtle if you aren't used to listening in a certain way, or listening emotionally/relatively if that makes sense. Music is a funny thing, something can go from subtle to obvious with the right kind of practice. One thing that might help is to focus on a limited amount of chords and/or notes, like practice hearing ONLY 1, 4, 5 (using either an app, or simpler songs), or ONLY trying to hear scale degrees 1-4. Chords are less obvious than notes to finally grasp. So maybe stay with the notes until you have some success. Also, even building up the sense of what 1 is in a song might take time, but with limitation this gets easier. Try to get to the heart what you can sense and build from there. Playing with a drone of one, as well as getting the voice involved, can really get us out of our heads. I'll keep on working on some other practice methods!
I love the idea of the mood or feeling of a chord and using this to differentiate them. Host tends to ramble and get too wordy between instances. Extraneous references like "sub dominant" are unnecessarily distracting .
Sorry, you don’t feel chords, you hear them, and you hear how they sound relative to the chords around them. How they make you feel depends on the context in which they are used. You have to listen to hundreds of songs , learn the chords in those songs and eventually identify similar patterns. At that point you can assign useful words labels to the chords which you can associate to the memorized patterns Imagine a song starts out 4-1-4-5-1. The first time you hear that song you don’t know the first chord is a 4. After you hear the next few chords you know it’s the 4. When you hear the song the next time you know the pattern so you hear the first chord as a 4 chord. Feeling has nothing to do with it
Whatever works for you! It's different for everyone. Your 2nd paragraph isn't quite my experience, it's more like all the stuff in the song (melodic and harmonic content) "points" to the key the song's in, or the story it's telling. My brain/heart interprets that as a feeling, if that makes sense. It does massively help me recall and identify the same auditory experience in another song. Calling it feeling vs hearing (or listening, or experiencing) seems to be trivial for me personally. I do know many students' accounts of frustration when teachers tell them to just "hear it", and non-musical descriptions have bridged the gap for many of them. Thanks for watching!
@@chrisfireymusic If it works for you and others then that is a great thing. Of course a student is not going to just hear a sound and remember it. What I think happens is you play certain chord progressions over and over and over until you recognize them. By recognize I think I mean there are neuron connections in the brain created for this pattern recognition after a certain amount of repetition. Kind of like word sounds. Infants hear them and try to repeat them over and over and over until it is wired into their brain.
I also find useful , when I teach this, to take a detour trough sound physics. Explaining harmonics, strings, frequency, sympathy etc. This often leads into chapters about history and temperament. And also explains the importance of Fifts and tritones!
I kind of disagree with this feeling method because it generalizes and "boxes in" the feelings of each degree. In different contexts, especially in modal songs, all chords take new meaning and new feelings. For example in a Dorian song that same "2 chord" feels like home, and doesn't take you anywhere. To me it makes more sense to learn the sounds themselves, and the feelings come after the context and me labels. I mean learning the sounds like "this is a Dorian sound", then using your head to figure out if this Dorian sound is the 2 of the key or is it a home sound. Then the feelings dependent a lot on the melodic contour and lyrics. For example there are a lot of sad Beatles songs that are very much major. But the contour and lyrics do the emotional work.
I getcha, I'm all for what works. For instance a tune in Dorian to me doesn't confuse my ears at all. I might feel the tonic minor home with a major 4 chord and it's obvious the context is different. I would say this emotional perception isn't so much about exact scale degrees but the emotion of the specific context harmonic context. I just started with the major scale / chords due to that being the most common context in our culture. I understand there is subjectivity and nuance here but I often suspect people just wholly miss the more experiential/emotional intuitions I'm trying to convey and that serve me with a high degree of accuracy. I agree there is emotional context and development in all of it: lyrics, chords, melody, the contour of the melody, groove, etc. Thanks for watching/commenting!
I find it difficult to voice my disappointment while still being kind. Dude, be in tune. This is so unprofessional. We didn’t “make this up” music works because of proportion & math. & aliens will have ii-V-I just like we do because that’s how reality works. Much love
Thanks for your two cents! I have learned to give myself grace, because I used to sweat every single less-than-perfect element, but it’s exhausting. I suppose I should play in tune though (I promise I can). I’d wager this is all half made up, half discovered, or some proportion, is where I’ve arrived, for better or worse. And I might have thought in another season of my life alien jazz would be riddled with 2-5-1s but now….im not so sure, who’s to say? And I love a 2 5 1. Thanks for watching.
I’ve intellectually understood these chords in functional harmony for years, but it’s only now with your method that I’ll be able to FEEL them and know them implicitly. Thank you for making the world a more musical place! Subscribed!
This is a fascinating way to approach the chords in the diatonic scale -- "how it feels" -- not just that it "sounds good," but "how it sounds good." I love this! (Keyboard player here.)
Gave up playing piano and picked up guitar later in life and simply switching instruments showed me exactly what I wasn't understanding. It was this. I was trying to learn this but I didn't know what it was. I always felt that progressions evoked certain feelings independent of the key they were played in. The guitar makes key-independent patterns much easier to see in my opinion.
The Minor Sixth, it's at home but it's depressed and doesn't want to go out! Amazing!!
Minor 6th is dominant 7 without root…. endless possibilities
@@NicholasFerguson-bell a dominant 9 chord, and also half diminished/min 7 b5! Hip stuff.
Hey man this is a hell of a lesson. Everything is sensible and organic. Lots of people are going to be feeling their way through harmony in a new way because of this.
That’s the aim, thanks for watching!
Glad I got to see this just a few months after starting, can’t wait to start doing this on a day-to-day basis!!
Funny I just clicked to check out your vid and wow I have been playing guitar for 50 plus years and I’m now working on original songs ! This is really what I need to progress ! So thanks 👍
Merci beaucoup. I've been playing piano for two years, but had problems with musicality. Singing helped that crash, and doing what you talked about in this video really has helped me to progress to the next level. Very helpful to feel the chords.
That's great to hear, more to come!
Thank you for making my musical life easier, especially I'm learning on my self but thinking of getting a teacher,🙏🏼 cheers mate.
I just got a guitar but I have been playing the lyre since last year and I have discovered that working out chords is much easier on a diatonic instrument! Forcing yourself to stick inside a single key is very helpful for focusing on the sound of each chord.
I agree!
Thank you. I appreciate you focusing my attention :)
Hi Chris, super helpful explanation, thanks for sharing!
really helpful....thank you for the chord expressions you focused on hearing!
Cool, helpful concept and skillset. I'll practice. Thank you 😊.
I always wanted someone that talks more about thia topic, one idea is that you make a tierlist, and give like example to practice, for example, songs that only use 2 or 3 chords the whole songs then 4 chords then chord changes in verse prechorus and chorus, and so on giving us examples to analyze
Where have you been all my life??? Help!!! I’m stuck in a music industry of sorts where most of the musicians are educated in music theory and I learned guitar when was just a toddler in the early 80s by ear! It’s been a hard life man trying to swallow theories!!! THIS IS IT!!!
It’s amazing how little musical feel can be in the music industry! Glad this helped!
As a drummer this helped a lot
pretty cool approach, thanks!
One to two feels careful, hesitate, thoughtful, in-between, perhaps even, but less, sad and melancholic to me.
Perhaps one-two is just undecided and it's the next chord that sets the tone.
It feels thoughtful to me too!
Great clarity.
This feels like home 🏡 🤟🏽🎶✨to me 😁👌🏽Hey isn’t that a song 🎵?! 😅
Thanks so much ❣️
As someone who has generally been pretty good at getting songs by ear, I can confirm this approach is super useful. The descriptions of the 2 and 3 chords were particularly well done IMO - I'd never thought about those personality traits. One thing that's harder to hear in this video is the instability of the 5 (except for the jazz digression, but then there's too much going to dwell on it). You should usually play the 5 as a V-7/dominant chord when trying to understand that instability and why the 5 "wants" to go back to the 1. Also, note that 6 ("sad home") is literally home in minor key songs. People will then call that chord the "1" because that's where you land, but the relationships described here remain as if it were still the 6. A video like this exploring how these chords feel from a minor key perspective (starting on 6) could be interesting!
I agree! I'll get to that soon!
I’m 56 years old just learning guitar & ukulele but have sang in choir and just started singing in a blues ensemble.
Listening to you right now I am slapping my knee saying out loud “yeah right?!”
When I first heard Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” on this radio📻I momentarily thought😌💭 that it was going to be Emminem’s “Lose Yourself” coming over the speakers 🔊 😂
They are pretty much the same BPM!
Kind of a Bruce Lee aproach.. 'try to FEEEEEEEEEL". I think its the only way to progress, by feeling the relationship between the chords and patterns. Thank you
I’ve played guitar for about 20 years straight then less as I raised a family. Now I’m retired and trying to recapture what I lost over the years.
Videos like yours helps me understand how song structures work that I didn’t appreciate as much when I was younger. Thanks for educating an old dog
Really good - great intro to move from playing lead gtr through scales and ear into chords and triads
Glad it helped! I will talk about lead guitar and melodies more, all this applies but just at another level.
Nice video, I'm a guitar teacher, I can tell you're one of the good ones.
Thank you for your approach to this subject. I got a lot out of it, which has tightened up my thought process for melodic improvisation.
I play in two bands, and for each performance, I have no idea what we are going to play. We don't have rehearsals, and we may have a different keyboardist for each performance.
I've only been playing for 17 months, and this is very challenging for me. However, as you mentioned, you get better at it the more you develop an ear for it.
What allowed the traction to kick in for me was getting into the number system of the triads along with the 3NPS (three-note-per-string) system.
However, it seems there is an approach to this that can make it foolproof, but I can't say I have found it yet.
To me, it seems that if you can find the tonic center or what you think is the tonic center, you still need to identify the key.
For example, you might think the tonic center is C, but you are actually on the 5 in the key of F major.
It seems there could be a structured protocol to nail this on the fly.
What I have in mind is to start with the diatonic scale to ensure it has me in the key. Then, find the notes within the scale that allow for a note progression of melody, like an arpeggio, and then play the same order in a triad chord progression.
Have you tried something like this in your journey?
Any suggestions along these lines that you can offer for me to explore?
Thanks for sharing.
You might say, Ask the musician for what key they are in before we play, HaHa
They don't even know what Key they are going to be in because Pastor just Has a Song in his Heart and we Find the Tonic of His Voice and Take off.
Between the Bass, Lead and Keyboadist it's a Race for the Tonic and then we Run behid the Keyboards with Melody.
It's incredible bit I need to get better at it. If I don't catch on fast enough, I have to either play the Bongos or Tamberine and try to figure it it out by just slides and fills as best I can.
But when I get it right with the Key, I'm on cloud 9. Can't make mistakes and enjoying the session.
Anyway...
Appreciate any feedback.
Sounds like some fun gigs! Definitely does get easier with time, but maybe a breakdown of how it goes for me, experientially, would help.
When I'm trying to figure out how to quickly jump into some music:
1. I tune into any initial emotional perceptions: major, minor, bluesy, gospel. This includes the overall "vibe" as well as any perceived tonal center. This is very intuitional and I try to pull on every song I've heard while doing this.
2. Knowing somewhat I'm going into and how to orient (in a major key, major with some bluesy character, etc.) then I play myself a note to compare that to the key, say the thinnest E string open.
3. With enough ear training practice, that will immediately hit you as a certain context (E feels like 2 in the key, so key is D) or (E feels like a very dissonant b2 in the key, so key is Eb).
4. The trick is to keep your listening wide open. Every note and chord is context and a signal, not to mention your eyes on other instruments etc.
Someone in your band probably has to lead the way and hopefully flesh out what key the melody is in. This should make it easier to hear the agreement between 2 or more people playing in a common key.
This can be practiced by building in practice every day with all the sounds. If someone's phone goes off around me with an alert, I'm practicing feeling those notes in whatever context I can pick up. I know the iPhone message ding is a C, the apple email sound is F#, my microwave is a B, and my toothbrush is a Db.
This turns into a raw curiosity of being musically hungry for fluency. This eventually is just an automatic way of life.
There is also the power in assumption and intuition. If someone sings one note, that's 1. After a few more notes, that 1st pitch might feel like another note in the key, or maybe still 1. It's all about context. For example, if you hear a dominant sound on the 1 chord, the 4 chord is likely coming, from the thousands of songs that do that.
There is occasionally ambiguity but most popular tonal music shows its cards rather quickly. To me it feels like something is in the DNA of a major or minor scale (and therefore the chords) that you can tune into, with all the notes pointing to Tonic.
Also, for guitar, if it appears to be in a non-friendly guitar key like Eb, I'd practice capoing to play in D capo 1, C capo 3, etc. Much easier to hear and feel chords (plus you get more resonance) in a good guitar key.
Hope that was helpful, I'll be back with more tips!
Fun Indeed,
It would be cool to see how you would approach this in a video with random songs with a MYSTERY key and see some tricks to approach the correct key and then run....
It would allow for CONFIDENCE to build from there with this hurdle out of the way. I think this is my road block.
If I'm wasting time with this milestone , I need to adjust what the next Milestone should be and focus on that.
Thanks for any examples......
@@SolidBuildersInc for sure! I'll get my hands on some royalty free stuff and do a video soon demonstrating this.
Thank you for making and sharing this. Your style of teaching is great. Now I need to watch this about 5 times. Review of 7dim chord shape would be nice.
@@WakeMikey I can tell you right now that a diminished chord is a minor chord with a flat 5th.
So there's three half steps between each note. For example, in the key of C major, B becomes the diminished chord. The notes are B, E and G and the G sounds rather dissonant together with the B. In terms of feel, 7dim wants to resolve into 1 to release the tension
Really helpful, thanks 😎
Subscribed!
Very interesting. I'm a little way behind you on the curve, i think. However, I'm pleased with myself as i realised recently that i can now identify maj7 chords and also some slash chords. Example for slash chords: For some I IV V progressions, substitute the "pure" V chord for a IV/V (4th chord, over the 5th chord's root). It's a very pleasing romantic sound with a strong pull to the home chord. Try it in the key of E. It would be E, A, A/B (A major with b in the bass). I can now pick these chords out with my ear, which makes me very happy. Some other players I know think it's witchcraft, but it's not! It's experience and following the bass. Enjoyed your video. 😊
I love the 4/5 chord! You hear it in a lot of stuff with soul. The ear just goes deeper and deeper over time. Thanks for watching!
Thanx ❣️🤟🏽😊🎵
May I ask you a question: do xou call the home chord in minor key a 6? This would be logical for me, but for some guitar gurus apparently not. e.g. C = home is 1, parallel a=home is 6. Thanks for clarifying
It can go either way.
Songs like House of the Rising Sun, Stairway to Heaven, Ain't No Sunshine, Bad Guy, Billie Jean, Eleanor Rigby, or We Will Rock You, I hear as a minor 1, and orient to that, simply because the home chord is all about resolving tension and it can do that firmly in minor. A major 5 chord of that minor being used, like E major for A minor, really strengthens the 'minor 1' sound.
But if Am is mixed in a lot with C major chords (F, G, etc) I tend to hear it as a 6m.
It's a spectrum from the '6 minor in a major key' sound to the 'tonic, one minor, resolution' sound of being firmly in a minor key (like the above examples).
@@chrisfireymusic Thanks Chris, that's also how I see it. However, in our band we got 3 languages, plus C-D-E... or French Do-Re-M.. usage, plus classical pro or jazz or just oral background, and we have to find a common understanding when we transpose whilst playing. I'd better go for the 1 to 7 system with a major as an exception for the dominant in minor (e.g. in am a E or E7)
I know the fixed Do makes it confusing!
Great lesson thank you
It’s so awesome how obviously passionate you are annoy teaching music.
Do you agree that there are 12 keys or do you subscribe to more of the Victor Wooten idea that there are 30 keys?
Ps. There’s 12.
Our experience as a listener is that there’s just one!(maybe what my mentor Kenny Werner would say)
Yeah I typically think 12, it’s somewhat trivial though. Whatever helps us music better.
Been needing you for 60 years. Thanks.
How did you actually train/practise this over the years to get to where you are today ie. to be able to recognise chord numbers by ear? Thanks!
I have a video about to come out today over this very thing! I'll link it here asap.
ruclips.net/video/Y7xwCZZNWAk/видео.html Here are some tools to practice this!
Thank you for this.
(And to give credit it’s due, “I’d Rather Go Blind” was recorded by Chess Records in Chicago, not Motown)
Thanks for the catch!
Can a song Start on 2,3 or 6 chord?
For sure! About to have a quiz on this and I’ll include some examples there.
A song can start with ANY chord. You can even start with notes that don't belong in the main key(s) of the song and then transition to whatever key(s) you want. Which chord feels like home and often becomes the key has a lot to do with where you place emphasis. This can be done through spending extra time on a chord, starting or ending on it, adding extra musical weight to that chord etc.
So this basically means - Learn and analyse SONGS
Sure, but I might put it (for me) turn up the experiential quality when you are listening to and playing tunes. Get to know the vibe and emotional quality of the most common chords used in songs and you’ll be training an intuition.
One to three sounds like Radiohead
I agree! I’m sure they use that move, I’ll have to go back and listen for it.
I don’t know much about all these cords so you kind of lost me at 1:40
Look up easy 1,4,5 chord videos for your instrument. If you can play a group of those with some command, then you can practice this stuff, and you don't necessarily need to know much more (the specific notes, why 1 4 5 are always major, etc.) to start practicing the feel of the separate chords.
If you would like to understand 1,4,5 more general, any basic harmony or music theory study / videos featuring your instrument will help there. I'll make more crash course style lessons on this too in the future.
Ok, we all know from theory that "Do", the 1 chord, the tonic, represents "home" but what if it doesn't feel/sound like "home" ?
Something to live with. You might look into why that is and test it against a lot of tunes.
There is for sure ambiguity at play sometimes. There are chord progressions that don't feel much at home in any key, or maybe it feels like a few chords are "home"
BUT it is strengthened by practicing on the vast majority of songs where it's much more obvious. My hope is by teaching this method you'll get a way in the door of listening in a different way and looking out for that "home" feeling in any tune.
Best of luck!
@@chrisfireymusic I've been playing guitar since the mid 1970s and piano since the mid 1980s. (My focus in the 1970s was mainly songs by The Beatles and simple 3 or 4 chord style songs.)
I could play the chords (in all keys with barre chords) because I took the time to train my fingers. But I noticed right up front that although I could play the chords, I did not know which chords to play without having them written down. The other students would know instinctively the next chord in the song although they would struggle to move their fingers. I could instantly play the chord but only if someone told me what it should be.
There are many videos on RUclips now which tell of this "Use your ear to determine which chord to play by the feel" method. Although I can tell you from theory why this method *should* work, such as _"The dominant chord contains the leading tone and the unstable augmented fourth so it should resolve to the tonic",_ *I can tell you from 50 years experience that it is not obvious to everyone.*
Unless it is made obvious as in a 12 bar blues piece which follows an exact formula or a country song in which the bass conspicuously walks up from the I chord to the IV chord, the chord will not be obvious to me. I will probably be able to tell, "OK, this chord sounds like it is diatonic because it is not clashing" but I will not know what chord it was, except by logic such as "Country songs don't usually use the diminished chord, so it's probably IV, V, vii, and if not, then ii or iii" so I will try them in that order, etc.
@@codetech5598 I'd experiment with it, it is subtle and takes time, but I think we all can make some deeper connections when we are more introspective while listening and playing, and being aware of any subtle emotional cues we get.
It's important to practice this stuff too with:
-giving yourself input (tagging the info as you practice chords, notes, or even listening to music you already know the chords and context of)
-getting your voice involved
-practicing throughout the day and allowing your ear and voice to really do some digesting with these sounds.
I'll be thinking of more lessons on this topic, especially with how to practice, I know we are all different!
@@chrisfireymusic So you say its subtle? Because these other RUclipsrs make it seem like the scale tones and their relationships to the tonic note / chord should be obvious.
"I will play Do and then another note and you tell me what it was. (plays Fa.) Well, obviously that was Fa because we can hear how Fa wants to resolve to Mi. It's so easy because you can feel it."
@@codetech5598 It's subtle if you aren't used to listening in a certain way, or listening emotionally/relatively if that makes sense. Music is a funny thing, something can go from subtle to obvious with the right kind of practice.
One thing that might help is to focus on a limited amount of chords and/or notes, like practice hearing ONLY 1, 4, 5 (using either an app, or simpler songs), or ONLY trying to hear scale degrees 1-4. Chords are less obvious than notes to finally grasp. So maybe stay with the notes until you have some success.
Also, even building up the sense of what 1 is in a song might take time, but with limitation this gets easier. Try to get to the heart what you can sense and build from there. Playing with a drone of one, as well as getting the voice involved, can really get us out of our heads.
I'll keep on working on some other practice methods!
I love the idea of the mood or feeling of a chord and using this to differentiate them. Host tends to ramble and get too wordy between instances. Extraneous references like "sub dominant" are unnecessarily distracting .
…wish I’d got. The grammar lesson you never got.
Practicing harmony means something else has to give.
Sorry, you don’t feel chords, you hear them, and you hear how they sound relative to the chords around them. How they make you feel depends on the context in which they are used.
You have to listen to hundreds of songs , learn the chords in those songs and eventually identify similar patterns. At that point you can assign useful words labels to the chords which you can associate to the memorized patterns
Imagine a song starts out 4-1-4-5-1. The first time you hear that song you don’t know the first chord is a 4. After you hear the next few chords you know it’s the 4. When you hear the song the next time you know the pattern so you hear the first chord as a 4 chord. Feeling has nothing to do with it
Whatever works for you! It's different for everyone. Your 2nd paragraph isn't quite my experience, it's more like all the stuff in the song (melodic and harmonic content) "points" to the key the song's in, or the story it's telling. My brain/heart interprets that as a feeling, if that makes sense. It does massively help me recall and identify the same auditory experience in another song.
Calling it feeling vs hearing (or listening, or experiencing) seems to be trivial for me personally.
I do know many students' accounts of frustration when teachers tell them to just "hear it", and non-musical descriptions have bridged the gap for many of them.
Thanks for watching!
@@chrisfireymusic If it works for you and others then that is a great thing. Of course a student is not going to just hear a sound and remember it. What I think happens is you play certain chord progressions over and over and over until you recognize them. By recognize I think I mean there are neuron connections in the brain created for this pattern recognition after a certain amount of repetition. Kind of like word sounds. Infants hear them and try to repeat them over and over and over until it is wired into their brain.
@@fredbarnes196 I agree, extremely linguistic.
@@fredbarnes196 I think it’s more that we are mostly talking about the characteristics of the intervals, not the chords themselves.
9:25 George Harrison All Things Must Pass
I also find useful , when I teach this, to take a detour trough sound physics.
Explaining harmonics, strings, frequency, sympathy etc.
This often leads into chapters about history and temperament.
And also explains the importance of Fifts and tritones!
I'm fascinated by all the sciency angle too, still learning a lot in that domain. Thanks for watching!
Good advice, get back to macro.
I kind of disagree with this feeling method because it generalizes and "boxes in" the feelings of each degree.
In different contexts, especially in modal songs, all chords take new meaning and new feelings. For example in a Dorian song that same "2 chord" feels like home, and doesn't take you anywhere.
To me it makes more sense to learn the sounds themselves, and the feelings come after the context and me labels. I mean learning the sounds like "this is a Dorian sound", then using your head to figure out if this Dorian sound is the 2 of the key or is it a home sound. Then the feelings dependent a lot on the melodic contour and lyrics. For example there are a lot of sad Beatles songs that are very much major. But the contour and lyrics do the emotional work.
I getcha, I'm all for what works. For instance a tune in Dorian to me doesn't confuse my ears at all. I might feel the tonic minor home with a major 4 chord and it's obvious the context is different.
I would say this emotional perception isn't so much about exact scale degrees but the emotion of the specific context harmonic context. I just started with the major scale / chords due to that being the most common context in our culture.
I understand there is subjectivity and nuance here but I often suspect people just wholly miss the more experiential/emotional intuitions I'm trying to convey and that serve me with a high degree of accuracy.
I agree there is emotional context and development in all of it: lyrics, chords, melody, the contour of the melody, groove, etc.
Thanks for watching/commenting!
Talk too dam much
I find it difficult to voice my disappointment while still being kind. Dude, be in tune. This is so unprofessional. We didn’t “make this up” music works because of proportion & math. & aliens will have ii-V-I just like we do because that’s how reality works. Much love
Thanks for your two cents! I have learned to give myself grace, because I used to sweat every single less-than-perfect element, but it’s exhausting. I suppose I should play in tune though (I promise I can).
I’d wager this is all half made up, half discovered, or some proportion, is where I’ve arrived, for better or worse.
And I might have thought in another season of my life alien jazz would be riddled with 2-5-1s but now….im not so sure, who’s to say? And I love a 2 5 1. Thanks for watching.