Blues Piano Lessons Course Chapter 7, Section 2

Transcript from this piano lesson below:

This is Part Two of Two from Chapter Seven, taken from Blues for Piano and Keyboard.

So far in this chapter, we've been studying tri-tone left hand comp chords, those fantastic two-note chords that you can do so much with. Now let's look at them in detail.

They call it "tri" because tri means three and it's made out of three whole steps. Can you see that?

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Here's a whole step, there's a whole step, there's a whole step. We studied that in "Pattern Piano and Keyboard"; and we learned that half steps and whole steps are the absolute foundations when you're putting chords together on the piano.

Now, I want to show you something a little strange. Kind of off the beaten path - kind of "How weird can you make your piano lessons?"

Now this is the absolute truth - back in the middle-ages, a while ago, the tri-tone was considered an evil chord. They actually went so far to call it the "devil chord". Now, I think God makes all things beautiful. In fact, today, if you listen to Black Gospel music or Gospel music in general, you'll hear chords that are full of tri-tones like this:

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Watch the Video Version of this piano lesson (top of this page)

Ain't that nice? There's a tri-tone right in the middle. Or what if you play a tri-tone down here? Remember those three whole steps? <demo> There it is. You can play a nice fat chord built on that. Isn't that amazing? That simple little tri-tone.

And here's an amazing fact, ninety percent of all the great rhythm and blues chords that really are fat are based on this simple little tri-tone. Incredible. You know they had a lot of fun making that a devil chord back in the middle ages. In fact, if you sang a tri-tone in a chant back then, you'll get kicked out. Excommunication for the musician. But now you know better, you know that the tri-tone is actually a beautiful thing that can be put to use very nicely.

We're going to go a step further. Now that you know how to create these tri-tones I want to show you how to play them in different locations so that your hand doesn't have to jump - so, that C tri-tone and F tri-tone chord are within a half step of each other. Now that may sound ludicrous, the notes C and F are a fourth apart on the keyboard. But now I'm going to show you how to invert these tri-tones so that they can be played right next to each other. This is typically an advanced concept but once you understand the pattern of what I'm going to show you, you'll be able to play this stuff right away. Check this out.

We're going to start with the chord F. Now here's a new concept, I'm going to invert or turn-over this to F7 chord by putting the 7th on the bottom and the 3rd on the top. Now do you notice how close those notes are to the ones I played in the video example for C? But now these chords relate to the chord F and I've inverted it or turned it over and put the 7th on the bottom. Now I'm going to go back to C just for examples sake.
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There it is, the 3rd's on the bottom now, the 7th on the top. And F, has the 7th on the bottom and the third on the top.

But the really powerful concept that I'd like you to get here is that even though F7 and C7 are radically different chords, you can play them very simply right next to each other by inverting that F7 comp chord which means turning it over and putting the 7th on the bottom. Learning to invert chords like this is a powerful concept that can really free-up your left hand.

So far, we've looked at C and F. The one other chord that shows up is G7. Now if you noticed, I've inverted the G chord as well. I've put the 7th at the bottom, which is F (music), and the 3rd on the top (music), which is B. And look at that, by inverting that G chord that's right next to the C chord, and it's really close to the F chord. What a powerful concept than can really free up your hands on the piano.

Now that you know how to create these left-hand tri-tone comp chords, I'm going to play the same video again. The video where the right hand's flying around and playing lots of blues riffs but the left hand is mainly playing either C7, G7 or F7 as two-note tri-tone comp chords. But this time, I'm going make it just a little easier to focus on those tri-tone comp chords . Every time I my left hand plays one of them, I'm going to flash a light on the screen, just like this. <example>

Alright, two-note comp chords, here we go. <demo>

Alright. That was an entire buffet of left-hand tri-tone comp chords. I hope you got them all. When you're ready, let's go on to chapter 8.

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