How to Play Chord Inversions on the Piano

Video Transcript

"So, here we are back at California Music Academy looking at chords on the piano. We've done tonic, subdominant, dominant but we've done them so far in root position which means the student's hand have to move all over creation. Let's see if we can get the idea of inversions in and I know that this has been discuss before with the student in fact at this point probably already been discuss but it's always good to bring up and there are a few ways you can introduce it. One, have them just look at the piano and play me a C: C, E, G. Doesn’t matter what C, what E or what G but if you have those three notes, you have what chord, you have a C chord and so just that simple exercise proves to the student that it doesn't matter what order the notes are in only matters that those three notes are present. In the same way, that if you have a mom, a dad and a baby, it the same as having a baby, a mom and a dad. Order doesn't matter. It only matters what's together in the group. It's kind of like a math problem. So, let's see if they can build a chord starting on an E. If I put an E here: C, E, G. I have a C chord and I call it a different inversion of the C chord. So, if they can understand inversions, you can bring them to understand how to play that one, I'm sorry, the one chord and the five chord and the one chord in inversion. There's a step between but the very first step is understanding that chords can go in any order and they still are chords."