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Let’s say you're asked to play something in the key of D and D is not your favorite key. Here’s an exercise that will help you familiar yourself and maybe get you out of sticky situation. Start of by playing a D chord, just a simple D in root position. But make a note of the root and the 5th. The first and the fifth are two of the safest note to play when you're playing in foreign key. They may not always be the nicest but they work with just about every chord in the key. So the first and the fifth of that key.
Start playing a D and then I'm trying a D2. Now remember this is an exercise to get you familiar with a key that you're too comfortable with. So just start playing this and maybe catch a rhythm. Playing D2 alternating them with D. And the next step is go down to the relative minor, which is B. B is the relative minor of D. It’s a minor 3rd below D. If you can’t work out your relative minor you don’t know what it is here is a simple thing to get you started you just say, “under-the-ground”. I'm not going to sing that again because that’s very cheesy and very corny but it helps you remember it. Guys that’s three semi-tones below.
Now what do I mean by B is the relative minor of D. Well B is related to D so closely that I consider B like the sad version of a D chord. Here’s a D and here’s a sad version of D. And we will talk about that in another video but for the time being our exercise now consists of D chord and going down to relative minor three semi-tones below. I'm still playing the same in the right hand, but now what I'm doing is I'm playing a Bm chord. So we start off with a D and now we’ve come to a Bm. Then we go a tone below this B. Go down one time from the B and we get to A. We’re still doing the same thing in the right hand, but now what this results in is an A SUS chord. So from the start I've got a D chord, I can now produce Bm without doing much in the right hand and I'm playing A SUS without changing the right hand very much either. And on the last chord I go down to tone again from the A and I get to G, which is D-G-A. Now instead of playing D-E-A in the right hand we just change it to D-G-A. This produces a G2 chord. This is G put the two in that’s G2. G-A-D I’ve inverted it so it’s D-G-A, G2.
What’s the point of this exercise? Well if you don’t know much about the key of D well now you know how to play the 4 most common chords because we've played with D, Bm, A SUS and the G without really moving my right hand. In an emergency this is what you do. So you can get out of the sticky situation by just playing the first and the fifth. Much better with that third note. Don’t get me wrong. I'm not saying this is the best progression to play in the key of D, I'm saying if you're unfamiliar with the key first and the fifth. Go down three semi-tones to relative minor. Go down another tone and you get your A SUS you get the fifth of that key and when you go down you get the fourth of the key, G2. Those are the four most common chords in a song. The first, the fourth and the fifth and a relative minor.
So we try that in a really foreign key. Let’s say you're playing in a key of let’s say A flat and you don’t really know anything about A flat you don’t even how many flats there are in A flat, but you know your A flat chord. So I know my first and my fifth. The very first thing I can do is just play the first and the fifth but the A flat in the left hand. Go down three semi-tones “under-the-ground”. To F going down a tone to B flat, going down a tone to—it’s just out of my camera shot but yeah there’s a D flat just over there. I will play high and to F and to A flat going down to D4.
So the master play of progression I the key A flat there you have it. You can obviously rearrange the order in the left hand the order of the chords, but if right hand just stays in one and five and if you're brave enough then you put that little note in. Go to A flat which is the 5th key and going to D flat and that’s when I put the D flat in the right hand as well.
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