Chords for 3 Essential Gospel Harmony & Theory Concepts in C Major

_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ [F] _ _
[C] _ _ What's going on, Gifted Hands family?
It is Elijah [G] here bringing you another lesson.
And today we're going to be talking about three gospel concepts that you can use in
C major that is going to make your playing sound more advanced.
It's going to make it sound like you actually play gospel music.
So whether you play R&B, blues, country, classical, whatever, just follow and use these three
simple [G] concepts and you're going to get that gospel sound.
All right, so let's dive [C] into it.
_ So first things first, let's just make up a random progression, okay?
Let's say we got, [G] _ _ see, I'm already adding too many gospel movements.
Let's do [C] one, three, four, _ five.
Let's do one, three, four, [G] five.
[C] _ _
_ [F] There's a head cheering sound right here, right?
[C] All right, so that's going to be our progression, one, three, four, five.
So what can we do to make this progression sound more gospel-fied, gospely, whatever
word you want to use, okay?
So what we're going to do first is going to be to embellish the chords that we're already given, right?
That's the first step.
Embellish is just a fancy word for adding some extra notes to the chords, okay?
So if we got one, [Em] _ three, I can play my [C] three chord instead of playing like a one over three,
[Em] I can play a chord like this, which is really a, instead of like a C major over E, [Em] like
a C major seven over E, [C] or C major nine.
You can even think of it as C major [Em] nine.
So when we embellish something, we're usually just going to extend the chord, right, or
alter the chord.
One, three, [C] _ four, [G] _
five, [C] one.
_ [D] _ _ _ [G] _
_ [C] _ _ [G] _ _ [D] _ _ [G] _
_ All right, and [C] then we're playing like a four as a major seven or a major nine, so we're
extending [F] our four chord, as well [G] as when we get to the five chord, I'm going to embellish
that not necessarily by adding extra, well, actually I do add extra notes too.
So I make it like a G nine or a G add two chord, right?
But I'm going to take it a step further and actually invert the chord as well, right?
So instead of playing just G with the root and the bass, I'm going to actually move the
bass note to a B.
Why?
Because there's a rule of inversions that we use, and all it says is that if I have
any chord, whatever the chord is, it doesn't matter.
In this case, it's G, it's a G major chord.
I can use any of these notes that are in this chord for the bass note, okay?
So instead of playing G in the bass, I can play B in the bass.
Or maybe instead of playing B in the bass, we play D, D in the bass.
[D] And each bass note is going to give us a different sound, a different feel, but they all work
together theoretically, all right?
So now we got one, three, [F] four, [G] _ five, _ [Em] _ _ [D] _ _ _ [G] _ _
[C] all right?
So just [Gb] by embellishing the chords, we didn't change [Eb] really any of the chords.
The harmony is still functioning, works the same.
We're just adding just some color, really.
We're adding color to the progression, okay?
So that's step one.
Step two, another way that we can make any progression sound more [C] gospel-fied, I know
I'm making up words today, but we can add passing chords, all right?
So that's the second thing we can do.
We can embellish the chords first.
Second thing we can do is add passing chords.
So instead of just playing what's written or playing the chords that are given to you
in a song, we can add on top of that, and that's a lot of times what gospel musicians
do is if we have one, [G] three, _ [D] four, [G] five, _
[Em] like just that much right there, I added a bunch
of passing chords, which passing chords is simply if I have a chord that I'm trying to
get to, right?
[C] Instead [Eb] of going directly to that chord, I'm going to add [Bm] in an extra chord or an extra
progression even, a temporary progression that's going to help me transition from one
place to the next, cool?
So like there's tons and tons of options, but I'll give you just one super common passing
progression or passing chord that's used in gospel is dominant chords, right?
And [C] so if we're on the one, say we're on the one, _ [Em] we're going to the three, [F] right?
Four, [G] five.
So if I want to get to the [C] three, let's say I want to get to the three, I can throw in
a passing chord that's a fifth [E] away from this E, which is our three chord, right?
So I could throw in like [B] a B dominant chord.
Why?
Because this is a fifth away [Em] from [C] our three chord and a [B] dominant chord wants to resolve
down a fifth.
That's the rule of secondary dominance, right?
So I play a B dominant chord and it wants to [Em] resolve to, all right, [C] so one, _ _ _ [Em] three, _
[G] we
got a [C] passing chord to the three, _ _ [D] _ four, and I can even throw in a passing [C] chord.
This one dominant, C dominant, wants to pass to F.
So I can play C dominant as a passing
chord [F] to get to F major.
[G] All right, so we got one, [Em] _ three, _ [D] four, _ [C] _ five, [G] and then even to get back to the beginning
of our progression, the progression starts at one, right?
[D] So to get back to the beginning of that, what we can do is we're already on the five.
_ [F] I think I switched it up and played it as like a suspended chord.
We [C] can add in [Em] a five dominant because this chord wants to pass back to the one.
So let's do one, [Em] three, [Am] pass to the [F] four, _ [G] five, _ _ _ [A] and this is a dominant chord, [G] right?
Or we could play it like this.
This is a dominant chord to pass it back to the one.
So one, [C] three, pass to the [C] four, _
[G] five, inverted five, pass to the one.
All right, so that's the second thing we can do.
And finally, one [Abm] other thing that you can do to make your playing sound more like gospel,
to take some gospel tricks and add them to your songs, is going to be to simply add walk-ups,
add movement to your playing.
So instead of just staying on one chord, right?
I mean, we've already talked about adding passing [C] chords.
What you can do also is we're in C major, right?
So I can connect chords not just by adding dominant chords, but I could also walk up
the major scale or walk down the major scale to get from chord to chord.
So if we're going one, _ _ I could do something like that.
We could do [Dm] one, two, and let's even go chromatic [C] to get to the three.
So one, _ _ passing to the three, [E] _ _ [C] dominant [F] chord to get to the four, _ _ _ five, _ [C] one, _ and even that
one was a little bit simpler.
One, two, three, [Am] dominant chord, pass to the [F] four, _ _ _ [G] _ _ [C] right?
[G] _ _ So something like that would work, which would be [G] just four, or four over six, five over
seven to the one, right?
And that's just another little movement that we can do walking up the major scale to connect chords.
[C] So all together, those three steps. _ _
_ [Em] _ [D] _ _ _ _ _ _
[C] _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ [Em] _ _ _ [C] _ _ _ [F] _
_ _ [E] Last time, here we go.
_ [C] _
_ [D] _ [F] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
[C] _ _ _ [D] All right.
[C] And that's it.
That's three ways that you can [Bb] add some nice gospel theory to your playing and get a more
full, more complex, more gospel [Ab] sounding piano.
All right.
See you in the next lesson.
_ _ [Ab] _ _ [Fm] _ _ _ _ _ _ _