This ‘’BORING’’ Chord Exercise Will Save You Years (But Most Ignore It)

[00:00:00]If you're trying to learn the chords by jumping from song to song, you're making the exact same mistake I made years ago.

[00:00:08]Most students think that the more songs they learn, the better they'll get at chords. But here's a problem. Every song only gives you a tiny number of chord combinations. So after months or even years, you've still never practiced most of the chords you actually need to know.

[00:00:27]So, in this video, I'm going to show you the one exercise that completely transformed my core playing in just 30 days, how to fit it into your daily practice, and why I still use it years later. And if you'd like to have the PDF version of this lesson to follow along, you can download it for free using the link in the description below.

[00:00:51]Back when I started learning chord voicings, I was constantly getting stuck. I could play individual chords, but moving smoothly from one chord to another felt impossible. And don't even get me started with nine or 13 chords.

[00:01:07]The more chords I learned, the more overwhelm I became. Then one day, my teacher showed me one exercise.

[00:01:15]Honestly, it looked incredibly simple and even boring. But after doing it every day for about 30 days, my core transition started to feel smooth. I'm in more progress in one month than I had in years of learning songs. So everything changed when I discover the chord grid. The way this works is I use all 12 key and I put this into a grid.

[00:01:41]So we have every single key that is available to you. If we look at this one, we have A, C, D, E, F sharp, B and so on. So we have all 12 right here. Now what's important here to understand is that those key right here for now are not telling you that they are in major, minor, diminish or what it is, just the key. And the very cool part is that we can actually decide what they're going to be for our practice for today. So we can change things around. And by the way, just as a reminder, if you'd like to have the PDF version of this video, you can get it down below in the description for free. This exercise is so powerful because you can actually change it and use it as you get better.

[00:02:24]Let me explain. First, you can change the order of the key whenever it starts to feel too easy. That force your brains and your hands to keep learning instead of relying on memory. Second, you can use it to practice chord inversion.

[00:02:38]Instead of always playing chords in the root position, you can train smooth transition using different inversion.

[00:02:45]Third, you can practice any type of chord you want. Major chord, minor chord, seven chord, nine chord, 13 chords, whatever you're learning, you can plug it into the grid. And that's what I meant when I was saying you can actually use this with anything. You don't have to look at the A as an A major. It can be in a minor, diminish, augmented if you want. So now that you understand why this exercise is so powerful, let me actually show you exactly how to use it. So the first step is that you have to create your grid.

[00:03:20]This will decide the order of the key you will practice. So place all 12 key on a grid just like this. And you can also have fun with chords that can be sharp or flat. For example, C sharp can be also D flat. So, make sure you work with different key like this. The second step is that you choose one chord inversion. You can use the root position, the first inversion or the second inversion. Just make sure you decide before you start practicing. Step three, you pick one chord type. For example, major, minor, dominant 7, major 7, or any other chord that you want to improve. Step four, turn on a metronome or drum loop if you want to have more fun to keep a steady beat in the back.

[00:04:04]That is super important. That step is really the key. You really want to have like a tempo because when you're playing a song, you're actually following a structure, a tempo, and you want to be able to switch faster than your brain is able to. And for step five, you need to decide how long you're going to be playing each chord. For example, it can be for one bar, two bar, two beats, or four beats before we move on to the next one. And that's it. Now, just work your way through the entire grid. Let's do one together. So, let's pick this grid and we're going to go through it. So, what we're going to be using, we're going to start with minor triad chord in root position. And I'm going to say we have four beat per chord. So what I would be doing is I would start from a right here. And we could do this for both hands if you want to practice [music] the chord playing in the left too. That way you're practicing even more because you're also practicing the left. [music] So let's say we do triad chord root position four beat for each of these one. So let's go. We have one 2 3 4 1 2 [music] 3 4 1 2 3 Four. One, two, three, four. One, [music] two, three, four.

[00:05:24]One, two, three, [music] four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, 4. One, two, three, four.

[00:05:39][music and singing] One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. There you go. You've done it. And you know what?

[00:05:49]You just practice all minor chord in all 12 key. You just transpose all the minor triad chord. So powerful here. You've spent just five minutes practicing this and you've already done more than if you were practicing in one song. Let's do one more. Let's say we want to practice dominant seven chord. But this one we're going to start from the third. So this is going to be the first inversion.

[00:06:14][snorts] So we need to figure out that the third of each of these chord are going to be on the bottom here. That means the root is on the top. All right, let's do the same thing for a beat. And you could actually add a metronome or even a drum loop as long as there's something steady or you can count just like I'm doing here. Let's do it again.

[00:06:37]1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 [music] 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 [music] 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 [music] 2 3 four.

[00:07:07]1 2 3 4 1 2 [music] 3 4 There you go. The trick here is while you're playing this, you're already thinking of the next one coming.

[00:07:19]And you're also developing this thing of thinking forward to the next chord. And that's going to be very useful when you practice this. This way, you can have only one grid and use this for a while with different ideas. And every time you change just one of these settings, you create a brand new exercise. That's why this one practice tool can be challenging you for years. Now that you know how to master your chords, you'll need this video to outgroove to