What Jason White Does at the Piano That Most Musicians Never Notice (8 Principles)

Added: 2026-06-05

[00:00:00]to God.

[00:00:08]Alter. [music] Here we go.

[00:00:19][music] Stretch it.

[00:00:24][music] Then he ends it like here.

[00:00:27]And then he goes, [music] "Hey, Germaine Griggs here, founder of Hear and Play, back with another video.

[00:00:34]In this video, we're going to do something we've never done before. We are breaking down the musical mind of a gospel genius, none other than Jason White.

[00:00:46][music] >> [music] >> We had the privilege of doing a DVD with Jason almost 20 years ago. And in fact, when we put his clips on YouTube some 17 years ago, one of them garnered over a half a million views. That's because Jason is often put in the Mount Rushmore of gospel musicians. Him and Kevin Bond and Mike Burrell, who we also did a DVD with some many years ago. David Jackson and Eddie Brown and we caught this group like the West Coast style. We didn't make it over to the East Coast. It would have been awesome to have Kevin Bond, but we were honored to be in that history of bringing DVDs to the masses.

[00:01:33]And in this video, I want to revisit some of those concepts because let's face it, the video is old. It's grainy.

[00:01:39]You ever watch a Super Bowl and it takes it back to like 2001 or 1990 and it looks so grand like this is how we used to watch things. Well, that's what this feels like. But the information is golden. Back then we were 20 year old kids. I believe Jason was in his 30s and we were just happy to be making DVDs.

[00:01:58]Show us that, Doc. And so now 20 years later, I want to attempt to just break down some of the principles and get into the mindset that we may glean some kind of nuggets. Are you ready? All right.

[00:02:09]So, I'm going to put on my earphones and let's go. As >> well as you guys,000 views.

[00:02:15]>> All right. So, let's do it together.

[00:02:16]Here we go. Come on. Heat. Heat.

[00:02:24][music] >> [music] [music] >> Wow, just watching that, not only does it take me back to our studio and recording that for days, but oh my goodness, there is so much there. So in this video I want to cover eight principles that I derive from just that one clip. All right. So let's go to our piano and let's get started. We are in the key of a flat. Right. Okay. So [music] the first thing you want to know is the number system. A flat is one, B flat is two, C is three, D flat is four, E flat is five, F is six, and G is seven. I'll have the notes on the screen. So, uh, brother Jason is in the key of A flat. So, the first principle that I want to share with you is something that Jason stood by and he said it all over the DVD, which is in the Gospel Music Trainer Center. All of our past DVDs are, but Jason would say, never sacrifice the melody. Never ever sacrifice the melody. So, I don't care how crazy your chords get, that melody note, you'll notice with Jason, is always on top. So, you'll notice Jason starts on the one, right? And he's got the nine in there, right? Or the two.

[00:04:33]And I'll just hold down down down this, right? The melody goes to God be the glory.

[00:04:40]And you can play that basic, right? To God be the [music] glory.

[00:04:46]But what does Jason do? He keeps the melody. He doesn't sacrifice the melody.

[00:04:49]He goes to God be the glory. Right? Look at that highest hand.

[00:04:58]Right? He goes Okay. So, what are those chords, right?

[00:05:03]And that's the second principle is that he borrows turnarounds from other keys.

[00:05:09]So, if you know you want to get to, for example, C minor, which is the third tone of a flat, you can use what we call its 251. I've done previous lessons on the circle of fifth and how keys are related, right? So, you know, D is going to take you to G. G is going to take you to C. Even though we're in a key that maybe D isn't natural to, right? D is not in the A flat major scale, but it doesn't mean that you can't use it because it's related to where you're trying to go. The 251 is one of the most popular progressions on Earth. Imagine being in the key of C minor, right? That would be a 251 in C minor or any key that C is a minor chord naturally. Now you have to ask yourself and it's important and this is an advanced topic but to know the diietonic chords right typically your first tone is going to be major but your second and third are going to be minor your fourth will be major your fifth will be dominant but your sixth will be minor as well so that kind of gives you three rows where C might be minor it's it's minor as the two in what key I have to ask myself what is C the two in well it's the two in B flat so that means I could probably use that Jason [music] White move going to C in B flat. I have to change my melody, but that's the thinking, right?

[00:06:27]It doesn't matter that D or G or C is not in the key, the prevalent key. It can be used as transportation to where I'm going. C is also the three and A flat, the key that we're in today. Um, but it's also the six in E flat. So, you know, I might explore a progression like that in the key of of E flat. So, back to our key. We're in the key of A flat.

[00:06:49]What is he doing? Now, there are two ways to look at this. We can call this the two of C minor because we're temporarily borrowing these chords from another key. Right? So the two of C minor or we can think in terms of our prevalent key. Right? We're in the key of A flat. 1 2 3 4 5 flat the five. And we can say ah this is a flat five. All right. So that's D minor 11 on the flat 5. Taking us to what?

[00:07:16]And look at his melody. His melody is on G.

[00:07:21]Right. So that's the chord that's going to be on the the G melody note. So he goes to G7 flat 9 sharp five. Right.

[00:07:30]This is the one. This is the seven of the chord. This is the three. All right.

[00:07:36]And then what you have left is pretty much a would be the nine, but it's a flat. He's got two A flats in it. And he's got a a D sharp. So he's flatted the nine, but he's sharp the five, right?

[00:07:52]And beautiful chord there. So you he goes from D minor 11 to that G alter chord. I'll just say that for short. And then he's back to G because the melody to God be the glory. So even though it's going back to the G because his chord is moving, he's doing he's borrowing a progression from another key. So by the time he gets there, that's the that's going to set him up for the C minor 11.

[00:08:17]So it's the same kind of chord as the D minor 11, just down a whole step, right?

[00:08:23]But he voiced it here. Why is this a C minor 11? That's the one. That's the three of the chord. That's actually the 11. That's the seven. That's the nine.

[00:08:34]And you got the five way up here. So also I could bonus principle. you know how much real estate you're taking up.

[00:08:43]He's from this C down here all the way to this G up here. Now my beginners, I mean this is something that you have to stretch, you know, like even here, this is a 10th interval, a minor, but it's a 10th and then you know these are lush voicings, right? So all while never sacrificing the melody.

[00:09:05]So the first two principles, number one, never sacrifice the melody. And you clearly see that. So in your kind of homework, right, just being at your piano, you can ask yourself, you know, what voicings can I come up with that keep the melody on top but do interesting things? And you can always look at the circle and say, what takes me to where I'm going in a counterclockwise direction. I'll put the circle up on the screen. And you can always back up a level on a circle or you can back up two or three levels on a circle. Jason backed up two levels, right? He knew he wanted to go to C, so he backed up on the circle and G took him there. But then he also said, "Well, what could take me to G?" Well, D. And that just so happens to give us one of the most popular progressions, a 251, but it wouldn't be native to A flat.

[00:09:53]That's why it sounds so different, but then it sounds so good because he didn't sacrifice the melody either. I know a lot of people that might throw in chords and sound all crazy, and you see these clips all over social media, but where is the melody? Right? So when that melody is preserved and you can come up with crazy stuff, now you're thinking like the mind of a musical gospel genius. Right? So that's secret number one. Number two. All right. The third thing I can derive from what Jason does is he uses altered substitutions for added dissonance.

[00:10:27]Right? Most people on this chord [music] would just play it as a sus chord.

[00:10:33]Right? This is an F7 sus4.

[00:10:36]Now it wants to be an F7. But what you do, sus chords, they remove the third of the chord, right? What is the third of F? It's it's A, right? 1 2 3, right? But you replace that for the four. And that's why you get a sus four. It's suspended. It has to resolve. If you just got up off the piano, people be like, what's going on? And this one just has the the dominant, right? It's dominant as well. And that resolves down. But that's not what Jason does right now. What Jason does in addition to all this lushness, right? [music] He does this one.

[00:11:13]What is that? Right. So this is like a F7 with a flat nine. It's got a flat five. It's got a sharp five. So it it's like it's like a flat N. Sharp five, flat five. I would just call it an alter chord. Like the alter chords. Here's the secret with them, right? They're either altering the fifth or the ninth. You know, they're typically dominant chord.

[00:11:38]So, you know, you're going to have a dominant shell, right? Which is the one and the flat 7 of of a root. And then [music] it's just a matter of is it going to be a flat N sharp five? Is it going to be a flat N flat five? Is it going to be a sharp nine, sharp five? Jason just has a combination of a flat nine, but then he's also got a flat five and he's got a sharp five. So the more you have of this, it creates a a crazy level of dissonance. But see, that's the name of the game. That's what makes other musicians like, "Oo, what?" Like that stank face. Right now, I would say Miss Betty, you know, Sister Sister Jones may be like, "I don't know about that cuz she just wants to hear Sister Jones just wants to hear just that, right?" But, you know, so it just depends who your audience is. But you can add that extra dissonance. And this is how he he voices it. Okay. So, let me do just a basic version of of these chords up until now.

[00:12:34]And then let me do the mind of a musical genius. Right. So, to God, [music] that'll be the regular chord, right? And then you might go, right? Just regular chords.

[00:12:45]And then you might you'll sus it right there, right? Because that wants to come down. That'd be the level one, right?

[00:12:52]Da. I wouldn't say level one, but just a just a decent thing. Right. Now, here's the mind of a musical genius. All right.

[00:13:05]But the melody was never sacrificed.

[00:13:10]But we just took every normal chord you would do and replaced it, right? The only normal chord was probably the start. And then this melody note got a D minor 11.

[00:13:23]That melody note got an alter chord.

[00:13:26]What I say flat N.

[00:13:28]And then that's a C minor 11. But it's it's pretty spread out, right?

[00:13:36]And then if that weren't enough, that flat N sharp five, flat five, sharp this, sharp that. Right? But that's that's how it works, right? So happy to give you this glimpse into it. So that's secret number three. Hey, really quickly, if you think this video is good, you've seen nothing yet. I want to invite you to our gospel music training center. It's our educational platform for musicians who want to really learn and master gospel music. We're the longest running platform for gospel music on the internet, having started August 2000, over 25 years ago. And all of our material from day one is in the Gospel Music Training Center. You can learn how to play praise, worship, shouting music, devotion, hymns, CCM, urban, choir. We've got everything in there. And most importantly, you can learn the language of gospel music in our flagship course, Gospel Grammar System. So, head over to hearandplay.com/gosspelcourse [music] or click on the link in the description to check it out. We're currently running a $1 trial, so you can actually get in the platform and start learning right now before the monthly membership fee is even due. Don't put your dream on the back burner another day. Join the Goss Music Training Center today. All right, secret number four. Jason likes to use these diminish halfstep movements on minor chords, right? And if you know anything about diminish, they're also related to dominant chords, right?

[00:15:03]There's a diminish in every dominant chord. So when you break those things apart, you can do some really interesting movements. And Jason does just that. So when he's done with this chord, then he's got that alter chord.

[00:15:14]Then he goes to God. Then he goes right. That's pretty crazy, right? So he's on a minor chord, right? To [music] God. That's the melody. But while he's on there, because you're on there for a while on the left, he's doing this, right? Which reminds me of a walkdown video that I did a couple months ago on the walk downs. Right? Remember we Right? That's basically what he's doing.

[00:15:42]He's backing up. He's on this B flat, but what he's about to do is actually based on F, right? And if you look on the circle, where is F in relation to B flat? I bet you it's in music's favorite motion, as I say. Right? So this whole lick is kind of based on backtracking to that F only to come back to that that B flat, right? Instead of just hanging out there. So when he goes, I hold that down, but then he goes so he meets that B flat, right? If the left hand is going, he meets that B flat [music] with that. But what is that?

[00:16:21]See, when you're studying things for musicians like this, you have to ask yourself, what is that? What is that the hint of? Right. Many musicians can go all their life doing things like this or picking up stuff on Tik Tok but not even realize what it is. It seems like a diminish to me. Right. I I feel like I could add that tone if I wanted to.

[00:16:42]Right? Which is a tritone. What are tritones? They differ by three whole steps. Right? That's a whole step.

[00:16:49]That's another whole step. That's the third whole step. Try. Right. which are a part of there's two tritones that make up every diminish chord. It gets real deep, y'all. And this is not one of those videos where I'm breaking every single thing down. It is an advanced concept. We're just trying to get a few nuggets here and there that we can apply. But when he goes here, right, you can either do that or you can add that for some body, right?

[00:17:17]So you can see this trionee here. It can come down to the trionee just a half step below it. Or you can just leave it alone. Don't do that extra note here and just go.

[00:17:29]So he went right G, G flat, E flat, C. And that set us up to get back to the B flat. We're still on the B flat minor, right? We're just playing with this diminished stuff, right? Which if you put that, right?

[00:17:46]This is really the chord, right? It's this it's an F7 flat N right you have to what we call imply that that F is there whether it's being played or not it's there is from whence this comes right so okay which is the same thing if you wanted to that's the chord right if you wanted to fully play chords or something like that and be the glory so again if I'm applying in this. I'm like, okay, well, if I'm on B flat minor, it seems like I can do a diminish, but that E doesn't sound right. So, I'm going to take the second highest note out, right? And I'm going to play it like this. And then I'm just going to go down a half step, right? If I'm doing full chords or I can go F is the actual chord, right? It's just a F7 there. And then he does, right? So, or I can do what he did.

[00:18:50]This is a nice voicing of like a D flat minor 6, right?

[00:18:57]And then he just takes [music] that to an E flat major chord, but it's doubled up. The G's are doubled up. All right.

[00:19:05]The fifth prince by derived from this is that he borrows a similar 251 to the C that he did earlier. But because the melody changes, you get to see how he changes his chords to adapt. So we know the melody now is going to [singing] God be the glory. Right? So this to God, he's still going to go D G C straight off the circle. Look at the circle of fists. I'll put it up. Where's D on the circle? Where's G on the circle? Where's C on the circle? Right? But remember when he did that earlier, it was to God and he went [music] that was be [singing] the glory, right?

[00:19:47]So melody was be the glor.

[00:19:50][music] Now we have to [singing] God and he's going to God. Right? So, same type of progression that circle I'm telling you one of the uh most profound things you can learn is how can I use the relationship of keys on that circle moving in that counterclockwise direction to put these things together while never sacrificing my melody. So, I will alter things or pick the right chord so that that melody is always on top. So, we know he's not going to do this again because that doesn't work.

[00:20:23]But the bass is very similar. So, he's going to go to [music and singing] God.

[00:20:29]And I can almost stretch that left hand.

[00:20:31]That's like [music] a perfect 11. If you can stretch, I'm barely there. But you don't have to hit that. You can hit the C and then follow through with it. And actually, it's on your your right hand anyway. You can just hit C's at this point, right? But what's leading us there is this two, five of of C. That is, right? And then so it's sus because there's no three in it, right? Do you see any E's in this chord? Search around. I see a bunch of Fs. Fs is the fourth. And you can think of it as the 11th as well. Four and 11 pretty much the same in terms of key notes. Like they're both Fs. I don't see any E's here. But what does he do? He resolves this chord.

[00:21:13]You see E now? How many E's? We we went from no E. Now we've got two E's. But this is a very similar chord to that other dissonant. Remember that secret I said he loves to use alter substitutions for added dissonance. Well, what do you call this? See, this is that same type of chord. C7, right? That's the That's the one. That's the three or the 10. That's the seven.

[00:21:39]That's the three again. There's a flat five. There's a sharp five. And then there's our root again on top because it's the melody, right? So he goes from this big sus chord, right?

[00:21:54]Alter chord, but it's a dominant, so it resolves.

[00:21:58]Right.

[00:22:00]And then that that takes us to this big minor minor 11 here. Now, in terms of the A flat scale itself, I know I call this 251 to the C because we're borrowing that outside of the key. But if I wanted to think of this in terms of a flat, right, that'd be the flat five 7 3 six. So flat 57 3 to 6 to 2. Crazy. Now look on the circle and tell me where the flat 57 362 is. They're all neighbors. This is the secret, right? You mix melody with alter chords. You mix alter chords with circle of fifths, circular movements. And now you're closer to that path of genius mastery. What is he doing? That's flat.

[00:22:53]Five, seven, three. If you can stretch three again, six, six. Now, so now we're at the two, right? But we're at like a sus two because we're getting ready. This is the kind of two.

[00:23:12]When you hear this, you know the five is near, right? So what is this? This is a B flat sus 4 or B flat 9 sus4. That's the B flat. That's the one. [music] That's the seven. That's the five.

[00:23:25]That's the nine. That's that sus tone.

[00:23:28]That's the five. That's a seven repeated. That's the melody. That's the nine again. But there's no three in this chord. That's why it's a sus, right? The four is being replaced with the three.

[00:23:39]We need a D. Okay, so that's the next secret. All right, secret number six.

[00:23:45]Jason likes to use sus chords that resolve two dominant chords, but he likes to use this little cluster thing in his left hand to do the resolution.

[00:23:55]Let me show you exactly what I mean. So when he goes to [music] be the glory, right?

[00:24:08]right here.

[00:24:11]Right? [music] So, this sus doesn't have any threes of B flat.

[00:24:16]Right? We're looking for a D to make this a dominant chord. Right? Now, it's just suspended. It's hanging out, right?

[00:24:23]It's got some E flats, the four or the 11, which is what creates the sus, the suspended sound, right? But we want this, right?

[00:24:34]So what Jason does is he [music] takes his left hand, right? He's got the one, a B flat, and he's got the seven, specifically the flat 7. And he'll go a half step below that and play this cluster, you know, and he's going to walk down the B flat scale till he gets to the tone we want, right? Cuz remember, we don't have any D's in this chord. We've got all E flats. [music] We're sus right now, right? So he's going to start here cluster like this little cluster right at it and he's going to come down the B flat scale and then that's how you're going to get the real chord. So that's the sus chord. I'm going to hold it right [music] B flat uh sus 9 [music] and then that's that's when this the left hand is basically playing the shell of of a B flat 7. Now the right hand is going to go from this C, E flat, F, A flat, and C. But once he does this E flat, all E flats better change the D's if you're resolving, right? And that's that's one of the secrets, [music] right? Sus.

[00:25:47]You just practice that stuff like this, right? Sus chord, [music] Jason White movement. All right, just do that over sus chord. Jason White cluster. All right, sus chord, [music] Jason White cluster. Right.

[00:26:04]And then again, he's back to that similar voicing of the D flat minor 6.

[00:26:09]It's just stretched out. Okay, so that was principle number six. Principle number seven is he likes to use these harmonizing sixth intervals on the minor scale. Let me show you what I mean.

[00:26:25]That cluster thing, right?

[00:26:28]Then he goes, so what is he doing? These are six intervals, right?

[00:26:38]Six intervals.

[00:26:44]And then he changes there.

[00:26:48]Then over E flat, right? So I'll hold these down for you.

[00:27:00]Same ones going down. This one's different.

[00:27:05]And that's on most of those are on that D flat bass.

[00:27:10]And then here then we're back to the beginning, right?

[00:27:15]to God.

[00:27:19][music] Alter to God.

[00:27:32]Here we go, man. [singing and music] Stretch it.

[00:27:39]Then he ends it like here.

[00:27:42]And then he goes right, never sacrificing the melody. Remember he did that before, but this time around he's going so turnounds. And that is the last secret that we'll derive at least for this video from Jason White and that's the extended 251 of the two. So he does that next part as I demonstrated in the last segment which has a lot of repeating parts but at the end for the [singing] things which he's done that melody before but before he did it it was more like right but a totally different intent there.

[00:28:31]Right now it's so it's right. So here this is a C7 sharp nine sharp five. So we're talking about a a nice alter chord but on the right it looks like a cordal chord. What are cordal chords Germaine? They're chords built on fourth. See that's a fourth.

[00:28:51]And if you look on a circle of fifths these are also neighbors because the circle of fifths circle of fourths opposite directions of each others. B flat to E flat is a fourth. E flat to A flat is a fourth. And so, uh, here we get a cordal chord, but we put that over this 10th interval on our left. So, that's what Jason's doing there. And you put this all together, you have a nice alter chord, right? You can learn this in all 12 keys as well. And then then that that's an F minor 11. So, [music] from this C altered F minor 11, which always looks like a major chord.

[00:29:28]Minor chords will look like major chords. Major chords will look like minor chords. Dominant chords will look like diminished chords. They they're all what we call polycordal. They're poly chords. They're many things within them.

[00:29:41]Right? So when I look at a minor chord, I'm starting to see the m this F chord here. I'm starting to see the making of a major chord because if I extend this to F minor 7, I can look at this as a flat major over F. You know, for my theory heads, F is the relative minor of A flat as well. I [music] can extend this chord and now I'm it looks like a flat major 7 on my right, but when I add it to that relative minor base of F, that gives me F minor 9. As I keep extending this chord, see on my right, it looks like an A flat major 9, right?

[00:30:18]Straight [music] through textbook. But when I put that over F and I can add the seventh, now it [music] becomes in totality an F minor 11. And that's what he's doing here. So from the alter chord, F minor 11.

[00:30:32]All right. So what is this monster of a chord? I love this one. Right. It's got a lot here. It's definitely a dominant chord, but what kind? So we got our [music] B flat as our one, right? We could put this this like a a sharp 11, right? Because the 11th is the same as the fourth tone of the scale, right? But it's sharp here. All right?

[00:30:56]It's got a a nine. It's got a three.

[00:31:00]It's got that sharp 11 again. It's got a 13 and it's got a nine up top. So this is a B flat 13 with a sharp [music] 11.

[00:31:12]Whenever you hear that, that's very jazzy, right?

[00:31:18]Sister Jones might be like, "What you playing there?"

[00:31:21]Um, and then that takes him. Uh, so and then you you resolve this that sharp 11 wants to come up to the five, right?

[00:31:37]And then you sus out the five. Just a basic sus. I hold it down. Right.

[00:31:44]E dominant 7 [music] sus 4.

[00:31:51]Love that ending chord. All right.

[00:31:54]That's just E flat dominant with a flat five.

[00:32:00]That's the five. Right. [music] Right. And just bring that to a flat.

[00:32:11]>> [music] >> All right, I hope you had a great time breaking down eight concepts from a musical gospel genius, Jason White. We covered some good stuff here. And I realize if you're a beginner or starter, this may be something that's just way over your head. Tons of alter chords and dissonance and tritones and this and that. And so this wasn't meant to be a lesson that maybe everyone will be able to understand, but for my advanced folks, I want to throw you something out there. And it was a good opportunity to reach back in the past, you know, sanca as they call it and grab something and bring it to today with the thinking that I have today to be able to break that down that my 20-year-old self was just happy to be there. And now I'm looking back, I'm saying, "Whoa, these are the things. I can see how that works after I've studied 20 more years of theory and things like that. So just bringing you both worlds." All right. I hope you derive some benefit from these principles that you can apply to your own playing and at the very least just thinking differently. Wayne Dyer said, "If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

[00:33:23]Now, if you're a beginner and you got to the end of this video, I do want to invite you to our chord workshop. It is specifically for beginners where we break down basic chords and patterns and tons of songs that follow these same patterns. Believe it or not, you can learn four chords and it'll take care of some of your most favorite songs like he's able and what a beautiful name it is. Here I am to worship. I give myself away and we cover it on this free public workshop. So you will walk away with those songs [music] in your pocket. And if you really want to go deeper, you want to access some of those older DVDs like Jason White's DVD where he covers this not only with a bass player, he covers it by himself with a bass player.

[00:34:02]Mike Burrell, we've got David Jackson, we've got Eddie Brown. We've got some of the West Coast greats in the Gospel Music Training Center, as well as JP, our director, who's got 20 years of content week by week in the Gospel Music Training Center. So, I want to invite you over there at hearandplay.com/gosspelcourse.

[00:34:22]And of course, if you want to check out the workshop, that's at hearandplay.com/gosspelworkshop.

[00:34:29]All right, so I'm going to get out of here, but I hope you guys enjoyed. And until next time, remember, if you can hear it, you can play it.