First Study Instrument Keyboard

9-Chord Exercise

The 9 Chord exercise is made up of the I, IV and V chords within any scale. The purpose of this exercise is to play each of these chords three times each, using the 1st, 2nd and 3rd inversions of each chord, so your fingers are not moving drastically between each chord progression. You should play each exercise both ascending and descending.

This will aid you when it comes to understanding your inversions of each chord, along with improving your ability to improvise within a piece of music or within a band situation.

You should play each tonic triad (Chord) with your right hand, with your left hand playing the root note of each chord only.

You always start with the root position chord

What is a chord inversion?

Every tonic triad is split into the 1st, 3rd and 5th degree of the each scale.

So C Major is made up of C, E, G.

To invert this chord, just move the first degree note to the fifth degree note.

So C, E, G is the 1st inversion, E, G, C is the 2nd Inversion and G, C, E is the 3rd Inversion of the C Major Chord

Example:

The C Major 9 Chord Exercise consists of:

C Major (Chord I)F Major (Chord IV)G Major (Chord V)

The inversion pattern will be as follows:

C Major (Root Position/ 1st Inversion)F Major (3rd Inversion)G Major (3rd Inversion)C Major (2nd Inversion)F Major (Root Position/ 1st Inversion)G Major (Root Position/1st Inversion)C Major (3rd Inversion)F Major (2nd Inversion)G Major (2nd Inversion)