Transcription
Practicing 251s is an essential part of developing your toolbox as a player, as a composer, as a musician in general. So, let's talk about what a 251 actually is.
Take some key C major. The two chord [music] is D minor because it's the second chord in the diietonic set. The five chord is G major because it's the [music] fifth chord in the diietonic set. And then the one is C major because it's tonic, the first chord. By diatonic set, I mean you're building thirds based on the scale. C major doesn't have any sharps or flats. So, it's just all the chords that naturally happen if you just stack thirds in a C major scale. Okay?
So, a 251. You can add sevenths to it. D minor [music] 7, G7, C major 7. You can navigate through all the keys and just go one at a time, but you can mix and match in a really interesting way. Take C major, our tonic chord. [music] What are the other notes in C major? Well, there's E also. So, what's a 251 in E major? [music] Well, it's F sharp minor, B major, B7, and then E. So, you can be playing along in C major. But instead of going back to C, you can do 251 [music] and pivot to E and finish somewhere completely unexpected.
What's the other note in that C major chord from beginning? So C, E, and then G. What's a 25 one in G? Well, A minor, D [music] major, D7, and then G. So you can do the whole thing. You can start in C. Do a 25 one, [music] but don't finish. Pivot to E, but don't [music] finish. Pivot and [music] go to G.
You can keep playing around with this. You can take instead of [music] going to the G chord, you can pick any one of those notes in G. You got G, you have B, you have D. pick any note and use that as your arrival point and do a 251 in that in that key. And what you end up doing is you end up meandering through various places until you settle on somewhere that you want. And it's kind of a really easy and fun way to challenge yourself and just keep playing these 251s rather than just going around the circle of fifths like you would normally do in a standard practice session. Try it out for