 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson we are going to learn probably one of your favorite songs by Brian Adams if you've heard it already. If you've not, it's going to be an exciting piano lesson for all of you watching it to improve your hand independence, to understand the theory of chords which are not really major or minor. We are going to look at the suspended chords used really amazingly well in this song and a lot of other stuff along the way, a good fingering pattern to improve your strength and of course the hand coordination no doubt in different ways with accents and with pulses and so on. So with this lesson there will also be notation, there will be my handwritten notes as well available for you on Patreon so do consider heading over to our Patreon page and for a $5 subscription you will get the notes for this lesson and pretty much everything else we will ever do in the future and have done in the past. And before we get cracking it will be great if you could hit that subscribe button somewhere there I am sure you can see it, hit it right now and there is a bell icon as well, hit that as well for regular notifications which will give you updates whenever our channel releases a performance, a riff or a lesson or a song tutorial and whatever else we would end up doing on Nathaniel's school's YouTube channel. So let's start. So the song I am going to first show you the two chords which are used in this song at least in the main hook or the main head of the song where he goes So that part we are going to learn and we are going to develop a lot of stuff to improve your hand independence and fingering along the way. So the first chord would be a D shape but the way it is played in the song is it goes D sus 2. Now D sus 2 let me just walk you through what a sus 2 chord and what a sus 4 chord is. A sus 2 chord will have the root, the perfect fifth which is D A just like a major or a minor chord. So if you take D major take D minor there we go. So a sus chord will have the fifth but it will not have the third neither the major third nor the minor third. Instead the third will get changed to the major second which is just next to the root here. You can also call it as Sa Re in Indian music we say Re. And then you still have your Sa Re Pa 1 2 5 and then you will have your sus 4 chord which is Sa Ma Pa what's the Ma now the Ma is the fourth interval fourth scale interval or if you know your intervals well it's the root the perfect fourth and the perfect fifth that would form the sus 4 chord. So sus 2 sus 4 and in this song by Brian Adams there's also the third the major third in this case which will be used in tandem with the sus 2 and the sus 4 to create this beautiful riff for this nice set of arpeggio phrasing. So with these chords you also need to understand that you can invert those chords. So if you take the suspended chord which is D E A you can then invert it by going D A D or you can do A D E. So in the song Brian Adams uses that inversion which is an inversion of the sus 2 the reason I still call it a D sus 2 is because D would be in your bass it could also be looked at as an A sus 4 but then A is not in the bass right. So a sus 2 a sus 4 are related to each other they are inversions of each other so just to walk you through D sus 2 is the same or has the same notes as A sus 4 and there's one more very interesting inversion what we call as the quartal voicing you do D E A and then if you start with E you will get E A D this is a beautiful voicing there are videos of this which we've talked about on YouTube to talk about quartal chords and a lot of the other not so normal or not so commonly used chords you have in music. So we are using this voicing and building the arpeggio and the arpeggio phrase is very interesting because you might think it's a triplet pattern which is something like this but at the end of the triplet pattern we go 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 so if you brush up your maths or if you already know this maths it will be 4 3's or 4 3 patterns 4 3's are 12 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 so 3's are over or the triplets are over which is why a lot of the students who I've taught over the years even some of my bandmates call this a triplet pattern for some reason and I try to correct them with students you can with bandmates sometimes it's a bit tricky and some of you may know why so you go 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 so the fact that there are two hits or groups of two at the end of the cycle does not make it a triplet phrase it makes it an accented semi-quaver phrase so that would end up being 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 so if you add that up 3 4's are 12 plus 4 equals to 16 so 16 semi-quavers or 16 16th notes will make up a bar of 4 beats so if I count that for you 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 right you can count it it's it's very much a 4 by 4 song but the accents or the phrasing of the arpeggio is not normal in the sense it's not one two three it could have so easily been like this this doesn't make it unique and interesting right two three rather boring one so what we have in the song is one two one two you can count it in a lot of ways but I guess the better way is to count it as these accented groupings 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 and in India we have phrases which are used for our rhythmic language especially in south India we have a language called conical which essentially gives you rhythmic syllables or words which don't become tongue twisters like saying one two three one two three one two three which at least I can't say so we have a we have a couple of phrases so for three you can say ta ki ta so I'd like you to try that out I'd like you to try saying it before you actually played and keep your pianos out while you're learning this lesson it will really help and stay around till the end of the video don't don't leave it short in midway because the theory stuff is now but the actual playing and the technicality of the piano is coming up very soon so stick around get your pianos out if you wish so the way I would count that is before I even start I would say ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ta ki ta ta ka junu you can say ta ka junu or ta ka dimi at the end or ta ka ta ka you can say ta ka which is two ta ka or ta ka dimi if you want to visualize that as four or ta ka junu is also works I guess so it'll go something like ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ka junu ta ki ta ta and if you see my snapping it's going two three four ta ki ta ta ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ka junu ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ta ki ta ta ka dimi ta ki ta ta ta so once you get that phrasing in your head it'll be easy to accentuate the arpeggio because when you play music like this it's not you shouldn't be counting you should be rather moving your head to the eventual pulse of the song which ultimately you want your listeners or your audience or your fans to also do so if you are not able to do that while you play the music how will they do it how will anyone you're playing for be be doing it so you have to move your body to the pulse with respect to the song so one two three one two three one two three or ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ka junu ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ki ta ta ki ta ta da dimi ta now let me walk you through the notes your left hand is going to just hold D for now and there are two chords in this part of the song you could say this is the chorus of the song where right after he sings those were the best days of my life and that's the riff which will succeed that after best days of my life so you go one two three what's the first chord it's D suspended two start starting with this inversion A D E and starting from the top so I would like to say high note middle note low note of the arpeggio high middle low that's it and then we drift towards the normal D major chord in second inversion which I start with that F sharp there so so two threes one two three one two three one two three now that's a D suspended four in an inversion so sus two major sus four major so you're doing sus two for a triplet or group of three major for another group of three suspended four for another set of three then a major chord for a set of three let's do that first okay and the very ending the takajuna will be that's e a f sharp a that would be a kind of a broken chord but not all the notes of the chord so sus two major sus four major sus two major we don't have time to play all the notes of the sus two and the major so instead we do that's the last four hits so putting it all together slowly even slower play along with me try and try to move your head along with the pulse one as you can see my head is not going it's not going with the accents it's going with the pulse which is the body's natural response even if you now go to Spotify and listen to the song your head is going to move like that so you when you play the piano your head should also move like that then you're well you could argue that you're feeling the music or you're in the zone so to speak move your head or you can even tap your foot but the thing for us piano players is one foot is generally on the sustain pedal so it makes more sense to move your head or move your body but you could also consider moving your foot now what can start happening is in the left hand we can bring out the pulse or we can bring out the accent i'm going to talk about that really soon but before we do the left hand stuff let's also learn the next chord so it's not just D major or the D shape it's the next chord would be copy paste carbon copy but from A so it'll that that'll be A sus 2 A major A sus 4 A major A sus 2 major okay sus 2 major sus 4 major 2 major it's almost the same fingers as well see you do your thumb index in middle ring for the black note pinky for the next white note so you're giving three fingers the opportunity to play those three notes so so that's the A and it toggles D oh yeah A back in the summer of D little slow and A i'm also tempted to fool around with the accents a bit because now that you know the chords you don't have to just do three three three four you can do other sorts of things maybe we'll do another lesson just on accents so do stay tuned to our channel and there's a bell also for regular notifications which it would be great if you could hit that as well so you won't miss a lesson now coming to the left hand the left hand is going to do the roots of the chords pretty much just the roots of your two chords i like to play them as octaves so that's D D and A A D D A A so what we will now do is play these chords or play the roots first off i think this will be easier for you is to hit on the accent hit point so if it's one two three one two three one two three one two three one two one two wherever you see the number one or feel the number one you need to execute that and hit only that number in the left hand or if you're counting only the thas you would need to play in the left hand and what note do we play the root of the chord let's let's do that slowly so see what's happening here at every one at every accent hit point as we call it the accented note which has that accent sign and music notation you're going to play the roots of the chord makes the song a lot more busier and in some cases also a bit more chaotic like for instance if this was not a D major chord and if it was a D minor chord the accent is used a lot in film music in scores in themes to just make it a bit more chaotic and sometimes a bit more epic and to add that drama to the music so accents number one and if you'd like you can play the accents by toggling as well you don't have to just do root and octave D you can even combine you can combine a combo or combo the root of the chord with its octave so x and all on the accents for now that's another workout more for the mind because your right hand has to keep the the riff the pumping right which is already a challenge so the left hand now has to think of the accents and you could play it DD or you could do toggle whatever works for you let's do that the accents with D and A and then let's move into the last left hand pattern which is the pulse going to a summer of 69 oh yeah all accents with some toggling there we go so check out the notes or the notation as well it'll help you out to learn the lesson you could also watch along finish the video and the notes are there so you could give it a couple of weeks if you're not getting this right now it's always fine to digest the information a bit more so the last variation for this particular tutorial would be to try and hold the pulse which is essentially what your head should have been doing all this time on the roots of the chord for now three four so irrespective of what your accent is you'd need to play the pulse so a good way to start would be say the konokol or the sedhi summer of 69 phrase do not play it say it and be able to hold the pulse then i feel you're going to get the right hand almost instantaneously you could actually start with maybe one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a one e and a two e dividing by four with your voice and then if you want say the konokol word which is now once you are done with that remember the phrase or maybe you would have got it written down in your books you can say say the thas a bit more with a higher pitch with more emphasis so you could also say thaa only loud and the other guitars can be whispered maybe that will now slowly but surely help us to get our right hand to go we're trying our best or my suggestion to you is to try and make your hand to be an extension of your voice which is an extension of what your brain wants to do in any case so you need that portal to transfer from your mind to your fingers one way people try to bypass that is to look at this hand look at this hand and then get the sync points between the two hands now it'll work for this song eventually but it'll be a fairly rigorous process if you ask me and then it may not work for the next song the advantage of doing it this way which i recommend it is you know by accenting by getting that phrase going with your voice and then executing it on the piano you're getting kind of thick skin to help you through the next song as well so the next song which might have some other random accented phrase will get a lot more easier than this so i always like to learn music on the piano so that there is some form of exponential growth which i see as i go forward so i would always recommend spend time understanding what you have to do spend time digesting the theory write it down in your book before you play and then execute and keep repeating don't just do it once and pack it up you have to keep repeating it till you really nail this stuff right guys so that was summer of 69 let's have a quick recap what have we done first we looked at the theory of these suspended chords sus 2 and sus 4 how they are different from major and minor then we looked at the accents used in summer of 69 we learned it on two chords the d chord and the a chord we figured out a nice arpeggio pattern in the right hand high middle low high middle low high middle low high middle low high low high low and after that we had two left hand variations one was to bring out the accents and the other was to bring out the pulse which is the natural response of the body to well played music and the icing on the cake would be if you can change instantly from pulse to accent that's the accent this the pulse accent if you're more ambitious you could try and get this done pulse you could also do eighth note pulse makes it more like a rock song which it is so that's your eighth note pulse which is like one and two and three and four and one two three that's the quarter note pulse that's the natural pulse acts and pulse nothing changed at all in the right hand it was only the left hand so that's how you bring out excitement and in a way make the song longer I guess then what it actually is you can play the same riff for I don't know how long you can go on and on because it's not it's not that monotonous anymore people are not only hearing the tune they're hearing what you're doing with the tune or collab how you're collaborating with the tune with the other hand right guys that's about the lesson hope you found the tutorial useful have fun playing along with summer of 69 and let us know in the comments what you thought about the lesson and do give us your suggestions it's your suggestions which are pretty much making our content on the channel so if you have anything you'd like to learn any topic do shoot that in the comments and we'll be happy to get that done for you and do consider being our patron on patreon.com slash Jason Zach where for a five dollar subscription you will get all my handwritten notes as well as the staff notation midi files backing tracks and a lot of other things and if you bump up your tire you'll also get access to to a lot of personalized workshops where you can add your own questions to it you can discuss your doubts and so on so there are lots of tires out there on patreon which might help you and if you'd like a more structured course at Nathaniel school of music you can consider going to nathanielschool.com and checking out either our six month semester programs where you learn with our amazing faculty at our school we have branches in Bangalore there's also an online way of learning so wherever you are in the world you can still learn and we also have video courses where if you are in a completely different time zone you can access some of our video content as well right thanks a ton again this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music cheers and catch you in the next one