 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this Christmas piano lesson, we are going to learn Feli Snavidad by Jose Feli Siano. A popular song around the festive season I am sure. And I am going to teach it to you in a slightly different way than it is normally taught. I am going to teach you the song in five ways. We are going to do some very groovy genres. It is a groovy song. It is a wishing song. So we will do the lesson as follows. We will first start off with the melody. I am going to teach you the tune. It is on G major. One sharp. F sharp. I will teach you the melody. Then we will go through the chords. And then we are going to develop solo piano arrangements on five genres as well as one bonus one. So do stay tuned till the very end and get yourself a copy of the staff notation which is available on our Patreon page. Along with the staff notation, you will also get MIDI files, you will also get backing tracks and not only for this lesson, you will be getting supplementary resources for pretty much all that we have been doing and will ever do on YouTube. And it will be awesome if you could consider hitting that subscribe button and turn on that bell icon for regular notifications. Let's get cracking. First off, the melody on G major. So I will just play you line by line. Get your keyboards out. It might help. And stay tuned till the very end because the chords are going to come in, the rhythm patterns, the genres. So do stay tuned. You might want to pause the video and get your keyboards out and play along with me as I am teaching. So first let's do the melody with a simple pulse in the left hand and a good note to play is G. So let's just look at G major. G A B C D E F sharp G. One sharp. Namely F sharp. E F sharp E D C B A G. So let's just look at the melody first. We need to note that the melody starts not at the one beat but a bit later. So one and two and three and four and one two three four and then a long gap. So Feliz starts at one two Feliz Navidad Feliz Navidad. Let's just do that package one two Feliz Navidad Feliz Navidad. If you read music, you can see the notation Feliz Navidad Prospero año felicitando. One more time and you can look at my fingers. I am starting with my index finger on D that would help. And then Feliz Navidad. You can use your pinky for that A Feliz actually pinky for both the top notes G and A. So let's do that together Feliz Navidad. And if you want to count this one and two and three and four and one it's starting at the end of the beat number two of the bar which seems to have four beats and two and three and four and one two three four wait Feliz Navidad two three four wait. So it's pretty much the same rhythmic figure. So we are going to fill those gaps with our left hand with a lot of interesting rhythmic options. 1, 2, 3, 4, wait, 1, 2, 3, 4, wait, so now moving to the third line, you can probably cross over your index finger, or you can use the thumb for both notes. Up to you really, the fingering is pretty easy for this melody. Let's do that again and I'm just maintaining a simple pulse and it's about the right time to introduce you to the chords, but without us actually playing the chords, let's just do the roots of the chords. So even if you are a beginner watching this video and if you don't know how to actually play a full on chord with inversions and patterns, you can get by by just playing the root. So I'll just walk you through the roots, that's a C which is the 4 chord of the G major. Eventually form a C major throughout our over our lesson, Feliz Navidad to C, D, Feliz Navidad back to the tonic, E minor, added an E minor, Feliz Navidad C, Prospero D, Feliz C, 2, 3. Let's do that whole story again. Feliz Navidad C, 2, 3, 4, D, Feliz Navidad 2, 3, 4, E, Feliz Navidad C, Prospero D, Feliz C, 2, 3, 4. And then the next increment or the next pattern would be just to play a pulse in the left hand, this will be a good opportunity to start working on the hand independence before the genres come into play. So 1, 2, a good way to develop the pulse is move your head to the melody while you're playing it. You may not even want to play anything but maybe do an iteration just with your head counting the pulse. 1, 2 and exactly what this head is doing, you're going to transfer it to our left hand with what? The chord roots of each of the chords. So C, D, maybe E, Feliz Navidad C, Prospero D, you can stop there. 2, 3, 4, stop like it is in the original. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, Feliz Navidad C, D, Feliz Navidad C, D. So that's about the pulse and for those of you who know your chords or at least the chords without inversions, just the root positions of the chords, at this stage you could probably play the root chords, the root positions of the chords in a block shape or in a block style and just follow the pulse and a D, E minor, C, D, G again, C and D, G. This is where inversions will help you because otherwise you have to keep staring at the left hand in order to figure out where exactly to go, which is the next chord root. So if you master your inversions, Feliz Navidad C, now D, nothing in common, you can probably play G major like this, sounds better, Feliz Navidad C, Prospero D, G. If you don't like blasting the chords so aggressively on the pulse, maybe you can do it as minims, which is one chord every two counts, Feliz Navidad, E minor, C, D. So this is a good way to kind of prepare us for what's to come, the five plus one genres. So I hope that's cool, let me finish off the second part of the song as well, we've not yet said we want to wish you a merry Christmas, which is a very important part of the song. So let's do the B section as we call it, so it starts at the end of beat one. So what's happening there, the figure is, you don't play at the one. So a lot of these off beats and it in fact starts at an off beat, it starts at the end of beat one and even Feliz Navidad, if you remember earlier, one and two, Feliz it started at the end of the two and now I want to wish you, I want to wish, that's what makes it very interesting if you ask me, I want to wish you a merry Christmas and I want to wish you a merry Christmas and the rhythmic figure is the same, so if you can just kind of get this into your system, with a snap, it's pretty useful to snap at the two and the four, not I want to wish you, it feels more like a hard rock song or something, so to get the groove into our system, it's always good to sing it and snap it or clap it at the two and the four of the bar. I want to wish you a merry Christmas, something like that, I want to wish you a merry Christmas, I want to wish you a merry Christmas, I'm the bottom of my heart. Okay now let's bring the melody into the right hand and my general strategy to develop hand coordination, especially when you're doing melody in one hand and chords with a pattern in the other hand would be, first focus on the foundation, which is the chords with rhythm, whatever rhythm you're going to play and sing, make sure you sing the melody before you actually bring it out there. I want to wish you a merry Christmas, I want to wish, now this is a bit tricky, so first get this, I want to wish you a merry Christmas, I want to wish you a merry Christmas and once you've got that into the system, play it a bit slowly, figure out where the off beats are, in the off beat you'll know when it's not, when the right hand plays something which the left hand is not playing because the left hand is on the pulse, I want to wish you a merry Christmas. If the pulse is tough for you at this stage, just go back to the semi-brieves with chord roots, G, C, D, G and C, D, G, okay I've added some interesting chords at the end, I've added an E minor, A minor, D, G which serves as a nice cadence to kind of resolve back to the tonic, I'll just walk you through that, so the chords are G, I want to wish you a C major, I don't want to wish you a C major but that's the chord, G, I want to wish you a merry Christmas, C major, D, I want to wish you a merry, that's G major, now E minor, I want to wish you a merry Christmas, that's an A minor, from the bottom D of my heart, it's a nice progression, what is that progression in the key of G, very popular pop cadence, even in jazz music we use that, it's a 6, 2, 5, 1, pump, pump, pump, pump, knows every jazz song, knows every pop song seems to have this sort of motion, so that's about the melody, I hope you can now play the melody with the chord roots or block chords, if you need some time maybe you should pause the video, practice it a bit and then watch the genres, so now let's focus on the genres, so the first style or the first genre we are going to learn on the piano is the march and how it works is just like people marching, left, right, left, right, now if you want to get a nice marching pattern without the melody in the right hand, this is what you do, you play the root of the chord in the left and you play the actual chord in the right and you go march, left, right, another way to practice the march would be um pa, um pa, um pa, you can say um pa, okay but now the challenge is I have to play the tune there and I have to still create this marching feel, so to do that I'll have to convert that entire pattern to one hand, how do we do that, I'll play it once and then let's see what's going on, there we go, you see that so the left right nature or the marching nature ended up being a chord, I'm taking a chord let's say G major here which is the first chord, actually C major is the first chord and if you go first note which is the root and the upper two notes, the remaining two notes will be the pa, um pa, um pa, so this would be at beat one for now, that would be at beat two and then beat three and beat four and to get a nice marching style it'll be good to do the um like the word um, um, longer, legato and pa, choppier, staccato, so um pa, um pa, um so don't do um pa, um pa, um pa, no one's gonna dance if you play it like this, so um pa, um pa, so a nice ideal, so the ideal way to play is with a combo of legato and staccato feel, so legato staccato, legato staccato, instead of saying legato staccato it's just easier to just say um pa, face navida and as always let's follow the process of singing, getting the pattern then bringing the melody in the right hand, feliz navida, feliz navida, e minor, feliz navida, prospero anio felicida and goes on till the b as well, i wanna wish you a merry christmas, i wanna wish you a merry christmas, i wanna wish you a merry christmas from the bottom of my heart and if you have a song you want to play over the season which i'm presuming is feliz navida, since everyone wants to play this you might as well grow as a piano player rather than playing it in one standard safe way, so these are gonna be five plus one very scalable technique, so you can play it pretty much for a lot of material, okay let me play the melody now, remember sing and then play, so i finish singing now i'm playing feli navida and e minor, feli navida, prospero anio felicida, one more time slow it down, feli navida and e minor, the second time he goes it's a nice variation feli navida, prospero anio felicida, that's the first time, feli navida, prospero anio felicida and it works for the whole thing, i wanna wish you a merry christmas, i wanna wish you a merry christmas goes on, so that's the marching pattern moving on, so the closest rhythm i think will follow up after the marching style would be kind of a spanish style, so it's what i call or what we all tend to call as the flamenco technique, so let me play you the flamenco technique, it's pretty easy it just adds one extra chord, so let's see how that goes, as you can see the music is getting very groovy at the moment, there we go, so what's going on here, one and two and three and four, so that offbeat is at the end of the three, one and two and three and four and one and two and three four and one and two and three and four and one and feli navida, prospero anio felicida let's speed that up, feli navida, oh, oh, feli navida, feli navida, prospero anio felicida and as always we now try and attempt the melody, the same melody and as the genres go forward you'll find that you need to work a bit more on your hand independence, so you can also watch a few of my other lessons which just focus on the problem of hand independence, we leave some videos in the description, at this stage you may even want to consider do I want to play the melody higher or lower, maybe you like it, you have a good vibe playing the melody one octave high, chords one octave high, chords one octave low, where it used to be, you never know, so you have to decide your preferred octave, that might also help, I'm just going to stick with what we started with feli navida if you know a song on minor, this flamenco technique will work pretty well flamenco is more on minor but I'm just calling it flamenco because of the rhythm pattern, right, so I hope you enjoyed that genre flamenco, let's now move into style number three, so for this genre we are going to need to do something to the melody at a global level, we are going to need to swing the melody, so what that means is so that's swing, what's happening here is if the beat was divided into two units, one and two and three and four and the ands are going to get displaced ever so slightly to the swing feel, so what was once this will now be that, so one and two and three and four and one and two and three, so one and two, feli navida that's the swing that's your swing feel as opposed to feli navida, that's your straight right, so straight and swing it's a nice strategy to maybe take a song which was one straight and then try to swing it like I don't know that seems pretty straight right, so so you can pretty much swing anything and it gives you a song of very drastic change if you ask me you know you know okay I'm not going to go on and on with more songs this is a Christmas lesson remember, so to establish reggae that's one thing you need to swing and then we come back to our good old marching technique, our first marching technique and it's actually going to be made easier because you're not going to play anything at beat number three, what was the march again, just that right, while for reggae you're just not playing the beat three, let me show you and I'll give you a variation as well, the variation now because we've created that room right, so one and two and three and four and one and two and three and of the three and on of the four two and three and four and one and two and four okay let's start with the basic reggae and then the modified reggae, keep it simple if you want don't do that offbeat pattern, lot of Bob Marley songs just pretty much go pretty much that, so you don't have to do that additional swing hit which I gave you, so that's about reggae let's now move on to genre number four I'm just going to call this the dance genre, so if you want people to dance or if you want it to sound like it's played in 2023 maybe this pattern will help you out, so the pattern goes and there are two variants depending on your skill level on the piano, the first version would be what we call as the thresio, thresio means three hits so it's a very common salsa rhythm which we use very often in dance music, so the pattern goes one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and and the challenge here is to go one and two and three and four, what's very important is the end of the two needs to be staccato two and three and the on of the four can be legato one and two and three and four and one and two there we go one and two still four four just the feel has changed to thresio moving on you a merry christmas now the thresio to be a bit more dance here than this instead of going one and two and three and four and one and I can do one and two and a three and a four and a one and I can do 16th notes which divide the beat into four units there's a lot more off beats in there right there we go maybe sing it one and a two I want to wish you a mess this would be a more 16th note thresio you see the the voice and the piano at least the right hand of the piano and my voice whenever I play or at least work on solo piano arrangements I try to equate the right hand with my voice whatever comes out of my voice if ever it does it has to also go here or vice versa they are they're the same thing the hand is an extension of your voice so if you think that way practicing the piano becomes very process driven and I think process driven is a lot more fun than result driven result in the sense you want to play felice navidad but you don't you don't ask yourself how should I play felice navidad should I play it with all these bells and whistles or should I just play it to please someone no should play it to primarily please yourself so you should find a process which works for you and a process which also helps you learn other songs which I hope you will after watching this video so let's revise the two dance forms once more first the slow eighth note variant of the thresio let's try the fast one think come to think of it the a section you should play the slow thresio and the b section you should play the fast thresio let's see how that works felice navidad slow thresio chorus so I think that works well or you can flip it around so tell me what you think in the comments after you've tried this out and also which pattern you have ended up preferring or choosing for this Christmas season or maybe you can do one pattern this Christmas and another one next Christmas if you want and you can always share your performances with me I me and Nathaniel school we have Instagram account so you can always tag either of our channels or both and we'll be happy to go through it and even share it we we love to share our students performances so you can record it tag us it'll be a lot of fun to listen to you playing this piece as well so let's move on to pattern number five I'm going to teach you probably a genre you've all heard and arguably the world's most influential genre the blues so let's try and play felice navidad in a blue style and I'll give you two patterns two simple base patterns which I think will serve you well so one pattern would be you take every single chord in the in the music and let's simplify our chord progression to just G major C major and D major chords because that's what blues does it just does one four and five we don't need the six and the other minor chords in this in this rendition so if you are on G major instead of playing G major in some pattern you go the blues way and play this sort of a pattern so it's one five intervallically from the chord and one six intervallically from the root of the chord so that one five of G would be G D G E sorry one five would be G D one six would be G E and then you repeat that one five one six one five one six and of course without stops this is your pattern this could be used in twelve bar blues or it's in this case going to be used in felice navidad why not so felice navidad now here navidad I want to go to C there because that's my chord so go to the root what is one five one six of C C G C a that's a bluesy rendition and because it's blues we tend to also swing the music so instead of going actually that's also nice so if you play blues which is traditionally swung make it a bit faster and play everything straight don't swing it tends to become rock and roll or you can go back to the blues maybe for the B section or the same A section I'll give you another blues pattern which is more of a bass line that's intervallically one three five six five based on each root so this will test your independence I presume a little bit so I don't know which one I like better so might as well use both in this blues version so one is a very traditional piano blues pattern the other is more a bass guitar pattern which is brought to a piano piano players played very often as well so I can't finish this lesson without one more genre from my part of the world so I'm going to just call this an Indian style or an Indian rhythm style and to generate anything which sounds Indian or maybe eastern you know stuff you might find from the Middle East or India the subcontinent in general we use a lot of triplets the time feel is generally triplets so what happens with the beat it gets divided into three units two three four one two not it has one and a two and a three and a four so so if you get that vibe we are not going to play all those triplets you know I'll also hurt your hand you know which none of us want so what you can do is just break up your chord one and two and three and four and don't swing it you might think that Indian feel is like swing it's not really swing because there are a lot more permutations than normal swing so this could be a good pattern that you can consider playing you can go one and one and a two and it's like a thresio but a triplet version of the thresio one and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two and a two and a three and again you have to work on your independence this this could be a good pattern to work with one and a two and a one and a two and a ta ta ta ta ta ta ta one and a two and a three right guys so we've covered Feliz Navidad in five plus one genres I hope you enjoyed the lesson and I hope you found the lesson useful do consider getting the staff notation on our patreon page it's available as a midi file as well as a downloadable pdf and you can also consider hitting that bell icon and hitting the subscribe button for regular notifications we have a lot more Christmas tutorials we've put it in a playlist so do check that out in the description you can learn a bunch of songs so if you have any song requests it's probably all in that playlist and we'll be doing a few more Christmas lessons as well and you can learn in-person classes with Nathaniel at any given point maybe you want to sign up for a course sometime soon or in the new year you could consider filling up a form in the description and our course advisor will reach you you can also visit our website nathanielschool.com for course details thanks a ton for watching the video and here's wishing you and your family merry christmas and a happy new year cheers