 Hi guys, this is Jason here from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, I'm going to introduce you to five really awesome challenges which you are going to do with yourself in a very very simple environment. You just need a keyboard, a book, a pencil or pen or whatever or in some of these challenges you don't even need a keyboard. You can do it wherever. Now what are these challenges aimed at? They are aimed at a three-dimensional growth for you as a musician at any level and what do I mean by 3D or three-dimensional, I mean theory, year training and technique. So in these challenges, you're going to be able to grow your technical skills on the piano, you're going to get rock solid, you're going to also train your year to be aware of certain things and you're also going to be training your music theory. This is also a great challenge to also perhaps see where you stand, how much you want to push yourself and what parts you're wishing to cross as a musician and the way I generally look at practice is always start with a technical goal with a need to accomplish something but then always try and be creative, try and make that practice session into a song. Try to compose something inside that particular practice time, whatever you have and what I like about these five challenges which I'm giving you are they're going to work on every aspect of piano playing, every aspect of theory and every aspect of year training and there's also going to be rhythm, pretty much everything. So five challenges or five exercises, whatever you want to call it, you can do this whenever you find time on the piano, even 10 minutes is fine and I would also encourage you if you have a friend or a family member at home who also play an instrument, you can also do this with them. It's a nice way to kind of challenge each other as well. So before we get started it'll be great if you can hit that bell, hit the like button that'll be awesome, hit subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and you will get regular notifications as well when new lessons keep dropping your way. Another thing which would be awesome is if you can support us on Patreon and for this particular lesson I'll be giving a lot of exercises which will be hosted there. We don't have that much time in this lesson to go through all of them so they will be waiting for you on Patreon to practice and the notes for this as well as whatever we have done in the past and are going to do in the future. So the Patreon subscription is $5 a month, we also encourage you to do like a yearly subscription thing that would also be helpful, you'll get a good discount as well. Let's get cracking with the five challenges I have for you. Challenge number one is to work on chord inversions. So what you want to do with chord inversions is randomize an array of chords. So an array of chords could be written down in a piece of paper. Let's say I have B flat, E, A and D flat written down on a paper. Now they have nothing to do with each other. They have nothing diatonically to go with, right? So you need to now play those chords. Let's say you start with B flat in the first inversion. What's the next chord? You'll have your book. It says E major. Now how do I play E major from here? There we go, yeah, interesting chords. So you go B flat, E, then you go A, D flat. Again, B flat, E, A, D flat, F major. Then you could have another scenario, maybe F sharp minor, B minor, E major and A major. Let's see how that sounds. F sharp minor, B minor, E major, A major. And to make the chords more interesting or more professional, you could play their roots in the left hand. So F sharp minor, B minor, E major, A major. And to make things even more challenging for yourself, you could try and ensure that you use the correct inversions. In fact, this exercise has to use inversions. And a great way to ensure that you use inversions would be don't look, put on a blind fold or whatever you want to do. So in this case, trying to close my eyes to play those respective chords, which is F sharp minor, B minor, E major, A major. And then keep challenging yourself or if you have a friend, you can say someone tells you D flat major, D flat major, F sharp minor, F sharp minor, D major, B flat major, B minor, E flat major. If you want to train dominant seventh, fine, E seventh, C minor seventh, D minor seventh, flat five, F sharp dominant, B minor, B flat minor, C major, D major. You can just go on and on doing this exercise. And in this case, I'm telling myself a chord and then playing it. But another interesting or a more grueling experience would be you actually write down a string of chords, let's say about eight chords or start with four, or start with two, then go to four, then go to eight. You could even use a randomizer function using a simple Excel sheet or something like that. Anything which just randomizes data for you. And hopefully that can also be of help, okay? So you need to be able to basically do inversions blind. That's challenge number one. Moving on to challenge number two. So with challenge number two, what I want you to do is basically take a song which is very familiar to you. Let's say Mary had a little lamb or three blind mice or happy birthday or twinkle twinkle. You know why I'm saying nursery rhymes, but something which is familiar to you, what is the most familiar tune which comes to your head? So let's say it's twinkle twinkle little star. So what you want to do is not play a lot of piano for this. So if you just go and touch, let's say C, that is the only information the piano is going to give you. Now you have to sing twinkle twinkle little star, not by going twinkle twinkle little star. Now that's going to sound ridiculous. So what will sound even more ridiculous possibly for people around you would be if you sing this with note names. So that'll be C, C, G, G, A, A, G, F, F, E, E, D, D, C. Okay, so that's C major. Now what if you want to sing twinkle on E major? Give yourself that one ingredient which is E. I'm assuming you watching this, you don't have perfect pitch, neither do I. So I rely on the actual sound E and now try to sing twinkle, but with these actual notes. So E, E, B, B, C sharp, C sharp, B, because E major has a sharp, four sharps. A, A, G sharp, G sharp, F sharp, F sharp, E. It's a bit annoying to say these sharps, but you can simplify it like G sharp or C sharp. For C sharp, it's easier on the tongue I guess. So E flat, E flat, E flat, B flat, B flat, C, C, B flat, A flat, A flat, G, G, F, F, E flat or B flat, B flat, C, B flat, E flat, D, B flat, B flat, C, B flat, F, E flat, B flat, B flat, G, E flat, D, C, A flat, A flat, G, E flat, F, E flat, whichever song you're trying to do. annoying initially but it really gets your head to work and you can do this or you should do it away from the piano. Another nice thing to do is get yourself like a tuning application, a simple tuning app which gives you a tone or a sound and then choose that to maybe G and then sing your song, let's say B, A, G, A, B, B, B, A, B, A, B, D, D, A, B, B, B, G, A, A, B, A, D. So you have that tuning app always ringing the G. Now if you are an Indian train musician, a karnatic or a Hindustani train musician and you find absolutely no sense in this, then do the same exercise but do it with swaras, do it with normal intervals or if you are a solfege-trained musician, you can do it with solfege. Solfege would be Dore Mi Fa Sol La Ti versus in India, the swaras we have here pretty much across the country in the classical music realm would be Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni, that will be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Sa is 1, Re is 2 like that. So then you go, you give yourself an F and then you go, Sa Sa Pa Pa Dha Dha Pa Ma Ma Ga Ga Re Re Sa and that's Twinkle with Swaras and then if you'd like to also challenge yourself in the western way, F F C D D C, B flat B flat A A G G F. And if you'd like to take this challenge into like overdrive mode, what you could do is do it on the minor. So what you want to do is sing your favourite song but convert it to minor. So what was once F F C C D D C, B flat B flat A A G G F will now be F F C C D flat D flat C, B flat B flat A flat A flat G G F. What did I do there? I sang, I sang Twinkle on its minor, on its what we call as parallel minor. So this is another nice challenge which I think will really help you grow as a musician and it's going to really train your theory and your year. It's like you're just thrown into the pool to swim. You know you have to somehow figure it out. The piano is a little bit of a spoon feeding instrument for your year and for your theory because you see everything. You don't get that option when you play the flute or the trumpet or the violin. Inevitably those sort of musicians tend to get stronger years. They tend to be a lot more confident about their notes. I want you to be confident as well. Let's move on to Challenge 3. So Challenge 3 is based on cadences. You take any two chords. Let's say in this case C 7th going to F, C 7th going to F. Get used to the chords. Now here's the challenge. You write down any two notes from the chord. So in the case of C 7th I'm going to say E. I'm just nominating a note. So C E G B flat is C 7th. I'm nominating E. Where's that? No I can't play it. I'm not allowed to play it. That's the problem with this or the challenge of this exercise. So I'm nominating E. Write that down. And for the F major chord which is F A C. I'm nominating F which I'm not allowed to play. Do not play it. Okay. So you go C 7th. Play the chord. Your job is to extrapolate or figure out a way to bring out the E. Which is E F. Got the challenge I hope. E F. It's very tough to get a note out of the chord. And this is very important for your harmonic ear training. So E F. Now what if I want another option? B flat going to A. B flat is part of the chord. A is part of the next chord. So B flat A B flat A. What if I want a G going to F? G F or C. You can do so many permutations or G. Another nice thing would be if you do B flat. The note B flat going to A. That will be B flat A. You could also do a nice if you're a bit more advanced musician. You could go B flat going to the A. So what I sang there. B flat. You do some fun in between B flat to A. But all roads eventually lead to A. So you have to find a way to jump away from that B flat. When you're about to go to the A. To find a way to somehow go there. So phase one could be just to get a note out of the chord and sing it to the next chord. And I always encourage students to do it with two chords. Don't do it with one. Always do it with two. And then after that try to figure out a melodic way to go from one note to the other note. So this is challenge three. Have fun with that. Let's go to challenge four. So with challenge four it's primarily to train your ears, your theory as well as your technique. So what you do is let's say you take a note C. Now I'm going to tell you to sing A flat. Now that sounds a bit tough. It sounds a bit weird. He's asking me to sing A flat. I don't have perfect pitch. So what's wrong with this guy? Not really. I'm teaching you actually relative pitch. This is a challenge for relative pitch where you play C. And now if you have to sing A flat which I'm not going to allow you to play here. I'm just showing you A flat. The note is right there. Do not touch A flat. Only play C. C. Now the first thing you'd like to do is understand what is A flat. A flat is a sixth. So the challenge here is you are going to sing it and then play it. So if you go C, where is the C? Because A flat is a sixth. See if it feels good. And now whenever you feel it's absolutely right. You play and then I seem to be right. That's a good thing. Now let's say I go to F and you want to play E flat. So before playing E flat what do we do? We have to first sing E flat. E flat is the seventh. So what seventh? Major seventh or minor seventh? It is the minor seventh so. Only once you get it are you allowed to play it? So there we go. Minus seventh from F is E flat. Now if you take let's say a B and now you want to get it's perfect fifth or I want to play F sharp. So B F sharp. Because I know it's a perfect fifth. Some intervals are easier than the others like the fifths and the thirds. You can also do octaves. D D. That's quite easy but you can try. Okay. Now can you sing me A D from B flat? D is first of all a major third. So understand that theoretically it's theory first. Major third. He's asking me to play a D which is a major third which is also the G of the Swara. Now check your answer. We are right. So you are not allowed to play that last the target note until you have sung it. This is a great way to match pitches which I do till this day. So that's challenge four. Have fun with that. We have one more challenge for you before we move on. So challenge five is rhythmic. So what happens is you need to kind of mumble a rhythm. Just try and create a rhythm. Just using like dab, dabba, dabba, dab, dabba, dab. You know any sound or you can even create some kind of percussion. Maybe let's go with something like dum, dabba, da, da, da, da, da. So again slowly. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. So again slowly. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Internalize that. Then if you can. This is if you can notate it. Notated using staff notation or figure out a grid where you can somehow write it. So one and two and three and four in the talk, the 40 and a so prom, da, da, da, da, da, da. Dumb. Now what is the challenge? Take a minor pentatonic scale just because it's cool and play notes on that rhythm pattern. So if you say F minor pentatonic which is so what's my rhythm now it's you don't have to just play one note you can do so that's the challenge. Challenge number five is bring out a rhythm with your voice or your body with some percussion and transcribe it if you can in some way or the other in some written form and then play it on a minor pentatonic scale because it's a very cool scale it's like an anything goes scale riffs will sound great using that scale so will melodies and so on. So those were the five challenges guys challenge number one to really randomize your chords and master your inversions challenge number two is to sing melodies using their names note names or Swara names challenge number three is to take two chords together a cadence and try to bring out two notes of one note each of each chord and sing it one note and sing that and the other is an interval challenge where you play one note you write the next note but don't play it unless you have sung it correctly simple 3d interval workout and last but not least your job is to come up with a rhythm transcribe it and then play something on the piano. So these are five challenges which I think will really help you grow as a musician or just feel like you're always in the zone or in the moment or in the hunt as an artist you know and there are a lot of challenges which musicians face in our careers we have to play with others some of whom are more established than us some of whom are we've never met before we also need to record things in a studio let's say with many people watching and or we may be doing a gig you know so you always need to be in as they say tip-top shape more mentally than physically if you ask me so the whenever you are given a job you need to be able to execute it at the word go as a professional musician so I think these things these exercise will always keep your brain active you know and agile to tackle another challenge which you're going to do in any case right so these are just five obstacles which you should you could keep doing along the way so I hope you found the lesson useful again do consider checking out our patreon page I've given a few more challenges a few more exercises have been notated hopefully you found all those things useful and I will see you in the next one cheers