 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson we are going to look at another creative way to practice your scales be it major or minor and also look at a very important technique which you need to practice on the piano and hopefully this gives you a different perspective a lot more creative options and will take your playing forward to the next level Right and this is part of a three-part series So if you haven't already do head over and watch part number one where we talk about Expanding and compressing the hand, you know, which gives you a lot of creative options and it's a very important technique in this video We are going to look at crossing over Okay, crossing over is a very important thing for the piano player because our keyboard is just one line of notes right unlike a guitar where you have six strings and when what happens when you run out of data You just skip to the next string. Isn't it because the guitar is tuned in fourths or in in one instance in thirds So whenever you run out of finger Stretch whenever you run out of fingers You just use the next string and the fingers just go down on piano. How do we do that? We can't you don't have another piano to latch on to That may actually be an interesting idea. But anyway, we have left with this So crossing over is very important. The first thing you need to practice when you cross over will be to move like this Okay, just get used to this motion So if I just keep my hand here on the piano, use your thumb and your wrist so your thumb sort of goes under the fingers and Then you push the rest of your hand to go this way And when you come down The other fingers go over the thumb and it comes down this way This is how you descend and this is how you ascend sort of like a moonwalk of your fingers if you will Right, so this is ascending and when you do all this fancy stuff Make sure you don't move your elbow at all. You don't need to move your elbow doesn't help at all Okay, so it may look like I'm moving my elbow, but actually I'm not I'm just moving my forearm Here you go. This is what's happening. I'm sweeping the piano. The elbow is close to the body. In fact, it's touching my my stomach Right, there we go. That's how you go. Okay, so the exercise basically grows This way and this way. So this is your E. We're taking E major scale As well as maybe E minor Sometimes we forget to do minor in an exercise. We just keep doing major, you know So we'll just do both so the exercise is basically what I call as the pendulum exercise Which allows your hand to move this way as well as this way what we call as the positive y axis and the negative y axis So let me show you what's going on and then I'll explain So what is happening here? My thumb is on the root in this case E of the E major scale and My index finger plays F sharp, which is one step up Then you come back to the root and Play D sharp so E F sharp E D sharp and even though you can use other fingers I would recommend that you just practice with your index itself Index going to F sharp index going back down to D sharp E F sharp E D sharp like a pendulum, right? Speed that up if you'd like That's one up one down motion Then you could also do two up to down motion. How will two up to down motion work? That's E F sharp G sharp coming down D sharp C sharp D sharp E repeat Now when you descend You can cross your middle finger, which is nice Then index slips there But then your thumb gets a bit sort of cluttered and this muscle starts hurting a bit, right? So you go Take the thumb away and bring it back another thing which students do would be index thumb Index and then bring back the thumb that could also work well So practice both perhaps D sharp with your middle or With your index and then the thumb needs to produce the additional C sharp, but it's still in the pendulum motion So one up one down Two up two down the pendulum continues Basically, how much is it going to go till you run out of fingers in this case? My pinky is the last finger. So the next objective could be three up three down That's ma a Now when you cross over I feel it's annoying to cross this ring finger. So cross your middle finger instead D sharp C sharp B C sharp D sharp E you bring back the thumb because you don't have enough fingers So you have to come back the thumb and then bring back the thumb to the root But the motion is still pendulum Okay, come back to the root and it's also important to know that it's creating like a triplet feel or a six by eight feel One two three four five six one two three four five six So it's good to keep that in mind because you're counting in sixes rather than maybe in fours if you will So you go one two three one two three one cross over the middle finger Index thumb index middle back to unity back to root. Okay, so that's three up three down last but not least We have the four up four down Now with four up four down you may be tempted to cross the ring finger Because then it brings back your thumb But again if you want to avoid the ring finger, which I feel is a little annoying you could cross the middle on the way down middle index thumb Index thumb there's a little more crossing going on here Back up. Let me show you that again in slow motion So middle need a index thumb back to index Middle thumb So four up four down again, you can look at it as 16th notes One e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a one e and a two e and a three e and a four e and a one Then one up one down Look at it as eighth notes or 16th notes Two up two down. It's just when you do three up three down We look at it more as triplets One triplet two triplet one now with the pendulum now that you Accomplished, you know one up one down two up two down three up three down and four up four down Well, the first thing you could do is try the same procedure out on the minor scale of the same key. So E minor in this case e harmonic minor with that D sharp so And every scale is gonna pose new challenges But it's pretty much going to align like this Your thumb will anchor and then everything floats this way of the thumb and the other side of the thumb And why I think this is very important when you're you know a new comer to the instrument Especially or even someone like me who's been playing for a while is because it trains your ear and your mind To react to data this way as well as this way when we practice our scales like this We are training our mind only going positive axis above the root or the saw We are we are kind of programming ourselves to believe that there may not be anything below the saw right? So what if the the scale started on the root? It can even go below the root can go above it can go octaves skipping So there's so many things which can happen, right? So So that's basically the pendulum exercise and if you can at the end of Exploring the major as well as the minor Versions of the pendulum you can start jumbling things up You know and defy the laws of physics if you will with the pendulum You can maybe consider going to up and one down or maybe one up and two down So if I do two up one down two up one So sorry, guys, honey, right? Sorry, guys, change the rhythm or maybe one up to down If you get the idea, right? Can then do three up two down three up one down and see what it can Eald right and this is where the pendulum exercise I hope will actually allow you to be creative improvise and create a song creative melody of your own while doing it Right guys, so this was the pendulum exercise to explore scales Both creatively as well as technically I hope the creative aspect is to travel both parts of the y-axis Which is very important around the root and the technical aspect is to practice Crossing over the thumb which is very very important for any piano player because our instrument is Linear it's just one line just one string if you will there no you can't skip and play the next segment Right, so moving on to part 3. We are going to cap this series off with the third Very very important approach towards practicing scales both creatively as well as technically I will see you in part 3 Till then if you haven't already Subscribe turn on the bell leave us a comment if you'd like to learn something else and keep rocking cheers