 Hi everyone, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson I'm going to give you an idea to take a tiny fragment of a melody. It's not going to be like a full melody. You may think of it as a full melody but I just think of it as a small tiny fragment which you could be honestly all the five melodies which I'm going to give you in this lecture just happened out of nowhere a stroll in the park you know while walking my dog or while having lunch or having a shower or brushing the teeth you get the idea. These come very organically and then what tends to happen with me is I try to capture that idea in its most organic form which is singing. So I would hum some tune a short fragment onto my cell phone using the voice notes application whatever comes free and then I listen to it back and see if I like it if I want to use it or improvise on it or try and recreate it on the piano or one of our principal instruments whatever you play well. So this is going to help you play the piano with a lot of harmonic flavor and melodic movement where the melody which appeared to be very simple but that is like a seed isn't it it's like a seed which looks like nothing great but then it builds into something huge that the big tree and then the fruits and whatnot. So you need to understand first of all that whatever comes to you most naturally needs to be respected you need to capture that and what I generally believe is you need to feel like you're a vessel for that idea when the idea comes by you you need to catch it or the idea will just go past you and just fly away like air you know. So you have to catch the air or breathe the air and music at the end of the day is air molecules vibrating at the end of the day. So these things come to us whenever they do and I would always encourage in today's day and age we have these modern gadgets which can record things anywhere. So you have a phone wherever you may be you know just hit the idea. So all these ideas which I ended up coming up with never happened on the piano. Okay so the one you heard in the intro was one of them and now I'm going to get started. So every idea I give you I will give you the basic idea but then I'm going to embellish it a lot. Okay so let's first look at all the five ideas how to play them we'll count them correctly the notation is also written that note that the last one is on three four. So there are five ideas lot of them are on four four the last one is on three four first let's learn them let's identify the scale and after all of that we are going to take it to town and really go forward with it and like I said most of this came organically with the singing so I will leave the singing files as well in the Patreon page along with the notation and my handwritten notes so that will help you as a year training practice as well you can probably transcribe it on your own and then you know don't watch what I'm going to tell you now because what I'm going to tell you now will be to kind of spoon feed you into learning the melodies so if you want to train your year the source original melodies with me singing will be available to you on Patreon and those are in fact voice notes which I told you at the beginning how I came up with it so you may hear a little bit of disturbance here and there because I'm moving around my house or I'm outside but you'll get the gist of the idea you'll get the scale and so on and so forth so let's get cracking before we do it'll be awesome if you could hit that bell and hit the subscribe button if you're a regular viewer if you've not viewed the channel that much then do consider staying tuned to the video to the end get your pianos out that'll be helpful and if you like what you watched or learnt do consider being a part of our channel by hitting that subscribe button the advantage of hitting that button is it will get you updates and you'll know when we post something when we give out new information when we are releasing a series or whatever it may be any of our channel updates will come your way and we don't really spam we just post our content right let's move forward so I'm starting on C counting it as 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 okay and a nice base to serve this would be I'm thinking of it as an A minor so I'm going to play A in my left hand so a good way to start off is to pulse it out in the left hand one two three four with that tune three four if you're not getting the pulse that well you could just hold A as a semi-brief if you wish or maybe minims slightly tricky in terms of coordination if coordination is a worry just hold down the A for the whole bar so that's melody one let's learn melody number two so again eighth notes we go one and two and three and four and one and two and three that's the end of the one and two and three and four and one and two and so it's a two bar phrase the cd e d a f e and you can hold down your c you can see the notation and play it higher if you wish so it's a two bar phrase in in comparison with the first one where I played over one bar now on C major scale that's melody number two now onward to melody number three melody number three is more on a minor again eighth notes one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four again two bars of music one and two and three and four and one and two watch out for the ends and two and three and four and one and two and three again if if you're not getting the pulse it's okay you can hold it down but you need to count one and two and three and four and one I've kept the notes easy on the fingers it's just the first four no crossing no crossing needed that's your melody three play along with me if possible we are going to learn these melodies and after we do that we are going to take them to town to make them a lot more interesting okay moving on to melody number four so small variation it's still on the minor key okay so I'm adding this flat seven here so you could argue I'm on the C minor scale or the natural minor scale with a flat seven so let's see how it goes so I fingering these five guys middle or I think the middle works good or you could do index and then bring back the thumb that's melody four and now for melody number five it's on a three four so I figured that adds a fair amount of variety for this lesson study the first one was on a very one bar phrase next we did it C major then we did two on C minor with two different complexities one with without stretching or crossing the other with crossing now let's do a three four tune so I like the scale also it's the C Dorian scale with a raise or a natural sixth and flat three flat seven e flat b flat and a natural so this includes a good array of notes now I'm playing like a traditional waltz rhythm to motivate you to get into that three space or else just get the pulse I like this scale it gives you a very Celtic folk kind of vibe you could do this pattern and now moving reverse that's your melody number four melody number three of course I'm doing some embellishment for fun but you get the idea melody number two simple two bars and now moving on to melody number one just one bar now I've given you I've tried to make it a variety but I didn't try too hard because while thinking of this lesson over a couple of days a lot of these tunes just came organically to me and I just wanted them to be a variety of scales and to my luck it happened so you have something on the minors you have something on Dorian and of course our good old friend major and for those of you who have been complaining sometimes in our comments this whole lesson is on the key of C for those of you enjoy C have fun enjoy playing it have some chips and a coffee if you wish but because it's not going to come your way very often on our youtube channel I like to explore a few more scales just to get your fingers working on all the different keys all the different notes and all the different shapes so now taking each of these melodies I have a few ways once I come to the piano after having learnt it fairly well to a basic stage or after having transcribed it or notated it I'm ready to play it I have some basic coordination of my hands now let's take it to town and make it well perhaps into a finished product into a complete song we'll talk about chords we'll also talk about changing the melody to serve the chords build chord progression so this is the next part of our lecture so do stay tuned stay tuned till the very end so if you take that first tune now remember I told you it's kind of on the A minor scale so why not consider planting an A minor chord or play an A minor there or play it higher or low could even play an A minor spread or closed how to play the A minor chord I'm not going to get into some A minor has to happen so now check this out if I dissect this melody I'm starting with C which is a chord tone of the A minor chord isn't it so if you look at this A minor chord here A is the root C is the middle one or the third minor third E is the perfect fifth or the top most note so it's kind of starting on the C so this gives you a nice roadmap for variations so the first variation I have for you is to keep the same melody going don't touch the tune just observe the chord so the landing is C it kind of goes with A minor now you ask yourself which other chord in the C major scale has a C I'm sure you'll I'm sure you'll be thinking out C major that kind of works which is the Roman one or the one major or so you could just keep the same melody and different diatonic chords so A minor C major kind of works then again I'm starting on C F major has a C in it there we go so it's a good way to kind of milk the same lick or the same phrase which you came up with organically it's a good way to kind of make it into a journey make it into a story make it run longer or last longer so A minor C major it's F major come to think of it the landing note is the last note of the melodic phrase so see that that's A so why not figure out chords which land on A A minor of course why not or maybe D minor works really well and it starts with a minor seventh with respect to D so creates a very nice mood you get that B which is also major six making it kind of like a minor sixth chord and a minor seventh chord so you're making the harmony very rich just by playing a triad in the left hand so that's D minor D minor now just out of curiosity I'm now playing F major which also lands on that A but that B is a more uplifting uplifting sound it's a lydian note it's a sharp four as we call we all argue the tritone is scary and wrong and banned in various societies but it sounds beautiful if you ask me it depends on the context so I have A minor C major F major D minor and maybe a diminished even the diminished chord works because this could imply a minor seventh flat five which uh which has that landing A so in other words every chord diatonically seems to work how how does E minor sir not too bad a quiet taste G even though there's no landing notes kind of leaves you hanging in the balance so diatonically on C major you have C major D minor E minor F major G major A minor B diminished C so you could choose these chords or the extensions the seventh chords play the melody to serve those chords and explore so the exploration now comes in your left hand in the chord hand as you're supporting the right hand so diatonically and be a bit curious also to go out of scale you know see if there are some chords which you know you just play but it serves the same melody like maybe I don't know that doesn't work so well now I'm landing on A why can't I try D major check that out that becomes D major the results to G well and then that's an E7 so even these chords or some of them which are not even part of the scale can land and maybe use that lick and then just play a long note which will be like the main word of your lyric as well maybe change that it's a bit weird but building something I think F major E so it forms like a E augmented shape doesn't it or E7 sharp 5 okay so that's why that tiny tune which you you know probably just came up with while brushing your teeth could could become now this is just the tip of the iceberg there's a lot more but I'm going to keep it very short and sweet in this lesson if you're interested in more studies around songwriting and composition in general and melody making in general do check out our channel you can visit the YouTube Nathaniel school channel and you can browse through a lot of our content we've segregated it in playlist or even better you could head over to Nathaniel school.com we have a section called free tutorials where we've categorized all our YouTube lectures by levels by topic by you know detail whether it's a theory lesson whether it's a year training lesson and so on we also have structured content where if you'd like to do a full-fledged course with regular lessons and with updated content you can go over to the members only sections of our YouTube channel or our website either which way you could get access to structured regular content you can also do a course at our school where we cover a lot of these things in person with me or on zoom in the online world so coming back you have I'm going to just fix the same melody and then fool around later with all the other melodies kind of organically but I just wanted to take this simple one so you get the concept and then we can do it further for the other stuff so the next thing I'd like you to do is actually change this melody but do not change the shape of the melody so the way I like to think of this melody shape is this is the worm or the curve right coming down going up coming down even more down you can see the shapes in my notes if you wish now I'm starting on C and if my target chord is A minor I look at this A minor chord and I say C is the middle note of A minor so it works well what if I start on E which is the fifth note of A minor which I have the license to do and follow the same melodic shape which will be now you have the same harmony same same chord but a different melodic flavor kind of making a longer tune now we've started on the third we started on the fifth of the chord why not on the root of the chord if you don't like the land which is a bit mysterious you can do resolve to the one below or the nearest note diatonic shouldn't be non-diatonic make it on the scale which is A minor so that's the default starting on A root keeping the same melodic texture I'm harmonizing because both the tunes are there they are super imposed so play the higher one now do this with some of the other chords which we agreed on earlier let's say F majors your chord and one is I start on F and then well that works perfectly and then what's the other one D minor G the two things which held its ground or did not change throughout this demonstration was the rhythm pattern of the melody tongue tongue tongue tongue tongue one and two and wait and then there's a tie right the other thing was the text the contour of the notes the melodic curve as I call it la la la la la that shape high low same etc that shape is also mentored but what has started changing first off our chords because we have the license to change chords over that tune second off we had to the license to change the tune itself but not change the rhythm pattern or the melodic texture or the contour of the notes we just changed it based on the chord tones on the 1 the 3 and the 5 of the chords which we figured works with this tune in any case just starting on different chord tones and see how that goes that'll add another good amount of variety so I have one more final way to make this concept a lot more exciting so using chromatic intervals chromatic intervals a fancy word a simpler way to explain that would be whatever you want just move to whatever note you want but retain the intervals retain the texture or the contour of the note so I'm just going to demonstrate a scenario where my chords are a minor which we identified works now you go to the next chord and a good year training challenge would be to actually hum the tune on the new chord versus that's a third of a minor now c e flat that's a third of c minor so new chord e flat minor and then maybe f sharp minor let's put that together so a minor c minor e flat minor f sharp minor I listen to a lot of movie scores and because I watch a lot of movies so I guess that's how these cinematic chord progressions come into play I've done a lot of lectures on this actually which use the circle of fifths you can look for mysterious chord progressions you'll find that in the description also how to use the circle of fifths for a lot of chord progression circle of fifths for chord progressions is a very good topic it's a it's something I keep learning till this day so do check out some of the additional lessons in the description so we go now original c minor there we go I've kind of transposed it to the next chord if you will so and we've also kind of moved scale a minor has become c minor then that become e flat minor that becomes f sharp minor so I'm just for this lecture I'm choosing a minor c minor e flat minor f sharp minor so I call this the diminished family of minor chords so it's forming a nice diminished seventh very familiar on the year but very different sounding because it's not diatonic so let's see how it goes a lot of these chord movements so that's what I mean by transposing chromatically so you're changing the melody based on the chords based on the chord tones and you can move any chord to any chord also if you wish if you combine them well if it's tasteful if you like it why not or stick to the diatonic realm which is just on a scale be it major or minor let's now try and fool around with this concept on the other melodies which I taught you so melody two was change the chord works for for all the diatonic chords as usual now let's move around the tune start on the third works so you need to find the pattern that's one two three four steps or intervals one two three two four three so if you take it on g or you can even do as long as you keep the contour changing it around but even kind of take just the chord and start with the first note of the chord now it becomes more of an exercise but I'd encourage starting something like this so if you don't like major you can make it minor you're just adjusting the intervals to make it minor but again you're retaining the the melodic contour so let's fool around with melody number three so we have one two three flat two three four three two four three two one sorry I can't explore all the chords of the minor C minor in this case C minor D diminished E flat major F minor G minor A flat major B flat major back so as always for any tiny melody we make seems to be a fact that almost all the diatonic chords seem to work so now let's try exploring chord tones that's the starting on the root C let's look at D flat stick on the key of C minor don't don't do unless you're Dorian because that A would make it Dorian variations it's a good workout on the fingers as well then it's almost a song right there you do C minor G minor G minor F minor chromatic movement there we go so that was melody three then melody four we ended up doing pretty much all the chords work one five four three two one seven flat root two seven flat one transpose or accordingly okay and then the three by four melody five C Dorian on three four sometimes if you get lost while by the intervals just feel it just see where it takes you you know because the texture is already in your mind don't think of it as an exercise as well that's another important thing by watching this tutorial you need to use it in your own way so sometimes if you get lost here and there it's a good thing yes write it down record yourself playing you never know what you know gold you might strike by playing on the piano so be aware of the situation keep a recorder always handy so in a nutshell we've taken five distinct melodies tiny fragments as I call them which at least I came up with very organically just by singing here and there in and around where I live and then we notated them we learned them on the piano we figured out which scale could work with them and then we had different layers or different levels of melodic movement to create bigger longer melodies with more harmonic movement and more more emotions and actually telling a story with that tiny tune so the approaches first of all were explore different diatonic chords from within that scale be it major minor Dorian write down the chords see which ones work with that particular phrase or that lick identify the scale that's very important and then get the chords around that then within the chord you have three notes so see how you can reshape or restructure the melody using the same curve but starting on different notes and last but not least we took it to a very chromatic world where the scale doesn't even matter it's just one chord and you find another chord which goes very well with the first chord and then just play a chord progression in a very cinematic way if you think about it right guys and before I conclude a quick reminder that all of the notated melodies along with the naturally sung organically created phrases of mine are waiting for you on patreon if you'd like to practice transcribing it without you know going through that earlier part of me training each tune try to listen to it and try to write it down that might help as well you can write down even the swaras or you can write down the actual notes right cheers stay tuned follow our channel regularly and we will catch you in the next one cheers