 Hi guys this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson we are going to learn five Christmas songs and all of them in the blues or in the rock and roll style depending on how you play it. So each of these songs are pretty much blues songs in the sense that they come from that genre but they may be a bit more bordering towards jazz or pop or some other primary genres but we are going to convert all of them into blues no matter what and I've chosen some songs which hopefully won't annoy you. I'm not going to convert Silent Night or Okamali Faithful into blues or rock and roll. No we'll do songs which perhaps at least have the word rock in them for example rocking around the Christmas tree which might be a bit more doable. Okay so I'm going to give you two patterns and let's learn those patterns first. We're going to do this all on the key of G major G A B C D E F sharp G and for most of blues and rock and roll in general we just need to deal with three primary chords that would be the tonic namely G major then the dominant chord namely C major in this case and the dominant chord namely D major okay if you calculate the tonic would be the one G the predominant or the subdominant would be four which is C the dominant chord will be five which is D okay G C D G C D fair enough. So you're going to play these chords but not the traditional way we play them like rocking around or root off the red nose or we're not going to do those sort of patterns we're going to do some very idiomatic blues rhythms okay and I'm going to teach you two in this lesson but to learn a lot more on the blues there is a blues piano playlist we've attached in the description do check that out that'll help you learn blues from a very ground level taking you all the way to some very interesting rhythms and very iconic rhythms which you'll never forget you'll you know that it's there you know that it's part of the blues culture and blues is a very inspiring genre I think without it we would not really have any contemporary genre today so it's good to learn blues if you haven't already so stick around and I hope that you can perform at least one or perhaps even all five of the songs that I'm going to teach you in this lesson so before we get started it'll be awesome if you could consider getting yourselves a copy of my notation it's available on our patreon page and you can also consider hitting that subscribe button and hit the bell icon for regular notifications let's get cracking first of all the two blues patterns so if you take the g major chord we don't play it as a block gbd instead we play the one five that's gd and then the one six that's one six that's g e so gd g e and there are two patterns around this one is quarter notes or crotchets one two three four usually aligned with your head movement or the pulse of the song as you move with the music the pulse follows so one five one six and keep it nice and choppy so we are going to play some very jumpy songs so just to get acquainted with the pattern try to sing a few of the songs that we have presented for you in this lesson so you can do maybe root of the red nose reindeer or rocking around the christmas tree or jingle bells jingle bells you know i'll have a blue christmas and so on and so forth right we have or even go tell it on the mountain oh go tell it on the mountain so maybe the first line of each of these songs you could sing and keep this pattern pumping so this is pattern number one and what's going on g major chord is still in the chord chart of our song we are not playing it as like that we are not playing it as a full chord but instead of that we are playing this very iconic blues phrase which is great for the bass register one five one six one five creates a lot of movement and a lot of harmonic color okay now if you ever have to go to c which you'll have to do as well because it's all blues g c and d are going to be the primary chords move your left hand either down to c but generally i would prefer to go up to c because it's a bit higher in this case and sounds a bit less muddier so that would be c g c a that's your one five one six of c major right then you come back to maybe g one five one six when you do one five one six of the dominant chord which is d d a d b if i just 12 bar this if i do this over the traditional 12 bar blues progression let's see how that works the one chord the one the one the one and then the four chord which is the c and back to one and one this is the structure arguably the most influential popular chord progression of all time the 12 bar blues so you can modify this slightly by doubling you can perhaps play every hit twice you can establish those eighth notes now so to do this one and two and a good technique for your wrist and your your arm in general would be try to move your arm forward and backward as you're playing and also try to bounce your wrist this way you're kind of distributing the energy to the entire arm your arm your hand won't feel the strain only in the wrist or only in the fingers or only in the forearm and if it starts hurting in the fingers and the forearm the pain becomes quite excruciating you'll have to stop playing for at least half an hour you know you don't want that so a good way is just push your push the piano as you play push in and out so and bounce your wrist especially when you're doubling and you automatically get a lot more dynamics you're getting natural human dynamics which can't really write down on paper so there's a little bit of staccato and it's almost like you're jumping on a trampoline you know so that's the feeling you need when you're playing this pattern so go tell it on the mountain rocking around the criss so you can either choose to do the the usual bouncy quarter note pulse or double that this is used for almost all the popular blues songs so that is pattern number one in the left hand then it's just going to be about the melody which is notated for you so do see the melody you can watch me playing it and we'll break down all these five songs now the next blues pattern is is inspired from the bass guitar or the the best bass line you can think of to start off at least with the blues would be one three five six five one three five six five yes we have modifications all that is available on our blues playlist so do check that out after this lesson boom boom boom boom boom so i like i would like you to sing it actually so and then that's the second pattern in intervallically one three major third perfect fifth major sixth pump okay so now that we have our two patterns in place now that we have all our available chords which is pretty much the one four five let's start with the music let's let's bring in the first song rocking around the christmas tree so i'll show you the melody in the right hand you can play along keep your keyboards along as you play around and i'll just support it with maybe a g or the chord root so let's do that again and i'm also doing the chord roots in the bass as a pulse g g d so two g's and two d's rocking around the christmas tree you can do christmas tree if you want i've heard some versions like that christmas tree at the christmas party hop rocking around the christmas tree at the christmas party hop now next part let's do the third line now okay so that would be mistletoe hung where you can see every couple tries to stop a lot of this chromatic there's a lot of fun playing these chromatics so whole story again rocking around the christmas tree and it kind of repeats rocking around the christmas tree let the christmas spirit ring next the ending is do some caroling do some caroling so and now what pattern shall we play i'm going to nominate one of the two so in each of these songs so we'll do the i think this works the usual pulse one five one six so maybe start with rocking around just see if you get just to get yourself acquainted because the figures will be the same that's a d so around again and doing a few slides if you want so for c to d it's a quick chain so i'm doing c gca very quick there one more time shall we okay there is another part to this song but in this video i'm trying to sneak in five songs so let's learn the a sections and over to you to learn the b sections and to help you with the second part of the song as well do consider downloading my chord charts on patreon where we'll have the entire chords of all the songs i've covered not just for this christmas tutorial but pretty much all the lessons we've done on our youtube channel so that was about rocking around the christmas tree let's just do that once more as slow as possible c d second line second cycle you can learn the b section later we'll cover that in another video perhaps so that's about rocking around the christmas tree let's learn one more now rudolf the red nose reindeer let me get you the melody first with the chords g g g d still d g so good way to remember this structure would be three g's and then a d and then three d's and then a g it's pretty easy to remember so g of the red nose reindeer g had a very shiny nose d and if you ever saw it d you would even say it closed g and then all of the other reindeer to laugh and call him names they never let poor rudolf join in any reindeer games now let's bring in the tune which i sang and the left hand what shall we do let's bring in our bass pattern for this song and i think rudolf is pretty much swing in any case so we're not changing much we're not changing the vibe i think so you may want to break it down just keep doing that one more time maybe go to the lower d one more time then of course okay you can see the charts for the second part so rudolf the red nose reindeer seems to work i mean if you like that pattern it would also work fine but we've just notated this for you okay that's rudolf the red nose reindeer for you let's do one more let's do the most popular christmas song probably of all time even people who don't celebrate christmas will probably know this song jingle bells so you go melody i think is really easy jingle bells jingle all the way that all the way is a bit tricky jingle bells jingle bells jingle all the way all the way that's a dotted crotchet for you all the way hey and a form two three four oh what fun it is to write in a one horse soap and sleigh hey jingle bells again jingle jingle oh what fun it is to write in a one horse soap and sleigh sleigh okay the base pattern for this could be maybe a double double speed blues pulse so we'll have to swing it to enable it to work in this blue scenario moving to c have added a chord there because that's the chord in the song a major a domin you'll have to get that a because it's it's there in the song it's a secondary dominant which goes to d again jingle bells jingle bells jingle and then one horse soap and sleigh let's do that slowly a second half so we have a couple more christmas songs in this rock or rock and roll blues style let's do blue christmas so christmas without you same same story thinking about you pretty 12 bar blues like if you think about it tan tan tan g g major d seven g major he's still g major c christmas an experiment with the other patterns as well but i think this pattern will work well for blue christmas let's cap off the lesson with a popular carol go tell it on the mountain so again let's get the melody in the right hand everywhere go tell it on the mountain that jesus christ is born okay let's freeze on that for now so which pattern works i guess both patterns maybe we should do for the b can do the jumpy rhythm back to a lot of these songs are played or to be played in a swing i think naturally the comp the composition itself is swung but you can even straighten it if you want a rock and roll vibe for example becomes very rock and roll or you can swing it and play it fast that'll be a bit more boogie woogie if you think about it so we've learned five songs in this lesson and have fun maybe adding this blues or rock and roll feel with the two patterns i've taught you and the baseline to a bunch of songs don't destroy them too much or be a bit careful i guess because people may not like every single song played in the blues or rock and roll way because it's actually possible you can take every single song ever created on earth and it can sound like a blues song because blues is a very very influential genre in music it started it all contemporary music has to thank blues it all started with this genre so hope you found the lesson useful do check out our playlist for other christmas tutorials and many more to help improve your piano skills from whichever level you're currently at you can also consider doing a course at the school by going to nathanielschool.com and you can consider supporting us on our patreon page for just five dollars a month where you'll receive my handwritten notes staff notation midi files backing tracks and a lot more thanks a ton for watching the video cheers