 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson, I'm basically going to show you how to build a melody on the piano. So, building a melody is slightly different than creating the melody, right? We've done a lot of lessons in the past on our YouTube channel and even in our courses at Nathaniel where we talk about how to create a melody absolutely from scratch, given just a few ingredients and you cook it literally with those ingredients from scratch. But building a melody is slightly different. Maybe you've already come up with this melody just like how a seed works for a tree. You know, a seed will exist, but unless you grow it or water it or, you know, work on it well, well enough, it would not end up becoming a tree which, you know, gives the fruits and whatnot. So, that's what this lesson is about. It's to help you build a melody, something which you already have and what you already might have which you make organically or away from the piano or away from your principal instrument tends to always be things which are catchy because it starts off by being simple and maybe you came up with it in the most natural of environments like, you know, while just having a meal or in the balcony or having a shower or whatever it might be. So, what we are trying to do in this lesson is to take those concepts, take what you have, believe in it and respect the concept or respect what you created and then try to execute it on the piano and then let the piano and the chords and the rhythm and the harmony take control, okay? So, the melody basically I have for you today, well, off the top is just a four-note tune. It's just D, E, G, F sharp. So, I'm just playing or going to play D, E, G, F sharp. Let's say you came up with this tune. Okay? It's quite a nice melody if you think about it. It's a nice assortment of notes. So, that's what we are pretty much going to do. We are just going to take that and let it become something like this, you know, add some harmony and a turn, some bass. So, I'm just going to show you how to transform into something as cool as that, you know? And for different skill levels as well, if you're a beginner, you're definitely going to be able to do something really awesome. And if you're an advanced player or an intermediate kind of person, stay tuned as we journey forward and there will be something for you definitely along the way. It's a rather detailed tutorial. So, you'll have to stick with me till the end. And before we get started, it'll be great if you're watching this video to hit that like button, to leave us a comment with something you'd like to learn in the future or just tell us, leave us a note on how you thought the lesson was. Subscribe is a nice button to click, which you'll clearly see on YouTube and turn on the bell for notifications. Even if you're a subscriber, it'll be nice to hit the bell so that you get reminded whenever we do a new lesson. And all of our notes are supplemented on our Patreon page, where you can have access to generally all of my handwritten notes whenever there's a lesson just to guide you forward. And along with the handwritten notes whenever the lesson needs notation or a MIDI file or a backing track, it will also be there. So, Patreon might be something you'd like to consider. So, let's get cracking. So, with a melody, I tend to look at it like how a, you know, off the top, if I've come up with an idea like this one. I tend to think generally how people write or narrate poetry. Like, not that I have the the slightest idea on how to write a poem, but generally when we write a poetry verse, it's built around, you know, they say A, B or C. A, and if you repeat that A later, it's for all, you know, going to be pretty much a similar sentence, which has the same rhythmic way of speaking it, even if you don't sing it and just narrate it, it would actually sound quite the same, you know. So, even if you take a genre like blues, blues follows a very A, A, B kind of writing, you know, where they'll, they'll say a phrase. Na, na, na, na, almost level with the ground, well, I'm tore down, almost level with the ground. So, they repeat that, well, I'm tore down, almost level with the ground, well, I'm tore down with a new chord, almost level with the ground. Well, I feel like this when my baby can be found. So, at the end, they do a new line or a new sentence that could be A, A, B. You could consider blues like that. So, with this melody, we have in this particular class, we go, so that's A, repeat the A and then repeat the A, but then add on something else that you could call as a B or just an extension of the melody. So, I'm not really changing the tune, I'll just do A, line one, line two, line three, pretty much the same and then line four, which is the new line, what you could call as B could just be, what did I do there? E, D. So, a standard option would be either make the new line or the turn around either more complicated than what the original melody was or like what I have done here, I've actually made the turn around line or the B phrase, if you will, a lot simpler. So, the whole section goes same, repeat and just to break that monotony or give the listener a sense of punctuation in the music, I just try to break the monotony of not playing and instead play, it also brings the melody to rest and that's good punctuation, sort of like the end of a phrase, end of a normal sentence or a paragraph or whatever you may call it using the literature part. So, now coming to the music, so we've talked about the melody, we've talked about this poetic approach towards building the melody or visualizing the melody. Now, let's get into the music. So, first off, a melody is nothing without rhythm and a melody is not just a stream or a string of notes, there is rhythm contained in every single melody. So, if I play something like this, there's so much of rhythm, had I played it like this, I don't think Bruno Mars would be very happy with that particular song as opposed to, you need that melody to groove. So, how do we make melodies groove and how do we add rhythm to our melody by just imagining this melody superimposed over some kind of a time grid or some kind of a rhythmic context. So, if I play the same melody for you and just go one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, I don't have, well, I've exhausted all my slots, number one, I don't have any other extra slots to fill, but what if I thought of this as an eighth note phrase where I'm dividing the beat by two. So, how do we count eighth notes? One and two and three and four and one and two and three and so, what you could end up doing there would be one and two and instead of playing this E at the two, one and two, we played at the end of the two. So, one and two and three and four and of the three. One and two and three and four and maybe even the end of the four and maybe give a gap there. One and two and three and four and one and two and take a break. One and two and three and four and one and two and three. There we go. One and two and three and four and one as opposed to three, four. It's the same notes, guys, but with that and what tends to happen is the melody grooves more and it kind of feels that it's there's so much more space and you it's not at all monotonous it just becomes and it also becomes catchy and singable which is why it's just that sweet spot for the melody you know so melody needs rhythm melody is not just as I said earlier just a random assortment of no that's not how great melodies are built great melodies have harmony and rhythm now we are talking about rhythm so can now become that's exactly what we'll stick with this lesson one and two and three and four and one and two and three okay okay now why only think of dividing by two you could also consider dividing by three these are what we call as triplets so one and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two and a triplet so there we go one and one and so now with triplets I have so many more slots to fill which I can fill in a bar of four how many namely to be clear I can have 12 slots because four threes are 12 four beats in a bar each beat is divided by three units so well four threes are 12 with eighth notes its four twos are eight so I have eight slots and I made my I did my best with the eight slots to create something with the eighth notes but with triplets so you could either one and a two and a you could do the and one and two and earth you can do the of the two one and a two there we go you could you have lot more slots to fill for the melody now we could go on and on we could go into sixteenth notes we could go into quintuplets we can do in a lot of things but I leave that for another lesson what I also wanted to mention is do you want to swing the melody or do you want to straighten the melody you know like a hairstyle if you have the have hair of course so if you have a straightened version of the melody you will go one and three and four and one and there we go and four one and two and three and four and one and that was straight that that that that but if you swing that you see it just completely changes the texture of the melody so this is about using time feels as I call them and beat division for really enhancing the melody or actually making the melody come alive as opposed to not dividing the beat and the challenge of not dividing the beat is you don't have slots you've run out of slots right and the all the music gets really slow so if you want to play faster stuff you don't really have a division in your head so always think of beat division whether you want to straighten or swing stuff and that will help you compose a melody really well so let's move forward let's say we are banking on that another thing you'd want to do to build the melody even more would be just change a little bit a little bit of a thing when it comes to the tune you composed let's just say one note gets changed in each of the a's so remember this melody was aab so first a I can do second a I can do I quite like that so first I go saare maag 1 2 4 3 so saare maag then I can do saare paag I can go to the power the fifth which in this case is a we're on D major scale remember which has two sharps so line one I did G then then maybe line three you could consider going higher you know create something quite interesting so fourth fifth sixth simplified you've already done a lot of stuff at the A so the good thing is the piano has a lot of tricks up its sleeve it's a very unique instrument so sometimes you let the piano you give the piano a little bit to work with but then the piano kind of also dictates terms it's not just your melody the way I look at it if I come up with a tune or any riff or any phrase I have this kind of belief that yes it's yours but then when you put it on the piano and give it some time the piano will also be the second composer it's almost like the piano is another person once you play it so keep that in mind and let loose you know don't over exaggerate what you want to do on the piano there are a lot of cases where the piano will also give you things I'm I know I'm acting really weird like as though the piano is an actual person but it it should feel like that and that is the organic approach of making music right the piano doesn't just offer you the melody it it offers you chords rhythm so you have to let let it happen a bit organically which is why in this lesson there's not going to be that much notes and notation to go with you I would recommend that you explore a lot as the lesson goes by and even after you finished watching it so that was about changing one note of the melody we can also maybe do can change two notes instead of doing then that becomes like a question and answer kind of a section right and this is sort of like how poems are also designed you can't actually it's not common to repeat the exact line line one repeating to line two right that'll be boring so they figure out a way to change some element of the two lines so that's what I did here then that could go with another chord which I'm going to come to shortly okay so the next idea or the next thing we need to do to build our melody is harmony so we've looked at rhythm which made it quite interesting almost a finished product if you think about it now what does harmony do the harmony is going to get this melody to move around and go and journey forward through different changing moods and environments perhaps it depends on purely your imagination for this process so if I have to let's say design a couple of base notes to go along with the tune first line let's keep the same thing that's with the D the tonic or the root first line and now second line I'll go I'm changing my tune to the paga or the five three so sare maga with the D and then sare paga with the B so that creates a different environment there is a motion now so change to B pretty much the same tune now what's that there that's a G or the fourth it's a bit unstable so it wants to go somewhere so where does four generally go to the five come back to the tonic so what am I doing there one six four five and on the one one more time don't forget the offbeat melody you don't want to do or instead offbeat try to feel a groove when you're playing you could even kind of imagine that there's a drummer beside you and there's a person actually drumming what I call as a ghost drummer that really helps keep time number one and number two make sure your melody is always grooving which is important so bass again D going to be I like octaves in the base lot richer G A D for now we'll keep that simple we'll build it later um D and to be going to G A okay now the piano likes its voices the piano is almost like a choir with you know executed with your fingers so what you could do is just add a stack up stack a harmony for example the fifth because your melody starts with a D so maybe embellish with the fifth so D with A sounds quite rich already you could even embellish it with the root and fifth would also use a little bit of finger independence hold the root and the fifth and then play the remaining notes see it strengthens the the downbeat or the strong beat or the beat one let's do that again E four one and two and three with the bass B G could also end with a nice suspended one there that's G F sharp otherwise A rather boring so A G F sharp anyway your soprano or the melody is holding so higher A you have so many options at the end to color that primarily because your soprano line or the tune is just holding it's not doing much okay so I hope that made sense so far so so far before we get into the more intermediate stuff and I don't want to scare beginners because the intermediate stuff is also playable I'm just calling it intermediate because it's definitely a little beyond what we are doing now so what we did now was I introduced you to the melody then we made it the actual melody which we liked by using our time fields and beat divisions then we just changed one note of the tune here and there to make it continue to remain as poetic as it was but more interesting to break that monotony then we looked at the simple bass roots D B G A standard roots and we use the fifth embellishment can even do some rhythmic stuff okay stuff like that so we are going to move forward or dive forward now into more intermediate techniques so I hope you have your pianos out there'll be really helpful so you can play along with me and even if you don't if you're not getting it exactly the way I'm doing it just by playing along with me it'll help you in this first iteration after that you're going to nail it you know after the videos over of course let's move on