 Hi guys, this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music and in this tutorial, let's learn how to achieve piano hand independence, a very very important thing for all piano players who play any genre. In this tutorial, I'm going to look at contemporary music or more importantly dance music or pop music or EDM music or music which just makes people dance. So what we are trying to achieve is a solid rhythm in one hand while just like what a drummer does, they will always have a pulse or they will have a very very important steady meter. They will be showing off the counting or the counting pattern of the song and the audience also will tend to move their head in the same exact way. For example, if we say 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, that's exactly how the audience's head is moving and if they are not able to do that, how are they going to move to the next level of enjoyment which is dancing. For this lesson, I've taken a very very popular chord progression, you'll find it in that Daft Punk song. So you go, you could even play twice if you'd like, okay, so you could claim that this came from the B Dorian scale or the parent A major scale, right. D minor being the 2 chord of the A major scale, D major being the 4 chord of the A major scale, F sharp minor being the 6 minor of the A major scale and E major being the 5 major of the A major scale. So get used to that chord progression, also muscle in your inversions, something like that depends on how you want to voice it. Just get used to that and in the left hand at the bare minimum be able to play your roots. So the first way I would try to work on independence before we get into all the disco and the dance rhythms is just try and play 4 chords in the right hand or 4 hits of each chord in the right hand with a single held bass note in your left hand. So that means, it's also what I call like a 1 is to 4 ratio. So hold the left hand for 1 and last it for 4, right hand plays 4 times for every one left hand hit, right try to sing along. You'll find that when you sing there may be a little bit of glitch, you may not be able to actually hit it 4 times. So I would encourage you to sing because you're going to work with either people who sing in a band ensemble or you may yourself want to sing and play the piano together. So it's intended for that requirement. So independence is not only hand independence, it's also piano versus voice independence. You should sing and play. You've seen all the great songwriters who play piano, Elton John, Nora Jones, Billy Joel who can sing damn well and play the piano also incredibly well. So you go first work on this really hard 1 is to 4, right. Sing something, anything. You can even sing that Daft Punk song which I may not be allowed to do in this lesson, they may take it down. But you know which song I'm talking about. Just have some fun with the chords playing that 1 is to 4 ratio as I'm saying, right. So now I'm going to introduce you to a pattern which you may have already heard in a lot of songs. I'll just play you the pattern first so you get acquainted one more time, right. So this pattern is a popular clave. In fact, I guess they call it the pop clave or I guess more conventionally or traditionally you can call this the bossa clave or the bossa nova clave. So the way I'm building this pattern or the way the pattern is already built is it's a bar of 4 and you can count it using 16th notes which divide the beat into 4 equal units. So what you'll find is when you're playing the funky disco or the dancy stuff, you are going to be dividing the beat into 4. That's what creates that energy and that excitement for people who dance, right. So you go, right. You could actually try playing it on the piano even without me telling you what the rhythm actually is notated, you know, on the sheet. Sounds quite catchy, right. So let's break it down. 1e and 2e and let's just get line 1. 1e and 2e and rather the first 2 beats 1e and 2e and 3. Stop. 1e and 2e and 3 and 4e and 1e and 2e and just get that first. 1e and 2e and 3 and 4e and then we proceed towards 1e and 2e and 3 and 4e. 1e and 2e and 3 and 4e. 1, 2, 3 and a 4 E and of the 3 and the E of the 4. So you go 1, 2, 3 and then you have to pretty much do this with all the other chords. 1, 2, 3 and a 4 E, 1, 2, 3 and a 4 E and a 1. And there is one thing you are probably observing my left hand. My left hand is not staying idle. For me to actually get this really, really groovy sounding piano pattern, you need to feel the pulse. And some people feel the pulse by moving their head. I would highly recommend that you start by moving your head to the pulse. Doing this may be a bit tough, what I did with my left hand because maybe you have not done it before. So start with the head. Actually I am doing head and my foot. You can see the foot in the video but my foot is also naturally going with the pulse. In some instances you may want to move your whole body with the pulse. Maybe with the left hand snapped now, this could be your next goal. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1. Well you could also try counting it but the practicality of the situation is if you get this going you can automatically place something on the piano. So you could start by just playing the roots of the chords which is B for B minor, D for D major, F sharp for F sharp minor and E for E major. So you go 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. Let's just take one chord B minor. So now some of you may be facing a little bit of a hurdle, you know, trying to get both the hands together. So now what did we do first? We played the bossa clave in the right hand and we tried our best to feel the pulse with our body. Snapped, moved our head, moved our leg. Now work the other way. You've got the pulse here. Just one chord B and now try to voice out or try to sing or try to hum. Do something with your voice, singing the clave. And while you're singing what I like to do is act like I'm playing the piano. Here and there you lose your left hand. As I'm talking to you, I also realize that I need to practice this a little bit more. So you go... So you get something vocal and that vocal can help your right hand eventually. Change the chords. Right. So the first operation which you need to do on the piano is to play the clave in the right hand. The clave hits. This is the bossa or the pop clave and the pulse in the left hand playing the roots of the chords, which I've just demonstrated for a bit now. I like my octaves as well. You could bring in some octaves. A lot more thicker. So once you've got the pulse in your left hand, you could also look at a little bit of finger movement that'll also enhance your independence. So you go... I'm still on the pulse but I'm toggling my fingers. Sort of like a bass guitar. Root. Octave. Root. Octave. Root. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. E. Right. So now this is the next level of independence which will be a little trickier. So do it once you've got the pulse. And I'm also playing the last hit of the right hand longer. Sort of like a drummer embellishes with the high hats. You know, they'll open it, close it. So it's just trying to follow a rhythm instrument as best as we can. So left hand doing toggling pulse. What I... I just come up with that name for now. Root octave. Let's just do it with B minor. Now all the chords. B minor. D major. F sharp. E. E. Still on the pulse. This is just both together. Root and octave together. Now they toggle. Toggling. You can go maybe one more step further by playing a chord arpeggio. Very, very slow chord arpeggio or an arpeggio following the pulse. So you could just do one, two, three. So it gives you a lot of harmonic color in the bass end. So something like quite like that. Right. So another thing you could do with your left hand is actually, instead of playing a very close sounding muddy chord, you could play it in spread voicing where you take root five third up the octave. We call this as a tenth interval. Okay. So you can just create a pulse vibe here and our bossa clave pulse in the left hand, but with chord tones. So we've moved from just root and pinky and thumb playing together. Then we toggled it, root and octave and then we did the chord tones, closed voicings or spread voicings, which I quite like and so on and so forth. Right. So now with all of these versions, the pulse was played in our left hand. Why don't we flip this around? This is another nice thing with independence, especially when you're playing contemporary genres. One hand has done the pulse. Now the next hand is going to do the pulse and you may be guessing it. The left hand is now going to take up the role of the bossa clave. So what I'll start off with in the left hand would be like a root octave groove. So you need your root and octave. So you do one and one and two and three and four and one and four and one and two and three and four and right. And now you have to hold your ground in the right hand playing the pulse. Get that pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump, pump. Doesn't it feel like a drum groove? Kick drum, root, snare drum, thumb of the left hand. And what is your right hand doing? Something like a hi hat, you know. Right. So we've played the bossa clave in the left hand with a nice you know, root octave groove. Another thing you could do as always, you could take a chord as a very slow kind of arpeggio or play the arpeggio in this case over the bossa clave. Right. So now we did the clave in the left hand, the same clave but with chord tones. Earlier we did root and octave combo. You can also do the left hand with spread voicing chords which on its own just sounds good, isn't it? So that's your clave in the left hand, bossa clave in the left hand with the pulse in the right hand. So let's just recap what all we've done so far guys. We've taken a chord progression B minor, D major, F sharp minor and E major, piece them together and give gives you that daft punk vibe, if you will. Then we looked at playing all of this over a very contemporary, super important to learn rhythm pattern which is the bossa clave used by Cole play, used by everyone. Any artist you'll find will have that. And as I'm saying it always get the pulse while you perform it and we've looked at various ways to kind of play the pulse in one hand and play the clave in the other hand. We started by playing the clave in the right hand. When we played the clave in the right hand, we were just holding the chord tones playing the clave and the left hand did its thing. It started with the pulse, then it toggled with the pulse, then it did a slow arpeggio over the pulse. And then what happened? We flipped the two hands around. The left hand took up the role of the bossa clave by doing root and octave grooves. Then we did triad grooves, spread triad grooves and the right hand held its ground, doing what? Just the chord pulse. Right guys, thanks a ton for watching this lesson. As always, this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music. Do stay tuned to our channel for lots more. You may want to subscribe to our channel if you haven't already. Leave us a comment if you'd like us to teach you something else. Support us on all of our channels, especially Patreon, where you can get all of my handwritten notes for these exercises. Do that if you'd like and keep rocking. Cheers.