 this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music. I teach piano here and in this short lesson I'm going to talk about a very simple and powerful groove which you can use on the piano to play a lot of the the rock songs out there stuff from Green Day and Nirvana and Radiohead and Imagine Dragons these sort of bands and a lot of these bands don't naturally have the keyboard or even the piano or any form of the keyboard in the band. It's pretty much guitar-driven music but a good way to approach the instrument or one good way to approach the piano is to learn from other musicians or to learn from other instrumentalists. You could learn from a banjo player, you could learn from a harp player, you can learn from a drummer. I learn a lot from drummers all the time or bass players, guitar players, horn players, singers. So a lot about the piano is not just about learning from other pianists, it's about learning from other musicians who play other instruments. It could even be electronic music or anything you listen to. So the technique you just heard in the introduction in the introduction part which was nothing but what you'd observe in the performance is some of the hits are very loud and the and a lot of the hits are soft. So it's very much like a drummer on a snare drum hitting the snare drum exactly where they want to with full pelt and then also hitting it softer that's what they call as ghost notes or bass guitar players call them mute notes or muted notes. Now on a piano you can't really mute anything but by playing things slightly softer and louder you give the effect of a drum or a bass player in the band. So the rhythm structure on the piano is very percussive. I'll just try to demonstrate it on the keyboard first on the surface and then show you on the piano. So it's essentially this right so that's going to be looped throughout that's left left right left right left right left right right okay perhaps you you'd like to do it with me once left left right left right left right again left left right little faster left left right with the pulse and you can perhaps stop or you can continue. So anything you play in the left hand is going to definitely be bass heavy and kick drum heavy you could think like a drummer playing a kick and anything in the right hand could be snare drum or the octave of a bass guitar player in a band right. So the chords I have chosen are the I guess pretty much the same chords used for Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day and I think the entire song what is this radioactive by by Imagine Dragons. So that's nothing but C minor, E flat major, B flat major and F major. So the scale I'm on is essentially B flat major I'm not too sure what the original song is on but once you figure it out you could transpose it and play at a key of your interest. So the chords I'm using now are the 2 minor, 2 minor, the 4 major, the 1 major and the 5 major. So E flat then B flat the root chord back to F it's fifth right. So if you see it goes well with the song played on the piano was a very kind of ballad rhythm which you may not use that often in a rock band so with the whole ensemble this is the rhythm which I showed you on the table that groove you can bring here so I would suggest first of all just do it with root notes of the chord in the left hand and the chord in the right hand. So you're going so in one bar you need to develop two chords at least that's how these two songs go. C minor, E flat major, repeat you could perhaps look at that in one piece and then get to the song speed and try the next two chords the same way B flat and F right all four together same rhythm. Elemental swing that's out of a feel. Try to stress on where you think the drummer is really going to stress on the snare drum so need not be that loud but you get the idea you're trying to copy the the impact of the drummer while you play and that's what will allow you to work really well with the group. Also with your chords try to articulate them such that some chords are a bit longer in duration and some chords could be shorter in duration. So usually when I'm playing the ones which are shorter those are usually not the actual snare drum hits those will be more the ghost notes played by the drummer. So that was soft. Normal speed. Another tip you could apply to your left hand just so that you don't make the bass too intrusive in the song is when you're playing the bass note C you can hit it with an octave but the second hits which are not the second the third and the other hits which are not on the beat one of the bar you don't have to reheat the pinky finger you can leave the pinky held and focus on the thumb which is anyways playing the root of the chord that is the octave right so you go see my little finger is still sustaining for I would imagine the entire bar or at least till E flat comes in or the new part. So what I'm doing is I'm grooving from the beat one onwards I'm grooving only with the thumb of the left hand and my entire right hand. So I've sort of let this little finger hold the root note. Now this depends on the song if you want your song to be a lot more epic definitely I would suggest holding the piano especially if you're a keyboard player who uses all these orchestral patches this could be the bass sound and that could ring but at the same time you don't want to annoy the bass player in the band if they feel that you're overdoing it in that register you may want to lift your hand completely. So this is with the pinky sustained even with the E flat you show you again slower once you get the hang of it you can mess around with the rhythm pattern you can you can make shorter phrases like you can just fool around and make something different of your own. So a good way to also develop some inspiration is to just jam with drummers and bass players because they'll give you all of these ideas this is what they do pretty much every minute of the day while they are jamming together they're trying to make these grooves which make people move in different ways. So one of the best ways to learn is definitely by jamming with a bass player or a drummer who you're friends with or who you're part of a band with. So in the next lesson what I'm going to do is add some arpeggio variations to this same exercise to make it a little bit more interesting on the piano. So practice this one and I'll see you in the next video. Come back for part two.