 Hi everyone, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson I'm going to help you or hopefully help you tackle the concept of hand independence from a very mental perspective and in a very logical perspective as well to a point that you don't have to just play the melody which I'm going to teach you in this lesson. The melody can just be like a bridge or an avenue to eventually play other melodies which you already know but are struggling to then bring in the left hand coordination or new melodies which you're going to play wherein you put in all the mechanical work, all the effort in this lesson and let this also serve as the benchmark for practicing hand independence for future lessons. So I've taken the key of F major which is seven notes, B flat being the one loan flat and there are some chords, four simple chords. We learn the chords later, first I'll teach you a melody. So the first part of the lesson is we learn the melody chords then I'm going to talk about how you can crack hand independence, what are the tools you need, what are the skills you need to work on not only by doing this video but also in the future, okay. A lot of my notes are available on our Patreon and for this lesson I've notated the tune, I've notated the harmony, I've notated all the patterns which you have to learn and all the tips and important things to be aware of waiting for you in a downloadable PDF and before we get cracking it'll be awesome if you could hit that bell and hit the subscribe button on our YouTube channel, yes see I stopped for two seconds, you can do that now and another thing you could do is give the video a like, a share and leave us a comment as well with what you thought about the lesson, let's get cracking. So I'll show you the melody first which I played in the intro, I've kept it really short it's just that, it's about four bars long, if you count it in eighth note so I'll sing it, let's try and get the tune, so this is your pickup, your C is your pickup meaning it's not at the one of the bar it's at the four or before the bar starts, you may also help to sing along you'll digest it better, maybe one octave lower, you can see my fingers, got that got the fingering I hope, okay coming to the chords, now you could get away with it incrementally by just starting off with a single F, for example this will help us get the pulse, I'm sure you agree that the pulse doesn't sound so great on just an F, so you could add a C to the F or you could play the melody a little higher maybe one octave higher and play the whole F major chord or play an inversion of the F major chord or maybe this will work, gives you some room to fill in the right hand and octave below around middle C, anyway so the actual chords I would suggest for this would be play an F major there in the second inversion ideally then it won't clash with the right in this octave, C F A, C major played in the root position C E G, F, C major played C E G that's B flat major the fourth major of the scale B flat coming back to F, so let me also show it in the root starting position then I have to move my whole tune up F major C major back to F 1 C B flat okay so that's about the melody and the chords you may want to check out the notes again see the available chords see how I've written the inversions and so on and so forth, so the first tool to develop hand independence which is going to be a lot of what I'm going to cover in this lesson is the pulse feeling the pulse so the melody if you consider the melody in maybe two ways let's say you consider it as quavers 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 then your pulse will be this right so this is what I call as the fast pulse or you know the way you know the way the notation is also designed and it's following an eighth note system and the pulse is following the quarter notes with respect to the melody played on eighth notes so it'll go like this it's also pretty much if you play the melody slow enough it's how our head moves to the music so you can call it the head pulse or the foot pulse 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 so that's the first thing you need to digest and you can practice that pulse just by moving your body tapping your foot or you can tap something next to you like a table or a bongo or the side of your keyboard or here very important task keep consistent 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 okay now this is what I call as the the obvious pulse based on the notation these are called as crotchets or quarter notes however if you speed up the melody or decide to play something slower what I call as the slow pulse it could be something like this while the normal pulse or the quarter notes was these are quarter notes then you need to work on your slower pulse or slower pulse could also be called as a minimum or a half note where you whack it and then you wait for two counts it lasts for two counts so it'll be at hitting at the one and the three and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and and for the purpose of our lesson I'm just taking a single F okay I know you could take chords and I've given you the chords in the beginning but you you need to stay with me till the end and we are definitely going to build it up really well so you go just single F what were the two ways we've discussed first was the normal pulse slow pulse the head will realign back to normal pulse slow strangely enough you may find the slow pulse a lot more trickier than the normal pulse okay and another thing you could also try just to test your timing you move your head don't stop moving your head but the left hand can just play whole notes or semi-brieves basically one hit per bar of four so you're relying on your body to keep time not on your left hand actually the left hand was helping us if you think about it when we did quarter notes keeps us more in time because that's the same way our head moves but when you do semi-brieves you have to have your own internal clock running isn't it one two three four so I would like you to practice all of these and you could play the root notes of the chords also just to add more harmonic flavor C normal pulse minims minimum again B flat slow semi-brieves whole notes practice that and also toggle the speeds maybe back to pulse now if you're watching this and if you're finding a bit of a struggle to kind of align the two hands together or if you're thinking twice hmm am I actually playing it well are there some tools which can help me well yes the first thing I would encourage you to do now is to believe it or not stick with me don't play the right hand for a short amount of time this is going to help you with your independence check this out you keep your left hand running just single root notes very slow this will internalize the tune in your head and motivate your hands to do the trick very shortly sing it again and over time this could take a few minutes of just singing because singing with the left hand is not going to be that easy especially the left hand pulse once you get the singing going then slowly bring in the right hand but don't leave your singing keep the singing going and super impose the vocals on onto the piano and you the more relaxed you are the more you better you get with hand independence and being relaxed is a function of just practice right you can't just be relaxed it doesn't work that way you have to practice hard you have to practice endlessly day after day or hour after hour and then you feel relaxed so when your mind and body feel relaxed you actually feel a sense of natural confidence you feel that I have the ability to nail this so singing is a very useful tool to build up confidence don't think that hand independence is hand and hand remember all the information is coming from here it's coming from your head so everything has to be sent from your head to everything so if you're sending it from your head to your voice I think that's the easiest start because there's no filter going to your voice but going to the piano there are all the fingers and that creates a filter because the piano is away from you so sing very important there we go so there's a great way to nail the melody always in the hunt move your body continue to feel the pulse there we go slow pulse all that right now you may still be having an issue getting it so let's dissect it further another strategy I find which can really help you with hand independence is just break it down part by part so if you're doing para-bara-bara that's a long tune isn't it so what's the fragment we can come up with with our voice let's see oh this is do that that's rather boring let's add one more note there I like that that one okay repeat that slowly get that break it down and repeat it next one with the pulse here and there you could go back to slow pulse line one over putting my second phrase right it's kind of fun because every break down everything you break up also sounds like another melody right then maybe bring a fragment from the first part change the tune now continue you have you can slow it how much ever you want so break down the melody it'll really help you with your independence okay so another strategy I find which can really it's helped me it's like a proven strategy to improve your hand independence is take a step back from the piano get out your book pencil pen whatever iPad if you wish and write down the notation you'd notate the treble clef for the right hand and the bass clef superimpose them and you'll see that there are only a few problem areas like that second C was at an end or an offbeat so you'll find that superimposing the off beats on the pulse is the worry superimposing the pulse on the pulse is super easy so notated and make it a point to figure out where where is there a challenge don't get disheartened and just say oh I'm not getting this at all no you're not getting it at one point you're not getting it at one point of the melody so just find that point the notation will really help you more than break down what I like to use it helps you respect the melody and whenever you have a problem it's like they say respect your opponent in this case your melody is the opponent so you need to respect the guy and then you can tackle all the challenges it has to offer you you have to approach it in a very very rigid way so that it can help you even with new melodies so what was that point again you need to superimpose the notation of the treble clef and the bass clef together I have a few more strategies which can just help you mentally when you practice this stuff because it can get mentally grueling right so if you have to play this let's say you practice on the piano you practice diligently for five minutes okay and you just keep going and you find that the first two or three minutes you're just not getting it it's just not working out what I find with students who I've taught over all these years and decades is don't stop don't play oh man I didn't get damn it or something like that you know so keep going for five minutes and I look at success on the piano at least I don't know about general success as a percentage so what do I mean by success as a percentage it's just time time will run by for five minutes so let's say the first two minutes of your practice you're gonna be about 40% good and 60% wrong the next three to four minutes you're getting into that 65 70 category and then last but not least that last minute is where you're like 90% right you know so I look at it as a huge success if by minute number five you've got 90% success on this exercise or on this melody because it's like a it's like a serve it's like a tennis serve or a badminton serve once you get that serve you can do it the next day and the next day and the next day you know the serve is not going to diminish it's only going to get better and better as you keep playing so that's the advantage of this environment what I call as percentage practice so don't think that oh it's wrong it could be wrong it may be wrong don't care remember practice is just you and the piano there's no one else who needs to you don't have to care about anyone else when you play so give it five minutes then the next five minutes after that five minutes you're in that 80 90% success point that is great if you ask me because that's ten minutes of effort you have the next ten minutes you have the next day you can go on and on and on with this and reach like a hundred percent on this right so I look at practice that way as a percentage of success rather than oh man I made that one note wrong I had that one point well that is true in a gig because in a gig if you make one mistake everyone's going to remember only that one mistake but when you practice that's not how you work it's bad for the mind and it's bad for it's bad for your growth as a piano player so I would encourage you just practice without thought practice is just keep repetition just keep whacking the ball it will eventually go to the right side or go above the line or cross the net or whatever it may be okay so that's the importance of percentage practice five to ten minutes and last but not least for those of you who claim that I've got the melody I have a few things to to let you just check am I actually playing the melody well you know so what I want you to do is to be able to play the melody with utmost or absolute confidence you should be comfortable with everything so first of all just see if you can be free with the tune see if staccato can be brought in staccato and legato toggle legato staccato there we go so because you're able to toggle between staccato legato at will you're definitely playing the melody better and if you feel you're speeding up slowing down well can't help you you have to practice that's a way to know that you have to practice right another thing you can do is make the melody a bit more interesting with ornaments just see what would a vocalist do do a bit of those runs and glides and see if that's not affecting your pulse or it's not affecting your left hand it's another way to know that you really nail this melody some glides add some harmony more confidence okay now another way to develop confidence before I'm gonna just finally present it with all the chords is the metronome right so using a simple metronome I've used the app pro metronome I'm gonna set it up to hundred beats per minute there's a hundred beats per minute sounds like so first off try to play the melody with this one and first say one and two and three and four and now we roll so how good are you with this melody well can you play it with a click one and two and starting now you may think okay I've got it with a metronome but that's not enough what I would then do is slow the metronome down to half of its value what is half of hundred fifty isn't it yeah so you go to a very slow speed now you may be thinking should I play the melody slower no this will be one three one two three that's a slow pulse this is gonna really push your timing and now that's metronome at one three okay now you could re-visualize the tune with the metronome by making it go two three four a one two three four and now this is counting at the two and the four of the bar two three four even more interesting for your timing for a one two three four a one two and now okay so that's pretty much how you use a metronome and just to conclude the video I'm just gonna bring back the chords which we had learnt earlier and just bring them in and the whole video is just about maintaining the pulse so let's see what the chords can do not leaving the pulse too much first off what were the chords F major C major B flat F major let's play the melody higher so you can visualize better repeat that's a slow pulse fast pulse now if you'd like to do something different in the left hand you can always do things like play the low note in the left and then go slow pulse upward to the actual chord this will make it sound a lot more thicker with your pedal on of course we call this striding okay you can even do like a broken a broken system also what we call ohm there we go you can even do like a little arpeggio right guys so that was basically the lesson on how to grow your hand independence from a very logical practice and a mental perspective what how should the mindset be that's very very important and the hope is you can then play anything in the right hand or the treble clef sooner than later or anything you're attempting remember it's it's not gonna just happen and at the same time it's not rocket science either so that means you have to practice and you have to put in the effort but the strategies are hopefully covered in this video isolate it learn the melody break down the pulse play simple stuff get the melody really well using the slow pulse the faster normal pulse and then the whole note or the semi-brief then break it down part by part singing is very very important notation is very important practicing with that percentage technique which I gave you is very important and finally we looked at the importance of the metronome then you can start floating around your left hand and whatever left hand movements you do get will stick with you for life so it's not like I'm not able to do this many left hand patterns don't worry do one or two and that'll stick with you for a lot more melodies in the future right guys hopefully your confidence with hand independence will grow after watching this lesson and if you like the lesson do do give the video like thumbs up thing somewhere there leave us a comment with stuff you'd like to learn and we put out regular videos on our YouTube channel at the rate of at least two a week including daily riffs which will also help you to learn music and compose as a producer so do stay tuned to our YouTube channel by hitting the subscribe and not only the subscribe there's a bell button as well hit that for regular notifications and the notes for this lesson everything we've done before and what we are going to do in the future is waiting for you on patreon as a downloadable PDF do consider heading over there and supporting our channel again this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music thanks a ton for watching cheers