 Hi guys, this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music and in this lesson, let's work on our left hand rhythm patterns which will go over a melody line which we are going to play in the right hand. So one way to generally develop independence on the instrument is to perhaps play a chord, a static chord in the right hand and then play a bass line or the chord tones in the left hand and then you kind of compare the rhythms between the two hands and that's one kind of independence but another very important kind of independence to develop on an instrument like the piano is to do two things or two different aspects of music with both your hands. In this case, the melody is going to be played by my right hand and the chord movement and the bass patterns are going to be played by the left hand with a very keen sense of rhythm following very closely to the percussion section or the drummer or the groove building system which you need to develop here. So let's get started first and build the melody. I have chosen a very simple melody on E-flat which I have built for you for the lesson. Let's just see how it sounds. Let's just look at E-flat major very quickly, seven notes for any major scale, E-flat has three flats, E-flat, A-flat and B-flat, E-flat, F, G, A-flat, B-flat, C, D, E-flat. So this melody got built from that scale. You could follow my finger finger finger usage. So that's going to be your melody and if I count it, it's a very 16th note melody, isn't it? One E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one. So it's a little syncopated if you ask me. So that's going to create some interesting challenges for the left hand once we start building the left hand. So it's one and one E and a two E and a. So if you get just that figure, I think you'll be fine. One E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E. So if you just vocalize that with maybe just the pulse, or a slower pulse. I'd always encourage you to sing the melody and then try to play it on the piano. So you go, okay, so get that into your system. And now let's start off with the left hand rhythm patterns. Before we do, it'll be awesome if you guys could subscribe to our YouTube channel and turn on the bell icon for notifications if you haven't already. Thanks. Let's get started. First rhythm pattern which we are going to do in the left hand is extremely easy. It's just your pulse, which you're just going to play in a very persistent way in the left hand. And the notes which you could use are, well, you could just play the root of the scale which is E flat and that should sound quite good actually. So before I play the pulse here, it's a nice option to tap it out here, possibly on your chest because it sounds a bit bassy. So you go, so do the pulse first, don't bring in the pulse later because the pulse serves as the foundation. So you practice, get that going with the melody. You could also try a faster pulse, which is, and then we try producing it on the piano with a simple root tonic or E flat. And what I like to do in the left hand is to always play the root as well as its octave or at least the fifth, right, to make it a nice thick bass sound. So you go, it's just a simple E flat which is being played 1, 2, 3, 4 with the melody again. So when you do the left hand, also focus on not only the fact of hitting the left hand exactly at the pulse, but also exploring a few dynamic changes in the sound. The first thing you could explore is pretty much legato versus staccato. Legato is a long sound, right, use the pedal or you could just hold it with your finger. Staccato is a choppy sound. So this is going to be an interesting layer of independence. So if you're not getting it, it's okay. But if you have already got the pulse, I would encourage you to try toggling. So maybe I could do legato staccato or just, yeah, let's try legato staccato, right, or maybe all staccatos. You may sometimes then do staccato in the right hand, which is a bit tricky. So you need to keep the same kind of melody or the same sonic quality of the melody in the right hand while changing the texture in the left hand. It's pretty much as though, well, it is true that both hands are sort of different instruments serving different musical roles. Come to think of it. So get used to that staccato legato staccato. Let me now try and combine staccato meets legato. You may not like all of these permutations, but it's good to get it all under your belt when you practice to get a nice holistic kind of practice routine going on for you. So the next thing could be legato staccato, right. So you could play around with legato and staccato as you choose. The other thing I like to do with just the pulse is do a slowish pulse and then a fast pulse. What I mean by that is the fast pulse is just the normal eighth notes, which is 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and or you could even count that as 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4 and then your melody here would be eighth notes, right, or you do the slow pulse and then the melody here would be represented using sixteenth notes or the melody in the right hand. So let me show you the fast pulse going to the slow pulse, slow, right, so as you observe the fast pulse is more on an eighth note system or it's just double of the slow pulse. So you can call it whatever you want, but basically follow your head movement and perhaps with the head, I guess that's what makes it the slow pulse. And when you double that head movement, I don't want to move my head as fast as the piano, so I'll keep my head the way it is to avoid a neck pain and stuff like that. And then, yeah, you build the speed variations accordingly. Now you don't have to just stick with playing the root, which is E flat. You could also play a few notes, you could try out, maybe a G or I quite like the C there, sounds quite cool, A flat, B flat. Another thing you'll observe is when the notes of the two hands sort of meet together or clash with each other, you may not be able to play the octave, so then you could look out and play the fifth instead. So fifth of any root is a nice replacement for the octave. For example, E flat with octave, C with octave, A flat with octave, but now I want to play B flat with its fifth, which is F, because my melody note has taken over to play B flat. So again, let's try some left hand changes, A flat. Right guys, now that we've learned about the pulse in all its versions, you have the legato, the staccato version, the slow pulse and the fast pulse. What I'd also like to try out now with you is the toggling pulse. Toggling pulse is where you take the octave, E flat and E flat or the fifth E flat and B flat and toggle it along with the pulse. So that'll be low, high, low, high, root, octave, pinky, thumb, okay. So earlier we actually played it together, which is a little easy than what this is all about, I guess. So you should try this out as well, toggling, toggle, root, octave with the melody and whatever dynamics or whatever expressions you wanted to give to your melody, like some notes are a bit bouncy, some notes are a bit long, some notes are a bit soft, some notes are a bit loud. All that needs to keep itself, it needs to retain itself. So don't compromise the expression of the melody because of all the fancy stuff happening in the left hand. The left hand has to be practiced like another instrument, happening in one brain, so to speak. So you go, toggle, and here and there you may lose the pulse, it's okay, but try to come back. So back to toggling with some changes, E flat, C, A flat, B flat, right, so toggling pulse adds a sense of groove and it adds a sense of color to your groove. It sort of slowly brings out like a drum kit in the left hand of your piano. The bass will be like your kick drum and the octave could be like a snare drum, right. Moving on, another kind of pulse which I like to play is a disco pulse, what I call as a disco pulse and that essentially sounds like very disco music from the 80s. You go, so essentially you're playing eighth notes or sixteenth notes, however you call it, like faster than the pulse. So you go versus toggling which we learnt earlier, a bit slower, still on the pulse, but disco will be at a faster pace. Play along, come back to toggle, pulse, fast pulse, disco, right, so we've done pulse, we've done toggling pulse, we've done the disco pulse and now we need another rhythm pattern and we have to go with everyone's favorite ever rhythm pattern which is we will rock you. So how does that go? You all know it, doop, doop, ta, doop, doop, ta, kick, kick, snare, so it's like a on the pulse rhythm and what I would recommend is pinky, pinky, thumb, pinky, pinky, thumb, root, root, octave. Let's see how that goes, probably sing we will rock you, just to have some fun. I have no clue of the words but you get the idea and so on, so keep that going and then bring back our original melody which is and always try to sort of combine this with what you've learnt already in the past. So maybe if I do we will rock you with something of the past like a pulse, disco, we will rock you, disco, right so that's about we will rock you pretty much on the pulse but you don't do da, da, da, da, you do doop, doop, ta, doop, doop, ta, kick, snare, right guys one more and then we will break this video and then do part two where I'm going to tell you five more left hand rhythm patterns which may be little bit more interesting or little bit more challenging than what we are doing now, right so the last rhythm pattern which we are going to study for this part of the part two series is the thresio which is a very, very popular Afro-Cuban rhythm or a Latin rhythm pattern which is used in almost every genre you'll find in the field of groovy dance music or pop music it goes something like this so if I have to count it it's a little bit more intense because it's playing over those 16s, 16 notes so 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2 so now you have to get that with the melody there so it may be possible to play chords first that could be a good start start with just a chord not yet the melody then try to sing the melody over this and then whenever you're ready give it a go that's the thresio and the way I'm playing the thresio on the piano is okay snap snap okay one, two, right so in this lesson we've learned how to play the pulse to support the right hand melody we've looked at the toggling pulse bringing out the drum like quality the disco pulse very groovy then we've looked at everyone's favorite we will rock you. Then we've looked at the popular Latin rhythm which is Tresillo. So moving forward we are going to pretty much take the same melody but we'll then look at different options in the left hand and I'm going to keep it, I'm going to continue to keep it very simple. I'm just going to take the root and the octave in the left hand or the root and the fifth if you can't fit the octave along with the right hand. We're not going to really do it with chords just get a good foundation with the root and the octave. So head over to part two for more rhythmic challenges.