 Hi guys, welcome back to our YouTube channel, this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music and in this lesson, let's learn how to construct melodies on the piano given an existing chord progression using piano player's ultimate favorite tool, which is what? Arpeggios. Okay, so let's get started with how we can use them. First off, an arpeggio is where you take a chord in any of their inversions. So if you take, let's say the G minor chord which is Gbbd, you can play it like that, Gbbd, Bbdg or Dgbb, this is what we call as the different voices or the different ways the voices work or we also just say inversions or shapes or whatever else you want to call it. Okay, so you go Bbdg, Dgbb, Gbbd. It's good to be aware of the top note of each of these chords because the top note is going to be your melody line. So if I play, what did I sing? I sang the top note, which in this case is Bbd. So get used to playing the three notes and singing the top most note. So we go, and now in this version. So all the notes are, but you need to sing only because that's going to be a melodic note. And then if I take in the root position, Gbbd, D is your main melody note. So let's go or very melodic already just by observing the top note of the chord. What do we do with arpeggios? We play them one by one, obviously. We take the chord tone, play the chords one by one, play the chord tones one by one. And let's say I take Dgbb, always choose an arpeggio. If you want to build melodic lines, play the arpeggio in such a way that you start from the top note and then perhaps hold the top note. In this instance, I'm doing high note, middle note, low note, middle note. I could also do high note, low note, middle note, low note, which I also say HLML, HLM. So or HMLM, HM. We'll start with this for now, played as eighth notes, one and two and three. Arpeggios are usually played faster at three and four and one and two and three and four. With the chords in the left hand, creates a very epic feeling, right? Repeat the same pattern for Eb using inversion, Bb, Fmaj, if you sing the top notes. If you ask me, it sounds nice, but it sounds a little boring, not so rememberable. So what you could try to do is just change the inversions of each chord. You're not trying to play inversions here on the piano to make the piano playing easy. You're trying to use inversions here in this instance to actually bring out the voice or bring out the melody from the chord. So you take that's the D on top, C, Fmaj with C on the top, so you go la la la, D on top. Playing something familiar, right? So you see what's happening, right? You create a lot of popular music, which you would find in all these electronic dance songs, primarily because the synths are playing it, you know, and arpeggios are great for synths as well as piano. So using arpeggios, being a bit clever with the top note, the chord only has three notes. You just have to understand that the top note is what the audience or the listener is going to really react to as the melody. Now, this may not be a very singer like melody, but it's still very melodious. If you think about it, it's created a hook right here, right? So whatever I've done right now, I've just played the arpeggio starting with the high note and developing a pattern like HLML or HMLM, you know? And sticking on to that high note, holding, pressing it down with the top fingers, which is usually going to be your ring finger and your pinky finger on the piano, okay? So that's not over. You can do a lot more with these arpeggios now, and let's move on. And guys, if you haven't already, please subscribe to our YouTube channel right away. Turn on the notifications at bell thing and all that and share the video, share the channel, get more people on board. Let's get started. So with arpeggios, you can also use accents, which are sort of irregular groupings within a beat division system. So if you divide the beat, let's say by two and do something like one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and that's a grouping of three plus three plus two, which is a very popular thing used in songs. So you go one, two, three, one, two, one, two, three, one, two. So now your melody becomes all that more prominent in the listener's ears because the melody is really striking at accents, it's striking at very unpredictable points, so it will be registered more by the listener. Or you could do that. That was what one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, four. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, Also my left hand is kind of playing an arpeggio of its own, right? That's also quite cool, but I'll probably talk about left hand arpeggios in another lesson. And if you haven't already, do watch one of our really older lessons where you may not recognize me. It's called creative arpeggios, so we will link that up in the description. Do watch that as well. Anyway, moving on. So you see how accents, irregular groupings of a time division can make arpeggios even more melodious. And then moving on, another style of using arpeggios is what I call as the wandering melody where the top note of the chord, since anyway the listener reacts to it the most, why don't you also react to it and move it around. So within the vicinity of the chord, within that vicinity, you don't want to play a note suddenly here. In any case, it'll be impossible. So you go, see it is sort of G minor, it works on G minor. There's a lot more melody because I'm playing more notes. I'm playing notes diatonically, very important to stay within the diatonic realm. In this case, we are on the B flat major scale which has two flats, B flat and E flat. So I can do something like the next chord, F major. See what's happening. What's also quite exciting is I was able to play that same sort of same motif and spice it up more with the harmony as an arpeggio. So the melody will probably show off itself as over G minor, over E flat major, B flat. And then if you don't want to play that same na na na na over F major, you could do You can use your voice. Your voice will sort of kick in the piano to kind of move away from its comfort zone which is just playing around the same point. That's what we ... That's what our natural instincts will want to do in the right hand. But your voice will push the piano because your voice is always going to sound good. It's a no filter kind of thing. thing. So when you sing, it's the most organic way to help your piano and then the piano takes over because that's your main skill. And yeah, so we've talked about usage of accents to make an arpeggio pattern more and more awesome. We've looked at the wandering melody where you take the top note and move it around a bit. And another tip I'd like to share with you guys in the field of arpeggios is where you can take broken up arpeggios. You don't have to play all the notes of a available time feel, you know, you can just play a little bit like for example, if I divide the beat by four, I can count as one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a one e and a two e and a three, but you don't have to play sounds a bit busy. So you could do maybe I'm skipping the e of the one e and a isn't it or every and so sounds like a gallop money money. I'm skipping what am I skipping I'm skipping the and isn't it one e and a two one e and a two e and a three and you can always combine arpeggios with what we've learned in the earlier videos. So if you haven't already do what some of the earlier chapters if you will, where in one lesson I've talked about passing and landing tones. So at the end of the phrase, maybe if you played it's getting a bit boring, right? So you can use passing tones to make it a little bit interesting at the end like a drummer playing a drum roll. That's how I look at it. So you can go and that what was that? I just did some passing notes to finally land back on a chord tone. So when you combine arpeggios with some of the other concepts of melodic creation, like following the chord tones, passing notes, landing notes, whatever else, man, things will get a lot of fun on the piano. Even though you're playing a rather cheesy chord progression, which is six four one five, which you must have heard in a lot of songs. So I apologize if I've chosen six four one five and you don't like it. I just thought I'll choose something popular so that everyone can sort of relate to this. You either have heard it enough and more and you don't like it so much or you may really like this, right? I'm sort of in the middle. So that's about arpeggios. Guys, very, very important for pianists to use arpeggios. You could also look at other musicians who play other instruments and learn from them. For example, a banjo or a mandolin or a finger style guitar. Listen to them and see what they do. They pretty much do the same thing which we are trying to do in the piano on the right hand. All the best with arpeggios. As always, do stay in touch for more videos. Like, share, subscribe, comment and more if you can. Cheers.