 Hi everyone! This is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music and in this lesson, let's look at a go-to piano rhythm technique or a rhythm pattern which can be customized to be playable on pretty much any genre, be it pop, some hard rock, some power ballads or even some film score background music kind of stuff. So, I've chosen a chord progression which I think is quite unique. I've not tried to keep it very cheesy or something you would have already heard. So, let's get started with the chords. So, you start with A major, then we go... Now, here's the interesting one, the second chord. It's D major with an A bass. So, that's D major in the right hand and then A pivoted in the left hand. So, let's do that again. A major, D major slash A. Now, you could also do D minor slash A depending on the vibe you want. So, that's A major. That's generally what I'm using in this lesson. D major or I could do D minor with an A bass. Okay, these are the first two chords. Something more uplifting, something more, you know, gloomier, uplifting, brave again. And then the end, the last two chords are going to be F major, G sus and back to G major or you could just do F major, G major back to A. Try to play everything four times. F major or G sus 4 going to G. So, these are pretty much the chords used in the entire lesson. So, make it a point to just practice them before we move to the rhythm patterns, which I am going to talk to you right after you subscribe to our channel if you haven't already. Please do that and also turn on the bell icon for notifications that will help us go a long way with making this channel go forward. Okay, so let's begin you have the first rhythm technique which I have for you guys, which is derived around playing every chord either four times and then shifting to the next chord or depending on how fast your chords are, you could do two times. I'm just going to go with four times per chord. So, that's one, two, three, four, change two, three, four, change two, three, four, change two, three, four. Normally, to get started, always follow the pulse of the song. Play the pulse in your right hand two, three, four, one, two. Remember what I said at the beginning. This is a kind of a go to technique or a default technique for pretty much any genre or a survival technique if you will. This could get you working with any kind of a groove because if you follow the pulse, nothing goes wrong because the pulse is what the audience is going to groove or move to. So, if all fails, at least play the pulse, you know. So, that's what I'm doing in the right hand. I'm doing one, two, three, four. Okay, and then the next chord, one, two, three, four. And the left hand is keeping it simple. I'm not doing this would start sounding very aggressive. It's like a drummer or a drummer playing a kick drum and a snare drum together. That doesn't happen very often, right? Or a tabla player hitting both the drums together. I don't think that'll sound great ever. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four, three. Let's do that again. One, two, three, four. One, two, D slash A. One, F major. Three, four. G, sus. G major. Back to A. So, now we try to develop a rhythmic interest or a rhythmic flavor which is customized to the song we are playing. And that depends on what I call as the time feel. So you need to figure out how much the beat is divided in two. Is the beat divided by two, by three, or four, or six, or eight. And also is the division process swung or is it straight? Okay, so I'm going to start us off with a simple divide by two which you might familiarly know as and. So you count it as one and two and three and four and so that and is what I'm going to bring out onto the piano with a very subtle hit in my left hand. And that subtle hit will be here with this finger. And two and three and four and one and two. So you could target these notes. E and two and F sharp. And two and three and four. You can hit for the F chord, you could either hit C or I prefer to hit just the octave because you have a gap, you have a space there. And two and three and maybe G with G's octave back to A with its fifth, namely E. A with F sharp played as the ghost eighth note as I like to call it. Why I like to call it ghost eighth note is because you barely hear it. And ghost comes from that drum terminology where the drummer is playing a ghost note with his or her snare drum, right? So that's what I'm doing with this finger and making it soft so that it doesn't cloud the other important hit points. So it's still four hits in the right hand. But if you see my left hand, it's doing something quite unique. There's a long hold with the pinky finger of the left as always. But I'm adding with my other fingers, which is usually the thumb or the index finger, I'm adding that ghost or that eighth note addition. And keeping it soft. Sounds like the song is flowing better, right? And also keep it soft. Don't slam that. That'll ruin the vibe and keep your pinky sustained at all times. And if you'd like the dark version or the sad version, you get the D minor with an A. So now I've divided the beat by two, which is cool. But what if your song has a kind of a triplet feel where it divides by three. So there you may want to say one and two and three and four and one triplet, two triplet, three triplet, four triplet. So to exhibit that feel, here's what I'm doing. So what was eighth notes earlier was one and two. And we only engage the left hand thumb or index finger. Now we're engaging also the right hand thumb. And I guess you'll only be able to use the thumb. All your other fingers are taken up to play the chord. So you go and and and and. So you do one and one and two and earlier we did eighth notes. There's a lot more movement, but it's in the triplet feel. It'll work for sounds like hallelujah. Anyway, coming back. Eight notes and now eight triplet. Choosing a D minor now if major seventh will sound nice. G major sixth building up the chords to something more bigger. So that's your triplet. And if your feel is more shuffle or swing, if that is the vibe you're getting, it'll be something like tada tada tada tada. And again, if you hear the band, the bass or the drummer or anyone in your group doing that, you would want to change to swing so that you can survive with the group. So then it'll sound like there we go. You can speed it up if you if the speed is this and two and three and four and one and two and three and while straight and three and four and one and two and four and one. Bring in the triplet. Please note that this pinky finger has not changed at all. It's been doing the same thing I've been talking about from the beginning. And the right hand also is really reinforcing the pulse always one, two, three, four. It's always going with the pulse. So moving on, what if we try to do sixteenth notes or semi quavers as some of us call it 16 notes divide the beat by four. So then we say one and two and three and four. So the intensity or what I call is the density of the notes which you play is more because you're adding more beats within the same space of time. So what was once one and three and four and one and two can now become money and so now you're actually needing both the thumbs or the thumb and this and the index fingers to kind of add to that extra sub beats while your right hand needs to keep with the higher fingers you'll have to keep the pulse. While eight notes, just the end and three and four. Let's move to sixteenths. Once you get the vibe, you don't have to count too much. You can just feel it. Because once you feel it, you start adding some dynamics, you know, it gets softer. It's okay. You can play soft and sixteenth notes. Volume has nothing to do with the time feel and explore it a bit more depending on the melody or the vocalist intention or the drummer's dynamics. You see, I'm playing exactly the same thing. Same speed, just volume that depends on your song. Okay, so that was 16 notes. So far we looked at eight 16 with a with some swing and yeah, it goes on and on guys. So if you have maybe a sixteenth note triplet, which is going to be rare, right? That's dividing the pulse by six. That's one to three, one to three, one to three. So you could actually bring about that flavor as well on the piano. This will be like a very prog ballad kind of thing just to make it even more epic. See how subtle the triplets are and see how the pulse is going on in my right hand and the base pinky finger is not lifting one. So after dividing by six, you could also divide by eight, which is crazy, right? Something like all these 30 second notes. So that'll be a bit too intense. Maybe depends on your song. You don't have to play it loud. You can play that also soft. Okay, so we've basically seen all sorts of divisions, but two things remain consistent. That's the left hand playing the root note for the whole bar one, two with the pinky four and the right hand giving us a strong pulse consistent pulse. And then the remaining fingers of your two hands, which are pretty much these two will then develop over the time feel or will follow the way the drummer is playing the high hats or the way the singer is singing in terms of what divisions they are choosing. And I would encourage you to try this for a variety of genres, be it some pop stuff, be it some rock, some hard rock, power ballads, progressive stuff, or even some film soundtrack score kind of stuff to either bring down the vibe or the intensity or take up the intensity. So that's why I call this a go to or a default piano pattern for any song you are ever given. And I found that this is like a very good sort of survival piano technique when I'm given something which I'm a bit unaware of, I can react to the situation quite quickly. Or maybe when I'm looking to compose chords for the song, I can chill out on the rhythm a bit. And my focus is on what chords to create or how to how to compose and arrange the song a bit better. So it's a nice go to pattern which I think you'll find very useful. Have fun practicing it. And as always, this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music. Don't forget to share the video, subscribe to our YouTube channel, like, comment, ask us something. So we can probably cover that in the next tutorial and tell all your friends about our channel. And let's move forward together. Cheers.