 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, which we've titled the Five Pillars of Piano Accompaniment for pretty much any genre, we are going to look at, well, five pillars, five strategies, five approaches towards accompaniment and at the top level, you can make these decisions and say, this is the way I want to tackle my song, whichever chord progression, whichever genre, whichever scale, whichever key I don't care, this is going to combat any of these scenarios. Now all of these techniques which I'm going to share with you are things which I've observed and tackled over the years of playing many situations, be it with a singer, be it in a studio with a producer or a movie director, any such scenario and I found that these five strategies tend to come out instinctively and then I shape it as per the situation, as per the song. So you have the core ready or the pillar as I like to call it and then you weave around that. Okay, so let's get cracking before we do. This lesson is supplemented with my handwritten notes with staff notation and MIDI tracks. It's waiting for you on our Patreon page for just $5 a month and that $5 doesn't just give you this video, it gives you every single lesson which we have ever done and which we probably ever will do as long as Patreon exists, I guess. And there's a subscribe button on our YouTube channel as you probably already know. It's just a click away, do consider that. So let's first look at the chord progression. There are four chords and just to make it simple, I'm also going to show you the chords with their respective inversions. This chord is C minor, played as G, C, E flat in this order. I like this way of playing C minor and in the bass you play C, its root. The second chord would be F minor over A flat, that's A flat, C, F, slightly tricky. So you may want to angle your thumb slightly in order to play that with an A flat bass. It gives it a lot of depth and a lot of emotion. So C minor, F minor with an A flat bass, not F minor with an F bass, it's F minor with an A flat bass. And the third chord is E flat major in its first inversion, G, B flat, E flat with a B flat in the bass. And the last chord is something I love is G seventh, it's a nice voicing as well which you should definitely do, which is F, B, D. There's no root in the right hand, the roots in the left hand. F, B, D, the whole story again, C minor, F minor over A flat, E flat over B flat, G seventh over G bass. Let's repeat that and the challenge here is, or I'm making it challenging for this lesson is let's play each of the chords not for the whole bar. Let's not do one, two, three, four like this. Let's challenge ourselves by playing it within a bar. So two chords in one bar will be C minor, F minor, E flat and G seventh. Let's do that again, C minor, F minor over A flat, E flat over B flat, G seventh. So it's shifting every two beats, of course I'm playing it on every beat, so it's two hits if you look at it. C minor, F minor over A flat, E flat over B flat, G seventh and repeat and repeat. So the first strategy I have for you is what we call ballad chords with a time feel. So ballad chords with a time feel will take the chord and in the right hand which tends to be the more busier hand, you just follow the pulse until the chord changes and with the left hand you start off by just slamming a nice huge octave. Don't do, sounds a bit smaller, so nice and big C, okay. That's G, C, E flat, okay and now I'm gonna do two hits for each chord and one hit with the root. This is the standard ballad style which we use in most of our songs. Hope you're getting the vibe. Now to add motion to this, you just tell yourself how much is the beat getting divided by. If the beat is getting divided into two units, you're gonna count quavers, right. One and two and three and four and if the beat is getting divided into three units, you're gonna count triplets, one and two and three and four and like that. If the beat is getting divided into four units, you're gonna count semi quavers, one E and two E and three E and four E and or takadimi takajunu takadimi takajunu. Dividing by three could be considered as tak it, tak it, tak it, tak it. Dividing by two, you could say tak, tak, tak, tak. So determine your time feel which is the rate or the amount of beat division and also it may be swinging. So instead of it going one E and two E and which is rather straight, it could be one E and two E and three E and four E and it could swing. So basically swing would be you're adjusting the E's and the U's if it's 16 note swing or eight note swing is where you're adjusting just the and so that'll be one and two and three and four as opposed to one and two which sounds more straight. Straight music is where you tend to move straight, you move forward and swing music is where you tend to sway you know like in a sideways motion. At least that's what tends to happen to me. You might know better I'm not the world's greatest dancer. So if you dance you will know what happens to you when you swing, when you dance to swing music versus to straight music. You have different dance routines, different dance genres I would imagine for each time feel of music. So how do we execute this on the keyboard? If you take our chord, let's take one chord C minor. Let's say I want to do simple eighth notes. A great way to do this is split up your left hand octave and very quietly at those in-between off beats repeat the octaves you're slamming it down together one and two and you're hitting all the ands rather quietly two and one and two and three and four and one and two and three basically all the ands gives the song a lot of motion, a lot of dynamics as well because the volume of these are almost ghost-like in nature. I can swing this now and where's the swing coming from? It's just my thumb of the left hand and for a ballad feel we try to use our pedal as much as possible, it gives a more ambient sound, a very epic open sound. Now what happens if you're dividing by three? Your vibe will be one and a two and a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, so I can now use both my thumbs and break up the chord slightly, you know, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, a ta-kit, I get a automatic triplet feel as opposed to waivers or eighth notes, right? If I wanna go very busy, maybe sixteenth notes, let's try that oney and between my thumbs, they're having a kind of a tussle together, very busy sounding. You can also kind of, you don't have to do, you don't have to only do notes between the C and the G thumbs, you can do, you can even add this G if it sounds good to you. But I would recommend just start with the two thumbs, because the bass notes are differing in this exercise at least, they are not the true roots of the chords, right? So ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta, if you swing that, depending on how much ever swing you want, forceful, all down to what your thumbs are doing, so this thumb technique is really good. I've done this thumb technique in great detail, we'll leave a link in the description, in that lesson right after this one if you have the time or whenever. So moving forward, this is about the ballad ecosystem, so any song you wanna play, this technique will really work, so start with pulse hits in the right hand, the roots of the chord in the left hand, super easy, you just need to write it down, write the respective inversion as I have written in my charts for this exercise. Then to add additional dynamics, additional rhythmic flavor, you add a ghost note with your thumb, this is what works really well for me and lot of other artists who play ballads. So moving on to the next technique, who can forget those arpeggios? So three basic arpeggios, I'm gonna talk about now with speed variations. So with speed variations, you just want to kind of decide whether, again the time feel, whether you're dividing by two, one and two and a shaker is pretty helpful, one and two, three and four or a triplet shaker, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, ta, see if the beats are dividing by three or one and two or a semi quaver, sixteenth note arpeggio. So this is a very important decision. So using the help of a shaker, you can figure out your arpeggio pattern. Now coming back to the chords, the three arpeggio patterns which are very, very important for you to learn would be, let's explain with just one chord, so C minor, G C E flat. The first arpeggio pattern is low note, middle note, high note, middle note, what we call as L M H M in music, L M H M, L M H M, okay, okay, and then the next pattern would be high, middle, low, middle, high, middle, low, middle, also called as high, middle, low, middle, H M, L M H M, you're starting from the top note and then you can even consider high, low, middle, low, which is kind of my favorite. High, low, middle, low, every piano player will kind of have a preference while accompanying. High, low, middle, low, and it's also important to note that again, if the arpeggio has a more sustained, ballad-like vibe, if it's used a rock song or a power ballad, you'd want to hold on your pedal as you play the chord and another nice strategy would be if you're not holding the pedal, at least hold down the top note or the first note as part of the arpeggio. So it's L M H M, see, I'm holding down my L, or if I do high, middle, low, middle, if I do high, low, middle, low, see, I'm holding on that high note. So it becomes a nice habit to have, also strengthens your finger independence. So now these arpeggios you can do with basic speed variations. For example, if you feel the song requires eighth notes, play all of your chords with eighth note arpeggios, keeping that L M H M or H M L M H L M L, whichever arpeggio pattern you prefer, to and decide, move your head and see if you're dividing the head by two units or by four units. One, it looks like in this case, I'm dividing by two. So we're playing quaver arpeggios or eighth note arpeggios. Let's do it over the chords. You'll find the notation where you can practice along, maybe later on as well over the week also allows your left hand to be a lot more independent. If you want to maybe follow the drummer can do a lot of this stuff or if you just want your own independent pattern in the left hand, make it very epic in the left hand and keep it very static in the right hand, very tight, build up, you can make it very heavy at the end with some triplets in there, got a bit carried away. But now you can see the usage even of 16th note variations if you feel the beat is dividing by four, white like this and I'm splitting my octave also just give a nice kick and snare kind of interaction or a low and a high highlighting some accents okay and what who we don't want to forget triplet arpeggios as well so if your songs on triplets maybe you can do LMHLMHLMHLM or start from the high note high middle low maybe change a bit later and remind it of an awesome Toto song called Child's Anthem you probably do this tutorial we have to do this tutorial definitely gonna do it if you like if you want me to do a tutorial of Toto's Child's Anthem leave it in the comments so moving forward let's look at another approach towards piano accompaniment so if you take any kind of a hand drum like a tabla or a bongo or a jembe or a darbuka you'll find that the high frequencies and the low frequencies don't collide with each other so if you take the bongo which is a good example this is your low sound that's your high some people prefer to flip it around I like this system because it's more piano like in nature so this is your low and that's your high so you can create grooves let's say this one which is pretty much like a person marching left right left right but it creates some interesting rhythmic color because your low frequency and your high frequency in this case the kick and the snare of the bongo they're having a chat with each other whenever two people have a chat you don't want you don't want two people to talk together you want one person to speak and then the next person speaks. Zakir Hussain the great tabla player has a nicer way of looking at it where he says the male person is the lower drum and the female person is the higher drum and they chat with each other sort of like a relationship between a husband and a wife or something so everyone has their different analogies that as rhythm players but the fact remains if you want to make a rhythm which works don't collide the low frequencies and the high frequencies rather use them both to chat with each other and help each other out so using that concept I can start with a march left right left right and maybe graduate to two lefts and one right left left right left left right feels a bit like we will rock you don't you think and you can make some combinations like left right right left you should see what works with your song so you can also listen to your drummer and just you know using a drum like this a frame drum a simple affordable drum or even a table or a book or your your own body you could kind of do the blow frequency here and the high frequency on your leg or something like that you can figure out the rhythm pattern which is going to work for you and then you just decide okay this is the low one that's going to be my base and this is the high one that's going to end up being my chord so if I do a march there we go I'm literally marching on the piano to prove it and so on another nice way to march is to march it more rhythmically well and do a legato in the left hand and do a staccato in the right hand check that out it's still left right so if your song is a bit more on the jumpy side or if you have a drummer in your band or if you have a percussionist you could probably adopt this sort of technique and then like I said these are five pillars so the marching concept is a pillar you can then make it adapt to different scenarios off the top if you're doing this over a 3 by 4 or a waltz song what do you do just add one extra on the right hand becomes waltz but also say things like which helps you count it better pretty much any groove we will rock you now very rock like almost any rock song you could play like this or maybe let's see any groove even your bandmate could communicate an idea to you could just ask them to sing the groove or just tap it they could hit tap hit you if they want which I don't recommend but some of them do especially drummers I've had a drummer friend who gets angry with me and he the grooves with his sticks on my shoulder which is not recommended so what you want to do is find the groove of the song and then play the piano you don't want to play the piano and then think later so the bongo will be a great friend of yours or a frame drum or a tabla or any instrument where you can have two different pitches moving on so let's say you want to define your piano accompaniment arrangement in a more dancey way you want to say you know this is a dance song I want to make people dance it's 2023 that's all they care about these days or seem to care about these days so what do I do pull out the big guns this is called the thresio rhythm now the thing about the thresio is because one of the hits namely one and two and three and four and one and two one and two is on the offbeat it creates that rhythmic interest and just gets people to be a bit excited and thus dance one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and four and one and two and three and four so this is a nice dance rhythm which you could try out it's called the thresio and what happens is if you speed this up one in two in three if you start counting it as 16th notes and then when you feel even more and and ease and hers against the pulse people will dance more I presume so one in a two and three so let's do that over the chord progression one in a two and three and four and one in a two and three na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na also kind of sounds very Latin very salsa you could imagine it in those contexts practice this or construct in accompaniment in two ways this the first ways like what we talked about earlier in the syncopated style with one by one left, right, right. The other opportunity you have, it will be to keep the pulse running as your listeners probably gonna do this or move their body to the pulse and then in your right hand you offload the entire hits to the right hand with the chord. So let's do it slowly in eighths one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and two and three and I'm hitting for the purpose of a better groove three one and two and three and I'm playing I'm not hitting the bass at every every beat I think it's nice even this way but this makes them dance more and it'll also motivate you to count in sixteenths rather than eighths you can literally feel those off beats as they are kind of giving you a little bit of a electric electric jolt so to speak which you have to feel within your body if you want to feel if you want them to feel your music and dance and groove you need to do it yourself so whenever there's an and or offbeat try to make sure that you you are also feeling that intensity or that that that energy of the ends otherwise it's not going to convey to the audience so keep the pulse in the left hand and the groove in the right hand you can also keep the you can kind of you can kind of divide your responsibility by playing C chord A flat chord B flat so that's the most syncopated approach while the grooving approach the drum-like approach if you will would be keep the pulse in your left hand and move the entire pattern to the right hand the very good dance rhythm which you could check out and you could learn more about it in our in the description we leave a link to the thresio and a few exercises on using the thresio and salsa rhythms in general which I love to perform and compose with okay so I have one more pillar of piano accompaniment for pretty much any genre which needs the drums so you need to listen to the drums follow the drums and then see what you can do in a nutshell what's going to end up happening is the drums the most important parts of the drums are kick snare pretty much all the time so you'll have your kick snare and then to support that and to give the audience a feel of the pulse and the division system of the beat we have the hi-hats or we might have the ride which is a more ringing kind of symbol which is used at the choruses of songs pretty much or the the outros or where the songs get very heavy you might want to use the ride so you balance your intensity but keep the same hits with the hi-hat and the ride so good way to practice the drums would be let's say you take a simple groove like we will rock you we will rock you groove would be doop doop ta doop doop ta kick kick snare kick kick snare right so you could perform the kick kick snare with your left hand with the lower range instrument lower range of your piano and do kick on the lowest note on the root and then divide your root and octave and play the octave at the top and that gives you the feeling that it's the snare drum even though it's not and this is what a bass player in a band would also do in an ensemble so it's pretty much universal and the piano is also a bass instrument like any other so you go this doesn't have to be we will rock you but it could be we will rock you now in the right hand you could start with imagining what the hi-hat of the drummer would do so if it's play that and if you feel it's too forceful then arpeggiate that you don't have to go blocks you can go arpeggiate that or maybe you feel the hats are going slow it's blocks would work for this let's do that with the changes let's look at now the hats doubling probably you could look at this as eighth note hi-hats could even develop some hi-hat accents for example an open hi-hat could be I'm imagining the drummer lifting the hat with his leg and creating an open field piano is very similar to drumming if you think about it it's just that the output is remarkably different okay if you like arpeggios what I'm going to do now is to try and make it as real world as possible and we are not going to change the chords it's still going to be C minor F minor over a flat E flat over B flat in G7 and if you're following the hats and if you want to do a faster hi-hat performance even though the hi-hat is not doing it himself or herself you can consider you play the faster hats maybe you want to do this drummers not doing that but you could do that as well at least you're following the kick and snare which are very important and when you follow the kick and snare you don't have to follow every aspect of it you can just follow the ones which you think matter the most in the song it doesn't have to be the ghost notes of the snare or the extra kicks you know and so on and so forth right so let's start with this groove now the first thing you need to do is observe it from a kick and snare perspective there's all these little snare goes to touch there's also hats looks like it's an eighth note hat sequence and this is a damn good drummer so the drummer is going to do some ghost notes like you do touch you see these random snares so you could follow those your drummer will appreciate it I'm sure yeah you may not catch those but this feels a bit like we will rock you at least to start so one way to start is do the kick and snare in your left hand and right hand just to be aligned with the song and the tempo of your drummer you could add those ghost notes with your thumb by breaking up the chord let's say if you want to play the kick and snare in your left hand I miss the G let me try that again there we go I think basically trying to copy the kicks and the snares with my pinky and my thumb trying to get the hats in my right hand or maybe I can just do just exactly with the hats so even if you don't match the drums exactly it should at least give you a perspective it should give you a good and at least you won't get kicked out of the band right guys hope you're gonna find the five pillars of piano accompaniment useful for you hopefully it will help you to survive or play any musical genre a company a singer who could be another individual a friend who you're jamming with or yourself you could be the singer and the idea here is to have an instinct whenever a melody is thrown at you a new song is thrown at you some environment some jam or recordings studio environment you should test out these five strategies and see what your fellow bandmates or your choir or your fellow musicians in general would like thanks a ton for watching the video don't forget to get your notes on patreon it's just for five dollars for my handwritten notes as well as the staff notation and if you want to dive into these concepts of piano accompaniment hand independence arpeggio playing in a lot more structured a manner you can always consider heading over to Nathaniel school.com and you can do one of the two things you have video courses where I've prerecorded a bunch of lessons in a structured manner or else you could consider learning with one of our faculty I'm also one of the faculty in person by just filling up a form the moment you fill up the form our course advisor will reach you and don't forget to hit that subscribe thanks a ton for watching the video cheers catch you in the 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