 Hi guys this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music and in this lesson let's learn how to construct or compose a melody given a chord progression and we learn various techniques to do that and it will all be based on a set of chords which are played in a cycle or a loop. Let's choose a set of chords first of all for the lesson. The chords are G minor, E flat major, B flat major and F major. So I am constructing this or I am within the key of the B flat major scale. The B flat major scale as you may already know has two flats namely B flat and E flat. Let's just build that together B flat C D E flat F G A B flat B flat A G F E flat D C B flat so that's two flats namely B flat and E flat. So the chords I have chosen are G minor, E flat major, B flat major and F major for pretty much the entire tutorial. The G minor chord let's functionally build it as well G minor is the sixth minor of the B flat major scale, E flat major is the four major of the B flat major scale coming to the tonic or the root chord B flat major one and F major which is the five. So we are pretty much going to play these chords and since the intention of this lesson is to bring about the melody it's going to be a little tricky to play the chords in the right hand because the melody is essentially taken up by the right hand. So we have to pretty much play these chords in the left hand and to play it with the left hand you could find a spot somewhere around middle C on the piano maybe here and I'm starting with G B flat D and then you could use inversions G B flat E flat which is a sort of a close way of connecting them G B flat D G B flat E flat F B flat D F major F A C you could also suspend it F sus 4 down to F major let's do that again E flat B flat F major sounds very popular right which was the intention of this lesson to take like a very very popular progression can build so many songs out of it and there are so many which have been built around it so G minor E flat major F major B flat major and now F major okay so good way to start off with your melody is to actually take the chord tones of this chord and build your melody along the way and after taking the chord tones we are then going to add some rhythm patterns and so on and so forth and just and make a really awesome melody right so before we get started I'd request you all to please subscribe to our YouTube channel if you haven't already you'll get a lot more notifications it'll really help our channel go forward and so on and so forth let's get started now so the first chord G B flat D has three chord tones G B flat and D so what you can do in your right hand is to take one of these chord tones and just focus on one for now okay so I could take G sounds quite nice or I could take B flat or I could take D now all of this sounds very pleasing to the ear and it works really well over that chord why because it's just common sense the note of that melody is there in the chord GB G B flat D are the notes of the chord the notes of the melody can thus be one of the notes of the chord and if you take a note which is outside the chord you may have mixed mixed opinions you know about those notes for example if I take a doesn't sound very stable it sounds very sort of tense we call it a tension or a color some notes you know may not sound great and there and you definitely want to do not want to take a note which is outside the scale to begin with like maybe a B oh man that sounded really bad right so a great way to start off creating melodies on the piano or pretty much any musical instrument is to look at the chord progression because inevitably chords drive the song chords are chords take the song on a journey and the melody sort of just follows the chord to begin with at least in a lot of the western written songs out there so we have a very popular chord progression 6 4 1 5 and we're just going to take chord tones of each chord play them in the right hand as a melody and let's see how that sounds so for G minor I'm choosing B flat right for the E flat major chord I could choose any of the three E flat G and B flat I'm just going to choose the G which is the third degree or the third note so we go G minor E flat major and now for B flat I'm going to skip to the D and for F major I'm playing a essentially the thirds of each of the chord so that's B flat G which is the third of E flat major which is the D which is the third of B flat which is the A which is the third of F let's play that together without me talking too much also observe that I'm playing it as an octave that tends to make things sound very very nice on the piano so you could try that if you're not so familiar with octaves you can just play single notes still sounds good right and at this point just note for those of you who are a little unclear about what I'm doing my left hand is playing inversions so I'm choosing the most efficient way to play the four chords namely G minor E flat major B flat major and F major well in the right hand I'm using octaves so I have two videos which already explain this rather I have a series on chord inversions which we will link up in the description do watch that if you have doubts regarding your chord inversions and regarding the octave concept which I'm playing in my right hand to make the melody a lot more bigger and a lot more colorful we have another lesson on how to play octaves on the piano so please watch that that will again be in the description okay let me play that again for you so that's G minor E flat D A over F B flat over G minor G over E flat major D over B flat major A over F major I'm just going to sing the notes for you so you get an idea I'd advise you also to sing and play it can be very helpful now you may observe one thing in the right hand I'm playing the melody sounds nice but it's rhythmically a little boring right because I'm playing pretty much semi-brieves I'm hitting a note tongue two three four change two so that's rather boring so what can you do maybe we could add some different rhythm patterns so another rhythm pattern which could work is two minims which could be a note for two counts followed by another note for two counts so that'll be something like this a little bit more exciting because you've added more than one note it's still the same B flat or you could make the rhythm more dynamic by doing a minimum followed by two crotchets let's see how that sounds now I'm itching to do a little bit more but I would suggest you to start with these rhythms try to start always in a structured approach and by watching this lesson the main thing is about the structure and after you get the core principle behind this you can always embellish it in your own way and do your own thing very very soon so I'd advise you to stay with me till we actually get somewhere and then you can take it from there and be creative the next thing you could do is quarter minimum and quarter you know which sounds very interesting so that's short long short so short note long note short note so all these rhythms happen without dividing the beat if you have to divide the beat into two and use quavers you know you can do stuff like very spicy very interesting right or you could perhaps not start at the one not have anything at the one running and do something like quite like that something more with subbeat something like and if octaves get tough just go single notes more and more melodic right more and more lyrical as we call it more and more like what a singer would would do with words okay maybe one more and you can make up your own could start with these one and two and three dividing by two one and two and three and four one and two and four one and two and you see what's happening right so we've picked a chord tone in this case the third of each chord and we've started with just a simple semibreve built it built it built it from there with more rhythms do start off with the rhythms which I've given in this lesson and of course you can change it from there and divide the beat more rhythm is always something which you have to understand makes melodies melodies don't just come with notes in fact those notes also will come from a chord as we saw in this video right so melody is just a concept it's an outcome of a great rhythm pattern and a great set of chords so melody is not just some random notes which are part of a scale well they could be from a scale but then you don't want to necessarily think of it that way when once you're already presented with a set of four chords which already sound good so when the chords are given to you you have to react to the chords with your melody and thus you have to respond to the chord tones which is what this whole lesson is all about it's not to build a melody through a scale per se it's more to build it given the chord tones or given an available chord an existing chord progression okay so let's have a recap of the lesson you have four chords you just pick chord tones out of those off those four chords we take one chord tone for each chord in this case in this video I've told you you can take the third of each chord that is G minor you take the B flat but once you get a hang or a grip of the the style or the technique or the approach of melody creation you can also take the other chord tones namely the first the fifth or anything then you can jumble them you can randomize all the chord tones and even the rhythm patterns like you don't have to just do tongue tongue tongue tongue tongue you could do something like see I'm doing the thresio tongue tongue tongue and then I'm doing like two minims tongue tongue so you can combine rhythms not really randomize you could also randomize but you can even combine the available rhythms we've done what we've done eight in this lesson we've done a good amount of rhythm patterns and follow the chord tones as you can see it sounds great if you can follow the chord tones and play so this is one approach towards building melodies on the piano given an available chord progression do stay tuned or do follow and head over to the next video if you can if you'd like where we'll talk about other ways of building melodies on the piano given an available chord progression again this is Jason here from Nathaniel do stay 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