 Hi everyone this is Jason here from Nathaniel and in this lesson we are going to take a melody in this case a very famous melody Ode to Joy and do a lot of rhythmic modifications to the melody. Normally whenever we mess around with a melody you know in a sense of making it more interesting we tend to add a lot of harmony we tend to add a lot of bass movements or counterpoint or you know fancier chords and extended harmony and whatnot but in this lesson I wanted to solely try to explain how rhythm can come into play as well so if you're a piano player or if you're a guitar player or if you're any musician who plays melodies this lesson could be great to kind of take the melody and make you sound a lot more sophisticated rhythmically right now it doesn't mean that you can't play some advanced chords in fact we have this lesson sort of divided into two parts the first part is the one which you're watching now which is on youtube and to carry it forward we request you to click on the link in the description and head over to our patreon page where you could support us number one and also download an entire booklet where I have this whole song notated with chords for a basic player as well as with chords for a more intermediate or advanced player along with all the notes from from the lesson you're watching right now on youtube so I would urge all of you to check out the link in patreon and head over there and support us so let's get started with the lesson the first thing I want to do is to bring in what we call as time feels in music so a time feel for me will be if you take the if you take the tune so right now this is the pulse right the tune is on the pulse which is one two three four one two three four one two three four one two three you just have that one division there so that was the subbeat where the composer has divided the beat into two parts right so for me a time feel is sort of a system which you set your mind in such that you constantly follow that or you constantly follow that division system of the beat as I call it so if I have to divide the beat by two and just count it for you guys while playing the melody it will be something like this one and two and three and four we use this and terminology to make it a bit more easier to to speak you wouldn't want to say one two three four five six seven eight you don't want to play you don't want to add more numbers because then it defeats the purpose of feeling the subbeat as something very different than the main beat so you need to accept the fact and acknowledge the fact that the subbeat is going to be a very excited kind of a feel right it's going to take the song to a different rhythmic level right and make it more groovy and more exciting okay so you go one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and and two and so what we want to do is not change the melody at all we want to respect the melody and this is a great song it's a great melody to begin with so we don't have to do much all we are trying to do is just make it a bit more rhythmically interesting so if you try and add the and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and you see what's happening i've started adding that subbeat feel otherwise it would probably be like a pulse which is nice isn't it this will be really good if you're arranging for a choir or a string section where everyone sing the words together right joyful joyful so then the soprano is doing that while the alto perhaps is doing joyful or joyful that would be the tenor and then that'll be the bass so if you want all the notes to run in parallel rhythmically as well as yeah rhythmically then you don't need to divide you can still play on the pulse and rely on some really good harmony to back you right so that's not what this video is about because i can't teach you to be rhythmically cool when you're just on the pulse so if you're on the pulse you may like i said earlier you would need to focus on a more choral arrangement or a string quartet or a more orchestral vibe where everyone play the same thing together so let's say you're on a piano or you're on a fingerstyle guitar or a banjo you know these sort of instruments where you can adopt some rhythmic phrases the chords as well as the melody so on the case of a piano i could play the melody in my right hand and play the the time feel in the left hand which is currently eighth notes right or divide by two but you see the melody is still fine i can even harmonize the melody so that's that's something cool which i i thought of talking about and what happens is with the time feel you can also incorporate the time feel with different parts of the like for example the piano you can go something like you see i'm actually doing it with one hand so depending on your ability to play the instrument depending on how you want to express yourself just keep the time feel in mind so the time feel is nothing but the eighth note dividing by two and then we move on so the next time feel you could have is the triplet so if you have divide by two which is one and two and three and the dividing by three which is the triplet will be one and two and three and four and so one and a two and a three and a four and there's a very sort of conventional way of counting a triplet you could adopt it or in india sometimes you can say conical phrases like if you go back to eighth notes you could do well whatever works for you really just to feel the distinction between the main beat and the sub beat so if i do triplets and incorporate that feel never lose the melody right keep it in there just make sure that with all the rhythm stuff you're adding the melody is still retained right one and one and two so get this going and get that triplet so if you go to eighth notes triplets that's triplets so again if you haven't heard this song you should definitely check it out odd to joy by Ludwig van Beethoven i hope i'm pronouncing that right anyway so that's the triplet rhythmic time feel and then to move forward well you can keep moving forward all you're doing is you're giving yourself or you're giving the beat a lot more options and giving it a lot more spaces to fill right but the speed of the beat or the speed of the pulse if you observed so far has not changed okay so if i divide by four that'll be called as a semi quaver which we can say as one e and a two e and a three and a four right it's just easy it doesn't become a tongue twister so one e and two e and a three and a four e and right you work really well for a nice folk vibe i guess and if you're a guitar player or a banjo player i would encourage you to to try this out on those instruments as well even though i'm showing it on the piano in theory this could work on if you're a finger style player or a banjo player or a mandolin player or a vina or a sitar player whatever you do right so you go while triplets would have been semi quavers and the time feel which in this case is semi quavers or 16 notes is always sort of like the maximum division system in your brain it's not it's like you're probably not going to go beyond that unless you want to do like a flashy roll or i don't know something like that to just show off a little bit here and there you know so that the think of the time feel as the maximum you're going to divide the beat for most of the time however you don't have to always divide by four and keep that as a mechanical law you can also not divide you can do something like see what i did there i did just simple crotchets or quarter notes you know by the book melody then and then i went to a triplet and then i can go something like that i could then add a semi quaver there so you could mix and match you don't you can sparingly use time feels maybe when the part of the song maybe when you go to the b section i guess right now you could bring in the time feel like a triplet or a semi quaver and go back to triplet so whatever you i hope you're getting the idea in the sense pretty much any melody you take which is sort of on the simpler side you know it could be a classical tune like this it could be a hymn it could be a pop song it could be a jazz song it could be whatever or a folk song what i'm trying to say is the melody is strong enough the melody is driving the song but the excitement and the more groovy and the the thing which makes people move dance and you know enjoy music in that sense perhaps is lacking and whenever you feel that's lacking whenever that intensity is lacking you could bring in the time feels right so yeah you should try this out and then we also i mean if you really want to take it to the next levels you can even divide by six so dividing by six will be you know fast triplets you know 16th note triplets so if you wanted to count that i don't even know how i can count that but it can be something like you know i don't know if there's any official way i just know up to one eander so you could do something like that's like one two three four five six one two three four five six so the each beat is getting divided by six so you have so many more amazing spaces to fill right and that's the beauty about time you can measure it this way one second two seconds three seconds or whatever but then between the two seconds or between the two beats in musical terminology you can have so many sub beats so as long as you're dividing them equally and as long as you can divide them and practice them and execute them equally i think people are gonna enjoy what you're doing right of course it's gonna make it a bit more intense and a lot more sophisticated but that's cool so you go so see how slow the melody is right to accommodate all that and then you can sort of build it so what i'm trying to show you in this tutorial is just an idea it's not how to play out to joy it's just different styles of playing pretty much anything using rhythm so let's just recap until where we've come so we have the time fields we have four time fields we have divide by two one and two and three and then divide by three one triplet one and two and three and then we go one eander two eander three eander four eander then you can i even showed you dividing by six which you need not do if you think it's annoying like one two three four five six one right but try to keep the pulse pretty much the same or the melody the same so if you do divide by two divide by three divide by four six i'd like six actually for some strange reason even though you're playing more notes it's actually making the melody lazier right for some reason right so it just changes the intensity around so just acknowledge the fact that you have all these sub beats going right so practices if you want what you could do you could pause the video right now practice it and then return back because i'm going to take this forward to the next lesson in pretty much the same video right and what i'd also urge you guys to do if you wish is please head over to the link in the description it'll take you to our patreon page where you can support us for this video and for a few help us release more videos like this and you'll also get a nice study guide and a booklet and all the notation including two of my arrangements of odd to joy one for beginners and one for more slightly advanced people right so let's now move on to rhythmic devices so once you have your eye on these things called time fields which divide the beat into certain amounts the time the rhythmic devices as i call them just take up the entire time field and look at look permutations around them so if i start with maybe uh division by three for instance you know if you have and if i count like one triplet one and two right one and two and three you don't have to play all these divisions right even though you are dividing the beat by three in your mind so you could let the divisions uh i mean let the division by three happen but you don't have to play all these divisions you can clear up some space right so instead of doing maybe all the beats you could maybe do tick x tick tick x tick that'll be one and uh so you don't play at the end you play at the uh of the triplet so you're actually sort of swinging or shuffling this thing right get a more fork vibe going if you want right so or you can combine you can do that was uh all all triplets so that's like tick tick tick with a tick x tick right if you think of it that way so i've just written these ticks and x's you can check it out on the screen so you have so that's the basic field again don't compromise the melody keep the melody running right or if you do division by two maybe you could do one and play both or you can be like one and like don't play the one just play the and that'll be represented as x tick one and or you can do one and you're not even dividing so you could do something like so my left hand on the piano is going like one and two and i'm lifting it every alternate beat or every alternate beat i don't hit tick tick x tick okay you have a nice rhythm along with the melody right and you're in the eighth note time field you're dividing by two so instead of doing that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that very possibly like a very machine gun like execution you can perhaps look at these time fields to just free up some gaps as the great Mozart said music is defined as the silence between the notes so you need to keep the silence when you play right so let's see how time fields can work with maybe a semi-quaver field or a 16 note field so maybe we can do so all the semi-quavers will be one e and a right so if you want to remove the e you can try like a gallop feel so you need if you can first vocalize it what i would suggest is vocalize the time field along with the melody if you can in a very crude unofficial way whatever works for you right you could get the tick tick x tick tick tick or or oh i did that earlier i can know what can we do you can do this is all in gallop so i hope you're realizing that whatever i'm showing you right now vocalizing the fact that i kind of can do it i'm able to do it also will imply that i can also do it on my piano or my guitar so it's very important when you look at your principal instrument to always vocalize it and imagine your part and then i'm quite certain that you can eventually play it yes it's a lot of hard work but the imagination part is something you need to do first so vocalize it like what i did with these silly phrase anything i really don't know whether there's some official way to say all this but just do whatever works for you so if you want to get a kind of a 16th note feel with a little bit of gallop it's still dividing by four right one and one and one and right so it's a it's also a great practice tool you know you're taking a song you're doing and you're just trying it out in different flavors or perhaps a good arrangement and production tool as well the whole idea i'm trying to make is any melody which has ever been released can be presented in all these time fields and once you present it in the time field we just talked now about rhythmic devices which can take that to an even greater level right so that's about rhythmic devices perhaps you could pause the video practice it a bit and in the same video i'm going to also look at a little bit on poly rhythms right and while you pause the video do also consider heading over to the link in the description i know i've said that before but yeah i'm saying it again so head over to our patreon channel and support us by purchasing a pdf notebook if you will of all of what we're talking about including the notations of out to joy including two ways of arranging it harmonically which i've done for beginners as well as some more advanced people right moving on if i look at a poly rhythm now like a poly rhythm there are a lot of videos on youtube which talk about a poly rhythm being constructed through all sorts of incredible ways but for me i just want to get by i just want to get going so i'm going show you a trick of using poly rhythms with the melody to kind of stay with the time field discussion but at the same time bring about this different feel like you get a two feel over a three or a three feel over a two or a three feel over a four or a four feel over a three so we can get these results quite quickly and quite easily you just have to be aware of what you're doing okay so let's get started now if i play the melody right so if if i divide this beat by two right one and two and three and four and and if i only tap the pulse as you're hearing here nothing is really subdivided or feeling cool right so what i do is just simply tap out what we call as a dotted note sequence where you go one and two and three and four and one and two and so what happens is it depends on the time signature it also depends on whether the melody is on that time signature whether it'll recycle and a lot of other geeky stuff but what you could do is if you just keep a dotted feel one and two and three and while the melody does not keep a dotted feel it plays on the pulse so you'll end up hitting one on beat and one off beat in in succession because that's what a dotted feel does to music it will take on then we'll go to off and then we'll come back on and then we'll go back off it's gonna never do off off or on on especially in in the dotted quarter notes which we are doing now one and two one and two and three and four and one and three it's a bit weird right so perhaps you could try that one and two and three maybe before the melody comes in one and two and three and four right with the melody see it eventually resolves and it becomes like an acquired taste so if we have to enforce it on our instrument so if you see my left and my left hand is pretty much attempting this dotted feel for simplicity I'm just playing the root right you see what's happening so again the great way to count it is one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four right and try to internalize it so another trick which I found which works is away from your instrument away from your piano wherever you are let's say you're having lunch or you're in the shower or absolutely jobless right what you could do is just hum the melody and the more relaxed you are while doing this I guess is a function of you being good at it right so try to initially it's going to be very chaotic but push through and if you can actually sing this on the dining table or in the shower or in such environments right you you're going to eventually get it on your guitar or piano or whatever you play right so the trick which I found to work for myself and a lot of my students is distance yourself a little away from the keyboard right practice some social distancing if you will so go a little away from the keyboard do your thing understand the concept come back and do it on the keyboard and it just somehow comes comes together so you do it sounds quite groovy also right the moment you do it you can say that it's syncopated you can use that word I guess when nothing is really meeting each other in with the two limbs of yours okay so this is what we can call as a two feel or using dotted quarter notes right you can check out the link where I've given you all the symbols and how you can count it and map it out really well so essentially you're doing one and two and three and four and one and the story goes on one off one on and one off now when you look at a three feel or a triplet feel or what I also or what we also call as a quarter note triplet feel right because a quarter note triplet is dividing two eighth notes by three which is which is interesting as opposed to an eighth note triplet which is dividing a quarter note by three where you go one triplet two triplet three triplet which I showed you earlier one and two so here we maintain a one and a two and a three and a feel one and a two and a but we don't play all these beats we do one and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two and depending on the time signature of your song this one is on four four so I guess you can go all the way to four it'll resolve and cycle itself recycle itself very well one and one and a two and a three and a four and so on one and a two and a three and a four and right this is what I want you to practice one and a two and a three and a four and right so you see there's no repetition of beats one and two and see I did not do to us in succession one and two and both all the three the beats the main beat the off beat which is at the uh and then the next off beat which is at the and one and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two and a three and a four so and so on right it's a little tricky to do so I would suggest maybe do only the piano and then with the hand and then bring in the hand later to do something like you know quite like that it brings a like a fork vibe right right but if you guys really like the original classically composed song well I come I deeply apologize because we are going to change it around a bit right but I still didn't change the melody if you observe we've still not changed that melody it's still odd to joy by by Beethoven so you go so one and a two and a three and a four right right and a thing for you guitar players piano players and all what you'll find is once you add more and more rhythmic elements to your music it's going to make holding the harmony and the melody a lot tougher so your chords are going to struggle what you could do earlier you may not be able to do now because the rhythm has entered the party right so the melody and and the harmonic elements may need to be simplified so if you're doing a lot of chords maybe chill out on the chords maybe if I just take the D chord don't change it just hold focus on the triplet slowly but surely you can start wandering off so that's about the three feel or the the quarter note triplet feel and the last time feel where you can make it sound like a polyrhythm is where you can use 16th notes which is one E and a two E and a and use what we call as a dotted eighth note effect right so that'll be an eighth note which lasts one E and a and that comes when you put the dot there okay so just check out the notes which you can download at the description so you go 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 it's like taking forever to resolve right but that's the fun of dotted eighth notes right very tricky to practice which I have saved probably the best for last if you will so you go one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E and a two E and it's never a repetition of anything because the structure of four is being divided by into it's going in three parts at a time so the odds for it to repeat are it's going to take a long while right so you go 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 with the track so one E and so whenever you're playing the melody so first now imagine you're doing a 16th note time feel so one E and a two E right and don't make the melody go with the time feel that's sometimes what I do by mistake so one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E so this is the normal pulse and then the dotted feel I try to keep this very very consistent and after a while I guess don't think about it too much it should just be like a a plane or a machine in autopilot mode so if I have to execute it on the piano as I said earlier start simple okay now be careful you don't want 16 notes to become triplets that's a common mistake I found with with people including myself so instead of doing one and a two and a you want to go one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a get that pumping in your head one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one E and a right one E and a you may not be able to count it I think that's okay as long as you've done it with your hand before your body knows it right you don't there's a saying where you have to count everything while you play I don't know if that saying always works sometimes it may even make the process more mechanical right so anyway it gets really groovy because you're in that 16 note mode and the cool thing is with all these polyrhythmic phrases or polyrhythmic editions if you will we have always been on a time feel right so whenever you make a mistake with the polyrhythm it's cool because as long as you stay on the time feel you still generate a very nice musical phrase like if you make an error doing 16th notes for example one E and a two E and a it's fine it just sounds like another rhythm but just know when you're just doing like a cool rhythm over 16 notes or in fact a dotted a dotted eighth note kind of pulse okay so these are the three things I wanted to share for this piece ode to joy or any piece so in conclusion you take any melody you like start with this one since you're watching the video so take take a melody a simple melody which has like quarter notes eighth notes and stuff and then slowly but surely explore all the time fields which are eighth notes triplets 16th notes and the 16 note triplets which is divide by six then what can you do you you clear the way a little bit by adding rhythmic devices okay and then we've also looked at how you can take the time feel and make it even more sophisticated by bringing out this polyrhythmic feel of three is to four four is to three and so on right so some of you guys may be wondering you know what are the chords which you played and all that well in this lesson which has already been quite long thanks for staying this far by the way the I thought if I would tell you the melody the harmony and the rhythm it's going to be a super long video and it may not serve the purpose of what I wanted to convey wherein I want to teach you this rhythmic addition which can happen with any melody doesn't have to be owed to joy I just chose out to joy because of how great it is how popular it is and all that so to learn the melody to learn the chords further do head over to our patreon page you'll get a booklet which has been handwritten by me let me just give you a glimpse of some of the stuff which we have there we have all this stuff and as you can see we've also notated the song which is a nice thing to have and learn and you also have the arrangement of the song which I've done in a very simple way using diatonic chords and I've also done an arrangement using some really exciting slash chords secondary dominance a few jazz chords a few augmented chords and non by the book chords and so on and so forth right so do consider heading over and picking up a copy for yourself and you can also support our school channel in the future for the future where we'll be hoping to do a lot more stuff for you guys right in conclusion this is Jason here from Nathaniel and also I hope that all of you guys are doing safe and staying strong around this time the trying time for all of us musicians and music lovers out there but yeah keep at it stay strong enjoy yourself take care of yourself cheers