 Hi everyone, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this piano exercise, we are going to tackle the idea of linear playing or linear study, which is basically to move up and down the piano freely without a problem. And I have a nice methodology or a nice structured step by step way of getting this done and not the usual way which you might find which is your traditional major scales which are you know which are also linear. Linear basically means you're going in steps one two three four you're not really skipping. Skipping is also a nice thing to do but in this video we are just going to do linear playing but not the traditional so a lot of students ask me how do I improve my fingering how do I play better how do I play faster especially and everyone seems to think that the answer is to play major scales up and down then do you know two octaves three octaves and so on and so forth but that's not the only way to improve as a piano player the linear study goes way beyond this so I figured let's focus on the main challenge of playing anything linearly that is this thing the thumb the thumb is the small finger so it has to cross under the other fingers you can't possibly cross this under that at least I can't maybe to do a gesture you could do stuff like that but not to play the piano going to be a bit biased towards the right hand as opposed to my normal videos because it will serve the purpose we'll do another video on the left hand as well but this will primarily focus on the right so when you're moving upward or right side or higher in pitch you would cross your thumb under fingers in order to move forward and it starts getting now to a point where what finger do you cross the thumb under you would cross it probably under the index finger that kind of works well you could cross it under or under the middle finger that kind of works well could you cross it under the ring finger yes but it's a bit annoying so you'd reserve that for certain scales where the thumb does not play a black key ever like F major it's really annoying to put your thumb there so in those occasions you would put your ring finger on B flat and then cross your thumb now would I ever cross the thumb under the pinky absolutely not almost never I don't if ever I do it I'm probably doing some wrong technique so you need to watch that don't cross the thumb under the pinky because your entire elbow is going to move in a almost like a chicken dance like way you know which I don't know by the way maybe you do so don't cross the thumb ever under the pinky rarely under the ring and in most cases under the index and the middle fingers most likely the middle because then you could get to play more and then cross now on the way down it's the exact reverse of what I just said everything crosses over the thumb again because the thumb is the tiny finger and it's the most stretchable finger unlike the other fingers as you can see this is the most stretchable finger you can go almost an entire 360 with the thumb very powerful finger so when you go down especially when you go to the left side lower pitch you'd cross fingers over the thumb so the index finger would be an easy option to start like that stuff like that then the middle finger also works the ring finger can cross fairly well but I would say use that sparingly only in certain scales like F major you don't have any option so the general rule of thumb no pun intended is the thumb should not be on a black note when you're playing the piano especially during linear playing if you're doing chordal playing by all means keep your thumb on the black notes it's absolutely it's very ergonomic I used to make that mistake sometimes in my earlier even in my earlier teaching days I you know wrongly I would imagine I used to tell students avoid the thumb on black notes but that's not a that should not be a general rule avoid the thumb on black notes if you're playing linear stuff that means if you're moving in stepwise motion so I would stand corrected there so in a nutshell on the way up cross the thumb under the other taller fingers these three mostly these two sometimes this one and on the way down the other fingers will cross over the thumb and as you do all this stuff a few posture related things for the body to keep in mind I just have one or two just don't move your elbow too much that's a bit annoying and it just makes the angle of hitting things and the ergonomics and the efficiency extremely poor so don't move your elbow you can get a lot of speed with crossing and if you see my elbow it's almost it's just tied to my it's just at the stomach pretty much it's right there right so keep your elbow fairly close to the body as much as possible so coming to the exercise now the exercise starts by being very mechanical technical and following the laws of physics if you will and then it starts getting very creative where we defy the laws of physics if you will so before we get started it'll be nice if you get your keyboards out or pianos out and practice with me as I'm teaching you you might want a book as well and you might want to get the notes which are waiting for you on a Patreon page before we get started it would be awesome if you could give the video a like and hit the subscribe button turn on the bell icon for regular notifications so let's get cracking I'm choosing E major I just don't like C major as a lot of you know so we'll take E major four sharps E F sharp G sharp A B C sharp D sharp E E D sharp C sharp B A G sharp F sharp E okay nice scale very symmetric and the the challenge here or the exercise I have for you what I call as the pendulum exercise so what does a pendulum do give it energy moves equally in both directions so just visualize the pendulum and go forward so if I take E little bit of motion on the pendulum equally up equally down would be one step up one step down that's E F sharp E D sharp so you're not going to go to E F sharp G sharp don't go to the third note it's come back pendulum swings up comes back to unity and then swings the other direction like what it does in nature so get used to that and you'd want your index finger to take take the burden of doing this job if you feel a bit tense you can also use your middle and get that done see what works for you in terms of speed and overall ease of playing the thing okay once you're done with one up one down you could journey forward towards the next little bit more of the pendulum moving which would be two up two down could also narrate the swaras as you go along and I like to keep a pulse in my left hand so that the left hand doesn't go to sleep which it might be careful so keep the pulse going or if you like some patterns maybe we will rock you or something we will rock you right if you want to go a bit disco if you're bored with E so some other notes maybe so that's we've covered one up one down two up two down then what can we do we can do three up three down obviously three up three down poses a kind of a waltz feel or a triplet feel doesn't it one two three one two three one two three one two three one now here's the here here are two options for you when you cross down now because you want to have a finger for the B you could think oh I should cross my ring finger at the D sharp but that may be a bit of a kind of a annoying motion to cross that over the thumb so instead of that I could probably cross the middle finger now naturally my thumb leaves its position here and comes here to the P or the fifth so my thumb tends to hop between E and the B let's do that again so there's a nice triplet in there and just to prove to you that the fingering is quite efficient see see the speed at which I'm playing it so I usually try to play the exercise a lot faster and I should be in control over it and I shouldn't have pain when you go fast a lot of musicians when we play fast I don't know why but we feel pain that's because you're not you've not focused on the correct fingering the correct posture the right ergonomics so the way I look at it at least from a piano playing perspective playing fast should be as difficult on the hand or as challenging on the hand as playing at a normal or a slow pace so you should develop your practice and your ergonomics that way it should be a very healthy process when you play the play the drill at whatever speed you choose to play it on so if you wish you can even cross your ring finger but then you have to anyway cross your thumb otherwise your elbow gets stuck in the air so bring back your thumb so hence I would recommend the crossing of the middle finger anyway your thumb has to come down so play it there hop it there back hop hop back hop hop back hop hop slowly let's bring in some left hand could also play some chords if you enjoy try to make the exercise as musical as possible to a point that by the end of it all once you're very confident with the thing you don't even call it an exercise anymore that should be a very good way to practice I think and last but not least we have only five fingers poor old human beings like us maybe we should have evolved a bit better maybe everyone over our countless years of evolution should have done things like playing the piano or maybe we should start doing so now so then some of folks in the in the future years will have maybe a sixth finger but now we just have five of them so the pinky the the e the tiniest one that's all you can do really so play four up the pendulum is now swinging to its max because that's the human level of what you can do so I'm going to stop at the power and again let's focus on crossing the middle now I need to play that because it's four up four down equally right okay now if you feel oh you're doing too much of crossing maybe you could cross the ring finger then you limit your crosses which is also very ergonomic you need to just get used to your ring finger crossing because the ring finger crossing may jerk your hand a little bit or make it a bit uncomfortable so just practice that maybe practice both fingerings so in a nutshell we have one up one down two up two down three up three down triplet vibe and four up four down which is the maximum stretch we are going to do at least in this lesson and obvious things to avoid are things like that where you move you where you don't use your thumb for the cross so whenever you're crossing use your thumb always and that's one mistake don't do that another mistake which I find some people doing sometimes even performers on stage they may do if they run out of fingers they may they may cheat like that and just add the other finger there but then you're going to lose the legato you're going to lose the dynamics of what your your goal was in the first place so try to just play it this way linear is linear one by one until you run out of fingers and then the thumb comes in to help you out and this is very different than the guitar and other stringed instruments because you're always on a shape and you clutch the instrument with your thumb so your thumb doesn't actually go on the fretboard or doesn't actually fret these notes so you're using the thumb ergonomically to actually give your other fingers some some some energy otherwise just the other fingers pressing down on a guitar especially a bass which I play is impossible at least for me you need the thumb to provide that counter motion which is why you really need your thumb for guitar for violin for bass so you're left with these four fingers so what do guitar players have which we guys don't they have other strings so they don't move like that on the guitar they don't have to cross they just when they run out of notes they find the next string and the intervals of the strings are tuned to serve the music and to serve the player they are generally tuned in upper intervals not seconds or thirds they are tuned in fourths which is really cool so the piano the reality is we have you you could look at this as the piano is a one string guitar if you want to think of it that way but to but the advantage we guys have is we have a thumb which can float around and we don't need the energy here to to be provided for whatever it is you're driving here so the each instrument has to be looked at in a very different way but just to give you that comparison the piano you have your thumb which is free this is your most important finger so just a few things now to make this exercise a lot more creative so we've looked at the technicality to make the what i'm calling the pendulum exercise more creative we have done one up one down two up two down three up three down why why why should it be symmetric yes physics tells us that a pendulum should be symmetric but in reality you can do one up two down let's see how that sounds quite like that and the thing is if you have your time signature at the back of your head and say no matter what i have to play four four or no matter what i have to play three four then you're gonna adjust the durations of these notes which i think is another skill or another nice real-time improvisational skill which you can develop while doing this drill so if i played all even one two three it becomes a walls that's one up two down but i can choose to conform it to four four by playing so it's still going one up two down but the the durations of notes are being adjusted we will leave a few notation exercises waiting for you on our patreon page which you could check out and dive into more of this concept and let's do two up and one down see how that sounds some dotted notes in there so it's still a linear exercise but you're just saying okay i'll go two up one down and not do it evenly otherwise it'll be a walls what else can we do you can play around maybe three up two down or three up one down let's try rather simple so so need to get those semi quavers in because i was lazy in the beginning right you have to catch up in the race so to speak always trying to keep a four four for this lesson at least and that's the it's rather weird that when you confine yourself to a musical prison cell you actually get to be way more creative than if you had no rules at all you know and a lot of people say music should be subjective it's free you need to play with a lot of freedom passion all of that may be true but there is a lot of maths in this field it's very much a branch of maths science physics so you have to follow some rules and then go go with the flow so if you confine yourself to an environment and say it has to be four four you will be creative with the notes to make it four four so you're in the jail cell of four four but you're making some some nice music which you otherwise might not make if you just play and let your fingers sort of freely flow away so i hope you get the idea you can do let's do a four up three down you have a lot of these options which you could build and i leave a few exercises in the notes which are on patreon so the last thing i have for you in this lesson is how you can take the same scale with the same linear goals but try and practice even more harder with the same collection of notes and a great way to do that is to use modes of the parent scale so right now the parent scale is e major which has four sharps classical music tells us already a mode which is the relative minor which in the jazz mode theory classes you will say that that's the aeolian mode or the sixth mode so i can perhaps start my journey with the relative minor keeping the same key signature which is four sharps namely f sharp g sharp c sharp d sharp so if i take the relative minor of e major that would be c sharp minor so e major c sharp minor okay so if i pivot now my pivot will change or my anchor note what is the anchor note that's the root of the scale for this lesson so my anchor will now be c sharp and now i want to perform the same exercise which is now here's where the problem occurs your thumb is on a black note recommended to not use the thumb for black notes for linear playing as i said earlier so use your index and you get index middle index thumb and one up one down what about two up two down you can cross your thumb there now three up that now if you're finding a congestion between your ring finger and the pinky finger here then you can play it like this this is three up three down so so my fingering would now be either index on the black note or the middle on the black note and i'll just show you both options index i'm crossing my thumb there okay see i have to bring back my thumb there upper and lower now when you're starting on a black note that's why i said it's good to try this out on all scales but all modes rather that's done but what if i cross my ring finger there that'll allow me to go even more below in in my left lower register i end up landing on my middle finger which is fine maybe i should have started with the middle finger in the first place you may not get speed though because of the ring coming after so there we go let's try the last one which is four up four down that's the max i would cross my ring finger i think that's nice keep your thumb here a tip for you would be to figure out which are going to be your thumb anchor points and just roll with it once you know your thumb anchors so if i take the the whole deal of going my anchor my thumb is on the E remember that it's on the A on the way down that's usually all that you need to execute the job you know so i'm just telling myself thumb on E on the way up thumb on A on the way down it's not this you know fingering where you have to it's almost a forceful way of playing the piano where every note has a particular finger and for me that's too many rules to follow so keep that's a that's a good tip to keep in mind when you're doing scales which you may not be so comfortable with and check this out if you're coming back if you're not crossing this way if the thumb is taking you back you can also use the thumb on the black note no problem because i'm coming back or you don't have to put the thumb there you can cross back so there are a lot of ways to do execute this actually the best way i can suggest is it has to be fast so if you want to if you're able to play it with this fingering fast it's it's correct if you played without with minimal pain with minimal stress on your hand it's the right way to play that's that's how i look at it it's easy on the body and super fast that which we all like to do right we don't we don't want pain and we want to play nice and fast so that's your relative minor but you can play this exercise on so many other modes so if you take E major you go up the second degree that would be F sharp Dorian so maybe bring in some Dorian chords maybe even more higher that's four up four down on Dorian i'm telling myself anchor thumb on A and B you can also cross your ring finger if you like that it's nice to keep the ring and the middle finger kind of equally placed then you have the Phrygian which is on the third degree probably start with the middle finger there nananananananana Lydian on the fourth degree Mix so Lydian on the fifth you may want to start on the index or the thumb really But when you're crossing back, it lands on the index. Then I showed you Aeolian and then Locrian, which is the seventh degree. So I hope you get the idea. There are two ways of kind of taking this pendulum drill to the next levels more creatively. First of all, we looked at it on the E major scale in a following the laws of physics, if you will, one up, one down, two up, two down, three up, three down, four up, four down. Then we looked at doing different things like one up, two down, two up, one down, three up, one down. And we looked at a lot of creative melodic possibilities where you alter the rhythm durations of the notes and conform it or confine it to the territory of four by four. Then we looked at starting or anchoring our first finger on the root of the respective modes of the E major scale, which is E major, F sharp Dorian, G sharp Phrygian, A Lydian, B Mixolidian, C sharp Minor or Aeolian and lastly D sharp Locrian. And hopefully with all of this in place, your linear fingering on the piano will be a lot more improved, I would say it's a study. You're not going to be able to master anything on pretty much any musical instrument. It's always a process, I would say. So the hope is when you learn this exercise, you'll get all I would hope is you are now a more confident piano player on E major that that's the best you can say at the end of doing all this. I can play E major now a lot more confidently. I think that's a nice thing to say or a nice goal to have rather than say I want to be the master of E major. I want to conquer E major. That won't happen in maybe even five lifetimes, I would imagine. So hopefully you get better with it. And also if ever you want to go back to the scale drill, the usual run of the mill textbook up and down, you can do that a lot more easily. You can do cross three, play that, play the remaining and you will also not get scared of doing it over one octave, which most people tell you, you can just go as per whatever you want. You know, I always look at that exercise and think to myself, it's a graph where the y axis is starting on zero and it only goes positive, it's only a positive y. Why not look at any system where the y axis goes positive pitch and negative pitch. Hence I like doing this sort of work where you go up, you also give the same respect to going down and it's good for the year also, I think. Right, guys? Hope you found the lesson useful. This is what I would call the pendulum exercise for linear study on the piano. Thanks a ton for watching the video. 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