 Hi guys, this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music and in this lesson, let's explore the six feel or what we call the six by eight rhythm pattern on the piano. While I'm doing it on the piano, please note that you can also do it on other instruments or you could even program it in a recording software if you will. So for all general chord lessons, you need chords. So let's look at a chord progression which I think is awesome. You have the first chord being D minor, D F A, got that D minor. Then you have second chord being F major, F A C, F A C, the third chord C major, C E G, the fourth chord G major, G B D. And when you play them together, yeah, it gives you a very nice, brave and epic kind of vibe, right? We also say that these chords are part of the Dorian scale, right? But I just love, I just love this, love the way these four chords come together. Let's see how it sounds first of all, D minor, B minor, F, C, E, G, Pum, Pum. So these are your chords. Write them down, get used to playing them a bit. And now let's look at how we can take these four chords and play them over a six feel. So a six feel, as the number six suggests, is six beats in a cycle or six beats in a bar, right? Some people will sort of simplified and say, oh, it's actually three or some other people may make it even more complicated and say it's 12, you know, 12, 8 or 3, 4 or something. I just like six because that's the way the songs are written. The chords will usually change after around six beats. But yeah, you could either do two cycles of six or one cycle of six, as we are going to see in this lesson, okay? Let's first look at one chord, the D minor chord and just see how we are trying to create a six, eight pattern around that D minor chord, okay? So D minor is DFA and the first thing to do or the first thing to plan out is to take the bottom note of your chord. The bottom note of my chord is D and you copy that D to the top end. That means you're actually going to take a triad which has three notes and play a four note phrasing or use four notes, one note being the octave of the low note. So let's look at the D minor now, DFA and now we add the D, ideally with the pinky finger. I don't think you'll be able to do it with any other finger. So you go DFA, D, D at the top end, okay? So what was once D minor, the three notes is now that. And when you play them going up and down or down and up, you'll observe something automatically that it just sounds like it's on a six feel, okay? So I'm just going up and down naturally, just looking at it finger by finger and let's see how it sounds, right? One, two, three, four, five, six, one. And by the time it takes to recycle what happens, six beats have elapsed. Let's hear that again, one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, right? And I'm visualizing this as triplets. If you observe my head movement doing the pulse, I'm feeling it this way, right? But if I played a bit faster, I'm feeling it as we call it as sixteenth note triplets. So the first way we look at it as eighth note triplets, which is dividing my pulse by three. And the second way we look at it is dividing the pulse by six. So depends on, I guess, how fast you're playing it or how you wish to count it, it all depends on the pulse. So with this entire lesson, keep in mind the pulse, whatever we feel as the pulse is how we are going to define what we play, right? Or maybe you don't have to define what you play. You can just go with the flow as long as you enjoy the sound, okay? So D minor again, it immediately sounds like that Metallica song, doesn't it? Okay, so we start from the bottom note, the low, and you could also, however, start from the high note, which is played by the pinky finger. So that'll be again, I'm just going down and up, down and up, isn't it? Let's do that again, high, low, high, low. Okay, so that's the essential two patterns, which I want you to practice. We are doing it over D minor chord. Let's now do it over the other chords. What are the chords again? D minor, F major, C major, G major. So we've done it over D minor. Let's now move to the other chords. D minor, F major. So how am I playing F major? I don't want to jump it too much. So I'm trying to find the closest way or the easiest way of playing F major and also the most pleasant to hear, also which has the most common voices. So I'll do C, F, A, C because F, A are in common between D major and F major. So you go D, sorry, D minor. So D minor, F major. And now C major. I'm already here on C, isn't it? With my thumb. So I just take these fingers down, C major. Then we can go a bit up and play G major and conclude. Let's do that again. D minor, F major, C major, G major. Okay? So the first chord is minor, all the other chords are major. Okay, what if you start from the top end, from the pinky? Let's see how that goes. D minor, F major, C major, G major, D minor, F major. You can now climb if you want. C major, G major. That also works. And what's cool if you start from the high note, the high note sort of becomes like the melody line, which the year is going to process as the melody. Okay? So make a note. When you start from the high note. And that brings me to my other very, very important point. The first note of the 6 by 8 pattern, I want you to sustain with whichever finger you're playing it with. So if you do the low note, see I'm holding it. I'm holding it till the entire thing finishes. Two, three, four. Right? You may want to hold it with your other hand just to get used to it. But yeah, you will get it eventually. So you go one, two, three, four, five, six. Then you start with the high note. Again, I'm holding that, okay? Maybe to train your ear, try to sing that, okay? Left hand needs to now start. The first thing I would advise you to do, since the right hand is quite a job, is just play some of the simpler patterns. Just hold down the roots of the chord and just wait till the entire six ends here. So one note for every six. Roots of the chord, meaning the name of the chord, so that's D, F, C, G. And I prefer to play it as octaves. It makes it a lot more grander and epic. But you could play it single notes if you wish. And I'm playing it as octaves in this lesson. F, C, G, D, D minor, F major, C major. Keep that simple. And once you've got a flair of that, then you could try and now toggle between the root and the octave. So that means every three beats, every three sub-beats, you can go octave, root, octave, root, octave, root. Just get a feel of that. And if you're having a problem playing the octave, maybe you're too close to the right hand, you could replace the octave with its fifth or even its third. Stuff like that. Another thing I'd like you to try in the left hand, which is quite cool, is play like a slow arpeggio. So anyway, I'm feeling triplets in my mind. We are feeling triplets, one triplet, two triplet, three triplet, something like that. So what you could do is let the left hand play one note for every three like this. But instead of playing like a boring root, which gets boring after a while, you could play root for fifth, third, fifth, that's D, A, F, A, D, no need of inversions. Just play the D minor chord like this. Okay. So this will complement the right hand, one for every three. So something like one, two, three, one, two, right, left, left, left, left. Let's see how it sounds. And now what's happening with the D minor chord is I'm trying to make it a little longer, six into two, which is 12. Otherwise, I don't, I can't finish my arpeggio in the left hand. That's why I'm making the right hand chord a bit longer. So D, A, F, A, by the time you finish that, you would have played this over two cycles of six. D minor. Keep getting, keep practicing. And the left, right hand. And then when you're confident with just this one chord, then change it to F major, C major, finally G major, back to D minor, F major. Sounds really cool, right? C major and on G major. So that's pretty much about the left hand in this lesson. I don't want to over, overthink the left hand too much because it defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to teach you. So that's about it for the left hand for now, hold the roots of the chord. If you can't do much more, toggle the root and the octave of the root and the fifth or play the entire chord as a kind of a slow arpeggio, forming a kind of a triplet with the right hand. Okay. So with all of what I've told you so far, we've looked at the six by eight time feel as sort of a triplet feel, isn't it? Tugged, dugged, one triplet, two triplet, one, two, three, four, five, six, one, right? It's always a kind of a three kind of feel where you're dividing the pulse or the beat by three. Another way to use six eight, which I think is quite cool, as not think of it as divisions of three, think of it as divisions of two, okay? And let the time signature be three by four or three beats per bar, okay? So for that to happen, you need to accent every alternate beat. So in other words, what was once, so what's happening is you're creating a natural accent because it's going down one, two, three, up two, three. So when you don't think of the accent, well, it automatically comes out, it automatically becomes a six feel or a triplet feel, isn't it? One, two, because a pitch goes down three beats and then it goes up three beats. What if you defy that using volume? So you go, right? One, two, one, two, three, one, two, three. So what's happening is every alternate note, I'm pressing harder just to kind of force it to become a three by four song and there we go. I'm in the world of three automatically, right? Let's count that one, two, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one. Let's start from the bottom, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, right? And to make it a bit more unique for yourself, you could do, you could jumble the notes. So this is a nice pattern which you could try out, which is one and two and three and. Okay, I'm counting it as one and two and three and because the three got divided into two equal units. And we usually, when we divide a beat by two, we say and. So one and two and three and one and two and three, right? One, two, three. If you look at my left hand, it's pretty much like one conductor going three. Isn't it? Earlier I was like three, four, one, and now it's sort of changed. It's just the kind of mindset where I'm trying to change it to this versus that. Okay, and the left hand can kind of support your purpose. So the left hand earlier was serving the triplet purpose. Now let it serve the division of two, where you're actually doing a three by four and counting one, two, three. Okay, let's see how we can bring in the left hand. You see what's happening there? It's one note for every two hits here, two, three, one, two, three. Let's spread out the roots and the octaves. Now it's like an obvious three, isn't it? Root, octave, octave, pop, pop, pop. So that becomes a three and you hear you're doing a division, change. You could also play chords in the left hand which slow arpeggios by doing something like one, two, three, one, two, three, one, one, two, three. So this is the style I like to play. Low note, high note, middle note. If you're not confident with playing the chords in both hands, I guess you can just hold the roots and it'll be fine in the left. Root, octave, root, octave, octave, right? So there are a lot of things you can do with the six by eight feel. But in this lesson, I just wanted to show you the difference. You can feel six divisions or six, a cycle of six either as triplets or you can feel it as eighth notes over a three by four or a three beat per bar song. So there's kind of two things to keep in mind. There's the time signature, okay? And there's the way you're kind of feeling the time signature. So earlier we did four by four or two by four, where we felt each quarter note or each beat or each pulse as triplets, which was a little lazier, right? Triplet, triplet. So here your head is moving in one, two, three, four, or one, two if you choose to do it over two, four. The other style was a bit busier where I looked at a three by four time signature and I'm playing eighth notes in my right hand, okay? So it's just the way your mind wants to react or the way you want to compose the song, but the cycle is of six. And the moment you kind of add the pinky to take over the octave, you're set, you get that nice six vibe. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pause the discussion here in this YouTube video and in the next video, what we are gonna do is we are gonna take this study to the next levels, okay? We are gonna look at all sorts of other crazy stuff. So once you've practiced this, I'd like you to please click and watch the next lesson as well, right? See you guys in the next video. And if you haven't already, please subscribe to our channel and leave us a comment if you'd like us to teach you something in specific and share the video with all your musician friends.