 guys this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson we are going to look at a combo piano exercise by combo what I mean is the right hand will have a specific task or specific challenge and exercise and follow some theoretical thing as well and the left hand is going to do its own thing it's going to do something in the base which will serve the left hand well so it'll be authentic for the left hand and the right hand will do something which is ideal for the right hand and you can use these exercises in a combo fashion primarily to save your time while you practice because piano practice a lot of us I'm sure are busy people you know we have school college and work and stuff like that so if ever you practice for about an hour it's nice to optimize things by putting it all together on the piano the right hand and the left hand come together sort of like a quick gym workout where you train all the muscles or a lot of muscles at once I'm taking the minor scale because I tend to like the minor for this lesson we'll take the E minor scale and I'm going to give you a specific activity in the right hand using intervals of the scale and in the left hand we are still going to be diatonic but we are going to look at some different options which only the left hand would would like to do right before we get started it'll be awesome if you could consider heading over to our patreon page and downloading a copy of our hand written notes as well as the staff notation for the lesson and there's a subscribe button somewhere there it'll be nice if you could hit that subscribe maybe after you watch the video or maybe even now would be great right let's get cracking so we are taking E minor scale let's build the scale together first E minor scale is the relative minor of the G major scale G major has one sharp namely F sharp so let's build E minor starting with the E and at this initial stage it's nice to get the fingering down at least in the linear movement mainly in the left hand because the left hand is going to do that pretty pretty often in this lesson so the left hand goes five notes with the five fingers and then you cross and play your middle finger E F sharp G A B C D E coming down E D C thumb A G F sharp E okay and the right hand could play three cross and then finish the octave together with both hands one octave for now one more time remember that E minor has an F sharp also note that this is the E natural minor the natural minor will have a flat 3 flat 6 and a flat 7 in addition to the normal major scale notes which is the major second perfect 4th perfect 5th okay so now coming to the drill the first thing I'd like to introduce is the left hand the left hand will basically do these incremental things you would go first of all you need to practice ascending and descending E minor going up and down one octave should do so the same thing we discussed so that's the first movement or the first level of this left hand movement diatonic to E natural minor another thing which is nice would be practicing octaves you can do this on any minor but for this lesson let's just look at E minor so E minor in octaves let's do that again E F sharp G try to predict your next note so it's good to draw the scale in a as I call it piano worm so do check out the notes for that E F sharp G A B C D E down E D C B A G F sharp E so we did single notes octaves then we have thirds it's nice to write them down diatonically so you write down E F sharp G A B C D in a line under that you could write down your thirds and then it's easy to visualize it's also nice to figure out whether the thirds is a white note going to white note or a black note going to white note and so on and so forth so you could map out your third shapes if you will E G F sharp A G B A C B D C E D F sharp E G let's descend G E F sharp D E C D B C A B G A F sharp G E okay along with the third it's also nice to practice fifths E B F sharp C G D A E B F sharp C G D A E B coming down B E A D G C F sharp B E A D G C F sharp B E so those are your fifths just make a note in in the minor scale the second degree will form a tritone or a diminished fifth so E B F sharp C G D A E B F sharp C G D A E B so this year 2024 the year of doing this I have planned to do a lot of the combo exercises so we leave a playlist for you and you'll find this sort of regular list of lessons because a lot of students tell me I just have about sometimes 10 minutes to practice the piano and in my case also that is the that's sometimes the challenge you may just have about 10 minutes before a concert or 15 to 20 minutes before a studio recording so these this is a good way to get both the hands running and not your hands only also your mind let's say you're about to record a song in this scale in E minor or you're about to perform a song on another scale let's say C minor or F minor if you do this sort of exercise before you play the song or record the song or anything like that you'll feel that the song is a lot less of a challenge than what you might think it is it probably also remove all your stage nerves and I tend to do this a lot so sometimes on stage when the piano is set up you know you can't get the piano out to practice you can always use a small MIDI controller like this this is CME X key it's a 37 key so I put it in my bag it fits pretty well and I can do all these drills you know and it gets your hands warmed up pretty well for the gig so coming back now on the left hand we said root thirds octaves fifths you could also end up doing the diatonic triads of E minor so that would be the one minor the two diminished the three flat major we call it three flat because G is a three flat with respect to E three flat major four minor minor we write the small Roman sign Roman numerals have capital and small as you know B minor the five minor small Roman C major the capital six flat major so that C major is a flat six with respect to E and capital six makes it a major chord then flat seven seven flat major D major and finally E minor coming down one more time triads you can also play triads in a pattern to test your rhythmic chops but for now it's more to find the notes that itself is a challenge now you if you're a more intermediate or advanced player you could consider even playing the seventh chords minor seventh minor seventh flat five on the two there then three flat major seventh four minor seven five minor seventh six flat major seventh seven dominant that's a has a flat seven with a major chord and a minor seventh okay so that's about your left hand now the right hand is gonna this is just something you can practice you can do it in any order probably you can start with the ones which are easy for you and you can then do other stuff or up to you really because the right hand is going to focus on musical intervals now the intervals with respect to any note if you think of it diatonically diatonically means from within the scale so for instance if we take E the first degree of the E minor scale and form its intervals that's a major second or a second we just prefer to just say second because it's now in the diatonic world some of it will be major second some of it will be minor second similarly for third some will be major some will be minor so major second then the third in this case minor third so you now have to practice your seconds your thirds this is your fourth interval mostly perfect fourths this is your fifth interval mostly perfect fifths this is your sixth interval mostly bit between major and minor sixth that's your seventh interval in this case it's a minor seventh but could it could also be a major seventh and finally octave let's repeat that second third fourth fifth sixth seventh octave now the challenge here is not to just play it with E it's to figure it out on all the roots so if you need to practice seconds you would want to go a second degree from each note of the E minor scale so you go E F sharp now what's the next degree it's F sharp what is F sharp second F sharp to the G right not G sharp that would make it a major second and it will not be part of E minor so E F sharp F sharp G G A A B B C C D D E okay so that's your second intervals I'm just playing it one by one so and in the bass let me support the right hand for now by playing a single note for every second interval that is played there let's do that again so E F sharp while the left hand is just playing E F sharp F G G A A B B C C D D E E F sharp coming down F sharp E D you can do upper you know the upper interval coming down to the root but there are two ways to practice this as you as you just saw you can either go going from the the note of interest to the second or going from the second back to the note of interest starting from the second so that's one way to do it can also go if I just do descending seconds as I'm calling it now that's another practice a ascending seconds would be probably easier to visualize descending seconds okay and then yeah you can do descending seconds while you descend the scale or you could go crazy and do ascending seconds so the movement of the interval is going up but the scale is descending that way so that's a lot of fun and all of them sound different ascending seconds still ascending seconds or I could do descending seconds while I'm ascending and descending the scale descending okay and if you'd like you can always color this up in any which way you want maybe you want to do triple the idea is to just get this as a pack and master this shape master these two notes and you do this you have mastered the E minor scale and you're well on your way to mastering a scale which is a neighbor scale as I call it because E minor is derived from the G major scale G major is very similar to C major as well as D major if you look at the circle of fifths the neighbors of the circle of fifths would be scales which are just one note different here and there G major has an F sharp C major doesn't have an F sharp it has an F D major has an F sharp as well as a C sharp while a G major has only the F sharp and no C sharp instead of the C sharp we have a C so if you do this very well on this ski you're definitely going to nail two other keys very fast it'll if this took you about two hours the next two scales will probably happen in 20 minutes or half an hour so keep that in mind whenever you practice it's kind of an exponential journey and it starts off by being this kind of an exponential curve it'll be a bit tricky in the beginning and then it's going to get extremely easy at the end so you don't want to practice struggle a lot and then kind of give up and just say oh this is too hard no it's it's hard in the beginning but it's going to get really easy very soon and you don't know when it'll hit you so you need to practice till it gets easy if that's probably a way to put it you know so that's the motivation you should have when you're practicing a scale exercise or a chord exercise especially on the piano the piano works like that I don't know much about the other instruments pretty similar actually with a lot of the other instruments out there but the piano for sure if you need to practice until it gets really easy that's generally how it goes so seconds are pretty much done now let's apply the same concept to all the other intervals remember what did I tell you the other intervals are thirds fourths fifths six sevens and octaves and as it's going to get wider it may be a bit trickier to visualize as you play so mastering these shapes getting it into your fingers developing that muscle memory is very crucial and you need to do it day in and day out in the sense practice it let's say tonight and then tomorrow morning you should not do anything else you should do the same thing again in the morning that is how it starts getting into your head is what happens is after a good night's sleep your subconscious brain will start taking over because when you sleep your other part of the brain is also practicing piano right take it from me I'm a scientist and when you wake up you shouldn't lose that opportunity because your brain has already done work while you're sleeping so get up practice the same thing don't do a new thing practice the same thing and even if you do this for about 10 15 minutes it'll be very very efficient practice you'll get results as opposed to playing the same thing without results for hours and hours so let's come to thirds now so a good way to start with third is to do thirds in both hands maybe I'll do thirds here and thirds there but I'll do it together again you can do ascending thirds or descending thirds descending thirds but ascending scale and when you're descending the scale you could go ascending thirds a good challenge and in the left hand you could do any of the options maybe you can just start with single single roots of the scale ascending maybe octaves in the left hand you see the left hand is also getting a fair workout while perhaps you're looking at visualizing the right hand a bit better but the left hand is probably getting a good muscle memory and it's also strengthening the hand a lot of people do only right hand or only left hand it's always nice to do both that's what the piano is about you can also do triads in the left hand while you do thirds in the right hand and you can play around with the rhythm like I said triplets for instance one two three dividing the beat by three this is all still on the E natural minor scale so with thirds again as I said there's ascending there's also descending okay so practice both with all the options in the left hand which are single roots octaves thirds fifths and what else seventh chords if you know seventh chords so that's about thirds what about fourths fourth intervals are not practiced very often but it'll be very useful for your melodic playing the advantage of practicing a piano drill in an intervalic way is it will help you with your melodic movements or your melodic improvisations or as you compose what'll happen is your mind wants something but then your body is not able to execute it but your body is subconsciously able to execute certain things but then you haven't practiced the fourths so if you practice all the intervals you can get it out into the open very naturally or very organically so if you take fourths just keep in mind one of the fourths is a tritone or a sharp four augmented four as we call it most of the rest will be perfect fourths so E A F sharp B G to C A to D B to E there's your tritone C to F sharp and then D to G E A so you can do ascending fourths the sixth degree just watch that that's a tritone or an augmented four coming down and even do fourths there and thirds there so that's fourths in the right hand and thirds in the left hand let's see how that goes tritone ascending descending there are two points to notice when you're when you're playing different things in both hands at least for me if I use my eyes for both hands it's going to be very confusing for the brain because your brain is looking at that and trying to map the next similar interval then it's also looking here so you'd rather practice in such a way that you don't need your eyes it just happens it's an instinct which is developed so it's probably going to be a lot easier for you it is for me to play without looking at the piano it just looks very scary sometimes like you're on a 30 floor building or something and looking down it's very scary but theoretically you're just standing there but when you look down at least for me the piano is pretty scary okay so that's your fourths and you observed one more thing I guess which was I could do ascending fourths or I can do ascending and then the next one will be descending so it becomes a very melodic drill if you think about descending ascending descending up down up down up becomes a good workout now even for me this is something I practice pretty often before a show before a recording generally it takes you about 10 to 15 minutes so and just that can be quite creative I think it sounds pretty nice and maybe a descending lick let's see how that goes just that these are this is a melody created using fourths something like that and then I copy it with a thirds movement something like thirds so that was about fourth intervals coming to fifths so fifths are pretty much going to be perfect fifths and we discussed that in the left hand already so let's try and get the right hand to do it little slower e b f sharp c and you could reinforce the concept of fifths onto your hands by playing them what we call as harmonically in the left hand and melodically in the right hand there we go fifths coming down again we can go in that zigzag way down up down up down up down a little faster you can probably do a cluster like that and choose your interval you maybe going up you could do a melody with seconds and then descend in maybe in fifths of course there are other intervals so and you can do what we call as phrase building where one phrase would be something following a different concept and then the next one would be a slightly different concept maybe seconds in one sex segment of the phrase and fourths or fifths in the next segment so moving on we've covered fifths good way to practice it could be could be in both hands where the left hand's playing harmonically in the right hand's playing melodically moving on to six the sixth interval very interesting because it's almost like a third in in an inverse and that's something to keep in mind when you invert a third for example in the C major scale C to E would be a major third you invert that and push the C there it becomes a sixth so E to C will be a minor six so a major third becomes a minor sixth and a minor third will become a major six C to E flat is a minor third E flat to C would become a major sixth okay so let's try and look at the sixth intervals as their own entity by writing it down as usual sixth on the E minor scale A to F sharp B to G C to A D to B E to C and you're pretty much done you can continue but I like to just go E to E because by there you've covered pretty much all the intervals okay start with your minor sixth and move forward six are great to embellish with a melodic with a melody harmonically so on so it just makes the melody on the piano a lot thicker when you use six so the top note you visualize that as the melody its upper third would actually be this one's upper sixth so E's upper third would be G and if E is my melody note I don't want to compromise that so what I'll do is I'll bring the third which is higher in pitch lower in pitch to G and that also creates what we call in a choir context or an orchestral context a tenor voicing which is under the lead okay let's do that again six and we have one more interval to go well we have octaves which is easy but the one unique one will be the seventh so you don't use it very often melodically but it's very important to know your seventh interval bang I see a lot of students sometimes getting these sevenths first they'll get the third then they'll get the fifth then they'll get the seventh an important strategy is to get it like just like that it's a very important interval in music so E to the D F sharp to the E it's a little bit of a stretch G to F sharp A to the G B to A C to the B D C E D one more time C D descending E D can even do it together doesn't sound so great but it's a good skill to develop also a common mistake which I ended end up doing is I put the seven sometimes as the six so that's something even I'm working on now to improve that in the right hand of course you can play octaves so a nice thing with octaves finally speaking this is the last interval of them all you do octaves maybe triads in the left hand triads in the left and the octaves in the right and that completes the the job or rather that completes the set of notes that you have to execute on the piano now how you should play it could be what I told you in this lesson but remember we haven't covered a lot of rhythm in this in this particular lesson if we had this lesson would be a lot longer but you can use some of the rhythmic concepts on our channel you can find scale exercises in our YouTube description and you look at a lot of hand-independence workouts as well so you could do any rhythmic activity in the right hand along with these intervals and any rhythmic activity in the left hand and see how much you can challenge yourself or not maybe you want to just keep it simple for a month and just stay like this and then move forward there but what you need to ensure is consistency if you're doing E minor scale even if it's for a month just do it no problem don't jump and figure out something else and don't give up too fast with scale drills you have to just go on and on with it and till this day I I wouldn't ever claim that I've mastered any scale exercise you just cannot it's just a work in progress and it's almost like a sport if you don't keep practicing your knowledge of the exercise gets worse so you want to keep practicing consistently and keep growing from there right guys thanks a ton for watching the video do consider supporting us on patreon and hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon for regular notifications if you haven't already cheers and catch you in the next one