 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this piano accompaniment lesson, we are going to learn the song Stand by Me by Benny King and we are going to learn how to play it in five different styles. Each of these five styles will go through chords in pretty much both hands but more specifically the bass line which plays through the chord tones, the iconic bass line. That bass line is what we are going to play on our pianos. The left hand is going to learn the bass riff, the right hand is going to learn a variety of chord patterns which I am going to build up from almost ground zero if you call it and from there on we are going to get to something very cool and stuff which I have composed, five variations which I am sure you will enjoy and the main intention of this lesson is yes to figure out different ways of accompanying this song in five different ways but in turn or while doing this you are also going to build up your hand independence, your coordination by playing a bass line here which is among the tougher things to do when you look at your two hands playing a bass line here and anything along with that in the right hand be it a melody or a chord pattern or whatever. So let's get cracking with the lesson before we do it'll be great if you could get your keyboards out and play along with me that's how the lessons generally work on our channel where you play along and I slow it down, I break it down so keep your keyboards on and a book and a pen, paper, pencil whatever works to write stuff down you can also consider heading over to our Patreon page where all the five variations are notated and also available as MIDI alongside the PDF as usual so using the MIDI you can import it into an app like Synthesia or any MIDI playback, karaoke app or DAW software and actually see the notes which I've played. So we'll first learn the bass line, the bass line is counted using eighth notes so you go one and two and three and four and one and two and three but you're not going to play one and two and you're not going to play every single note of the eighth notes you're going to go one and two and three and four and one and two and three and so let's get that one and two and three and four and one and the first one is staccato as I'm hearing in the song with the double bass rendition one and two and three and then you have a long one one and two and and of the what two one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three so that's pretty much how you count every note will align with one and two and three and four and you could also argue we are in an eighth note or you know dividing by two grid which is easily practiced using one and two and three and four and or or maybe, karnatically, you can say, thak, thak, thak, thak, so that gives you a sense, some sense that you're dividing the beats into two units as you count your pulse. 1 and 2 and 3 and 4, 1. So let's break that down, you can even look at the notation as I play, then I'll walk you through the chords, etc, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3, 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3, 4 and 1 and 1 and 2 and 3, 2 and 3, 4 and and that's your chord loop, so A, A and I hope you're getting my fingering, I'm starting with the thumb on A, I'm playing E with my ring finger so A, A, don't forget the second A or the second hit in the bar has to be played longer, hit, long hit, short hit is staccato, represented with that dot you see there and just to walk you through the chords, in fact, I'd like to now come in with our first right hand accompaniment style, which is not really a great style, it's just where we play block chords or the actual chords of the song and you just hold it at the rate of one hit every bar, like a semi-brief, so it'll go something like A major, C major, A major, F sharp minor, F sharp, D, E, A and it's always nice as you're practicing the chord shifting, even if you don't get your left hand with the right hand, imagine the left hand or sing the left hand, that can be very helpful, so this is on the A major scale, so the A major scale as A major, B minor, C sharp, minor, D major, E major, F sharp, minor, G sharp, diminished, A major, so now the chords used in stand by me are two bars of A, A, D major, E major, A major, now to play these chords we use inversions which are just closed shapes, you can see the notes where it's all written down, so A major will be A C sharp E, then I'm just moving this middle finger to F sharp, A C sharp F sharp, then A D F sharp, then I'm sliding both, all my fingers up to B E G sharp and ending on C sharp E A and then maybe come back to A C sharp E because you have to create the loop, so one, two, three, four, two bars of each chord, we start with block chords A C sharp E A F sharp F sharp D B F sharp A G sharp F sharp F sharp E A F sharp F sharp F sharp F sharp F sharp F sharp F sharp F sharp F sharp F sharp, which we are eventually going to play in our right hand As I told you earlier try to focus on the bass line so before you actually bring the bass line into the party try to sing the bass line as well as sing the melody you know with the lyrics or if you don't know the lyrics also it's fine I don't so I just mumble along so you go so keep the melody line and the bass line in mind as you journey through your independence when the night has come and the land is dark and the moon is the only okay so once you've got the melody line singing wise with lyrics hopefully and with the bass line let's now bring the bass line together remember you're playing very simple semi briefs in the right hand so the right hand is not going to challenge us that much it's more the left hand so play the bass line which we learned that's variation one guys okay so now let's get a bit more fancier in the right hand with variation 2 with variation 2 I would encourage you to do almost whatever I in variation 2 I would encourage you to do pretty much what I say in all of my lessons when it comes to base hand independence play whatever you have to play in the left hand but support it in the right hand with a steady rock solid pulse so one two three four keep that going so earlier we did three four rather easy just your semi briefs now we are doing just a simple set of crotchets maybe a good challenge would be to first sing the bass line and then with the piano just to see where the alignment issue is with your voice it's easy to tell if something's getting messed up you can find exactly where the off beats are with the base that's the second variation I'm calling it staccato pulse be very tough to at least for me to sing the melody while you're doing a chord pattern a bass line and trying to sing the melody but if you're one of those people who wants to juggle it all together go for it actually even I'm going to try doing it I can sing it but I need more practice I feel so there we go that's variation two variation one semi briefs variation two pulsing variation three is what I call as clocks arpeggios reminding me of the song cold clocks by cold play for which there's a lesson you can check it out in the description so clocks will the rhythm pattern is very similar to so we're taking same inversions but this pattern and a good way to count it also in India we can say some conical phrases like it helps us to feel the accents pretty much every single eighth note is being played in the right hand but in an accented way with the bass would even say one two three one two three one two even though that's a bit grammatically wrong rhythmically speaking it's okay you can see whatever works for you so I have two more I would say I guess more intermediate patterns one rhythmically cool the other harmonically cool so stay tuned if you feel this is a fair amount of information for you great you can continue practicing these variations but at least watch the remaining two through to give you some push forward and I always encourage students now maybe you feel you can get these three variations but I always encourage students to punch a bit above their weight to to reach out for things which you may not get right now but if you keep trying it or if keep imagining yourself doing it and repeatedly practicing it you will definitely get there so have two or three things which are within your wavelength of skill and then try and push a bit more forward so variation four would be the flamingo pattern as I call it which goes something like this so you're using sixteenth notes in the right hand one and two and just that first beat has the 16 or also I could call it as a gallop very similar to the old arpeggio I'm just adding that and as a variation you can also go add in the top pinky with the octave if you can or if you want otherwise you can just stick with what what has been notated changing with the bass so probably a good practice would be just do it over one chord to get this stuff really well oiled I'm just doing a major just loop that for yourself slow it down you will figure out where the collision or where the problems are occurring in the independence world maybe there or maybe at the end and then let's do the other chord actually the F sharp is easier because he just does you have to do the next one add the pinky for additional flavor to get more out of the arpeggio so that's your flamenco folk arpeggio system which I have for you and now I have something melodic which can kind of augment what the melody of the song is doing some sort of like a horn section or a string quartet you know playing in arrangement with the main lead tune so let's now do like a melodic variant with the same old baseline that'll be variation five and then we pack up the lesson the first two bars would be just that so a with fifth e and then the inside note of the chord c sharp then so that's a harmonic embellishment then lot of these third third movements which are very melodic I think it supports the tune so again then and back to our the bass first which I think is quite melodic let's do that a bit slowly see the notation guys the notations are available on our patreon page all five of them along with midi so which one I like more the fourth one or the fifth one let us know in the comments what you thought about each pattern what you found difficult easy or what you thought about the lesson in general and if you like what you just learned please give us if you like what you just learned please hit like on the video leave us a comment what you thought about the lesson and what you'd like to learn next maybe you could suggest a song and we'll figure it out an interesting way to kind of dissect yet another song which has been covered on our youtube channel I look forward to that don't forget to hit the subscribe button if you haven't already hit the bell icon for regular notifications so you don't miss out on any of our lessons and this is stand by me in five variations and I am Jason Zach from Nathaniel school of music cheers and thanks for watching