 Hi everyone, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, I'm going to teach you a very important rhythmic skill on the piano and pretty much in music in general. And I've encapsulated all of the commonly done rhythmic challenges into one lesson and we are going to move in a stepwise manner. We are just going to take like three notes in a chord and build some rhythmic challenges around that. And then we'll do it with an entire melody on an actual scale. And the concepts which we plan to use in this chapter or in this lesson is to apply a concept which I call as rhythmic subtraction. I don't know if it's officially called that, it's probably not. But you take basically everything you have which the song has to offer and then start removing things. And I visualize this as you know you're constructing a house in like nowhere. So you're going to see like all these bushes and you know plants and trees I guess and what not. So you have to clear a small path in order to even exist. So music needs that gap in any case for it to sound good. And rhythmic subtraction is a great way to be aware of the gaps in the music or the available gaps depending on how you subdivide the beats. Are you going to divide it at all? Are you going to divide into two? Are you going to divide into three which are called triplets or semi quavers which are dividing into four. So this lesson is going to focus on an exercise. We are going to go in a structured manner. First we do rhythmic subtraction and then after that we are going to take this exercise into overdrive mode if you want to call it that. And we will do what we call as rhythmic displacement which is taking things which are there and moving them all over the place, moving them left, right and not center for sure. So let's get started with the video guys before we do. 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The first thing I will do is just take an E major chord and play it in an arpeggio like this and the way I am counting it is 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and meaning 8th notes, beat is getting divided into two units, 1 and 2 and 3. So maybe two bars of this for study, 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1. This is an E major chord played in an arpeggio pattern so. Okay, let's develop some chords now while doing this in the left hand. So the chords I am playing are E major in the bass, left E G sharp B then C sharp minor 7th but to make it easy I am doing, I am ignoring that dropping off the E. I don't need that because it's already there on top and it's obvious. So easy on the fingers also then I like this sound. So this is an A major with an add 9 on top and end with a B sus 4. If you don't know these chords just follow the note diagrams and the notation and you can read it that way. So I just thought of keeping the left hand interesting otherwise if you are not so sure of forming chords you could just hit an E, just that. If you want a nice progression around this maybe E, C sharp, A, B this will work completely fine just the roots of the chords C sharp, A, don't forget the right hand or with the actual chords sus, sus 4 at the end, E G sharp B, C sharp G sharp B, A E B. D sus 4, look and do this also with the E minor arpeggio you can play some nice minor chords like E minor, G major, C major and maybe D major at the end, E's again if you can't play the chords that fluently at the moment you can do simple root notes E, G, C, D, 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. Just some chords to back that melody up and playing the chords I am trying to hit it in minimum so that's 2 counts each chord. Also focus on some nice dynamics before we move to the next stage of this lesson. Play soft, bring up the level even with the major, be aware of your dynamics and your volume control, don't speed up, don't slow down and don't play it at a speed which is not comfortable for you, play it at a speed which works for you best. Intention is not to play fast, okay so now let's take this concept forward the first thing I told you in the introduction for the lesson was rhythmic subtraction. So rhythmic subtraction basically means you have all these eight notes, eight quavers or eight eighth notes played in a bar of four, two and three and four and the second bar if we consider it as a two bar concept or loop, in the second bar it would again be two and three and four. So I have eight beats in E, eight notes in the eight beats of each bar which gets kind of boring, monotonous and maybe even annoying sometimes to hear so much of information. So to kind of clear the way we can subtract and the exercise I have for you just as an exercise otherwise they would be endless permutations would be in bar number two we are always going to subtract the one. So two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one okay so at the bar every alternate bar three and four and one and two so the note you used to play which is E you are not going to play anymore so two and three and four and one and two yeah and then another beat you could subtract in the middle somewhere of bar one. Now bar one is where you can play around a bit more maybe you can start by subtracting not the one because you already did that at bar two you can subtract first of all the and of the one so that is one and so the note one and that is going to be missed left out so okay that's the groove okay and then you minus the one if not anything it creates an extremely unique pattern which is something you may not have even heard in a song before you know I quite like that and it slowly gets more familiar you digest it better remember we used to be pressing the G sharp now we don't what has happened subtracting the end of the one and then subtracting the on of the next one now what can we subtract we can subtract the on of the two of bar one and bar two we just always we like never play the one of bar two so take some time to digest it even for me that's the B which is not played a good way to start is just make a noise with your mouth that can help you to remember what is missing the challenge you may find and I find there's more challenging on a guitar or when I'm teaching guitar players is they may play the previous note or the next note in that when they shouldn't you know it so because the note got missed you may play you may play what you missed but here you should not be playing that note you should play the next upcoming note should not lose its note it should be G sharp or E or B or whatever okay you don't want to play that so one and two what are we missing now we are missing the on of the two one and no B so whole story and the journey continues we have them all notated for you so all the permutations of missing out beats are there at least in the quaver domain now you can do this also with the minor chord which we also enjoyed there in the earlier part of the lesson so what shall we minus and three no three B three and remember the next bar we're trying to remove the one it's creating a nice pattern in the brain I think this lesson should probably be called how to make unique creative arpeggios as we but we do a lot of arpeggios on our channel so we'll not bother this is still rhythm in the rhythm domain so after you figure out the subtractive process we then go into other things like beat displacement but I just thought I've composed two nice melodies for you one on the major pentatonic and one on the minor pentatonic so I'm just going to show you the same strategy with the minor pentatonic and the major pentatonic over the same old chords we have already been learning and before I do that if you're not getting the chord so easily you could even do this whole information with just three notes of a scale let's say E F sharp G the first three notes of the E minor domain so and if you jumble up the notes I think initially it's fine as long as you actually subtract that beat if you have to tell yourself I will not play the end of the two in this practice session for the next five minutes or so so as long as you subtract and play something around the information I think you'll be completely fine and then move to playing the correct notes of course okay now for the minor let me now transform this whole thing into a very catchy minor pentatonic melody so melody goes something like this you would have heard that in the beginning of the video as well so how are we playing E G A G A B A B E G A G A B A B D B A G A G E D for D you cross your index finger to come down so slowly all with an E minor but remember we've discussed four nice chords on the minor progression G C D E now here's where subtraction can sound very melodic earlier if you remember I just played triads I played chords chords can just magically sound melodic right because it's still the same three notes now that I have a palette going on for me and I'm going to subtract let's say I want to subtract something maybe I want to subtract the two so it's giving the music also a lot more context it's almost like it's like a question someone is asking another person and then that other person after this gap created in time now that other other dude goes so it's in a way a nice strategy to even compose melodies you know play eight beats of random stuff maybe if those of you use chat GPT or one of these fancy AI tools you can tell him or her or it or whatever you call the creature give me eight random notes on the E minor pentatonic scale and give you like some 10 options or something can use the tool and then after that play it practice it it's probably going to be a nightmare at first to practice it because it'll give you a random assortment of notes and I've tried this with the app it's it's quite a lot of fun we do it in class also sometimes and then you start doing subtraction right you can subtract certain beats of your choice and make this exercise very challenging and at the end of it all we ended up coming up with a lot of interesting melodies sometimes some nice rock riffs and some nice chord arpeggio patterns synth arrangements which we could do in a software later and it's been a lot of fun so sometimes you can even use an excel sheet to do this you can use an excel to to knock off a few beats look at it do whatever you feel or just use a pen and paper no problem so if you take that melody you have a lot of options I even have a major pentatonic melody for you which I think you'll like more stretching going on so now the higher girl or the higher third lot of groupings of four if you will do that also with some subtraction now the challenge with this melody is it's composed over two bars right so you go so the second bar would be the new melody if you will and then that new melody you can subtract at a different point maybe always at the one of the bar of the second bar the alternate bar is what I'm creating this lesson with you know just to simplify the learning so if I do if I subtract the two two no g sharp at the top also at the descent because that g sharp lands on the at the next bar is one right so no so maybe I don't want the c sharp the first c sharp you need to give it some time for it to digest right so what have we done so far we've taken major chord minor chord with subtraction using eighth notes then we've taken the the two melodies we've taken that one and then we've taken the major pentatonic and we've done chords now the last thing I'd like to leave you with in this lesson is as I said in the beginning to take the lesson into overdrive mode would be to displace certain beats so you're not removing you're not subtracting well you will end up removing that position but you're not removing the note you're displacing the note so let's say you go back to the minor pentatonic theme and you just identify a point of interest let's say you identify beat number two and a half so one and two and so the end of the two is coming back to g right now this and of the two is going to go this way or that way but if it goes too much this way it will become the two and if it goes too much that way it'll be the three so how do you go in more fractions well we are dividing the beat by two or half what else can you divide it in by you can divide it by four can do you can also do three but four will keep the same you know fractional system so you go instead of saying one and two and you go one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a one e and a two e you're now you're not gaining more information on the piano but you're gaining more options in the mind so you need to first train your mind to to give space or to react to those beats so play the same thing and maybe access the 16th note divisions one one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a one e and a two e and a three and a four e and a one slightly tricky to do but just feel that and now what did we nominate earlier we nominated the end of the two one and two and which is the g so i'm gonna first anticipate this or move it before one one e and a two e and one e and a two e and instead of doing it at one e and a two e and a tongue tongue tongue i'm not one e and a two so one e and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two one and two transforms it that's one e and a two e and a three e and a four you're retaining that a at the three i'm getting carried away with just so much but then there's more which you can do because even that d if you nominate one different note for every bar in the second bar if you're nominating the one then it goes to the e of the four of the previous bar it's going down by a step so like that earlier it was now and i'm tending to make everything earlier but you need to hold back and just do the targeted notes of in your book which you need to circle or you can read the notation for a few options which we have for you as you may already know by now there are a ton of options so we won't have the bandwidth to notate every single option but a few things which sound nice will be put there for you to read and play but as you know there's a lot of maths going on with maths comes permutations so there's a lot of options to deal with so now just like we anticipated what is anticipating again you're moving the guy before in time so to speak the other thing would be the delaying where you move it later in time you make it a bit more of a lazy note so you're not removing anything you're just moving the note you targeted what was once there will now be late you can even like take the one of the next bar and somehow this inspires you to take this beyond what you could now call as an exercise at the current moment of learning it and hopefully you realize that this can give you the this can kind of build melodies it can build riffs it can build a lot of patterns which you may find useful and a very simple way to make music if you ask me just using rhythm using numbers beats subdivisions taking a note pushing it this way that way or just saying hey i don't want the note at all in the first place remove it and by removing it you get more real estate to think and as as the great Mozart once said which is a great quote to leave you with music is the silence between the notes that's what he says so what he probably means by that again we don't know what he really meant what he probably meant means is the silence between the notes is what gives context to the actual notes it's sort of like a painting you don't you leave the canvas blank also right you're not going to you're going to have a background or one consistent thing on that you have the contrast by something very plain versus the thing which is in that particular picture or that painting it's the same with music but with music remember it's a dynamic art form the music is moving forward so ironically if you have an endless array of notes which is it's offering melodic contrast but it is not offering rhythmic contrast in other words it starts sounding static in a way even though it is moving it's sounding redundant boring monotonous etc so you make it more interesting by knocking off one or two beats clearing the way so to speak and the other thing you try to do is move things before or after where they should be and make life really really interesting for the year and it's tough it's it's actually more than it sounding good and all that it's a tough practice it's a it's a serious job to practice even with me doing this video or this tutorial right now I'm I'm kind of telling myself that I need to go back to the piano tomorrow and try more of these permutations out because it's a exciting as I'm talking about this and b it's a serious workout so if you want to give yourself a workout well develop an array of eight notes or an eight note melody or a 16 note melody over two bars over eight notes and then start subtracting anticipating and delaying certain chosen notes not everything that will confuse the process a lot so anticipate delay and subtract which is removed that is the these are the topics which we've covered in the lesson and to organize your learning a lot better you could consider the notation which is waiting for you on patreon there's also midi file of every part which you can import into any midi tool midi playback tool like a synthesia which shows you the notes drop down in those fancy sometimes confusing colors so let's move forward with this in a in in in subsequent lessons do let us know in the comments if you if you if you're finding something challenging in the world of rhythm that's something I think my favorite part of music is rhythm even though we talk a lot about chords writing melodies arpeggios and whatnot rhythm is still something which I love the most and probably will continue to focus on on this channel so do leave us your comments and thoughts about this lesson and what you'd like to learn in the future you could also consider like a regular course at our school go to nathanielschool.com fill up a form and one of the course advisors at our school will take the learning journey forward thanks a ton for watching the video cheers see you in the next one