 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music in this lesson We are going to learn good old country piano music stuff Which a lot of us probably grew up on including myself believe it or not a person from Bangalore, India But yeah, you you find a lot of people Jiving and grooving to country music And it's just a common genre which we all come to I guess country blues as well has that Feeling and of course folk music in general. So Country has its roots in blues for sure. There is a lot of blue grass influences There are a lot of rock and roll influences rock influences country is now modernized with a lot of the rock vibes The R&B vibes and so on but in this lesson I'm here to tell you a very old school country pattern and Instead of doing one I thought we'll do three of the very best and I also want to mention that these three are inspired or influenced from the Mark Harrison Country piano book. So we leave a link in the description. He's an incredible author and his books are amazing And I use it a lot in my classes with students and it's really helped us to not only play country But to then use that to play other things along the way So Mark Harrison country piano, that's where this this lesson is pretty much coming from So first off, what are the properties of the grooves which I'm going to share with you? There are three in number. It's all going to be syncopated or the left hand in the right hand will work together and the third one in instead of using the hand syncopation or Hand independence only. We are also going to look at some finger independence. So there are three essential old school Country rhythm patterns, which we are going to learn. 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Let's now get cracking enough of sales So before I get into the pattern is just in essential to learn some theory behind what we are doing for the most part it's going to be one four and five cards and The five card will tend to be a dominant seventh card You can play it as a seventh card if you know so if you take let's say the key of a major is your one card a C sharpie then you have your D major which is your Four-card Now you can play it. It's great to learn it in the different inversions Then you have your e major Which like I said earlier you can play it as a dominant seventh card And played and all those inversions Now it's also nice to know that the tonic card can also be played as a seventh if you take a Seventh or a major you add the dominant whenever you play this especially in country It tends to want to resolve itself to the four of the scale It's also secondary dominant or a five of the four because It's resolving to the four of the a major scale where D happens to be our four Okay, so that's about the chord theory behind this and generally with country piano It's important to know your root and your fifth and know your fifth of the chord in both directions Sometimes you may be expected to play the fifth Above the root sometimes you may be expected to play the fifth Below the root and then you have the syncopations which are Whether two hands essentially don't collide they don't play the same thing It's always like a drum or a percussion instrument don't like left right left right those sort of patterns So just to know the chords in the right hand one four five and the left hand you're going to deal with One in five toggle and you can also learn your octaves which are quite easy A's octave is A and D's octave would be D and along with the five you can Can drop down and this creates base movement, which is very melodic in nature and Draws you to the chord it kind of embellishes and highlights the chord when you actually go and press the chord Because otherwise country music in general is very simple. It's just the one four and fives Which we play at least in the old-school music, okay? So I'm just gonna play you the pattern and then we are going to learn Learn it with me try to get your pianos out and stay tuned till the very end We'll be doing three patterns in this lesson So the first pattern is a traditional wall style where you go left right right left right right So that's the first thing you want to coordinate with your body left right right left right right, okay? Um, you could also say um pa pa um pa pa um So what is the left going to do the left will either play the root or the fifth and the right is going to do the chord Okay, so it's gonna be just at the very default level or this basic level a would be the root of the a major chord I'm currently comping a major. Okay, so a and the actual chord in the right hand. So Left right right play your right hand slightly staccato What I like to do is um pa pa um pa Maybe the first one staccato and the second one legato try that with me if possible You can always say Um now once you're confident with that every alternating time you can do a e a e that's your toggle root fifth root you could also kind of do root fifth higher fifth root higher fifth or root lower fifth root lower fifth Okay, and what happens is just before we transition or I guess if the chords getting boring just to play You can do these bass climbing ingredients like so you don't want to Stop your right hand the right hand continues, but So we'll get to that later. Let's first try and do the progression at hand The the progression we have in this exercise is a four bars And then e seventh four bars Then you stay on e seventh for another four bars Come back to a So that's like your main a section of this composition. So let me just do that with a little bit of singing Um Okay, so it's a four time four bars of three four E four times e seventh rather this is how we are playing it So And now we continue that's your one call one seven that's a seven D Again, you can follow the charts. We have the charts there. So Okay, and also observe there are some climbs which happen So, uh, let me actually teach you the climbs before we do the whole thing together. That'll be And that kind of is fitting right because you're going your goal is to go down from a to e Because e is the next chord you could have even gone up to e But it's nicer to go down to e because it's closer the distance traveled is lesser if you're climbing down in steps So you go a That's what makes it very country, you know, because it's making the chord a lot more interesting or I would say the Transition to the chord a lot more interesting. Okay e Now when you're staying on e you can still make that e major chord a lot more interesting by going e b That can work Where you're just playing the e major chord in crotchets or quarter notes at the end of the bar Ah Now you're going back to the a so how do you go back to the a pump pump pump pump So you climb down from a to e now you're climbing up from e to a so let's do that again I'm guessing this is the first half of the song I mean You still do Because a seventh wants to go to D. It's a secondary dominant chord So to climb better a A seventh climbing to D. How do I do a b c sharp D Now coming down So I want to go to the low e So he's going down Okay now coming to the end section e b e climbing same story a Okay, so let's it's basically a four times e seven four times e seven four times a four times Then a twice a seventh twice d four times e four times and on a four times So yeah, that's quite a bit of bars, but you can play it and you'll get a feel of it Okay, let's do the whole thing slowly A Always a climb somewhere at the end Don't forget your right hand seventh climbing to the four d major Keep your left hand lagato and your right hand staccato Repeating story continues. So that's your traditional walls feel now one more very common country pattern Which you can generate just using this idea which we talked about climbing up climbing down And all that and the syncopation between the hands is now instead of a walls feel Let's go to a traditional two beat feel where it's going to be two beats Or you can even count it as four by four. So let me play the two beat for you and then let's get to that I'm going to take c major Okay, let's change scales. So we do three scales in this lesson. So one country Uh rhythm pattern on a one more on c and the next one's going to be on g So you're going to learn a lot of scales. So stay tuned. So you have this is how it kind of sounds Okay, so as you can see it's very left right left right left right almost like the hands are marching So So I would suggest first get this nice staccato, right hand would be nice. I feel You can even say The first chord is c major Now when we go to f Because f is here and it's annoying to shift your hand position. What we could do F c f c instead of doing f high c you can do f low c because a low c You're already fingering it for the c chord c g c g f c f e c g c g now g 7 g Same story is your hands not changing position. So c g f c g d c g Then f g f It's essentially fifths the upper fifth in the case of c For the other two chords just so that you're keeping the positions closer lower fifth lower fifth so whole story F so I'm just showing you c to f And then let's do the climbing ups and climbing downs which also are great c g c g f c f c That was c major f major now. Let's do that with climb c g c c d e f you're repeating that c twice c g c c d e f c f f e you could do that f f e d for additional effect the staccato at that first beat C of the climb Climbing up to f Climbing back to c Climbing up to f Climbing down to c Oh, I sound like a kindergarten teacher. But anyway, so c g climbing up to f Climbing back to c Now c c b a g I want to go to g so instead of doing I prefer Higher c down to g seventh low d g g a b c g c then it comes back lower So you can use the Root or octave Down the fifth down to the root to kind of take you to different octaves So this can be very helpful if you want to expand the range of the bass So let's do that whole thing again C g c c d e f I'm telling you the bass So that was higher c second line G seven that's how I'm playing g seventh b d f g so that it's Closer to c I'm playing inversions on f also c f a c g B d f g this is how my right hand chords are being played. Okay c f major G seventh and back to c whole story again C g climbing up to f c back to the c And higher c b a b g d g and back to c G lower c pump pump pump f C f f e d c G and g g a b c g lower c g That's out of the pattern now you can fool around. I guess you you don't have to necessarily do Always do g to the lower d you can do g to the higher d Or f to the higher c or c to the lower g up to you So the fifth can either be above the root or below the root. Okay guys Let me do the whole thing very slowly that we get a feel of it And then let's move on to the final pattern which is going to be quite interesting for finger independence and so on That's the bass which I'm singing So that was the two feel for traditional country music So I have one more for you called western swing. So let's get cracking with that So I've chosen the g major scale for western swing as we call it. First of all, it's swung So swung means Instead of the eighth note going One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four It's one and two and three and four and one like you're swinging So let me play you a snippet of this swing groove and then we'll obviously break it down. It's on the key of g so your chords Are your g major chord? D seventh, which is the five And then of course g so the shapes which can get you started would be g major g b d then That's f sharp a c d when playing it around the region of middle c and then you go D seventh You can play it however you want really I'm just choosing the default position which is g b d now the pattern here is let me play a bit Now if you study my pinky You see it's it's clinging on to that top note. So there's a this is a great finger independence exercise Which can really ensure that this one finger stays down while the other fingers continue to do their own thing. So So let me just break that down with only the g chord Okay Okay, so whole bar one two three four one two three four And what's the left hand doing the same thing as earlier g t g Slowly So now when we want to go to the next chord d seventh we could play And in some cases you could hold on to the g to the top d of the g major chord for longer So now it's held on for a whole double two bars Of course, you're gonna eventually want to play this a bit faster Stuff like that Okay, so let's do line one of the workout Again one more time holding on to that d for the g major chord D seventh g major again Now for the next line i'm trying to invert it just for fun So the old g and d Was voiced here, but then the second line I think that's beautiful. Okay, that's the second line for you F sharp Okay, third line is a bit tricky there are many chords. So that's g Again G7 c major in the second inversion so whole story Let's do that again slowly The left hand's just doing fifths toggle sorry g major And d back to g major Let's do the whole thing again Don't worry about the fifth being higher or lower than the The root of the chord. I think both work Well, just go with the flow because it's also chord progression dependent and How you shift and what you find convenient or the sound or the vibe you like I guess So don't obsess over whether the fifth should be above or below the root You could learn this the way it is though and don't forget with the western swing as we call it the pinky has to hold Okay, let's do western swing very slowly. So let's do the whole pattern super slow try to play along Right guys, so those were three patterns. Now, uh, there are midi files waiting for you on patreon There's some notations as well Uh, and some of my notes for you to supplement the learning with remember We've done three patterns one on the traditional waltz country feel We did that on the key of a major if you remember Then we took the two four or the two beat country feel which is like marching your hands Do that a bit quicker and And all of these have walk-ups and walk downs Both of these rather and the last one was what they call as western swing Which is the toggling bass but the Melodic pinky of the right hand where you have to kind of split up your your hand into two parts like that Right anyway Right, so those were three traditional country patterns If you'd like to know more if you'd like to learn more styles Traditional and non-traditional you can head over to our website nathanielschool.com There are some video courses where I've prepared structured learning material Uh, at the time of shooting this video at least 70 plus lessons are waiting for you there Or if you'd like to learn with me in person you can do one of our flagship courses Depending on your level music method is what we call it and you can do it over a six-month semester with us and See how it goes and then continue learning. So we have actual courses at nathaniel. They're all online. They're virtual You can do it from the comfort of your home. So I look forward to catching you soon. Cheers again This is jason zack from nathaniel school of music