 Hi guys this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this exercise we are going to learn quite a few things but primarily focusing on left hand arpeggio movement. We have done a lot of videos on left hand arpeggios and arpeggios in general there's a playlist in the description which we leave for you but most of those videos will have one pattern or something primarily I guess for beginners. In this particular lesson we are going to attempt to offer arpeggios for all skill levels so even if you're a professional player or an advanced player so to speak if you've been playing for a while do stay tuned there'll be something to learn. I have also composed a very simple sort of ballad like melody in the right hand which you heard in the intro video we learn that as well it's notated for you on our patreon do consider heading over and checking it out you'll also get my handwritten notes midi files and a lot more content which helps supplement the other youtube videos which have been done and which will continue to be done. So the entire composition or the entire exercise is going to be on e major scale so please deal with e major scale four sharps don't run away e f sharp g sharp c sharp and d sharp okay that's your e major let's get acquainted and the chord progression will be based on e major but I've added a few interesting chromatic movements which will make the journey a lot more interesting most of the videos we find to explain things end up being this you know one four one five or one five six four standard diatonic chord progressions which I think are a bit overused and then they do it on c major as some of you may already know so we're going to do it on e major and a very interesting long chord progression so you learn a bit of theory as well a bit of chord voicing and more most importantly left hand arpeggio movements as you heard in the intro and the right hand will be sort of pivoting on a very simple and fixed melody so we're not going to improvise too much in the right hand it'll be a fixed melody printed for you so before we get cracking it'll be great if you can consider hitting that subscribe button and turning on the bell icon for regular notifications we release videos very often so I guess you should stay notified let's get cracking so first off the chord progression so the chord progression I'm going to show you with blocks first of all so that you can actually get this done in not only your left hand even the right hand if you so enjoy after the video but this video will be left hand so just to demonstrate this is your first chord e major in root position I'll play it for you and then teach it's a very common ballad chord progression at least the old ballads one two three four change two three four changing two three four one two three four last has the last bar has two chords let me walk you through the through the chords so first off is the tonic chord of the e major scale namely e major played in root position e g sharp b two three four changing to b major slash d sharp if you're not so sure of a slash chord in simple words the bass note will have to be d sharp if you have a bass player in your band tell that bass player to play a d sharp it's not b major it's b major slash d sharp if you want to learn slash chords a bit more we leave a couple of videos in the description e major then we have b major slash d sharp very very pleasant sound not a very stable sound though so e major stable journeys towards b major over d sharp then b minor over d again we are following our slash chord routine b minor over d and then a over c sharp it's a major over c sharp and how i'm voicing it e g sharp b d sharp f sharp b d f sharp b c sharp a let's just take those four chords and learn them so e major b will be over d sharp b minor over d a over c sharp and i'm not singing a over a it's not it's not a bass it's c sharp bass so work on that get it with both hands e major b over d sharp and you'll notice that there's a nice chromatic movement happening right there's so many edel songs i'm sure you know a few of them which seem to have this progression two three even desperado by the Beatles pretty similar two three so i hope you've got that under the belt okay right left hand bounce you know that's pretty interesting just to get that muscle memory going okay let's move forward next chord mostly chromatically going down so and then e minor over c major over b and then f sharp major over a sharp and then b sus four the b has to come because we are in the key of e major and we want that dominant chord to pull us back to the tonic right so b over d sharp all the eight chords now over c sharp to a minor over c major over b f sharp with an a sharp b sus four b major so the b sus four results to b major so those are about your chords you can check the notation if you wish pause the video and get the voicing decently well and now coming to the pattern so the arpeggio patterns i'll first teach you all of the five arpeggio patterns with respect to just one chord e major chord arpeggio pattern number one will be probably the most famous solo piano arpeggio of all time l h m h as i'm calling it so you have your chord and you go low note high note middle note high and you just kind of loop it okay that's your pattern one and whenever you're ready you can obviously do this execute this over the entire chord progression so okay and stay tuned for a while at least i i'm at least for this video try to stay tuned till the very end because the melody line will be coming up shortly then we put it together and chat about the whole thing together so first let me show you the left hand patterns l h m h the textbook vanilla pattern okay pattern number two would be an octave displacement routine in the left hand with l h m h l h m h so what happened there l h m h l i call this l you may think why are you calling it l i write it as an l dash or an apostrophe meaning which the low note played by your pinky finger gets displaced to its octave on the top end on the right side l h m h l h m h you can run that very swing fashion some good accents along the low and the high extreme sides of pitch and this is a nice pattern if you're able enough you can do this in a 16th note or a semi-quaver like motion i will teach you the whole movement very slowly so follow along for now let's just get pattern two with just this particular style okay so pattern one pretty easy just need three fingers pattern two you need to kind of move your thumb on top for sure otherwise you won't have a free finger okay so the third pattern is kind of an arpeggio pattern it will have the root and the the low note and the high note whacked together and then in the on the off beat you play the middle note so if it's e major you do out notes in note single note get a nice movement going also makes it a lot more thicker because you're whacking two notes together that's a nice power chord fifth sound when you play it in the bass sounds a lot more thicker so why i chose this also to make it thicker but also to add an element of swing this sounds very good on swing can also make it a bit more sort of diabolic a bit more angry if you make all this minor there we go and a diminished right so in this lesson we are focusing on some happier stuff ballad movement okay so that's your out in number four will be spread voicing so spread voicing will take generally an interval of at least a fifth and a sixth it can go beyond so there will not be a third interval so if you visualize e major here the third is in the middle so then this third forms a major third from e to g sharp and it forms a minor third from g sharp to b those are closed voicings because they are thirds if you want to spread it out remove that g sharp and whack it an octave higher that'll be more of a cello like approach or a more orchestral approach to voicing a chord okay so okay spread voicing you need to use your wrist also to kind of access that and the pattern I have for you is keep it simple one and two and or else you can come back one and two and three and four and one and two and three and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and and two and okay so this is your spread and last pattern before we get to the melody line inserted with the chords will be played and show you so e major what's happening here you see a lot of notes so they're not really new notes they are just another octave from one of these lower ones so l m h l octave m octave coming back down so it follows with a nice set of eight quavers some people may also like to go all the way up but then it doesn't kind of add to eight and I don't like it because it fights with the right hand sometimes so one two three four either 16th notes or go in eighth notes one two and three and four and and so on now some of this will need some fingering which I'm going to talk about okay so those were the patterns l h m h l h m h with octave displacement or the octave added from the l then this kind of combo arpeggio feel where you do a block of two notes and then a single note in the middle and then you have your spread which I need to mention allows you to play a lot more deeper or lower on the piano as opposed to maybe the l h m h here it sounds very muddy there right so there's a good register to play the spread voicing on it'll sound well serve you well and lastly there are the show off arpeggio which adds the octave of the low and the octave of the middle note g sharp so depending on your chord you'll have to voice the pattern accordingly let's dive into the melody now so it goes two three four so over e and b over d sharp we are playing you can play a block there and a very predictable continuation of the melody now because of the a minor that g works better that does i don't like that g sharp over a minor because we've gone out of the diatonic e major let's do that again and for that e i made a bit interesting just by highlighting the same chord in a rhythmic way a lot of these off beats so and then ending off ending with that suspension f sharp over a sharp remember in the bass you can also do a little bit of a trill there if you are able any any kind of glamorous thing if you'd like to do at the end let's just break do that again throughout this we are playing quarter notes or blocks in our left hand correct so now let's take that same melody and play that with all of the arpeggio patterns discussed before in the lecture but with all the new chord changes so let's do lh mh with the melody a good strategy would first be to hum or to sing the melody you need to change now know every bar let's bring in that okay continuing forward played now which is a b minor over d let's do those four chords again let's move forward let's get that down one more time last two chords whatever you want to do there is fine or keep it simple okay whole story with lh mh in the bass and now let's journey forward by the by playing the next arpeggio pattern number two which is lh mh with each of the l notes gone up and octave okay in the second half of that phrase let's first do left hand and then bring in our usual right hand melody hum C sharp C sharp C C B B B flat B flat B hum I'm kind of budgeting that as B sus for B major so on the second half of the bar I'm adding the D sharp so whole story left hand I am singing the bass no you help you a bit with fingering not using my ring the question is very simple these the the pinky the index and the thumb will pretty much conquer the fifth movements or the the first the third and the fourth note the second note will be between your middle and your ring so these two fingers have to decide which works better so I'll just tell you the which fingers in in note number two middle finger G sharp now for this I'm accessing my ring finger easier okay then ring continues over that B minor over D then still ring finger works still ring finger works middle finger now ring finger middle finger still middle finger in general when the note is black we prefer the ring finger when the note is white we prefer the middle finger in the base area let's do that again get the fingering that's the pattern you can even speed this up and play 16th notes whenever you can you know and two and that's so left hand at a double speed so to speak okay let's do that with the right B minor over D A major over C sharp A minor E major so 16th note version of the LHMH with the octave displays or even the eighth note works moving on to arpeggio pattern number three which was that combo pattern right so let's now drive this forward with all of our chords A B over D sharp I leave the fingering to you but in general keep all your five fingers ready and waiting if you just say oh this is a three finger job it's not gonna happen let's bring in some melody beats in the right hand and in there right and sometimes we may go with all of this chaos in the left hand we may go back to quarter notes please don't do that so try to get the exact notation the notation is there on patreon if you wish it's in a pdf file including midi if you so choose midi and that was arpeggio pattern number three now let's move on to arpeggio pattern number four which includes a lot more depth you can call it the spread voicing or the open voiced method with a wider interval gap between the notes let's look at each of the chords in the bass so E major played as E B G sharp two two two that's the voicing and then two two two that's D sharp B F sharp two two two and then two two two that's D B F sharp D B F sharp again E B D sharp D sharp B F sharp D B F sharp and then C sharp A E let's do those three with the tune let's break down the second half let's do the first half one more time at this stage if you want you can even harmonize the melody maybe you can start with octaves if you enjoy you know but what I like to do sometimes is add some thirds just the upper third of each note okay let's do that again turning forward now this is how I'm playing A minor C A E C A E and then E major over B B G sharp E B G sharp E quite a wide voice B G sharp B and then F sharp over A sharp will be A sharp F sharp C sharp two two two I'm just keeping the last B simple but if you'd like can do a sus4 major in the notation we've just kept it pretty simple there just the major chord there so whole story okay we have one more pattern arpeggio pattern before we wind up the lesson if you remember we discussed this on the E major chord so let's do this over all the chords in the progression so that would be we can start doing this with eight notes E major so and that gentle fingering strategy I'm adopting is use these four fingers to play finish off your octave and then you'll have to cross a finger sometimes two fingers depending on the chord in this case I think the index will work but the middle is working better for me it gives me more speed especially if I want to get that 16th note going so now here it's a bit tricky because you have to cross from black to black B major over D sharp then that's pretty easy just a bigger width here because of the inversion this is the toughest one I found I'm playing this with my ring finger and if I have the pedal held it's a bit easier because I can jump my hand but I choose to assume the fingering assuming the pedal was not there it should still sound not choppy you know it should still sound legato at least so to do that I am playing pinky middle thumb crossing the middle so let's do all those four chords and now with the pedal so I'm lifting it between or before each chord coming to that A minor over C over G sharp let's do that A minor over C same cross but this time I'm preferring to cross my index finger since it's closer E major over B again I'm crossing my index and then F sharp over A sharp or B flat pretty easy there because it's all black notes so it's very easy to cross and then piece us for let's try and do that really slow so we've looked at five arpeggio patterns with a fairly simple melody which as you see went on and on so even I tried to have some fun with the melody by adding a few grace notes and a few filler notes in between and we'll leave a video in our description on how to practice grace notes these apogee aturas and turns we've done a few lessons but we leave a nice one in the description lots are there in the description so lot of links which you can do to kind of follow up your learning visiting some of our commonly used playlist things which will relate to this lesson also links to find us on patreon where you can support us for just five dollars a month which will give you the handwritten notes from this lecture the notation midi files and a lot more there are also tires you could check out there you can also follow some links along to our nathanialschool.com homepage website you can look at free tutorials there you can look at video courses where we have structured learning content you can also do a course at our school by reaching our course advisor not just for piano also guitar vocals and and other instruments so do connect with us by any means possible for you or whatever you'd prefer to learn and do stay tuned to our youtube channel by hitting that subscribe button and turning on the bell icon for regular notifications thanks a ton for watching the lesson see you in the next one cheers