 Hi guys this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this exercise we are going to tackle the challenge of hand independence like this channel tends to do very often hand independence and arpeggios I guess are a more popular videos but this one uses hand independence with a slightly different perspective where we look at the same melodic pattern in the bass clef or the left hand but we displace it through different subdivisions as you may have heard in the intro video with respect to a very fixed chord progression which I am going to first teach you in the right hand. So a very important way to tackle hand independence on the piano is to play the pulse how the human body pretty much moves to the music which doesn't have to necessarily follow a time signature it can just go with the flow you know so even if it's a 7 by something or a 5 by something or a 3 by something you still move the same way all humans in that room will move the same way of course if the music or the musician is good so you are going to play the pulse in one hand which is very important while doing something else in the other hand and in this particular exercise we are going to play the pulse as chords in the right hand and we are going to play a very simple four note bass line with a lot of displacement variations now if you read music or even if you don't read music and want to visualize things better we have hand written notes by your Struley written for you waiting for you on our Patreon page in addition to that each of the variations I am going to tell you with the chords the names the notation the staff notation will also be waiting for you on Patreon in the same post along with the midi files which will allow you to just double click it and open it into any kind of a virtual midi player of some sort like Synthesia and the like and also it'll be awesome if you could hit that subscribe button if you haven't already and hit the bell icon for regular notifications let's get cracking so we are taking the key of E minor and I'm going to give you four chords in that particular key okay let me play them and then teach you so what's going on here we start with the normal traditional E minor chord but played in second inversion that'll be B E G B E G and then we go A E F sharp A E F sharp it's a very unique chord actually but it's part of the umbrella of E minor which is E F sharp G B C D E E D C B A G F sharp E which is the E natural minor a relative of G major by the way so one sharp F sharp so the first chord B E G then A E F sharp and then C E A which is an A minor chord in first inversion C E A where A the root is on top and and then coming back to the original E minor so E minor and then the F sharp on top with A E F sharp it's almost like a suspension of sorts right almost like an E sus two with a sus four I don't even know what to call this anyway leave it so E minor B E G A E F sharp and then C E A B E G okay and we do each chord four times and I like a nice staccato synthy sound as I call it synthy in the sense reminds me of some glam rock songs back in the 80s and to make it more interesting maybe the last hit could be legato instead of staccato check this out creates a nice flow long just gets the body to move I feel create that articulation slowly little slower so that's about your right hand and I'm keeping the left hand or the bass clef really simple it's just the first three notes of the natural minor scale over a four note melodic pattern which is E F sharp G E and all of these four notes or hits would be played as quavers or eighth notes so one and two and rest okay so the first variation would be one and two and three and four and one and two and three nothing at the three and the four even though one and two and is covered by these four guys three and four and will not have anything which gives us the motivation as this lesson keeps journeying forward to utilize all those missing spots and we try and push this fragment or this motif we will push that figure up and up and up and later and later in the bar and see how that goes and we are going to divide our beats into two equal units so one and two and three and four and and signifies the division of two and introduces things like quavers into the party one and two and three and this is how I want you to count it play along one and two and three and one and two and three and four and okay now we have to do it with the right hand so before you actually get that left hand a quick trick would be to try and sing that by now you can kind of do you know the melody simple three notes okay starting at the one three four one and two and so now take that away bring back your chords slow that down the chords are basically still playing up a pulse so keep it a bit slow and these pulses are crotchets or quarter notes which last one count over a bar and now we need to bring in the bass clef before we do we sing a melody you may find this to be a bit of a challenge if you do maybe do it with one chord don't change and as you journey forward you then go and when you're ready after you've done singing get them together keep singing if you wish or count one and two and three and four which is a bit tricky at least for me to count one and two and three and same chord loop same melody speed that up try to get the articulation in the right hand okay so now we are going to do a lot of displacement variations or permutations and all that this is going to do the right hand will not be displaced throughout the lesson all that I've taught you in the right hand is over finished some students I find and trust me I have some telekinesis I can probably see you right now some students tend to avoid playing the piano with me while I'm teaching I would recommend you to get your keyboards out or pianos out or go to your instrument and play along or you can even pause the video you can even slow down the video using the YouTube slowing down features and you can also keep the notation in front of you try to be prepared as you play with me in this lesson so the right hand continues to do its thing and the left hand now is going to slowly displace the figure which is the four note phrase we started at the one so what is after one and of one so one and two and three and four and one and two and three first you want to do that one and two and three four one you want to count everything and whack the and two ends one and two and three and one and two and one and two and with the right hand a good strategy would be now to count the ends with the right hand so So 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & now we do it at the end. 1 & 2 & 3 & 2 & 3 & 2 & 3 & 2 & 3 & 1 & 2 & 3. And once you sing it, try to execute it. Blow it down just to get 1 and 3, it has to count. 1 and 2 and 2 and 3. Few things you could do, you know, you could close your eyes and play. That tends to help with the independence or the coordination. Because at this stage you know what your fingers know what they are doing. So you don't necessarily need to look at your piano. So just feel the notes, feel them colliding with each other at those specific beats. Earlier you did. At the 1 now. 1 and 2 and 3. And you need to also let loose a bit with your body and let whatever natural reactions need to happen. You need to play freely. You need to be free with your body and mind when you play. So if your eyes do something weird or if your head does something weird, as you've seen in a lot of my videos, I guess all musicians have a way of feeling the music. Sometimes we just close our eyes, but sometimes for these subdivisions you may want to do something more. You could kind of angle your body a bit, you know, open your eyes, close your eyes, move your head, sing, whatever it takes to get the job done. So that was the end of the 1. Next, we just move everything to the 2 of the bar. So 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. 1 and 2 and 3 and let's see how that goes. goes two and three and four and two and three and four there we go slow that down one singing it first remember the chords are going to change it may be tough for you to actually count as you saw I may have made a few errors while saying it but you need to feel the beats which you can do internally so that's the two let's now do 2.5 or the end of the two and three and four and three and four and three and four remember it's just consecutive notes and three and one let's see how that goes okay so two and is over what's next well three so one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and three and four and three and four and three and four and three and four and so back to the cards then what's next we can do 3.5 which is now the challenge with three and and obviously the upcoming four and the four and is that they are going to eat into the next bars one or two because you've displaced them beyond the bar so they go into the second bar as you'll see with the notation so you go one and two and three and four and that's normal that's a three then we did one and two and three and four and one and two three and four and I like the fact that that E comes in with a bang at the one of the next bar very groovy keep your chords in the right hand or keep the same chord until you've got the independence right parabarum parabarum parabarum at the end of the three and four and one and four and one and four and one and four and one with the left so we've done three and then we don't when we go into four one and two and three and four and one four and one and four and one and so four and one and three and four and one just with one card four and one and parabarum and independence will challenge you in many ways it's not that you won't be able to play you'll be able to play but then the notes of your chord will get jumbled or all go all over the place and that's the point of this exercise to push you to develop your hand independence and in a very sort of mathematical way if you think about it you started with a four note grouping starting on one now we've gone up to the four and before we conclude the lesson why should we forget four and the last beat of the eight beat cycle or four beat cycle divided into two eighth notes so that's at the end of the four that's the four let's keep that going a bit slow now one and two that's at end of the four and one and two so I guess the four and the four and a half even I find it quite tricky sometimes to do it the other reason why we tend to find it tricky is not only because the hit points of the two hands are at different spots it's because there's different information to play so there are many ways to tackle hand independence you can do it with melody in the right hand chord pattern in the left hand which is traditional you can do it in this case with a baseline in the left hand and the right hand playing the chords with a specific pulse like pattern which complements very well so you hope you guys find the lesson useful hope you can use it in your daily practice and do consider getting the notation as well from patreon you'll get my hand written notes as well in a structured manner and let me before I conclude the lesson let me just play all the variations once and try and do it as slow as I possibly can at the one now and of one and one and two now and of the four now and before I conclude we are also on Instagram you can follow me on Jason Zach and if you'd like to record yourself playing any of these exercises feel free to do so make a reel or a story or whatever is available on that particular platform you can even tag me at Jason Zach that'll be awesome to see what you can do or at least you can come up with some weird faces while doing the whole thing right guys thanks a ton for watching the video don't forget to subscribe leave us a comment with what you thought and what you'd like to learn in the future and we'll be happy to prepare that for you cheers and see you in the next one