 Hi guys, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. Welcome to another lesson of ours in this lesson Well, what you heard in the introduction performance, which I did is yeah I mean a section of a song was done and dusted if you think about it and What you need to know my right hand was just playing one chord C major if you will right and that's what I'm going to try and work on in this lesson to take two chords which you use very often in songs, especially Dearing pop songs rock songs and traditional song writing which involves around just two chords major and minor chords Isn't it so we take those chords and place them in the right hand and then see how The magic can happen with actually the left hand right is usually we focus on the shapes of the right hand We get into the voicing we get into lots of stuff just for the right hand and we assume that the chord is sort of complete But actually it's not just a few small alterations in the left hand will just enable the Existing chord to not even sound like itself to not even sound like a major chord anymore or a minor chord anymore Right so in this lesson We are just going to take two cards one major and one minor and just try and look at some ways of building music And if you haven't already don't forget to subscribe to our channel turn on that bell icon for notifications Like the video and leave us a comment. Let's get cracking So we start with just C major in the right hand and actually we end with C major in the right hand That's pretty much it. So the right hand well for variety. So this is C major by the way C E G now the nice thing about this chord is you can voice it in three piano friendly ways These are what we call is inversion. So you go C E G You can also take the C from the bottom and push it to the top E G C That's the C on top you can also do G C E Okay, G C E So these are the three ways of playing C major Beautiful sounds right so you go what I'm doing in this lesson since I like the sound that way is to go G C E Sort of comes to the middle of the keyboard and it reminds me of my favorite songs like imagine by John Lennon Let it be by the Beatles So you have their voicing generally around is around here is around middle C because it makes your voice really shine through Right, especially for a male singer because male singers have lesser range Right in general, I think playing chords in and around the middle of your piano or middle of your keyboard This is what they call Popularly as middle C. It's not really in the middle of the piano geometrically, but yet they just call it middle C but anyway So this is what I'm gonna do. I hold down a simple C major chord G C E Okay, and in the left hand Normally the base note of C major is going to be C. Isn't it so it has a very Resolved and stable kind of sound isn't it right now the same chord has two more notes There's E so I could do C major slash E or C major with E in the base So this sounds like it's yearning to resolve somewhere. This sounds like it wants to go somewhere It is actually sounds like it's not at home. It's not the tonic chord as it's called So it's just the fact that you've altered the root of the chord. So the intervals start changing So C with E in the base. Okay, you could also do C with G in the base, which is the other note of the C major chord See that wants to resolve somewhere else, right? So C with E base wants to go to F major Right or C with G base seems to want to go to G But C with C base seems to just be happy where it is, right? so that's the effect of a Chord a standard triad with a altered or a different base, which we also call as a slash chord Okay, now this entire thing which we'll work on in this lesson. Let's just keep it in the C major scale, which is CBAGFEDC That's your C major scale So you do not have to really alter your right hand You just have to touch and move around and actually your creative power is going to be in the left hand It's not at all going to be in the right hand and if you're new to chords I think this lesson will really help because you can just enjoy the sound of harmony Without the complexity of you know shifting here and there or reading sheet music and chord charts and whatnot And if you're an intermediate or an advanced player Who's learned chords by the book if you've learned chords as oh major let's find a shape of that Okay, minor blah blah blah this video may help you because it'll help you re-voice the chord and probably Create some extended chords or some a very good chord embellishments because of the bass Okay, and before I get cracking with what I want you to play in the left hand It's important to know that the base note of any chord or of any musical sound or any harmonic analysis Really defines the emotion really depends the tonality and the vibe of what you're playing at that current moment So C major with a C bass as I mentioned just feels very stable and at home C major within e bass Feels like it's wanting to go somewhere else right maybe to a new home that okay So that's exactly what the bass will do it just Completely changes the vibe even though the right hand or what we could call as the upper voicings or the upper notes Right the higher notes are pretty much the same So if you just take the C major scale You know and just roll with the base notes of the C major scale and keep the same triad in the right hand That's C with C then That's C major within with a D base That's C major within e base C major within F base C major with a G base C major within a base C major with a B base See back to normal root C. It's really weird what just happened Isn't it because everything just sounded awesome? I just played the same old major chord with everything in the left hand every possible note of C major scale Just sounded quite nice. It sounded usable right except maybe that B It's a little weird. So let's ignore that for now. Okay, so well So that's the whole point, you know, you should experiment and explore your base Not really caring too much about the right hand. Let the right hand just do its thing And why don't you try playing it in this simple ballad style? Just four times in the right hand the chord one two three four Remember, I'm playing C major in the inversion. I don't like playing it like this for some reason Feels a bit better on my fingers. So you can try whichever inversion suits you. So Three four one. So this is the rhythm pattern Play four hits in the right hand and one hit in the left hand as Octaves would be nice that really brings out the base One right Now let's make a few alterations maybe Change that base to F Change that base to a Change that base to D Change the base to E Back to F and so on you see it's very it's like a chord progression if you ask me Very similar to a guitar player Probably a lot of guitar players will will hold chords like E minor or G major, you know and then Voice there other chords around that using the lower strings the lower E and the lower a to change the base And when you change the base the chords change the root changes as I said earlier, right? Another really nice flavor to add for your ballad performance would be to add An off eighth note with your left hand thumb. So what was once? to Without that eighth note one and two and the and adds the movement, right? It's like you're telling a story It's a very simple thing. You just have to work on this thumb to be very soft Right and I've done a detailed video on how to play ballads on the piano for all styles of accompaniment Do check that out in the description, right? So in this lesson, I have basically done an arrangement already I've put together some base notes for you, which I think will sound quite nice We'll use that and I would highly encourage you to improvise with your voice You'll hear me mumbling some random stuff. That's because I don't write lyrics very bad at it So I just try whatever I can but as long as you can build a melody and then close it out as a song Which could then be either played by an instrument like a Flute or a violin or you could then pen down some lyrics and sing it, right? So this is how I have arranged it in line number one every bar will change as C Actually, I'm changing it every half bar as a minimum if you will so two counts per base note will sound really nice so C a Stay on F C a That's line one. Okay line two C a Line two again Line three is a carbon copy of the first line C Stay on F and then we climb Climb that again Yeah Okay, and here and there you can also enjoy Certain voicings instead of just playing C major like this you can add like a D This will work really well for the last chord G Right, you can even remove the E. That'll become like a G suspended for Right, which kind of wants to go to G major but then in this lesson We are not allowed to play more than one chord, but you can okay, so you go Okay, so you can even change your G in the right hand to an a That sounds really nice over an F over a D over a G also So you get what I'm saying, right? It's just one chord in the right hand and the Exploration or the diatonic movement diatonic means from the scale the diatonic Exploration of the left hand to create that base movement or that story Just using the base. So now we've done the major chord a static major chord in the right hand We are now going to do a static minor chord in the right hand Why should we leave out minor and these are the two basic chord qualities, which we have in music The stable ones at least the major and the minor So now let's move forward with the minor static chords and create some awesome music around that Right so continuing on our study of static chords Earlier we just looked at the major chord now We're just looking looked what you just heard in this demonstration was a minor chord and I took nothing but C minor So how do you get C minor now? C E flat G its inversions E flat G C or G C E flat I kind of like either actually so I wouldn't mind doing C E flat G or G C E flat I'd leave that to you. Maybe you like playing E flat G C So figure out which inversion the inversion needs to be explored by your right hand That's pretty much all you're doing in the right hand picking a major or a minor chord Inverting it choosing one of those inversions and just banking on that for the whole journey Okay, so the left hand now can be moving of course It moves around but then you can't do a movement on the C major scale, right? Because the C minor chord is derived from well mostly the C minor scale So what I'd like to share when I'm composing on minor is first of all you build the natural minor which is That's C natural minor. What did I do there always for minor we consider we definitely should flat in the third So E becomes E flat Then you have your A becoming A flat That's six flat B becomes B flat, which is seven flat So that's your natural minor But what I like to do when I'm composing or just improvising in general on the minor Tonality is to try and look at it like a hybrid minor scale. So what I mean by that is you just make sure your three is flat Make sure the three is not normal three. It's always Three flat while your six and your seven can be played around with all its permutations So in other words, you could do six flat or six natural Six flat Six natural Very Dorian That's very natural minor or minor, right It's Dorian or even melodic minor And then you take the seven flat That's seven flat That's your seven natural that's B That would be harmonic That would be the jazz melodic minor And you have Dorian and of course the natural So in other words what I'm trying to say is you play around with the six and the seven Don't mess around with the three the three has to be flat three and Maybe don't use what I call as the exotic notes. Okay, the exotic notes will be the flat two It just gives you a very obvious statement It's like it has to be used in that context, right? It's a very powerful sound And we also call it a tension in music. You also have the flat five or the sharp four Some people call it the tritone so this is another note you can avoid for the minor tonality Maybe we should use that in an in a later video for different tonalities Which are more, you know, unique and exotic if you will so These are the scales we can build we have the natural minor than the harmonic minor the Dorian And the melodic So you don't have to really bother about that in the right hand But you can keep that aware in your left hand So what I've done in this exercise is I've just tried to Use some of those notes and I've used in a very popular what we call as a bass line cliche Which is used by so many artists you've heard that popular Led Zeppelin song that popular Beatles song and So many other songs around along the line which go That way right that's all I've done just ripped it off Right so let's get cracking with that C in the bass B flat A flat stay on a flat. It's a nice sound, right? C B flat If that is also a Pink Floyd song like this if I'm not mistaken C B flat then a borrowing from the Dorian Natural sixth a flat then let's climb G A flat B flat and loop that Again the same ballad technique is earlier play every chord with that eighth note ghost as we call it and The right hand is just holding the same old thing and like I told you for the major chord segment You can kind of alter this chord by adding or subtracting. Maybe you could do You could add that D, which is the nine or the two basically or Can add a B flat if you want you can just leave it like this Sounds quite nice on its own Right so if not anything this is at least one section of your song right it could be like an ambient verse It could be a bridge who knows it could even be a chorus and also depends on how you use it You can use it in a rhythmic sense. For example There we go You know this Rachel song. I'm sure hit the road jack So depends on how you use it really you if you groove it it's gonna sound You know bluesy or like a rock song you can even do Very green day guitar rhythm I guess Remember I said I'm also very influenced by what the guitar players do in a lot of these folk songs rock songs Even if you look at the way the banjo is played, you know banjo is another nice instrument to get inspired by this constant lingering note technique because some of these instruments like the banjo are actually tuned that way like the Banjo if you were to just play it without Fretting anything. It's the G major chord generally. That's the tuning they have for it, right? So the piano we have to search for things a bit But the piano is nice in the sense. It's a what you see is what you get kind of instrument There are no there's no shape. There's nothing there's nothing to really rely on visually It's just what you're supposed to play what you want to play and what is your goal at the current moment in this instance? I want to play a static chord there shouldn't change at all and I want to float my left hand So the main intention behind this lesson is to hopefully give you some kind of Movement in the left hand usually I found a lot of students of mine We we take a lot of time with the right hand, but we don't talk about the left hand much So I've just sort of developed this exercise for even an intermediate learner or any learner I think anyone at any level could do something with this style of playing I've composed a lot of songs believe it or not with just one chord, but it doesn't feel like one chord That's because of the left. That's exactly because of what the bass is doing, right guys again This is Jason here from Nathaniel. Thanks a ton for watching this lesson Don't forget to like share subscribe to our channel hit the bell for notifications and all of these lessons are Supplemented with a lot of my handwritten notes which will be available for this lesson a lot of the previous lessons of the past and Every every single lesson in the future cheers and I will see you in the next one