 Hi guys, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. In this lesson, I'm going to introduce you to how I go about my business when I'm having to deal with the topic of fillers. Fillers are those arpeggiated runs which you hear very often, you know, sometimes it comes in very quickly, the whole idea is to create some flair or plain and simple just to show off or sometimes if you're accompanying a band, you'll have an occasion where maybe the singers finish the sentence, finish a phrase of singing and then in the gap, you could kind of lead into the next thing. So it could be musical, it could be something the song needs or it could be something you just add as flavor to the song whenever possible or whenever you get the chance or if it's an instrumental song, I guess you can do it pretty much all the time, right? So traditionally the way you play runs of fillers, at least a lot of the videos I've seen on the internet revolve around things like taking a triad and playing that with inversions and you kind of arpegiate that and keep climbing. For example, that's your inversions of G minor which I'm taking for the lesson. Or you could do it in fours which is a little uncommon because it's a bit trickier to play on the fingers. So that is one way you have your runs of fillers described. The other way is you could take groupings of notes of a scale like for example, G minor on a scale and now you do your runs again runs of three, that's another common way to do a run. So I've talked about inversions then the groups, let's say a trio of notes. Or you can do four notes. Another scale you could consider for your runs would be the pentatonic scale which is a five note scale. You could develop runs on that scale. You can even do major pentatonic, it's also nice warm-ups, right? So the runs I'm going to try and describe for you today are going to be things which I do a lot in my music which I think are quite unique which you may not find going around on the usual how to play a piano run lessons. So let's get cracking, don't forget to watch the lesson till the end. There are quite a few concepts regarding the runs, quite a few theoretical concepts which you could even use in a non-piano run show off kind of way. But in the lesson it's primarily two octaves to just run up and down whenever you need to. So someone will play a chord and you are there and you're expected to play a run or you want to play a run. This lesson is basically to show you how to play that or at least how I approach some of my runs, right? Before we get started it'll be great if you can hit that subscribe button, hit the bell icon for regular notifications and do consider following us on Patreon where you're going to get all the notation for these lessons. You have the option of doing a one month subscription or a one year subscription. Both of these options exist, you'll get a discount of course if you do the one year. So do consider Patreon for all my handwritten notes, notation, wherever applicable and let's get cracking. So I'm going to start with a major chord as the base. So that's your G major, G major which will be G B D and we'll take one more chord for our exercise. We'll try and do the run on a major chord as well as a minor chord. So if you take a minor chord it'll be G B flat D, right, it'll be your G major, G minor. So pretty much all the music we develop in this lesson will be around this. The first kind of run or almost all the kinds of runs which I will be demonstrating will revolve around an additional note to the existing triad. The additional notes would be an add two, A being the added two because it's a middle or again A being the add two because again it's in the middle of the root and the third. You could also call it an add nine in the case of a minor chord from theoretical objectives. So that's your add two or add nine can do it with both the major and the minor chord. We don't call this a sus two. We say add two because the three is not going anywhere, the three will also be there. Then we have the add four where you do G major, okay, you're adding that four perfect fourth or sus four, so add four, there we go, it goes with both the major and the minor. Then we have the sharp five or the flat six or we call it the minor sixth or the augmented fifth. So with a major chord it works more like an augmented, we add that embellishment, okay, you could also do it over a minor chord, right, very X files if you ask me, right, then you do get it a bit more majestic with the major chord with the major sixth, okay, those sort of runs, then you do a major chord with that augmented fifth squeeze, so everything has its vibe and the reason why I choose these, so what have we chosen so far, we chosen the add two, we've chosen the add four and we've chosen the add sharp five or flat six or we've chosen the add six, so add six could be add six, could be add flat six or if you want to call that flat six sharp five, feel free to do so, okay, so these are the added notes, now we could also add a seven or a seven flat but I think then this lesson will get very long, so let's just stick with what we have and the run or the strategy for developing the run or the piano arpeggio movement would be to keep a few things in mind, one is we want to play over a minimum of two octaves so that it sounds and feels a bit fancy, the other thing we want to do is decide before we play the run, do we want to do a triplet run or do we want to do a semi-quaver run, semi-quaver run or a 30 second note run will be groupings of four, but groupings of three would be or six, one two three four five six, one two three four five six, one two three four five six, right, you have to prepare yourself for a two octave strategy, you have to prepare yourself for whether you're going to do triplet runs or whether you're going to do groupings of four or semi-quaver runs and last but not least you have to figure out at least with my analogy of describing the runs I do, which is your added note, are you adding the two, are you adding the four, are you adding the sharp four in some cases, are you adding the six or are you adding the flat six also known as augmented five and the base, the home base which you start off with before you cook everything around that will be the major or the minor chord, for this lesson we are going to take G major or G minor, okay, right, so let's get started with the first one which is add two, so you take the G major chord, add the two, so what is the two of the G scale, whether it's G major or G minor, the second note is A, isn't it, on its own it just sounds quite nice but with the run let's try and develop a run, that's your run there okay and I'm doing it with triplets, one and two and you could count it as threes, speed it up, just slowing it down so you can see where I'm crossing, play three then your thumb, you could also, you could go drift your bass to maybe a C and then the overall vibe becomes like a C major seventh sound, maybe go to E, giving like a E minor seventh vibe, D sus four with a D bass so G, E minor, same run, C, D sus, right, of course you're not gonna want to do it for the whole song, you want to do it wherever you get the chance to sneak it in, right, now with all these runs you can start from the bottom or you can start from the top, both have their own flavor and both are logically possible as well, right, now we're doing this run in groups of six, now you could also take the same music but accent it in a different way, for example, it sounds a bit weird to count it but if you think, okay, triplets you go one and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two, right, but if you think groupings of four or semi quavers you go one and a two and a three and a four and a one and it doesn't have to necessarily resolve, you know, one and a two and a three and back to the world of threes, one and a two, world of semi quavers or sixteenths, triplets it's just the feel or it depends on how your left hand and the right hand are integrating or working together, right, so remember runs, fillers, I've said this before, think of groupings of three or six or groupings of four, double, double, double, double, double, double, right, so we've done an add two and we can do it from the bottom, we can do it from the top, what else shall we do? Well, first of all you could consider doing the add two with a minor chord, why not, you can even, this is the normal one but if you'd like your pinky fingers available, so you can sneak in the high D as well, right, you can add that or you can even add like a lower D or think in terms of four groupings, four note groupings one and one and a two and a one and a two and that's a bar of four or a bar of two one and a two and a thaga dina thaga dino, thumpa dina nore diri dino, your runs also getting a lot bigger now, right, major, minor, so the mechanics kind of remains the same, right, whether you do it over a major or a minor, right guys, so that was the add two, let's now move on to the next add thing, okay, same G major chord but now let's consider adding the flat six to the chord which is one of my personal favorites, so you take a G major so flat six will be the E and then you bring that down by a step or you consider the flat six as a augmented five which is the five going up, you get that sound so that's the vibe, right, you need your ring finger for this one to cross so it'll be slightly tricky for G, that's your sound there, right, you could just even play around with those four notes, you know, do it in a sparse way, bring in the minor, so if you bring in the minor chord with a flat six, again very interesting, right, you hear this a lot in movies and all these sci-fi kind of programs, right, so I'm doing in groupings of four now, one E and a two E and a three E and a four E and a one two E and a three E and a four E and there's one little secret which some of us teachers don't tell you, I mean, you might even want to call it a little bit of cheating but the pedal, the sustained pedal which we don't talk enough of is generally pressed during these runs, so that is what really gives you that flow between the notes but of however to control the pedal needs a little bit of experience. So some keyboard players I find with some pianos or some digital keyboards you have a button which goes like an in auto sustain mode. The problem with the button is it has no intelligence. So it's either going to sustain it on fully or you leave it off. So I would highly encourage don't use the button sustain ever. Either don't use sustain at all or use an actual sustain pedal. So I'm using a pedal in this particular lesson. So you go what happens is if you go higher can do things like that and if you spend some time listening to that you actually hear the harmonics of the sound hope you could hear that right. So the sustain pedals not just there to sustain it's there to cling on to the harmonics or enhance the harmonic resonance which is also there. Remember every note has a lot of harmonics on any musical instrument or pianos no different it's a it has a lot of harmonics or overtones as we call it anyway coming back. So just remember I use the pedal while playing and I guess so should you. But as a as a kid growing up our piano at home did not have a pedal. So I used to actually practice this without a pedal you know. So try to make it sound decent enough or musical enough without the pedal and then bring in the pedal which was my sort of old school strategy. So without the pedal I'm still getting the legato right. So then you let the pedal enhance your performance and also give you a little bit of leeway here and there while crossing. So I think we are completely fine with that. So we've done a major and minor chord with an added flat six or an augmented five or one right and do it you don't have to do it in this stringent run like way. You can even just do it on your own just have some fun with it just embellish it here and they're like right let's say you're just jamming on a G minor chord maybe go to C minor repeat maybe played higher right so you could just play simple chords and bring it in wherever that was the add to so let's bring in some adds flat six maybe take a major more brighter with the add to maybe the other one try it at different pitches if you want back to minor since the pedal is held you can kind of either play arpeggios or you can kind of block play some blocks like maybe like yes I am getting a bit carried away but I'm trying to show you the application it's not like you play a G minor chord wait for the singer to finish you know still stuck there singers getting over and now you know you don't have to just do it just because you can do it you should do it because it the song also needs it right so maybe you could at the compositional stage you could bring in these fillers and see how that flavor works as well so now we've kind of exhausted the minor sixth embellishment also known as the augmented fifth I guess when you use the major third you call it the org five now you call it the minor six so now let's do the other six what is the other six available the major six or the sixth in the major scale or just the major six because the major six could be there even in like a minor third or a minor vibe for example the Dorian scale has the major sixth in it even the melodic minor it's there even with a minor domain so that's why I would like to add that as well so what does an add six do this is the vibe okay so you do 135 back to major almost like a pentascale right sometimes I sneak in that a because that creeps the pentatonic scale in but just get used to this so the resultant chord you're shredding on is actually the G major sixth chord right so so G B D cross to E which is the add six repeat for information if you do this on F sharp it's really easy it's just the entire pentatonic scale is right there right you can have some fun on F sharp if you didn't know that okay coming to minor with an added major sixth that's I think one of the last embellishments for the day so you go I'm just trying to take the major and the minor chord and just transform it a bit you know if you can or if that's even possible right guys so yeah we've done add two we've done add six we've done add flat six one thing remains that's the add four okay some people also call that the suspended four so if you have to do an add four well you play your chord then you add the C very common sound reminded of the Baywatch theme from way way long ago right so you get that sound right you could either do it with just the suspended chord you can ignore the third or you add the third which gives you a more interesting sound you can build a lick or two around that or just practice as an exercise so back to our usual drill how does this work with minor quite well I guess change your bass it'll transform the sound these arpeggios when you add those notes it kind of goes with most of the common chords you would anyways have written in your song so it's a good way to kind of you could even consider this from a from an arrangement angle where you could kind of program this or play it on a synthesizer or on like a loop kind of environment or a loop based instrument and let that ring for the whole song you know somewhere in the background and it can be like this arpeggio effect you know which you can actually play unlike some of the modern music where people kind of draw these notes which won't get you that good results the human way of playing a run can also be brought into like an electronic song or something like that which which I found some good results with if you ask me right unless it gets really fast then you need a machine to take over okay so these are about all the runs guys I'm going to recap everything I know I've drifted along the way so do hang around for a just a couple more minutes while I will recap all of the runs once so let's start with G major with the added two and then G minor with the added two then I'm going to do G major with the added six then the normal six like that right you get the drift so there's going to be maybe about eight variations in this arpeggio run and I'll do it on triplets for ease of understanding that I'll be okay so G major or major chord with an add two practiced in the descending start minor chord with an add two minor chord with an add two from the descending direction okay major chord with a sharp five creates an augmented flavor triplets again okay minor chord with the same flat six giving you that sci-fi x files like vibe you do it in semi quavers like I'm doing now groupings of four or groupings of threes would also work descending version remember in some cases you'll have to cross your ring finger some cases you'll have to cross your middle so that's a job you have to figure out but while crossing I tend to remind my students to not kind of move their elbow at least students so I can see when I'm teaching don't turn your elbow because then your entire body will lose its its shape so to speak so try to even if you're crossing let the wrist cross and if you see my elbow is still stuck to the body pretty much right you can move your whole body if you'd like but I don't encourage sudden jerky motions of the elbow because that can also hurt your wrist if you overdo it with your elbow so be a bit careful with runs sometimes it gets a bit sporting like so you kind of overdo it take breaks take regular breaks while doing this stuff coming back where we do normal six with a major chord same story with a minor chord in the major sixth I like this sound groupings of four right there okay so the last grouping was the sus four which is the C in the middle of the B and the D there we go you may want to remember to cross over your middle finger in this case you can get some good speed there always try to practice in reverse direction as well starting with the top it you never know how you're going to play it you know how it just comes out for for the purpose of the song ideally you want to do all these things to serve the song as best as possible so you don't want to do what you know how you know you'd rather do you'd rather have a bank of these things waiting for you and then in the song you can kind of pick and choose or it just kind of sometimes happens a bit organically you don't even know how it got built how that run happened it just happens just to serve the song and hopefully you realize you have a good bank of stuff to rely on last one was minor chord with a add four again get your fingers going for add four you need to cross over the the the middle finger right so when you practice this always take breaks as I said earlier relax take care of your wrist your forearms may also start burning but protect your wrist because your forearm can take a fair beating because to come back or to recover you just don't play for a while and yeah whenever you feel a pain while doing fillers or runs I would highly encourage you to take breaks or practice it slowly these are the things which really matter practice it slowly I know the eventual intention is to kind of show off and you know do this on stage and go crazy you know these are things we love to do and I would highly encourage you to to learn such things but we have to realize it's a physical job because you're playing much faster and at the same time you need to keep that control while playing so don't lose the musical foundation which is are you playing triplets are you playing semi quavers you should know that and a metronome will also help while you practice set the metronome to a slow speed and then try to divide it by three or divide it by four these things can be used to make it a bit tight while you play also use it in context with the song so if you take let's say a chord sequence of just two chords of g minor maybe in the gap play the filler you know this will give you more control down okay you can add different chords so try to use it in context use a metronome relax take your breaks you don't don't think like this is a sport where you have to really burn your muscles and you will you should not hurt your wrist while playing that's that's the most important things right that all of these muscles and these parts of the body which are near the fingers the wrist and around here these are very very feeble if you ask me right it's not evolved that well so try to relax these muscles always when you play the shoulder the arms the forearms all of that can take a beating because we are used to that with our species I guess but the other muscles are very very weak so take care of those muscles I tend to give it a go for about 10 15 minutes of rigorous practice I'll just keep doing it and then whether I'm tired or whether I'm not tired I just stop playing so that could be considered so when you practice just given a good amount of intensity for a short amount of time 10 minutes or so take a break and then come back to the the job if you want or do something else right guys so this is about how to add fillers runs or all these fancy arpeggio movements to your music hope you found the lesson useful and as always this is Jason here from Nathaniel school of music do consider subscribing to our channel leave us a comment to tell us what you thought of this lesson like the video it really helps the video move forward along the youtube waves and we also have a patreon page which you could consider being a part of and well if you actually want to do one of our courses if you feel you like some kind of organized training structured learning with certificates given to you so on and so forth do consider registering for our music method course which is our flagship four month offering you will find all the links to register on our website or in the forms provided in the description thank you for watching cheers