 Hi guys, this is Jason here from Nathaniel School of Music. In this challenge, I'm going to introduce you to something which has sort of tormented me over the past couple of weeks. I call it the Thresio Challenge. So basically, I want you to play the Thresio pattern along with a lot of other triplet groupings which don't really fall under the basic time feel of the Thresio to take you out of that, come back into that rhythm and at the same time, practice chord inversions like crazy. This will be a really, really good chord inversion exercise and at the same time, also practice one of the most challenging but yet very sought after and very popular left hand patterns. So there's a very common left hand pattern going on which you pretty much use for almost all the standard groovy music out there, whether it's Latin, whether it's rock and roll, whether it's any kind of stuff, right? We also call it the Umpa rhythm, Umpa, Umpa, Umpa, Umpa, Umpa. In the right hand, the challenge is to maintain the Thresio rhythm which is but not only play that. We add a kind of a flair and an arpeggio. So you're kind of tested to play your chords and your arpeggios in one exercise. So and then the next chord, back and then it starts getting crazy at the last chord which is the A7b9. So it's a four chord progression, Dm, Gm, Dm and A7 with a b9, that's the Bb, you see there, right? So I really hope that you will find the challenge exciting and it will help you in your growth. You don't have to do necessarily the whole thing. If you want to simplify your left hand, so be it. You want to simplify your right hand, so be it. So I'm just showing you the exercise with all the bells and whistles which I could think of while doing it, right? Within of course my comfort zone and then I pushed myself way out of my comfort zone and then made that sort of my new comfort zone. So that's generally how you practice stuff. So here's an exercise for you with inversion practice, with hand independence, with ear training, with rhythm training, with left hand, with a very important left hand pattern, the works. There's a lot going on in this exercise. So before we start the exercise, it will be great if you can hit that subscribe button, turn on the bell for notifications and this entire lesson will be supplemented with notation. So if you read music or if you'd like to learn reading a bit better, head over, get yourself a copy of the notation on Patreon and support us. It's $5 for an entire month where you get everything we will ever do on YouTube past and present and future. So I welcome you now to the Thresio Challenge. Get your keyboards opened, ready, get a book if you want and let's get cracking. Fine. So the chords are D minor, G minor, D minor and A7b9. Okay, D minor, quite easy. G minor is here and in some instances I'm playing G minor with a minor 6th version. I quite like that voicing. D minor is vanilla D minor and then A7th we are going to add color to the harmony because the rhythm of that chord is also going to go crazy. Okay, so I'm going to explain this to you over four cycles. The first cycle will sound like this. Okay, so as you can see something very different happened at that last chord. So let's go through the first cycle again and before we do the left hand pattern is going to be consistent throughout the lesson. So you do D minor like this. An important trick is start with your pinky, middle and thumb after which when you go to the fifth your middle finger has to be lifted for obvious mechanical reasons and then you put in your index finger. So there's a little bit of this work you need to get into your subconscious. So maybe you just want to work on this D minor, take some time on D minor, so this is all about the left hand. So also very important to staccato the top end of the chord, um, pa, um, pa, um, um means long. Um, pa, um, pa, um, pa, um, pa, um, pa, um, pa, um, pa, um, pa, um, pa, um, pa, um, pa. So then the melody is coming, okay, just jam with something you know, you know, just to get cracking with that left hand thing, just get used to that then try out the G minor which is simple. A flat D broken and then switch, swap out your fingers, middle for index, you get your G minor and you come back to D minus the whole left hand is always going to be G minor back to the same old D minor and then a seven flat nine. I don't really care about that in the left hand much. I'm just playing a normal a major a major. So let's go through all the four chords again, D minor, D minor, um, para, G minor, um, and D minor, maybe jam a bit, G minor, just jam with basic melody, just play some song, you know, I don't know what I'm playing, but you get the idea of anything, okay, so just get used to some melody stuff in the right hand and now coming to the actual exercise. So the left hand, get it nice and well oiled. The right hand is quite easy. I'll just show you for the first three chords, which is always going to be like that. And then each cycle, I'm going to walk you through what stuff happens over that last chord, which is an a seven flat nine. So it's pretty much this phrasing in the right hand. So it's triad three hits. That's why we say thresio. Then you're adding that pinky at the octave. So okay, and the same story for the next chord G minor and you need to find the closest inversion. What is that D G B flat? So D minor root position, G minor inversion. And then you can even add a minor sixth or ignore that G minor D minor. Same story. And that goes on for the whole exercise, only difference being in the next cycles. There are four cycles towards the drill, right? So first cycle you do thresio, pa pa pa pa, thresio, pa da da da, thresio again, pa da da da. And then the a seventh chord, I'll teach you that. And then you do the same operation with the next inversion of D minor in cycle two, which will be and then G minor closest inversion. And then of course, something happens over the a seven flat nine, and then you go all the way up. So D minor started here, then F A D and lastly, third cycle, you're going to do A D F. So and then slightly tricky, just deal with that weird finger passage. So G minor back to D minor. And then and then you do something on the A A seventh there, which I'll teach you shortly. Fine. And the very last cycle, what happens is the D minor chord, you're going to express it in every inversion. So you do, that's all the three inversions you just did in cycle one, cycle two, cycle three, cycle four, you're doing pa pa pa pa. And I'm bringing in that arpeggio as well in the midway between the three inversions. That's basically the deal. So I'll just show you the right hand minus that a seven thing. For now, I'll just use it as a placeholder and just hold it like that for you. But we will deal with the A seventh very shortly. And the left hand again, what was it doing? Oompa. So whole thing G minor D minor and then the A seventh, then you go to higher inversion. Same left hand and then the A seventh, I'm going to teach you. Then you go higher third cycle and that A I'm going to teach you. And then the last cycle, that's the inversion drop, you could call it that arpeggio drop, arpeggio drop. Right. So just to cap it off, let's look at the dominant A seven flat nine at the end. Different stuff happens to each. The underlying strategy, which I have at that A seventh chord is I want you to work on your triplets. So I'm just trying to introduce all the possible kinds of triplets we have. So the first one happens in cycle one, where you go from two and three and four and one and while while you do this one and two and three and four and in the right hand you go da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. So you're trying to give this is the pulse. This the left hand goes kind of goes eighth notes while the right hand is going triplets dividing the pulse by three pump pump pump pump pump pump pump pump pump pump. So the tricky part is how are you going to get the triplets there and the eighth notes there? That's the goal. That's why I've called it a challenge. It's something to just push yourself, hopefully out of your comfort zone. So you go right and then it comes neatly to the higher inversion of D minor right. So putting that together in cycle one triplet it lands here. So coming to the second cycles A7 flat 9 embellishment, basically I'm going in a accented way this time by going I'll play you and then teach you. So A7 flat 9 has all these notes and I'm avoiding the A which is the obvious root which any way you're playing here. So I'm developing it in 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4. So 3 plus 3 plus 3 plus 3 equals to 12, 12 plus 4 equals to 16, that's 16, 16th notes for you. So which is adding up to the same cycle. So the earlier case I divided the beat by 3 in my run at the end. In this case I'm dividing it by 4 but phrasing it in 3, 3, 3, 3, 4 right. So okay so the whole thing with cycle 2 sorry cycle 2 started on the upper inversion of D minor. First cycle, second cycle then run. So I'm doing higher inversion of D minor and then it neatly takes us to the higher inversion of D minor. So first round A7 was triplet, second round was starting here the accented phrase. It will be if you use a bit of conical, you can count it out easily by saying, then it goes neatly to the top. So coming to the third cycle now let me demonstrate it and then explain it uses 16th note triplets at the end of the bar, 16 no triplets basically means you're dividing the pulse by six so that'll be daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga daga triplet triplet triplet triplet right takite takite takite takite takite takite so it's a bit faster so I've designed it again in a nice two octave arpeggio run for you to practice let me play it once and show you remember D minor now starts off up top here earlier it was here cycle one cycle two and now cycle three G minor as usual, and D minor, run, okay, so that run was, and then it ends. Let me try and help you with the fingering, or that, you can just work on that. We cross after, maybe do it in pieces, and then slightly on the quicker side I would imagine. So that's about the third one, if you can play it, otherwise maybe do another embellishment which you learned earlier. And now coming to the fourth one which I really like, remember the embellishments are all in thinking of threes. First we did 8th note triplets, then we did groupings of threes, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, because we had to compensate, you know, for that last 16, for it to add to 16. Now we just learned the 16th note triplets, which is still 3. The last one would be using dotted notes, okay. Let me just show you. The last one, remember the, before the filler, you're doing descending chords. Now, what's happening there? I'm also voicing the diminished chord, or the A7b9, in these ways, one and a, two and a, three and a, four and a, two and a, three and a, four and a, two and a, three and a, four and a, three and a, four and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, four and a, three and a, four and a, three and a, four and a, three and a, three and a, four and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, four and a, three and a, four and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, four and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three and a, three the accents of those notes, what we call as a dotted feel, or using dotted notes in music, so the challenge of that is, there are no arpeggios, it's these intervals. Try that out. And then okay, let's try and get the whole equation a bit slower. I'll call it out as best as I can. Cycle 1, triple it, triple it, higher inversion, accents 3, the 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, then 3rd cycle, triple it, descending inversions, end with 3rds dotted. Okay, so that's right. If you didn't follow much of what I said, and if you read music, the notation is waiting for you on our Patreon, head over, check it out. You may be a notation kind of person, so read it and nail it. The speed or the tempo I'm completely leaving to you. So the reason why I called it the Thresi or challenge and used that word challenge is so that you guys can do it and send it to me. So it'll be great if I can hear your submissions, you could easily send it to me on my Instagram channel by just sort of you release it and then tag me, I will get a notification and then I can definitely share it with on my on my portals. So all the best with the challenge. I hope it will help you with all these many things. I've tried to put in a club, chord inversions, a bass pattern, triplets, arpeggios, inversions, all of this in one and all the best with it. And if you're energized enough after having done it, well, the icing on the cake would be to transpose it to a couple more scales and see how that can work as well. Again, guys, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. If you haven't already, don't forget to hit that subscribe and more importantly, the bell button for notifications whenever we do new lessons. And consider following us on Patreon. There's a lot of stuff there and a lot more stuff which is going to be coming out there, including lessons, more videos, which we'll be putting out there and so on and so forth. Cheers and thanks for watching.