 Hi everyone, this is Jason from Nathaniel School of Music. We are going to learn the piano intro of the song God Bless the Broken Road from the amazing country band Rascal Flats and you're going to learn two versions of it. I'm sure you've all heard this song or if you haven't, do check it out. It's one of my favorite songs and it's sort of popularized and known because of that intro. Which you heard in the beginning of this lesson as well. So we're going to divide this lesson into two parts. First off, I'm going to teach you what I'm calling as the playable version or the easy version, depending on what you want to call it. In this version, you're all going to be able to play it. So get your pianos out, get a book, get a pen and paper. It's on the C major scale, not my favorite scale or hunting ground, but you may like it. So it's going to be very easy to learn. I'm going to break down every possible thing. And after we do the easy version, I'm then going to focus on the actual version in the original as per the original. And I've spent a lot of time going through it and watching a few other videos has sort of prompted me to kind of do my own take on it, where I've just heard it and I thought that's the way it is. That's how you can play it. And I've also figured out a way to get the correct fingering going and play it like a country musician in general on the piano. Before we get cracking for your information, the notes, the notation are all available on our Patreon. Do consider getting yourself a copy and subscribe. It'll be awesome. Hit that bell, smash the like button, leave us a comment what you thought about this lesson. And we'd also be happy to finish this entire song. In this video will just be the tutorial. So drop us a comment. If you'd like to learn the whole song, I'll be happy to consider it in a future installment of our video shoots. Let's get cracking. So it's on C major, EZ, PZ. No surprises there. All the white notes on the piano. Slightly slippery if you ask me, but it's C major. Anyway, so let's go through the EZ version. And first off, I'd like to focus on the left hand. And the left hand just, this is what you can do. Remember, this is the EZ version. It's not the original version, but it's more than sufficient if you want it to sound like God bless the broken road. It'll sound really good, even this easy version. Play along with me. So the left hand goes. Bass clap. So first line. That's, E, F, G, A, F, G, C again. Try to figure out which fingers work pinkie, ring. Giving some room to bring back the pinky there. Okay, each one could be played as minims to our luck. The second line is exactly the same as the first line, in the bass at least, so don't forget to play the lower C at the end. And if your piano doesn't have that many keys, you can always transpose it minus 12. That will allow you to play the lower octaves. Next time, only bass try to play along 4. And now the melody is exactly what I've been singing throughout this. Go to middle C on the piano and the same bass and I'll just show you with the bass to give you the perspective. Let's narrow that first line, shall we? First thing you'll realize is there are a lot of off beats in the melody, right? It goes Very few of the phrases seem to go with my snapping, isn't it? So if I count one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and there's a lot of this rhythmic anticipation as we call it. So very few of the starting notes of the phrase start at the down beat or at the one or the one, two, three, four beats of the bar. In fact it's before. So the whole thing again, one and two and whenever I say and it means off the beat. So that poses a challenge for the left hand because the left hand is on, so the independence needs to be worked out. Now you may be forced to do, don't do that. You need to follow a steady minimum movement in the base or half notes. Try to get just that. So just think the starting of each phrase in the right hand will always come before the left hand. Except the first beat. Okay, that's your base whenever I said pass. Let's do that again. So first time we give a gap there. One and two and three and four and a lot of these ends and one and two and three and four and one and let's do that whole line one now. One more time slightly slow to speed and moving forward so that melody goes see again a lot on off the beat. So you'll have to match the left hand accordingly. So okay and then we repeat that repeat that that's also sort of repeated and the ending is that's not the that's the first line. Second line goes on the beat finally. So first line, second line ending whole melody with the base. It's good to know that the ending base note is actually a long whole note like three, four, the whole thing goes to speed. So I think that sounds pretty much nice. If you ask me, right, it goes pretty much well with the song. I'm itching to kind of go on but this video is only about the intro. I'll be happy to do the rest of the song as well and it'll just take a lot more time. So we figured let this video just be for the intro. Hopefully that makes sense. Okay. So the easy version is done and dusted. If you're happy with that, great, but I would encourage you not to be so happy if you've played the piano for about a year or two where you want to get all the bells and whistles going and play this exactly like the record exactly like what you hear on Apple or Spotify music and stuff like that. So just a few things to tweak from the easy version to give you the final version. The base, little bit, little bit of arpeggiation there at the endings and the right hand will have some stacking notes. Instead of playing, we stack some notes and then we'll change to something more thicker, something what a country piano player would more commonly play. So let's dive into that. So line one in the original version would end up being let me play it and then explain. We already kind of know it so far. So I'm going to move a little faster. So what changed from the easy version to this version? We've just added a C to the first note and you hold that down. Even the sustain pedal would help, but then lift it properly. Okay. Okay. So until you whack the next C, keep the first C ringing. Now you could also do, I'm not hearing that in the song, but I think it makes sense. So first C is your additional note or what we call as double stop note. Now you can whack B and G together and then G becomes your double stop. Note that with it, it sounds a lot more grander and colorful. Anyway, C and G are the root and fifth or the sign power of the scale, so it will always sound meaty. It will always make it thicker and richer and won't clash with anything since it's the root and the fifth. That's your next double stop. E at the E earlier, you didn't do it with C now you're doing it with C. So again, clearly there's a lot of C's and G's being stacked on top of the melody. What was once? Now becomes, okay, that's your first line. You can consider this as four parts. Second part, third part, okay, we'll divide it in four parts. So this part one. Let's see how that goes again, part one. Now, a little faster and when we play it like the original, also move your head to the pulse. That's what I generally like and suggest people to do again. Playing along. What was that? That was some serious stuff going on, took me a while to figure that out, so he goes, so the melody is, but he stacks it with the chords which are there for that melody which support that melody, which is F, F. So the chords stack with the melody and that's exactly what happens. What was once will now be F major, F major, that's C major in this inversion and then he plays another C major in this inversion, E, G, C. So the whole thing again, let's get that first, could actually play just that and get away with it, but that's not all, there's more, so stay tuned. So intro, okay, so I hope that's sorted. So what he does is he breaks it up a little instead of just doing which is what you'd normally find in a slightly wrong, notated version of the song. It may be, it may be just blocked there. What I think he's playing is, right, that's an F major in spread voicing guys, so that's F, C, A. So get that, originally we would have done just that, but C, A in the right hand thumb and then back to the single note, so very gospel country, very choral, the lower voice, soprano, other that's the rhythm, so where does that come in and it goes beautifully over that G chord, it gives you that very nice dominant flavor, G with an F major over G, very dreamy. Okay, whole intro again in this original version, he doesn't end there, he doesn't go, doesn't just hold it there, he does, C, G, E, that allows the right hand to kind of go up and play the next line, which you're going to hear, okay, allow the right hand to go and not miss out that beat, the left hand goes C, G, E, okay guys, I know that was a lot, but that's what's in the song, so I can't really help it, let's slow that down even more, play along with me if you can, again, with the double stop C, last time and then let's do the last line, again, up to some tempo, now let's move onward to the next line very quickly, so you have to do it after the spread voicing of the bass, C, G, E, that's C major in first inversion, G major in second inversion, and then we go the same chord over an E bass, then you do a single G that allows your whole hand, I guess, to flip back and then take up this, so let's break that down, only the right, let's only do that, first three chords, first three hits, and then you do G, C, G, so G, C, G, C, so that's G, C, G, and then single C, single C is whacked, so with the bass, so that G, C, G chord goes with an F bass, because the bass is still E minor, 7th you could say, single G over that F, and then you bring in that whole chord, it's like an F at 9, so again let's do that slowly, again let's do that slowly, slightly tricky over the F, and then to our luck that's the same, earlier we did, now we do that same embellishment with the spread voicing of the bass, wait through the on beat, that's pretty much your intro, and there's a nice flourish leading into the verse, before I teach you that, let's revise the whole intro, stick with me, we have to finish this, come on, on the off, just don't get confused with the chords, just write them down or see the notation which is provided, you can download it also on the Patreon, so that you don't miss a thing, okay, I'll do it again slowly, and now when you end the intro you do, G E G C D, G E G C D, G E G C, it's like a distribution of the chord between the two hands, immediately goes to the verse, let me try and do the whole thing a bit slowly without too much of talking, and then let's conclude, something back to tempo, that was the intro of God bless the broken road, hope you found it useful and don't worry about playing the easy version as I call it, you can, it'll still sound like really good if you ask me, and maybe have a hybrid between the easy version and the absolute original version, we have had both in this video, so you don't have to do only easy or only original, you can do somewhere in between, see what suits you, if you are a singer as well then you don't have to learn it exactly not perfect because you're also needing to focus on your vocals and so on, but I'd encourage you if you like the song, try to push yourself to the limit as they say and try to get it as original sounding as possible, again this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel, hope you guys found the lesson useful, do consider giving our channel, subscribe, smash that like, leave us a comment with what you'd like to learn in the future and we are there on Patreon, check out our website for regular structured courses as well, cheers.