 Hi everyone, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson we are going to learn how to create musical phrases. You could call them as melodies, riffs, baselines and so on and so forth. Basically melodic phrases using a simple concept in music called as accents. And using accents or you can even call it as grouping of notes within a time signature, within a time feel that I'm going to come to during the lesson. The grouping is what's going to create that interest, that sentence like approach when we write sentences or write poems or anything grammatical in that sense. So let's talk about some very basic accents first over a 4-4 time signature and how you can make a 4 by 4 time signature a lot more interesting. I have a lot of finger drills for you. So do get a piano out. You can also get a book out. You can write it along with me. The notes will be available on our Patreon page, my handwritten notes as well as staff notation for this particular lesson. So do consider getting yourself a copy. And after we've got acquainted with accents over a few finger drills, we are then going to look into a composition which I've done over a rather weird time signature, 31 by 8. But it didn't sound too weird, at least for me. Didn't sound too weird because I'm thinking of it more like a sentence construction using small groups and using the right punctuation if you look at it in grammar. And how we'll arrive at that 31 by 8 piece of music would be in increments. So do stay tuned till the very end. We are going to end up enabling you to compose music not just on a 4-4 with accents and phrasing but pretty much on any time signature with any grouping of your choice. And there are a lot of tricks which I'm going to share with you which have helped me to jam with musicians, record in studios and be a lot more comfortable with time and also creative with melodies because the best way to break out of a sort of writer's block on the piano would be to break the symmetry or break the common patterns that we might face. So to break the patterns this topic would be pretty useful. Also before we get started it'll be great if you could consider hitting that subscribe button and turning on the bell icon for regular notifications. Let's get cracking. So if we take a 4 by 4 time signature, 1, 2, 3, 4 and start pushing notes into it. 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. What we find is there are very few compartments or very few places for that particular music to exist on. It can exist in beat 1, beat 2, beat 3 or beat 4. So a common thing that we do and I'm sure you would have already done it sometimes even without knowing it is to divide that particular time system 4 by 4 into subdivisions. So if you take let's say quavers, quavers are eighth notes where we divide by 2, you will have two slots to fill in every beat of the 4 by 4. So it'll now end up being 1, 2, 3, 4 and we can kind of count it in a couple of ways. You can say 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and which we do a lot that and is representing of the sub beat. And then we can even consider some Indian ways of counting. For example, Thak, Thak, Thak, Thak, Thak creates this kind of two syllable word which makes the counting of this pretty easy. So I'm going to now give you a small tune. Let's say this one. So I'm on the key of D major. Let's first revise D major as you probably know on our channel, we don't do a lot of C major because I don't like it too much. So D major has two sharps namely F sharp and C sharp. And if you divide 4 by 4 by 2 and play quavers, you can end up with things like a grouping of 4 with these four notes. D, E, F sharp. Now this sounds pretty good. But I don't think it'll sound good unless you start adding some chords to it or some harmonic perspective. Now it sounds good but does it sound catchy? Does it sound rememberable? I guess not so much. It's more like an ambience for maybe a vocal line or it's part of a background score. I want to make this stand out. So the accent or the phrasing or the grouping of these notes are 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. So I would consider that as even. How do we break that? Well, you could reduce it. You can say, okay, I want 2s. So maybe but now again it's even but it's a less set. The group has become smaller. You can get some good results but still it happens to be very symmetric, very evenly grouped. Now to break that you can just use some simple maths. You have the number 8. 8 is now the number of subdivisions or number of sub beats you're going to have in this bar of 4x4. So what can I do with 8? I've done 4 plus 4 equals 8 which is fairly normal and repetitive and monotonous. 2 plus 2 plus 2 plus 2 is also pretty repetitive and monotonous. So what can I do instead? Maybe I can try 3 plus what equals 8. Well, get a calculator out if you want. The answer is 3 plus 5 equals 8. Now how can I phrase this on the piano or any musical instrument really? Here's a simple option. You can take the first three notes of the D major scale okay and go. This would be your three set and then your five set would be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So it's going to feel 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Let's see how that sounds. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. This automatically starts sounding a bit irregular. It may sound a bit wrong at first but as you played a bit faster, your mind rewires itself to go with a pulse. Even though the grouping of the melody is irregular or uneven, 3 plus 5, 2 odd numbers, it still adds up to 8. So you can still give yourself a pulse and I'm going to show you that. I'm going to play crotchets or quarter notes in the left hand and you can do two things. You can play the pulse. I quite like mixing between staccato and legato there. You can also change some bass notes within the D major scale as I'm going to walk you through throughout the video. You can also hit on the accent hit points which are and I like that whole legato staccato combo. So I'm doing staccato, legato. So I feel you, I think you can feel the accent in both ways. It's just a different feeling. One feeling gets you to kind of move and the other is a bit more agitated, gets you a bit more, you know, you're not, you're a bit uncertain about that particular phrasing. So this one because my left hand is only on the accent hit points which are at irregular intervals. Versus the pulse. But I can guarantee you and you can also see I am not changing my right hand in any way. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3. You can also play it maybe higher to give yourself more room if you want to play some chords. Now some of you might be wondering isn't an accent that greater than sign which comes in sheet music pretty often? Yes. Now that specific accent is to tell the player that you should play that note louder. Now there are, in my opinion, there are three ways to produce this accent and thus I would say an accent would be a change of some musical property with respect to all the adjacent notes around it. So what are, instead of saying some musical property, there are basically three controllable musical properties that you can mess around with on the, on any instrument. One is pitch, the other is volume and the other would be the duration of the actual note. So by adjusting the duration, you can create a change, you can create an element of importance of that note with respect to its adjacent neighbors. You can also adjust the volume of a note which will be different with respect to its neighbors. You can also adjust the pitch. So what we have showcased here in this illustration looks like pitch, isn't it? Because I am not changing the volume of anything. You still kind of feel 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 because the pitch of the ones 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are pretty obviously telling us that it's a group of 3 plus 5. However, I can even reinforce this with some volume. There we go. Tuck it. So you can add accents on those ones and you've created a pitch grouping. You're now adding volume to the party. And later on in the lesson, I'm going to also talk about duration of notes, which you can adjust. Okay, so this is the first thing you need to practice. D, E, F sharp, D, E, F sharp, G, A and then try it with some accents. There we go. You can do the pulse in the left hand or you can do minims in the left hand. So let's journey forward now. We've created an accent using 3 plus 5. Let's look in another way to get a 3 plus 5 going, but maybe from a reverse, from the top pitch to the bottom. Let's look at this drill, for instance, where your pinky can play A. So 5, 4, 3 in terms of scale degrees. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. This is also a very good finger exercise to strengthen your fingers because you can whack those accented hit points a bit more louder, thus strengthening the finger. So two ways to execute 3 plus 5 in this lesson. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, from the bottom versus from the top. There we go. Now coming to 5 plus 3, let's just flip it around and do 5 plus 3. So for 5 plus 3, I have some very simple strategies. You can do you can do from the bottom 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3. So play the 5 note grouping and then the 3 note grouping, something like this. And if you're doing the pulse in the left hand, it might be very much more important to focus on the volume of the accented note in the right hand. While when you're playing the accent, it hits in the left hand. Volume doesn't matter in the right hand because the volume of the left hand is anyways making the whole ecosystem louder. So let's try 5 plus 3 now in the right hand in the reverse direction. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now you can do what I like to do could be you don't want to go all the way down. Well, you could, but then you need to do volume because the pitch is dropping fully down. So you can be a bit creative now. You can keep that group of 5 and fool around with the groups of 3 or be a bit more creative. Ultimately, it's 3 notes diatonically going down in the D major scale. So we've done 3 plus 5, we've done 5 plus 3. Another way to look at it, a group of 8 could be in more tinier fractions. What about 2 meets 3 meets 3? Is that equal to 8? I think so. To get the 2, I'm going to do Sapa, which is D, A, the root and the fifth. To get the 3, I'm going to go with the strategy discussed earlier which is Sarega. So now how is it going to be? 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. Now some of my students over the years of teaching have tended to play this plate like this. I'll just show you. Stuff like this, you know, 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. Now this is absolutely wrong because there's a gap between each set, isn't it? 1, 2, it's almost like 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. That 4, you're not saying 4, it's sort of like the same problem we find when we count the Mission Impossible theme, isn't it? A lot of people might go 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, but that's not right. You have to go with the pulse. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It ends up being a 5 by something, 5 by 8 or 5 by 4 kind of song. Now coming back to D major, so to get 2 plus 3 plus 3 correctly, don't do. There's no timing there, rather 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2. You don't even need volume now. It's very obvious. There we go. The music starts sounding a lot more rememberable, a lot more catchy I guess. So that's 2 plus 3 plus 3. Let's do that again. So 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. Then what else? We can flip those numbers around. 3 plus 2 plus 3. Let's see how that goes. Now 3, 2, 3. Put that together. So over the 2 beats, I'm playing 1, 5, but that's pretty much an interval skip or interval jump. So you can do even a 6, you can do a 7, you can do an octave, maybe a 4. So something like that's 2, 3, 3. If you do this over 3, 2, 3, there we go. The rhythm is already creative, but now the melody is starting to get a bit more creative. So it automatically becomes something people will latch on to. And then last but not least, let's consider the 3 plus 3 plus 2. I call them as thresio arpeggios because it has that thresio like groove. So 3, 3, 2. See how that goes. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1. Okay. So you can even do reverse. Instead of doing sarega, you can do gare, sa, but I leave that to you. You can try that out. Now what I'm excited to share with you is a melody that I ended up coming up with in a class actually. And we kind of, it organically happened. I don't know how it ended up happening to end up becoming a 31 by 8. It was tough to count, but easy to play at least for me. And students also ended up playing it. And after all that, we realize, oh, it's a 31 by something. So what I'm trying to share in this discussion is it's not very difficult to compose over odd time signatures. You don't even need to call them odd, except that it could end up being an odd number. Some people could even call 18 beats per bar as odd, but then 18 is not an odd number. So maybe we should change the name of an odd time signature. So to arrive at a rather long odd time signature, well, it doesn't have to necessarily be an odd number. An odd time signature is just something we are not used to very often, like a 4 by 4, 3 by 4 are very common. Now to arrive at this 31 by 8, let's do it slowly on the piano. I'm going to take you first through the 3s and the 5 segments. Let's slowly weave in that melody, then go into a 7 by 8, then 11 by 8, then a 15 by 8, and finally a 31 by 8. So do stay tuned. Now, this is the first thing I want you to try over 3 and 5. I'll play it and then teach. So, here's how I'm playing it. Check out the fingers. Index start is a good start. So I can cross my, actually I can start with my thumb. Cross the middle finger. But you see the problem there. Then I have to bring back the thumb. So I started rather I started with the index finger. Now the thing with this melody is it's about how you perceive it. So it's going to be the same melody, but check this out. First we'll make it grouped as 3 and 5, then we'll make it grouped as 5 and 3, 5 meets 3. Let's see how that can happen. This is 4 plus 4, right? 1, 2, 3, 4. There's no irregular grouping. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. But we can perhaps change the story of this by playing it as now you can do that alone with just volume in your right hand. It may sound a bit too forceful for the listener. So maybe we can introduce a chord change at that accent hit point. I'm doing a 1, a 5, a 6 for pop chords. Now it feels like 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I can change the narrative of this to make it now a 5 meets 3. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1. Both have different feelings. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. You may find 5 meets 3 different or trickier than 3 meets 5 even though you're playing the same thing in the right hand. That's the beauty of it. That's 3 plus 5. Now we've done 4 by 4. Let's try and do a few more time signatures. Let's consider 7. This is the melody I have for you for 7. It's pretty much the same melody. I just avoided one note I think. Now the beauty of 7 is you can phrase it in a couple of commonly known ways. 1 being 4 meets 3. 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 what's the volume difference? 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 I don't know which one I like more. 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 or 2 3 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 I didn't even need my left hand. I'm just getting it with some volume increments there. Remember that the 3 properties of music which I'm adjusting volume and pitch right now. Later we'll do some duration as well. So 4 meets 3. 7 by 8 is pretty odd and rather rare but let's go rarer to 11 by 8 and let's see what happens with 11 by 8 now. So let's experiment with the melody after I'm done playing it. So what's the melody? That's 1 5 4 3 in scale degrees 2 3 7 1 okay and then it repeats pretty much. So D A G F sharp E D C sharp D now let me break the counting down for you. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 I have a minimum there so it makes that last beat pretty easy to kind of count because it's just a long note which lasts for 2 crotchets or 2 beats. What I'm imagining also to make it easy for me is a big drum which kind of waxes 2 hits at the end of the 7. So it's similar to the old composition which was this sounds a bit forceful to make it a bit more relaxing which is weird because it's now 11 instead of 7. We've added that minimum value. This is 7. Now this will be 11. 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 fact fun story when we were notating it we actually thought that this was 4 by 4 and I was swearing blind that it was 4 by 4 because it felt so normal but it's not apparently see 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 right. So divide it into chunks maybe you can choose a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 3 4. So essentially the 7 part of the 11 7 plus 4 is 11 right that 7 part can either be 4 meets 3 or else 3 meets 4. Ta for the 4 okay 11 shall we do one more no actually 2 more we have to do 15 and finally make it 31 let's see how that goes so 15 let me play it and then show you I'm just adding 4 more beats so it'll be 7 you can group it as 3 4 or 4 3 then another 4 where you hold a minimum down and then 4 where you don't hold the minimum you play 4 quavers let's see how that goes 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 so it's essentially a 7 meets 8 or you can say 7 meets 4 meets 4 which adds up to 15 and I like this that I'm doing a g chord a chord let's play that again for those of you who identify swaras so that adds up to 15 and the accents are helping us enjoy it more otherwise it's just two textbook or two academic just to make it 15 you just add some notes no we are grouping it we are choosing the grouping and also concurrently making the groupings easier for us to count so if we the composers are finding it easy to count the odds that our audience will also find it easy and enjoyable will be very very high so last variation of the melody which ends up being the finally composed melody which you heard in the intro video to make it 31 by 8 I'll just show you what's going on I'm ending the first phrase as the old 15 and the second time that is so when it ends with that five you can't say it's 15 plus 15 15 plus 15 is 30 then you might as well just call it 15 now it ends up becoming 15 plus 16 if you take the second phrase it's 16 beats now that's kind of in a very weird way 4 by 4 because if you take it if I play this with a pulse you could even play that 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 5 because it's all adding up to 16 beats at least the second phrase 7 plus 4 equals 11 equal plus 5 equals 16 11 plus 5 but to make it 31 by 8 I take that old 15 phrase which I played for you just recently that's 15 and combine it with the 16 which is adding that one more extra note creating a five beat cycle at the end let's see so guys so in a nutshell in this video we first looked at how accents work for melodic phrase building we've looked at different ways of accenting so to speak within an eight beat cycle for various groupings we did 3 plus 5 5 plus 3 then we made it 3 plus 2 plus 3 2 plus 3 plus 3 then we did 3 plus 3 plus 2 and then we looked at a simple melody which ended up starting even more simple which was we made it 4 4 but then grouped it 3 plus 5 5 plus 3 then we made it 7 by 8 which may be new for some of you and we added that pause to make it more relaxing but 11 by 8 okay then we made it 15 by 8 and finally 31 by 8 you might want to consider getting a copy of the notation all of the patterns even I'm reading it right now as I'm teaching you it'll be available on our patreon page as a neat pdf download you can also get yourselves a copy of the midi files these days midi is midi are quite useful you can import them into various programs which show you the notes light up in any which way you want with colors and stuff like that so have fun with the lesson thanks for watching the video do stay tuned to our channel for lots more we release weekly tutorials and riffs and there'll be lot more coming up on the channel lot more topics if you'd like to learn music with us in the near future in person or online you can sign up for live lessons all you have to do is head over to nathanielschool.com fill up a form and our course advisor will reach you very very shortly cheers catch you in the next one