 Hi guys, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. Let's learn Rudolf the Red Nose reindeer, the popular Christmas classic which has been there for I don't know how long. So I've kind of arranged it in a blues version and we'll do it in two styles. We'll do it in an easy way with just pretty much a very blues rhythm pattern and then we'll try and expand on it further and depending on your skill level, I'm sure you can figure out a version which will really work for you over the holiday season. So let's first look at the left hand in isolation and then look at it with respect to the right hand melody which I'm sure you're quite familiar with. We'll take the scale F major. I just think it's really cool for most songs. It has one flat, B flat. So the pattern in your left hand you would want to play would be a blues pattern, a very blues left hand rhythm which is one five, one six, one five, one six. So if the chord is written as let's say F major, now it's important to know what the main chords of the scale are. So in the F major scale, the one chord is your F major, the four chord is your B flat major and the five chord is your C major. So you go one at the one chord and at every chord the blues pattern in the left hand will be one five, one six. So that's a very catchy left hand blues phrasing and also very identifiable for the genre which is blues. So you go three, four, one, two and you count. So one bar will be one five, F C, F D, F C, F D again. So one five, one six, one five, one six, one five, one six. So I do a little variation later which is I just add that third in the middle. We'll not do that at the moment. We'll learn that later. So one bar. So you can actually start by singing Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer with this pattern. Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer and now the chord changes. So where does it change to the five which is C. So you do the same pattern, C G, C A, one five, one six. So and then you stay there and then come back. The chords are actually printed out for you in the melody version. So do check out the chord. So anytime you see an F major, you play for that whole bar as quarter notes and nice and staccato, very bouncy. You don't want to go right, nice and bouncy. And then C. Now sometimes you may want to play C lower because the melody is invading in and around that middle C region. So you could even play lower, you could even go to the four if ever the four comes which is B flat major. So 12 bar blues is what we would normally use this with but Rudolph is not really a 12 bar song but it's still very bluesy, very rock and roll-ish and the entire version we learn will be in a swing style. I'm sure the original is also in swing but then some people play it straight for some reason. I think it's meant to be a swing song. So it goes that's how you phrase your eighth notes. One and two and three and four and Rudolph, the red nose, red India, not Rudolph, the red nose, red India, it's not straight. So you may want to get used to playing swing especially this pattern is very swing blues oriented. So let's do the melody in the right hand along with this left hand pattern. The melody is quite simple. I'm taking it on the key of F major and then as the lesson progresses forward, we will add a lot more interesting phrases in the left hand and some right hand, bring in some harmony. I'm also going to teach you a very, very cool augmented lick which you're going to find somewhere in this song. We're also going to look at some harmony without really chords but with some chromatic thirds, things like that which is very bluesy, very country and so on and so forth. The main goal of developing this version is to not only help you play an awesome song for the holidays but also grow as a pianist and hope use this technique to hopefully play other songs. Before we get started, it'll be great if you could hit that bell icon for regular notifications, subscribe to our channel if you haven't already, hit the like button, leave us a comment for stuff you'd like to learn in the future and most importantly, all of our lessons are supported or augmented with a lot of my notes and notation, backing tracks, MIDI tracks and so on and so forth. In fact, this very lesson will come with three PDF files. You'll get an easy version for beginners. You'll get the version which I have been jamming along with which you heard in the beginning of course and you'll also just have the melody with chords. So if you'd like to just play around the chords, you have three versions waiting for you. The middies of all these are also available and all the notes as well. Not only for this lesson, for pretty much all the lessons, it's pretty much $5 a month and you're going to get all this stuff and it'll keep reaching you as we keep doing new lessons on our YouTube channel. Let's get started. So let's quickly do the right hand melody. First, first line. Okay. Starting with my index finger. C D C A F D C. Some notes can be a bit choppy, not rude of the red nose reindeer. Rather boring. You could do it. Rude of the red nose reindeer. I leave it to you which notes you'd like to chop up, play choppy, but you get the idea, I hope. And a good way to phrase the melody is to actually snap here with your left hand before it starts doing stuff. Of course, on the two and the four of the bar, that's a great way to feel the blues or swing music in general. Three, four, let's try that line with me three slowly to again start. Let's move forward. Same position. So and then now here you may want to bring back the index finger which was used for C to B flat. Okay, so the whole two lines start with C on the index and then for the third line and fourth line do B flat on the index. That could be a good roadmap. So snap. You don't want to put your thumb there. So put the index there. And then then it pretty much repeats. Same story. And then now it changes. So then na na na na na na na na. So you bring your thumb up there. And I'm adding a nice secondary harmony there. So you can learn that chromatic from A B flat, B C. It's a nice passing set of notes because it goes A and immediately lands on the F major chord. And then it easily takes us to the next part, which is that then one foggy Christmas Eve. So it goes, let's move forward or let's just do this with the chords in the left hand. What did I tell you about the chords? Just blues. So you start with F with the melody. Again. Let's do that again slowly. Stay on C. And now I'm doing that walking base, which is quite jazzy. So you go. So a lot of passing notes. I want to go, I want to approach C to F. So na na na na na it kind of takes you really nicely to F. And when I come back to F, you play the blues. So this na na na na na na is just to break that monotony. Let's do that again. The whole first four lines. Still F C. Stay on C with the blues pattern and now climb climbing up again. Then you repeat pretty much the whole thing. Don't forget to swing. And now climb again. The same climbing. But now climb more. So pumps. I'm only showing you the bass there. Then it goes to the B flat. So it's like a nice chromatic climb of quite a few notes. It's about eight notes. We'll come to that later. So remember what I showed you with the right hand, the right hand, the left hand will harmonize together while the pinky can actually hold the soprano, which is the lyric sung by the main voice. So one more time. And then okay, the next part is I've kept it a bit simple. I've taken away the blues element. We'll bring back the blues because the chords are already quite sophisticated. So let's just do the melody there in the verse or the B section of the song. One more time. Okay. And the bass for that. So that's like a B flat major. B bass actually it'll create a very diminished seventh flavor there. It's a nice dominant passing chord more on all that later or you can check out some of the theory lessons where we've talked about this theory. Okay, very nice pass there. B flat, B diminished. That's like an F over C bass. It's actually implying a D seventh. So then one foggy Christmas Eve and then come down to G. So that's G, C, F, Pum, Pum. And now I'm doing a little lick there. G, which is the two five one, very common jazz cadence. The E, C, F, Pum, Pum. Because the melody there is rather simple. It just stays there. So you can do a nice bass thing there. Okay, the whole two lines of the B section down G, C, F, Pum, Pum, moving forward. Okay, what are we doing there? It's like a little G dominant voicing, G with an F, but staccato melody. So G seventh, C seventh, come back. Okay. And then you end with a low C. So lower C. And then it repeat. Let's just do the B section once more. C C, bass lick, Pum, Pum, Pum, dominant G, dominant C, back to G, A, B, climbing. That's the whole B section. Okay, shall I do it once more now without talking? So you can just figure it out. Okay. And then back to blues, same melody. And then ending. The same bass climb could probably slow it down at the end and end with a nice chord with F for the top. So right guys, so that I ensure a lot of you who've started off on the piano, I'm sure you can get somewhere with it or possibly the exact same way in which I've presented it in this lesson so far. Get yourselves a copy of the notation. The midi file may also help. You can import it into an app like Synthesia or anything which is free. It allows you to put it in and you can see the notes in whichever format you desire, whether it's notation or those block like things which comes down in all sorts of colors. So all these things are available. Now, if you're a intermediate student or a bit more advanced, hang on. Or if you're a beginner, again, please hang on. It'll be great. You may be inspired by some of this stuff. So let's now move forward with a more exciting way of playing almost the same thing, but just a few variations here and there. Okay, moving on. So in the A section, I'm not doing too much of change. I'm just adding this little thing whenever I can. So same thing. Now, since my right hand is chilling out there, I can add a little bit of some interest in the left hand. So instead of doing, I could do so that's one five, one six, three, the three as a passing eighth note to get used to that slightly tricky initially. And then I'm doing the same story. But then when I come back down, instead of doing, I'm actually playing C major in a more, I would say a little bit more of a salsa way, but in a swinging way. So how am I voicing the C chord? It's rather interesting. It's a C seven. So I do C with my base. Then I'm doing a B flat and E. So I'm ignoring the G and I'm playing it in a spread way. I'm playing the E higher. If you if your hand, if you feel is stretching out too much, or if you have small hands, you can probably ignore this way of playing for now and go back to the default way. But if you can, it goes, this is the rhythm. Keep your wrist nice and smooth or relaxed and circle it if you can. You could also jump your wrist since these are staccato. Okay, let's do it till there. And then the embellishment on C, that one. And now the spread groove. I've reserved that groove for the the same climbing base. And now you do the additional third there for the blues grooving. That's the whole thing. So let's do that whole thing again. And this holds good for the next line as well. Embellish the salsa thing. Now the first time it ends with it. And the second time, the same thing which I taught you earlier in the bass and in the treble, moving forward to a few more advanced things which I'm doing at the next section. First of all, I'm harmonizing my right hand such that the top note of the chord becomes the melody. So I don't compromise that. But I'm adding some chords. So okay, so even without the bass, it sounds quite rich, doesn't it? Because that's then one is B flat. That's your diminished seventh. And now come to F major. Christmas Eve. That's a implying a D seventh. So with the bass, the same bass I told you earlier, B flat, B, C, the lower D. You don't, it sounds a bit, doesn't sound full if you play it up there. So B flat, B, C, D, D. Quite low to sing but you get the idea. So there I'm doing something quite interesting. I'm going first time doing the harmony. Staying on the E but you could also go play this a little earlier. It gets a nice bluesy or a jazzy vibe. Let's do that again. The same bass lick we learned one more time. If you do, if you do this as quarter notes, you won't have time to play that. You won't have time to play the lick. So you just have to anticipate the tune. Okay, so it's just that internal voice. You could add that embellishment one more time, the whole thing. Okay, now pretty much the same thing. Okay, now I'm adding some off beats there. And just to get that swing vibe. And then that's the same thing, G, A. And now instead of doing, you could do a little lick there. I'm trying to stress on the C augmented chord which is used, well, at least by the beatles from what I know in Oh Darling, it just really adds that interest, doesn't it? So whenever you're going from a dominant to a tonic, in this case, C to F, you can always sneak in that chord. Okay, let's just do that again. And now lick. Okay, you could even end on the augmented fifth which is G sharp. So moving forward to the next part, well, it's pretty much the same. And now you could add some thirds harmony. Thirds meaning with the bottom thirds kind of makes sense for the lyrics there because then all the other reindeer, so it's like plural. So more people are talking, I guess. And then and then the salsa thing and then now I'm ending it with again something bluesy. So you first do the chromatic jump and there but then to add some spice at the end. Let's do that again. A B flat B C or the bass is going F G G sharp A B takes a little bit of time to practice and when you end F C F very low F that's like the lowest F on the piano. Let's just do the whole last chorus section climbing could even slow it down. Right. So those are some embellishments and regarding the melody, you can do anything you really want. If you'd like to spice it up, you can do I do that a lot. I I trill. It's like a guitar is doing a hammer on, you know, instead of going to D directly. You can even do can do a turn like that. You can even kind of staccato anything you want. It adds more to that swing. You can just squeeze in that that may be overdoing it, but you get the idea. Hope you folks enjoyed the lesson. This is Rudolph the red nose reindeer in quite a few versions, quite a few embellishments, melodically, harmonically, rhythmically. And hopefully you have fun playing this over the Christmas season. If you're watching this before Christmas or just around Christmas time, work hard on it and send me a recording as well. It'll be great to hear it. We are on Instagram. You can find me at Jason Zach. So you could just do a version and send it across and tag me or something like that. And don't forget to get yourselves a copy of all the notation of not only this Christmas song, we are doing a series of Christmas songs. We are doing a series of Christmas songs. There will be at least six to eight songs in neat folders with MIDI files, PDFs, different versions, so on and so forth. Lot of things to learn all the best and I will catch you in the next one.