 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson for beginners on the piano, we are going to look at some interesting ways to coordinate your two hands to play something very musical, very groovy and it'll be nice if you can get your keyboards out and play along with me throughout the lesson. I'll be giving you everything in a slow to the regular speed so it will be quite helpful if you bring your keyboards out. You can get a paper and pen as well to make a few notes and yeah, if you're a beginner or someone who's been playing for maybe just about under a year or two or even beyond, you may find that the most common challenges faced by piano players is going to be to coordinate your two hands together. So your right hand wants to play a melody, your left hand wants to play just a chord or a note or two or some other pattern and it's just not happening together. So in this lesson, it's just going to be a very simple set of just three notes and your left hand is also going to do a nice set of notes. Before we get cracking, it would be awesome if you could subscribe to our channel, turn on the bell icon for notifications and if you liked the lesson after having watched it, it would be great if you could leave us a comment and tell us what you thought and give the video a like and share. Let's get cracking. So the first thing I want to talk about is how our hands can work together, how we can coordinate them together. So I have two very simple ratios. I call them as piano ratios. So you can practice them pretty much like a percussion player. The first one would be one is to four. One is to four meaning you're going to play one hit in the left hand and four hits in the right hand. One is to four. Left is to right. So the first collision will happen together. The left hand, the right hand will merge or meet together and the right hand in the case of one is to four will be faster than the left hand. Four times the left hand. The right hand is four times the left hand or the left hand is quarter as fast as the right hand. So they start together, follow a simple pulse and for my left hand, I'm just going to tap here on the chest. I think it gives you a nice bass sound like a kick and the right hand I'd like to tap on my leg or the thigh that gives me a nice snare ish or a treble sound. So I can do one is to four as follows. One, two, three, four. And I'd encourage you to hold that one in the left hand so that it on the actual piano, you're not going to slip your hand or lift your hand abruptly. So one, two, three, four. One, let's do that together. You can do it with me. One, two, three, four. Move your head. You can also move your body while doing the same. One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. So that's your one is to four. One and immediately on the piano it translates. Let's say you take two D's. D incidentally is here in between the twins if you didn't know that. It's a nice note. It's very easy to find just here. So you go D. That's a good start, I guess. Left hand is doing the one is to four, three, four, one, two. And there we have it. Your hands are coordinating together pretty much like a drummer or a percussion player. Three, back to the body. Four. If you don't want to do it on the body, you can even do it on a table. I just prefer the body because the body has different resonances at different points. So you get low frequencies somewhere. You get high frequencies somewhere else. One, two. You can speed it up also as you feel. Try to count. Try to always move your head. Three, four, one. Okay, so that's one is to four. Let's now look at the other ratio which I have for this lesson. Four is to one. So that would be one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. The left hand is doing four versus the right hand's one. One, two. Do it with me. Four. One, two, three, four. You could also tap a table. One, two, three. That's four is to one. Or you can take a note D on the piano and do your four is to one. I said D is quite a nice note to begin with. Two, three, four. One, two, three. Okay, so those are about our two ratios. One is to four. Four is to one. Another interesting thing or an important thing to remember as a newcomer are scale degrees. So the way I am proposing you learn your scale degrees is you build the scale and remember each degree or each note of the scale with a certain name. Now in India we usually assign the first degree to the word or to the syllable sa. So D would be your sa of the D major scale which I am eventually going to build. So sa is D E will be re the third note F sharp G the fourth note we call it D in Indian swaras. The fifth note we call it pa in Indian music then the sixth note B we say then the seventh note knee C sharp on the piano knee and then the octave you don't have to play it up and down at the moment. It's just good to know because I would like you to sing that. So so simple thing you can do with me put your thumb on D index on E middle on F sharp ring on G pinky on A. I hope you know the notes on your piano keyboard. If you are unaware of that don't worry. You can head over to our Nathaniel school channel Nathanielschool.com and you have members only content in and we have a specific plan or package which we've compiled called the everything for life plan. So you'll get all my members only lessons. The reason why we put it in in that area is because it's structured it's part by part and level by level so you can start knowing absolutely nothing on the piano and you can definitely get to some place really well so head over to Nathanielschool.com probably after the lesson if you're wanting a more structured form of learning the piano so for now D E F sharp G A we can keep that with our five fingers and sing along you can either go D E F sharp G A A G F sharp E D it's a bit annoying to sing so I like the Indian Swara method where we say Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Pa Ma Ga Re Sa sing along with me Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Ma Ga Re Sa one more time Sa Re Ga Ma Pa you could also do this in the left hand but what you could also do is just play a steady Sa while this happens in the right hand so Sa Re Ga Ma Pa then again D Pa Ma Ga Re Sa and whenever I'm playing chord roots in the left hand I like to play them as root with the octave that could be with the pinky on the root and the octave with my thumb Ga Ma Pa Pa Ma Ga Re Sa Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Pa Ma Ga Re Sa so those are all the ingredients we are going to use the notes of the D major scale D E F sharp G A B C sharp D D C sharp B A G F sharp B D we're going to use those notes and the last thing I want to talk about before I give you the melody for our study is the value of notes or the durations of notes some notes last short some notes last long so in music we use symbols especially in the western music culture or the notation staff notation culture if you will we have a symbol for everything so if you have a whole note which is an oval or an egg looking thing that means a note which lasts for four counts once you play it and hold it for four counts one two three four you could also have a half note which lasts for two counts one two one two you could either say one two or if the time signature is four by four you go one two three four one two three four you could also do a quarter note also known as a crotchet which lasts for one count one two three four one four one two three four or you could dot the minimum or dot the half note and you get a note which lasts for three beats or three counts one two three four one two three one in a three by four this would encounter or take up the whole bar but in a four by four you can do things like one two three four one two three four one two three one so using these four symbols the whole note the oval shape semi-brief the minimum the dotted minimum and the crotchet or the quarter note you can build a lot of rhythm patterns and I have just chosen a very simple set of notes in the right hand with just one rhythm pattern in the right hand so it's just going to be crotchets while the left hand is going to do some of the fancy stuff so we are going to encounter these four objects or these four note values or symbols for representing note duration and we are going to build some nice music moving forward so that was just to prepare ourselves for the actual job at hand so let's now move forward and there are some notes which you might find useful you can find it on our Patreon page pretty much all the notes you are seeing live in this lesson while watching it if you want to download a copy with all my handwritten notation check it out there on Patreon and also on Patreon for different subscriptions the base one being five dollars you will get all my handwritten notes for pretty much everything I will ever do on YouTube and even the stuff we have done ever since we launched the Patreon channel so five bucks a month will give you all my notation notes midi backing tracks a lot of other things and if you bump it up a bit to the fifteen dollar or the thirty dollar subscription you will get to learn with me in person once twice a month during our live virtual lessons a Q&A where you can share various doubts ask me questions in person over an online conference call so let's now get to the melody I have composed two tiny pieces with the aim of having you do two technical things which are very important on the piano one is crossing over your fingers which are a very important tool in fact before I start I would encourage you to just do this without playing anything just cross it and you will realize the only way to cross stuff is via the thumb the thumb goes under fingers on its way up or ascending and the other fingers go over the thumb on the descending direction so ascending descending crossing over we are going to learn the other thing we are going to figure out is the stretching part so your hand will be in a kind of a close state and then your hand is going to stretch out a bit more ok so let's get cracking melody number one is so that's a sum total of eight notes over two bars and just D E F sharp and then the C sharp below the root or the knee as I called it so now you may find your fingers getting jumbled up happens to me as well so what you can do is maybe follow this fingering so that's thumb index middle thumb now crossover you can cross your middle finger that would work fine middle back to the thumb which is always on D but now the problem is you you don't have a finger there to go down you're kind of trapped so that's why I like this little drill wherein you go D E F sharp D index finger index move away your thumb put your middle finger on D E C sharp and then bring back your thumb to recycle the drill let's do that very slowly together one two three play D E F sharp D index C sharp D E C sharp again D E F sharp D C sharp D E with swaras so when you do knee sorry knee you're going to end up doing index middle ring index and then back to thumb sorry knee sorry knee sorry knee sorry knee at any level on the piano whenever you're practicing something melodic I would always encourage you to sing as you play a real time with the piano you need to sing or vice versa sorry knee sorry knee see sometimes I do that mistake so I like to keep my self sorry and then not the middle the index knee sorry knee there are some type cases where you have to cross the middle but in this case I think the index finger crossing works better sorry knee sorry knee sorry knee sorry knee now while that is happening in crotchets one two three four one two three four I encourage you to play semi breeze or whole notes left hand that will amount to a one is to four hand ratio and the notes I have for you in bar one I would like you to play D and in bar two I would like you to play the the A now you may be arguing which A should I play should I play the lower one or should I play the higher one you can play either and that would be good practice so maybe start on the low D okay one more time really slow another nice tune to build from the first tune would be going with your pinky the pinky didn't do much so far so which is the high A sa reg pa then ma not sa reg ma it's sa reg pa pa five ma if you're confused with the syllables I'm singing you can just ignore it you don't have to bother they are just easy to sing otherwise I'll have to do D E F sharp A G F sharp E F sharp it's a bit of a I don't know what to say tongue twister I guess good D E yeah so I'm going going back to the swaras if you know solphage you can do it with solphage do re mi fa sola t but that gets a bit confusing I guess because the dough is generally see as a lot of people who I've taught from the western parts of the world keep telling me the dough is see so that confuses us in India at least at least in the subcontinent because we are rooted with the root of the scale no pun intended where the root can change the root can be one of any of the 12 entities in music so in this case my world is on D and D is the sa or the root so second melody again sa reg pa ma reg sa reg pa ma reg sa slowly and again we can do our usual D and A notes in the left hand sa reg let's showcase both melodies again sa reg sa reg sa reg sa reg sa reg higher and do that ma reg sa let's not get too ahead of ourselves I'm getting a bit carried away by this melody so anyway the other variation for the left hand so these melodies let's just keep it fixed in the right hand the left hand variation two you could say first one was D A now variation two could be D 2 3 4 G 2 A 4 D 2 3 4 G 2 A 4 so we have the other melody D I'm doing Samapa D G A in the bass again if you're confused with me singing the swaras don't worry think of it as a guy just singing the notes instead of doing na na na or la la la which I think is really boring I'm just doing it with the swaras which I know sa reg a or sa I'm singing the bass which is again a very nice challenge may challenge people who are not beginners as well watching this where you have to sing only the right hand while doing the left hand activity and then sing only the left hand while also continuing to do both hands pretty much. So another nice variation you could do is make the second bar have an elongated G. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, that will be a dotted minimum 3, 4 with the tune. This is where it starts getting a bit tricky to slow it down so you can also do your own rhythm combinations in the left hand and probably the last one I have for this lesson you can do the first bar can be fancier 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, hold, D E F sharp A that's the next base pattern let's try it another variation could be F sharp don't do D E F sharp A instead do D F sharp G A so like that a bit better slightly tricky you have to think while you play one more time let's see how this sounds with melody number 2 let's see how this sounds with phrase number 2 other note combination in the base like I said you can try different note combos first write the rhythm down try to clap it assign it with some notes and then see how far you can take the left hand with a fixed pivoted right hand you can even do something like 5 variations in the base first we do only semi-briefs then we do semi-brief minims then you do 1 minimum and 2 crotchets and then follow it with a semi-brief variation on that lastly you can do 2 minims as B D A right guys so let's just have a quick recap we've looked at two very simple melodic fragments with some proper fingering then second melody your pinky then we've looked at two different or five different ways of accompanying that melody in the left hand using simple note value ingredients built with whole notes half notes dotted half notes and quarter notes also known as crotchets before that we looked at interacting our two hands with the two ratio options 1 is to 4 4 is to 1 we also looked at how we design or build scale degrees using swaras so I hope this lesson gives you a lot of work over the week or the weeks or month however long you want to take off your practice and do stay tuned to our channel for a lot more lessons coming your way a great way to do so is to actually stay tuned that happens by hitting that subscribe button turning on the bell and if you like the lesson there's a like button please press that now if possible and do leave us a comment with anything you'd like us to teach you or how you thought about the lesson and don't forget to share the lesson with all of your musician friends thanks and cheers