 Hi guys this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music and in this lesson let's get introduced to the idea of playing glam rock or synth rock that kind of stuff also maybe even disco music on the piano. So let's get started. The progression I have for you is very simple but before I talk about the progression I just want to talk about how the left hand and how the right hand is going to work. Pretty much in any of these glam rock songs example can take songs like Van Halen's Jump that could be a good good exercise you know you'll find the chord moving very rhythmically at the same time very melodically okay in the right hand while the left hand is playing a very pulsating rhythm following either an eighth note sequence or a quarter note sequence okay so the left hand is generally going to do that so if you want to do eighth notes sorry if you wanted to do quarter notes in the left hand you just play the pulse but maybe don't play the pulse too long like don't do it too legato do it more choppy since it's rock and roll or rock music in general play a choppier pulse one and two so that you can give way for the eighth note feel which is very very common in rock music so you one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four so create a very drum like approach in the left hand very percussive approach two and three and four and one now if you'd like to also play the eighth note you could go see I don't even have to bring in the right hand and it's already groovy right two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one okay let's go back to quarters one two and three and four and one I'm going to be on D major scale for the tutorial one and two three and now let's go to the eighth notes slightly faster right rock music is generally at this tempo two and okay and if you do disco music goes a little bit more faster that we'll probably get into in another video now let's get into the right hand of the piano so the right hand is pretty much going to just play triads but very melodically sounding triads so before we get started guys it would be great if you can subscribe to our youtube channel if you haven't already and please turn on that bell icon thing for notifications so that any new lesson we bring out will hit you and you won't lose any information cheers so now let's get started you have the D major scale and I'm just going to take like the D chord the G chord and the A chord the one the four and the five that's all I'm going to do for the lesson yes you could do a few others but let's just stick with this for now so first thing to observe is that every chord you play or every shape of every chord you play if you take the D major chord for instance and play it like this in the default root position shape the top note of the chord sort of rings out doesn't it this is what the human ear seems to react to or listen to even though you have three other notes it's pretty much that so if you use this trick to your advantage now you're putting D out there for the listener now you're putting F sharp out there for the listener so one chord has three notes and each of the three notes could be highlighted for the listeners here let's do that again even you should be able to sing that because you're the one playing it for the audience so you need to train your ear sing the high note that's the D and then that's the third F sharp and similarly you can do the same procedure for the G chord that's G B D with the D standing out B D G D G B and then finally the A chord see what's happening every inversion the root the root position the first inversion and the second inversion the top note is actually very melodic in nature in other words that is the melody it's sort of the melody line so if you focus on those notes and build a melody or a theme around those notes with the chords I think it can give birth to a very glam rock or a very synthy or a you know 80s kind of a sound so if you take let's say what am I doing here I'm playing A D F sharp which is the second inversion of D and then the root of A major which is A C sharp E but for my melodic here and to make the melody a lot more exciting to make it more rock and more disco and more glam you can attack a few of the off beats you don't have to only go with the ons now people will think you're just playing chords but now if you played a little off and what chords am I using I'm just using the one chord D major the five chord A major G major which is the four back to the five chord which is A and back to D okay so let's try and build like a tune using the chords maybe I want to do a see it's it's a very melodic thing what I just sang so whatever notes which I sang now could be voiced in the top end of the chord following what I just sang and then the remaining notes which you're going to play with your other fingers in this case my thumb and my index finger will just fill up the blank so if it's F sharp you know that D major has F sharp in it and also you should choose D major you probably don't want to choose A major because A major has E A C sharp E which doesn't have the F sharp note in it so you can go one pam now I did I sang E so what chord goes with E A major will work since I'm limiting my study to the one chord the four chord and the five chord two three and four and I want to sing the high note G there pam E G F sharp E F sharp E G G A I like that A there so you go observe how I'm also playing it on the off beat divided the beat by two and I'm latching on to those ends of the bar of course I'm not only playing the ends I'm also playing some of the down beats and a lot of the off beats so that you feel a little bit of excitement when you're hearing this music one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and okay I hope you got that again one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and another very very important tip or a very very important way to make this sound very very pro is to alter the duration of each of your chords you could say some chords are going to be staccato and some chords are going to be legato so if I sing it'll help you the best because you get a very natural flair maybe every third hit I want it to be long I'm going to do that on the piano one and two and oops I should have done the third one long one and two and three and four and you see what I'm silently doing with my left hand I'm always feeling the pulse you don't want to lose the pulse right because that's what your left hand is going to eventually do I've just sort of waited a bit with the left hand so that we can completely get the right hand so try let's try this out properly so it's just an assortment of the three chords D major A major and G major but I'd advise you to also explore and try to create your own melodic patterns because this is not too difficult you could perhaps use the same hit points which I've given out in the lesson and then play your own chords with your own inversions like for example something like you'll find a lot of these glam glam songs or glam rock kind of songs like Van Halen's jump using this technique a lot okay now let's look at the left hand there's no great rocket science in the left hand you either can play the pulse and what's also nice to realize in the left hand you could just keep the root of the scale sometimes this may just work you can actually play a D root maybe to get started and actually it will sound good see that's an A major over a D in the bass whenever you want to punch out the harmony then you can change the bass okay so essentially I'm doing the pulse and harmonically or bass wise I'm either playing just the root in this case D or I'm playing any of the roots of the actual chord in the right hand if you choose to just play D then your chords will be D major with D bass A major with D bass G major with D bass this is a very progressive rock kind of vibe to play like that or a very glam rock kind of thing used in the 80s so if you can try that out and then consider moving it around that'll be awesome and now you will you another thing you could try in the left hand would be an alternating eighth note sequence between the pinky and the thumb playing root and octave let's see how that goes just that let's go back to the original thing you could also explore and try out a few other bass notes B that's pretty much it let's summarize left hand playing a very pulse pattern following the pulse or else toggling root and octave like a disco feel and the right hand will essentially take the the three chords of the D major scale which is D major G major A major the one four and the five the positive sounding chords and then you're trying to express a melody using those chords by highlighting the top note of every chord well you don't highlight the chord itself will highlight because of the laws of physics so the top note will anyways reach out to your own ear as well as your listeners here so high D F sharp right so you have high D high F sharp that's high A and so on so yeah have fun playing it and you don't have to only use a piano tone for this you could try like an 80s synth some analog moog patches which you may have a freak out with some different patch options on your respective keyboards okay so I hope you guys have found that lesson useful so we've covered a little bit on glam rock if you will and some synth rock kind of stuff which made the 80s very popular due to the stuff played on the keyboard practice hard have fun as always and I will catch you in the next video if you haven't already please subscribe to our channel could also leave us a comment and tell us if you'd like me to cover something in the future and also share the video and our channel with all your musician friends and let's move forward as musicians together cheers