 Hi guys! So in this lesson, we are going to talk about how you can build melodies on the piano using an available chord progression, using the concept of chord tones as well as non-chord tones. So the non-chord tones could either be within the scale or what we call as diatonic to the scale and the notes or the non-chord tones could even be random chromatic notes which are not part of the scale in the first place. They're just used to add flavor and color and an interesting embellishment. So in the earlier video, if you haven't already, please watch the earlier video where we looked at how to create a melody with just one chord tone out of the available three. So the first thing you would want to do is take your chord progression. In this case, I've chosen G minor, E flat major, B flat major, F major or F sus going to F major. Let's see that again. G minor, E flat major, B flat major, F major and I'm playing it in the left hand so that I can sort of free up my right hand and create my melodies in the right hand. So the first way to start embellishing or building a melody is to just take the chord tones and play them and play them in a unique and interesting rhythmic pattern so that the rhythm pattern itself and its uniqueness brings about a melody line in the song. So if I just take G minor here and just take G minor there, this is going to be rather boring or just playing quarter notes or on the pulse one while this one is going to play the exact same chord but in an interesting rhythm. For instance, also the order of notes is going to be random. It's going to be not predictable. Obviously, I'm not going to play it together because a melody is not many notes pressed together. It's one after the other. So you can do all sorts of combinations. So I quite like what's happening here. So there's an interesting rhythm which can actually be sung even non-melodically. For example, dum param param. So this proves that whatever I'm playing in the right hand seems to have some kind of rhythmic interest and how are the notes of the melody making sense or how they're sounding nice and consonant it's because all these notes are part of the chord in this case G minor. Swinging it a bit. Just improvise on that one chord. Try out a few left hand options. Now mind you this is just one shape of the G minor chord. You can play it like this which is G Bb D or you can even play it like this which is Bb D G which is the first inversion and that gives you a very very different flavor for your melody. So something like believe it or not we have how many chords are we playing right now one chord just literally one chord. So there's a lot of creativity which can be just developed using the chord tones and a rhythm pattern. You can try out the other inversion second inversion D G Bb and try to get a vibe going with that hold or that shape there here and the root okay and when you've done that piece it all together weave it all together and it just magically comes together and or rather very organically comes together in a sense that you don't know when a melody will emerge it's just going to happen it's just going to build itself and naturally grow the melody always in my opinion should always happen organically yes there are a lot of concepts we learn like in this case the notes of the chord which is very important you can't do anything if you don't know the notes of the chord. So once you do build it with the chord tones you then sort of let loose let the melody sort of build itself so to speak okay. So let's just try and create a little a little bit of music now with just this one chord stuff like that right and now you have other chords we have G minor E flat major B flat major F so as the chords flow the melody notes gain or have to be different because the melody notes have to follow the chord tones so E flat B flat it's simple on F just hold one just one chord tone maybe a couple more and so on and so forth you can pretty much go on and on actually so what more what next now this sounds very sort of plain and simple and by the book right you'll hear a lot of pop melodies like this to make it a bit more interesting and a bit more story like you could use a concept which we call as passing and landing tones so the landing tones have already been learned by us right we have all the chord tones those are all the landing notes landing notes means at the on beat of the bar or at the one beat or at the strong beat of the bar you'll need to land on one of these chord tones or another way to land better is to make the landing point a lot more longer in duration compared to all the passing notes the other notes which are not part of the chord tones so if you study the chord G minor G B flat D the chord tones are in fact G B flat D now other notes which are sort of passing the A the C which is like the fourth or the 11th in this case if you want to call it 13 or the six E flat remember I'm in the key of B flat major so these are the diatonic passing notes F so when you hear this it doesn't sound as stable or you know calm or pleasant or correct sounding as the resolutions which are the root minor third perfect fifth octave these are the chord tones they have to sound good because the chord is already being pressed so any of the other notes either will be used to build flavor and color and spice these are also called tensions when you use them for a long time you know so what did I do now I started with the tension and ended with the with a resolution because you can't hang on to that sort of slightly tense or slightly aggressive sound and now it resolves so that's one way you could use non-landing tones you could play them for a long time establish the fact that it's colorful and then bring it back to the normal which is one three five so another way you can use passing notes is just in a linear approach just moving the notes forward or up ascending or backward or down or descending so for example if I have g minor so I can do something like see what's happening there so I've been able to add the a and the c which are not so nice notes within the g minor chord but I'm adding them as passing notes that means when I play a it's usually at weak beats of the bar sometimes even the ends or when you divide the beat the off beats you'll find these at obviously the weak beats and the longer notes are generally going to be the chord tones in this case see I ended at g which is a chord tone another chord tone and then if you have all these other chords you can really weave in your passing and landing notes in a very very interesting way something like I can do these fast trills lot of options you're actually combining chord tones and the passing notes which are non chord tones so let's just recap this whole passing landing thing the landing notes are ideally the notes of the triad which in the g minor for example is g bbd the landing notes are the non chord tones which is the 7 f the 2 or the 9 a then the 4 or the 11 sounds very colorful or we call it a tension and then the 6 flat or the 13 see I'm in reference to the g minor chord but I'm also diatonic to the overall picture of the major scale so we usually keep to the same major scale whenever we are playing at least pop music of course it changes for other genres of music but this is more for things like pop rock country folk those sort of genres which are yeah more on the radio okay so that's about passing and landing tones and with passing notes well you have the diatonic passing notes you could also express yourself using chromatic passing notes which are not even part of the scale so maybe we'll reserve that for another lesson because the possibilities are really really endless if you think about it so what I'd advise you to do is start with one chord maybe the g minor chord and just establish all the three chord tones build some amazing music using just the chord tones in all the shapes which we call inversions then after you have really mastered your chord tones over the chord progression then what we can do is we add passing notes which add more tension or more color or more flavor or more spice running out of adjectives to your music right so this is another way to build melodies on the piano given an existing chord progression hope you guys found that lesson useful and if you did please share the video with your friends bring more people on board this youtube channel and also do consider following us or helping our channel grow by being a patron or 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