 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this tutorial, we are going to develop five exercises on different genres with both our hands where the right hand is needed to do the thing and where the left hand is needed to do the exercise and we are going to take triads, which you all know which have three notes right tri triad and we will extend it by adding one more note which ends up being a copycat or a carbon copy of one of the existing notes. We are not going to change or we are going to add we are not going to add a new note for example a seventh or dominant seventh or a ninth and so on and so forth. We are not adding a new note. We are adding the same note, but the fact or the point of adding the same note will allow you to develop your genre skills and train your ability to play a lot of different things on the piano keyboard and to make the learning of this lesson a lot more efficient we have staff notation which is waiting for you on our patreon page. Do consider heading over there and downloading a pdf of the same. There's also midi if you wish and it'll be awesome if you can get your keyboards along and learn along with me and stay tuned till the very end. There are going to be five exercises which will give you use cases to use triads with that extra note and we could look at this lesson as a follow up from another lesson where I looked at some theoretical reasons to use an extra note for a triad. So we link that up in the description. So there are a lot of advantages of just stacking up a chord with an extra note. Let's move on to exercise number one and before we do it'll be awesome if you could consider hitting that subscribe button turning on the bell icon for regular notifications and giving the video a like and leaving us a comment if you like the lesson or if you'd like to learn something in the future. Let's get cracking. So a very important use case for a triad with an extra note would be to play a six by eight time signature one two three four five six one two three four five six. So I've developed a rather simple run of the mill chord progression G major E minor A minor and D major. Let's practice that together. So G major these are the notes G B D E minor E G B then A minor A C E D major D F sharp A you could argue that all of this is come from the key of G major one sharp F sharp right. Okay so now to make this a six by eight exercise you take the same G major chord add that octave there play it with your pinky you could play the other notes with your first three fingers in your left hand you can do pinky middle index in your right hand you can do thumb index middle and you generally use your pinky for the root and your thumb for the octave when you're stacking or the thumb for the root and the pinky for the octave in the case of the right hand. So the exercise goes in a nice six by eight rather circular flow and you could count this out as L M H higher which is a octave of the low of the L L M H L I like to write that as L dash L apostrophe L M H L H M L M H there we go you have so many songs which go like this right that one or that Ed Ed Sheeran song and so on maybe some Christmas songs and so on okay I can go on and on with a six by eight it's a really popular time signature so we take the four chords which I gave for you G major E minor A minor D major and let's first start playing them in a six eight together right hand first A minor D major and the trick here for this exercise is to always try and anticipate the next chord or the upcoming chord in the progression G see that even before I went to E minor my thumb and my left hand root is fingers are getting ready for the journey or the shifting point to go to the next chord so G E A D again G and it's in a six eight E minor A minor D major and in the left hand you could maintain your roots with an octave that would be nice I've done some exhaustive six by eight lessons we leave them in the description for you just to practice just these sort of chord movements over the six eight time signature okay there we go now once you've done that you may want to get it with your left hand as well you kind of find it easier with the left hand you get the idea you may argue should I go G lower E I guess going to the lower E will be better because it's closer to G higher A lower D that's how I'm doing it just to keep the voices kind of close to each other A minor D major okay so that's the exercise in the left hand in the right hand I just want to kind of add a few layers to the exercise when you practice it you could start with the root position of the first chord so the root position of the G major chord will be this so from here maybe you want to find an efficient path to reach to the next chord so E minor instead of going all the way down here it's not really all the way down but it's kind of annoying you need your eyes to do it so you might as well play E minor like that G B E G in its first inversion right G major E minor then A climb and D just staying there and D major in its second inversion is very close to G so let me do that again little slowly G major E minor A minor D major G major E minor A minor D major and G and the same exercise you could now start from the first inversion of G major so first inversion would be B D G and now I stack up on top to give myself that upper B and let's do the drill again G major E okay now I don't want to jump all the way to E minor rather G major E minor I'll do it as B E G B because it's very close to B D G B B E G B so G major E minor just move the lower finger ups A minor played as C E A C D major in root position whole thing again G major E minor now G major in the left hand I would prefer to execute with my ring finger I was doing the middle but in hindsight I would prefer the ring because that allows you to use your middle finger for the E minor the upcoming chord it's always good to have all your five fingers ready and waiting for the job especially when you start playing inversions if you just do root position the first three fingers and the pinky will generally be fine but with inversions you'll have to start initiating the ring finger as well so just be aware that you need to keep all these five fingers ready for the job so let's do that again with first inversion now E minor in its second inversion then A minor in its first inversion D major in the root and I repeat there we go A minor and D and we have one more job to do which is starting with the second inversion of D of G major I think I'll start from a lower octave otherwise it starts getting very squeaky so that's your G major second inversion E minor will be root A minor will be in second and D major you kind of have to it's a bit awkward in the left hand so what I would do is pinky ring index thumb and the left hand kind of goes through a sort of a semicircular motion almost like a pendulum swing so let's do that again second inversion the last chord is tricky so G major E minor A minor and the last chord D major and then back to G and the exercise and the exercise is kind of designed to keep flowing forward so if I start with root G major E minor A minor D major I can now do first inversion and keep the climb going now I do second inversion of G major E minor A minor last and you see where I ended I ended exactly an octave above from where I started so this is a nice exercise to practice six by eight and one of the exercises in our lecture to practice triads with more than three notes which is the going a bit against the norm the triad has three we've added that one extra note in this case the octave of the left most or the low low note so let's now move forward to a very famous genre which can be very benefited from playing or adding or stacking the octave to your existing music and that's salsa so to teach you salsa I'm going to teach you a very famous piano salsa pattern which is called as the Montuno let's see how that goes so I have four chords which is basically chords of the Andalusian cadence if you like the Andalusian cadence we have an entire series on the Andalusian cadence waiting for you in the description check it out but for now it's just A minor G major F major E major kept it very Spanish and Andalusian A minor G major F major E major okay again very common progression in the road Jack don't you come back no more so a lot of songs use that right so I have two salsa Montuno patterns for you so that octave really adds the bite and I think in this case the octave is important not for the time signature but for the groove to get that octaves are very common in salsa music so let me break down that pattern once more for you so octave and then the inside two notes so I like to call it as oh I oh I oh I oh oh I oh meaning outside I meaning inside so oh I and the oh or the outside note will be played with your two octaves play whacked together oh I oh I and the I would be the internal two notes which will end up being in this case the third and the fifth of the chord oh I oh I oh I oh I and if you can keep a pulse in your other hand or on the keyboard eventually oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh I oh if I break down one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and one so we've added one extra beat there one and two and three and four and one and two and one and three and four and one and two and three and four and one and two and three and three and three and four and four and one and two and try and get the pulse if you can get the pulse otherwise you can can just hold the chord or the root, maybe. If you can't get the pulse in the left hand, maybe you can just hold the root and just keep it as steady as possible. Pulse would be ideal. If not, just hold it, okay. The other Montono pattern I have for you would be the same hit points, but with alternate notes. If I just show you with A minor, which is here, remember we've stacked the A up on top, you go A with a C, E with an A. So this adds some nice harmony, which is why I like playing this style. There we go. Slowly. Try the pulse in the left hand. So the two salsa exercises we have, first was the out-in-out-in drill. With the out-in-out-in exercise, I recommend using your wrist a lot to kind of push in and out. That will give you that pumping effect and it'll just allow your brain to understand what's out and what's in, I guess. And then we have the toggling thirds, as I call it. So salsa is a very exciting genre. It's a very groovy, dancy genre. And by learning it, you can definitely improve your finger control, your hand independence. And this is a very common salsa chord progression or a Spanish chord progression, you could say. A minor, G major, F major, E major. And you could also develop a nice workout for yourself by transposing the Andalusian cadence into other scales, like maybe D minor or maybe C minor or maybe G minor and so on. For now, in this lecture, we are looking at A minor. Moving on to the next style of using triads with that extra note on the top. This is more for melodic flavoring or for melodic purposes, you could say. So if I have a melody for you, the melody I have composed is on F major, just using crotchets or quarter notes. That was A, G, B flat, A, G, F, A, G, F, E, G, F, climbing E, F, G. We'll play it again, maybe higher. A, G, B flat, A, G, F, A, G, F, E, G, F, D, E, F, G. And the chords which I think will work with this melody could be F major, C major, D minor for bar 3, B flat major for bar 4. So the intention here is to create an arpeggio pattern, not losing sight of the chord which we have F major, C major, D minor, B flat major, but also bringing the melody. So in a sense, the melody and the chords are going to happen in just this one hand. So for the purposes of this exercise, I'm just going to show you in one hand and then we'll bring in the right hand. So what was the melody? So let's just look at that. And the general rule which you need to follow would be when you're stacking the melody with chords, just try and play it with only these two fingers, the pinky and the ring finger. That is the only budget you're going to get. You'll have to use the other three fingers for the remaining notes of the triad. So we go A, G, B flat A. So let me try and walk you through this. A is the highest note of the F major triad in this particular bar of music which I composed. So you need to ask yourself a question. Does F major have A in the first place? The answer is yes. And A is its third note. So you need to create an inversion where A is on the top and you can start with A on the top and then the remaining notes follow the F major triad, which is A, then F, then C, then A. So you could stack up this A in the bottom so you never lose the F major sound whilst changing the melody in the right hand. So let me play you what I'm trying to convey and then I will teach. So one more time. Using my ring, you could even hold the pedal down so that it sounds smooth. The original melody didn't change. First bar with an F bass maybe. And I'm just kind of cascading the remaining notes of the chord descending. I'm trying to not leave my pinky because that's the melody line. And if you're finding it difficult to stretch up and play that B flat, you could even maybe simplify the chord by not going all the way to this lower A that will make it a lot of notes. So then you can go just three notes, A, F, C and now you're floating the top note. That's another way of doing it if you feel this way is a bit tricky. This is a stretch, I would agree. Yeah, easier way. Now you have enough and more fingers to play that melody. Okay, let's journey forward in this particular exercise. So we go A, B flat, A, now C major. What did I do there? I'm stacking or I'm kind of creating my foundation shape for C major like this. And then I'm going to float the upper note. So this entire exercise revolves around you floating the upper note in order to play the melody which you are intended to play, which is this exercise. So quite easy because all of those notes are white. So the stretching becomes easier, right? But again, if you feel your fingers are a bit stretching out, you can do it with just a simple three note shape. But you're still floating the top note. So let's do both together. Let's continue with the third chord D minor. Pretty much the same pattern. F and my default shape is here. And then I drop, I cascade the notes down in an arpeggio fashion. Okay, now we are climbing B flat up so that we loop it well. That'll go D. Again, D. Here I just need three and then E. And the remainder of the notes continues to be a B flat stack like this. D, G, repeat. A rather simple melody, no doubt. But you can do this with other songs as well. You don't have to just, this exercise is mainly to get you to understand the technique, get your fingers agile enough to play the pattern. I'm sure you can use this with other songs because the concept here is float the top note. And in the same hand, try to arpeggiate with the remaining notes of the triad given to you, right? So let's move forward with the fourth reason to play triads with four notes instead of three. And now it's time for the left hand. So for this exercise, we are going to take an E major chord with that extra note. And first of all, you can do a nice arpeggio of this specific chord, which I really like. I like the arpeggio pattern to begin with, which is E, B, G sharp, B. And instead of repeating it, LMHM as I call it. No middle, high, middle. Now this creates a very small cycle. It's nice, but it's a tiny cycle. So to kind of elongate your cycle duration, you're adding the octave. Almost like a banjo player would do with the three fingers. Generally, what happens on a banjo is the lowest string is a higher octave note. It's the higher G. So it provides for this higher octave mixed with lower octave, even though you're just playing three chords. So I could say that this is very banjo inspired. So you go, there we go. Call this a banjo roll if you want. So this is the pattern. Let me slow it down. So what we do with the left hand, first practice this default pattern with an octave on the top. And then the fun can really begin by you looking at the top note and saying, I need to move this top note kind of like what we did with floating the melody. So why not move it to a major seventh? So the major seventh of the key of E would be D sharp, right? You can do a major sixth. So what used to be the octave is now changing. The thumb has just changed or floating as we saw with the melody. Then maybe a flat seven in that case of a dominant. If you like stretching, what I like to do sometimes is maybe play the ninth and then play the ninth with the eighth. Come back to the octave. Eight is octave. If you would like to stretch a bit more or if you can stretch a bit more, if you're a younger person watching this and if your hands haven't stretched out more, well, I apologize. So that would be the 10th interval for you. Quite tricky. So it's optional. You don't have to bother playing it if it's too much of a stretch. Then the ninth interval, eighth interval or the octave, major seventh, dominant seventh, major sixth, and that's pretty much it. You can do a sharp five as well, but I'd leave that to you. So let me play you the melody and then I will break it down slowly for you. It's also notated. You can check it out. One more time, slowly. Just the melody. Climbing. So let's do that with the left hand pattern, shall we? Right now, no floating. Just the simple one with octave. So now you can play the same melody with all the floating available for us, right? That is major seventh, major sixth, maybe ninth, maybe a tenth, if you wish. You can stick with the major seventh, major sixth, into a dominant seventh, but it's quite spicy because it's not part of the existing infrastructure or the scale, right? So that was floating. That was an exercise with an octave added to a triad in the left hand playing a banjo roll and then we float the top octave to create some very exciting harmonic movement. Otherwise, and this can be very helpful when the chord is static. When you play an E major for so long, you can always move around with that one of those notes. So it's still E major. It won't annoy your bandmates, but you can kind of fool around or move around and create almost a counter melody with respect to the already existing melody which we have, right? So I have one more exciting use case for triads with an extra note and I come back to everyone's favorite genre blues. So let's move forward. So I'm on the key of C, C major. I'm just going to demonstrate all the exercises with just the C major chord or you could argue the C dominant seventh chord. So this is C major, C V E G, C dominant seventh, C, G, B flat. So I'll tell you the patterns. Pattern number one could be... So that's one, two, three, four. So it creates some nice rhythmic interest. Otherwise, becomes a bit monotonous. So with blues, it's always nice to have that extra octave, especially in the left hand because a bass player, the main note apart from the root of the chord which a bass grooves with the next most important note you could say is the octave. So might as well get that octave in there. So that could be your pattern one. Then we can add a flat three to make it a lot more bluesy. That's a flat three. So slightly tricky. So I would use my ring, slight wrist movement. Okay, then we can use a six to the chord which is the my girl rhythm, I guess. I got sunshine on a cloudy day. Okay. That makes it a very nice 12 bar form. You could also maybe add a seven flat in there. If you don't like... That sounds too much like my girl. You can change it around to be slightly easier to play also. So seven flat. So another very important reason to have the ability to play a chord with four notes because it pushes out, if not anything, it motivates all your five fingers of the left hand to think of what they should do. And in blues, that's very important. You would need all your five fingers to play along. Right, guys? So in conclusion, we've done five exercises to incorporate our triads with an extra note. We've done three in the right hand. The first one we've done is our usual six by eight which you cannot play if you don't stack it. So that's something you need to practice. Then we've done the salsa or the Montuno, most specifically where the octave is supremely important in the flavor of the genre. Then we've done a very important functional exercise to bring out your melody and chords with arpeggios not in two hands with just one hand. So I think that's a very important thing to practice over your journey. Then we looked at two left hand approaches. One is to practice that standard banjo roll like arpeggio pattern. And then of course we cannot do a lesson spanning multiple genres when we don't include blues. So blues was done at the last. And so on and so forth. Right, guys? Thanks a ton for watching the video. And if you liked the lesson, do consider hitting the like button. Leave us a comment with what you thought about it. And if you'd like something in the future for us to teach you, do leave your suggestions there. All the notation and MIDI files are on our Patreon page. Do consider heading over to patreon.com forward slash Jason Zach. And if you'd like to learn music in a structured way in our music school, you could consider heading over to our website where you will find structured video courses in each subject of music you might need to learn. Piano, beginner, intermediate, theory, ear training, notation, and so on. You could also do in-person classes with our faculty at the school for pretty much any instrument, piano, guitar, vocals are all available. Cheers and I will catch you in the next one.