 Hi everyone, this is Jason here from Nathaniel. Let's learn the great Christmas carol, god resty, merry gentleman. We are going to learn it on E minor. I'm going to give you a variety of versions. First off, melody with simple chords with a really exciting rhythm pattern which I think will work great for you. Then we are going to look at a very tango, very Latin kind of version which I've developed for you with a lot of embellishments, with a lot of harmony options. So there's a lot to do in this lesson for different levels. If you're a beginner and you just want to learn the melody with some exciting bass, you can do that as well. So let's get cracking and before we do, it'll be great if you could subscribe to our channel if you haven't already, hit that bell icon for regular notifications so you don't miss anything we do and also all of our lessons will be supplemented with my handwritten notes for each one as well as notation, backing tracks, MIDI, wherever applicable and in this case for this Christmas lesson, you're going to get the notation in different versions, you're going to get MIDI files and you're going to get notes as well for not only this lesson, for pretty much every lesson we do. So where you want to be is the Patreon channel which will be a great supplement for whatever lesson you're watching right now. So let's first look at a version of God Resty Merry Gentleman with first the melody and what we are going to do is we'll take the melody and just keep stacking harmony and rhythmic ideas over the same melody. So get your pianos ready, play along with me. It's very, very important. Okay. So you go first line and what's nice about a lot of Christmas songs is it kind of follows a repetition. So you're going to repeat the first line twice. Let's get the fingering right if you like like one nice set of fingering and simple stuff you could play in your left hand. You could either play just play the roots of the card C A B or C B. Eventually those will become cards. Or if you know the entire cards, you could even play them as a block. That's C major or C major seventh could also work. A minor or A minor seventh B seventh or suspended if you know your cards. So C A minor could do B sus or just B. And the right hand could also look at playing some harmonic ideas like little bit of thirds or would even play the chord with the top note of the melody sticking out. So you need to know your inversion. So let's rewind what we did earlier was just the tune with simple bass. Then we add some stacks, some block triads. Okay. Twice can do stuff like that. Okay. So that's your first line. Now what I'm also doing as an option, very inspired by the Beatles, of course, especially when you're on minor, you can go like a chromatic bass drop. It's still a minor, but with a nice D sharp bass. So that's sort of a very cliched movement. Let's get that. If you can get your chords in the base, that's E with D sharp, E over D, C sharp, back to your C because it drops chromatically from E to C, E, D sharp, D, C sharp, same A minor. Let's do that again. Second line. I'm proposing this still E minor, the top ones is always going to be GB, chromatic drop D sharp with the same GB, chromatic drop to D, chromatic drop to C sharp, C, A, B dominant. Okay. So that's the flavor we add in the section second line of the song harmonically because otherwise the melody is the same. So it may be like, oh, you've just copy pasted it, which is rather boring. So whole thing again, guys, first line and second line. First line, we're keeping it simple with respect to harmony. Second line, we could drop the chords. So E minor, C, A seventh, A minor seven, B. Okay. Or if you're not so familiar with chords, you could just play some roots or root in a fifth. Either the upper fifth or in some instances, even the lower fifth would sound great. Sounds great if you just do E and its fifth, which is B. And it may seem simple, but trust me, it's not so simple. Just to even get that root in the fifth. Then, okay, with chords again, with the drop, let's move forward now. Now, the next part, I think, cannot be arranged in any other way other than a choral arrangement, which is how the original was. And this is a traditional Christmas carol. So that means it's generally designed for soprano, alto, tenor bass. So you have the stacks of your choir who have to handle this. And in the choral version, if you have to break down chords, it's going to be literally a chord every beat, which is ridiculously insane. So so it kind of goes. Everything has a as a chord. You can get away without too many chords in the beginning, as we've already seen for the first two lines, but the next line is crazy. So let's learn it in partly choral way. Let's first learn the melody. Let's only do that. OK, so get the fingering. Figure out when to cross. OK, now what happens here is you could retain that information in the right hand. But with the bass, you could harmonize in third. So what I'm doing here, basically, I'm just harmonizing my left hand with the lower third of each soprano. So that's B's lower third is G sharp. C's lower third is A. So how you decide this is you form e harmonic minor and you go, you form the thirds, you first write it down. Very important part of choral harmony or any form of harmony to know your thirds. So what we are doing there, because it's cordially very quick, very quick changing chords, we just add that third ingredient. You can read the notation as well. If you if you can read it. And what I'm also trying to do there is copying or doubling the soprano so the melody becomes stronger. So I do stacks of thirds in my left hand for that entire remaining line, a third line and fourth line. Let's do that. Let's do that again and continue. Let's do that again. So let's just do the last line or tidings of comfort and joy. So you go, let's do that. Still, thirds. I'm kind of making it a bit interesting. I can go back to chords A minor seventh that's A over G and then that's B seventh. I like that contrary motion movement there. These are all rules of harmony, which I'm trying to put into one track. Chords, choral and now some kind of contrary motion which could also call as counterpoint. And joy, joy, they meet up and joy, comfort and comfort and and then you groove on E minor. Comfort and joy, oh, oh, that's another nice counterpoint there with joy. I'm holding my soprano joy and the bass and the climb of the bass and the drop of the melody. Comfort and joy, E minor. Comfort and drop the bass to G. A, B with its A harmony. Climbing to E minor. And you close the song. Okay, let me break that down again. Before we do a few things to note. This is on E minor but a lot of my bass movements, my climbs are very melodic minor like. Comfort and joy. Rather than comfort and... Somehow I don't like that C. I like the C sharp which is the natural 6th. Comfort and joy. Or the raise 6th. The normal 6th. Comfort and joy. So let's revise the choral bit going to the end and then we'll come back to the intro and kind of embellish it further. Let's see what we can do. So choral bit again. There we go. Okay, now in the beginning when you did, instead of just holding the chord, you can groove the chord which I'm going to actually expand on in the actual version which we'll do later on. So this is the groove. You take E minor. Simply minor. But instead of doing broken like that, we do E, B, E, B, E, B. So you can pretty much do this for the whole first line. But there's a C major, A minor and B. So there... So how am I doing this? I'm just playing E, G with both C and A. Ending with B. With that nice dyad descent. If you don't know that, you can just do that or just hold it. One more time line one. So for the second line, you do that Beatles drop, that line cliche, but you do it again in the same rhythm. So for C, same ending. Okay. Then we go to the choral part which I taught you. Climbing. So a few final words about the song which will allow you to embellish the melody, a few licks. So if you're a more advanced player, you should definitely stick around or if you've... You'll find something interesting, I'm sure. You can add more spice to the lesson. In the first line, I'm doing a little bit of flavor there. That's an B seventh lick in the bass. One more time. Remember to keep a nice staccato as well. We also call this rhythm as umpa, umpa, umpa, umpa, umpa, umpa, umpa, umpa, umpa. So and this is a swing feel. So it's okay to move one or two notes a little bit earlier or a little bit later, mostly earlier. So you're going a little bit before at the ends as opposed to kind of works, doesn't it? Make that a bit longer and then back beat the cliche down. Then the choral part I've added some more layering. So make it more like a choir. So I'm singing you the alto which is the extra note I'm playing in my right hand under the soprano which is the melody line there. So it's literally like a choir which is going on now. And then stick on D. Doing just diads. Comfort and adding in an A and an E minor there. Same bass drop. Just adding like a chaotic chord there. Okay. Like an F sharp minor 7 flat 5. So that comfort and joy I'm trying to embellish with stacks of thirds. The choral part, let me just go through that again. I'll slow it down. You can just follow. Could kind of end with a nice melodic minor jump. See I like this melodic minor a lot. Even the V3 Kings tutorial has this as well. So let me just do the normal version again and just let's speed up the process just to revise what all is going on. Lot of offbeat melodic stuff especially before the choral part because your melody is a bit free. You can do stuff to it in the first two lines and the last couple of lines. So watch out for that ending lick. And then second line with the bass drop. And then choral F sharp minor 7 flat 5 if you like it. Melodic bass. So whole idea. Let me just play the whole version very slowly at the end of the lesson so you could follow along. And just a quick reminder before we conclude guys the entire lesson I've notated different versions for different levels as an easy version then there's a normal version. Easy version will just be pretty much the melody with simple bass. Normal version has that rhythmic movement a little and then the final version which I've played at the beginning video. The performance at the beginning and at the outro which I'm going to now play very slowly. Thanks a ton for watching. I hope you enjoy this version. There are so many great versions of the song and I'm sure they will continue to be great versions of the song because it's a that's why you have that's why you call this a great song. A great song is something which is timeless. It just keeps going forward primarily because of the music and also because what other artists can contribute to the same piece of music which is what I have done and which is what I'm sure even you will do and what's really exciting about Christmas songs which I found over the years is every year I tend to if I play god resty merry gentleman in maybe the next year I have a feeling I'm I probably will come up with a completely different arrangement and I'll be sure the first thing I'm going to do is make another video of that the next Christmas. So till then learn this version. Thanks a ton for watching. If you haven't already don't forget to hit that bell. Very important if you're a subscriber. You can also hit subscribe if you haven't already. Leave us a comment with something you'd like to learn. Hit the like button that really helps the lesson go forward and share the video and compliments of the seasons. Merry Christmas to you and your family and wish you all a happy new year as well.