 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, I'm super excited to share how to play probably one of my top five favorite songs of all time by the great band The Beatles. It's called Blackbird. Now, you may be thinking, what is a piano teacher doing teaching a song which Paul McCartney kind of plucked away on his guitar? Well, I have a nice version which I play and I'm totally inspired by the Beatles version of it. And most of what I'm going to teach you in this video will be pretty much what the guitar strumming pattern is all about. We are following the same notes, the same chords, the same hit points, pretty much the same guitar pattern. And I do play a little bit of guitar, so it kind of came a bit more organically to me. And let's see how it goes. I hope you find the lesson useful. Get your keyboards out. And if you haven't already, do give the song a listen. It's called Blackbird again by the Beatles. I'm sure you've already heard it if you're watching this video, but still give it a listen. It's nice to hear the original and then come back to this video if you wish. So before we get cracking, it'll be great if you can consider subscribing to our channel, turning on the bell icon for regular notifications because we do a lot of your favorite songs as piano accompaniment, as piano solo arrangements and so on and so forth. And you can supplement your learning on our Patreon page, patreon.com forward slash Jason Zach, where you'll get my handwritten notes as well as the staff notation, MIDI files and other supporting material for our lessons on the YouTube channel. Your support will also mean a great deal to our channel. So let's get cracking. It's on the key of G major. G major has one sharp naturally, right? F sharp. What I'm hearing in the original song with the guitar, just tell yourself to drone the G or repeat the G every alternate time. Which G? I mean the G just under middle C. So that one. So if you hear the intro, for instance, this is going to repeat almost all the time, except when he shifts up his guitar to the upper register. Even there you play the G and that's it. And then you do, you see, there's a lot of this recurrence of G, right? And we are going to count a very simple couple of patterns, very inspired by banjo players or finger style players. You could also refer to this as the Travis style picking pattern named after the famous guitar player who invented the technique. So I'm trying to just get inspired by all of these things and try to do it as best as possible on the piano and make it as authentic as possible as well. And it's going to be super easy, which is why I think even if you're a beginner or a newcomer to the instrument watching this video, you'll find that you can play this. So stay with me, get your keyboards out. We are going to divide this into sections, but we'll first do the iconic intro. Now, I cannot do the sliding thing on the piano. I can't do the sliding thing for obvious reasons. The piano is a very binary instrument. It's either this or that. You can go in between notes. The guitar has that ability to slide as you probably know and have heard in the original, right? Where we slide and we slide all the way to the topmost frets of the guitar. So I'm going to work on a piano version of the intro. Let's follow along. Okay. Now, before I show you that there are two rhythm patterns, which we are going to do for the entire lesson. And let's do both those rhythm patterns on G. So, so there we go. So my pinky is on G, my thumb is on G, and I'm just doing eighth notes. So this is one pattern, singles in the right hand. And as you climb, remember, you keep that G ringing and you're going to change notes in the upper register, left of the G and right of the G. So it's just G in the middle and then stuff to its left will keep changing based on the chords and stuff to its right will be changing based on the chords. So that's pattern one. OK, now the other pattern, the interesting Travis style picking pattern would be instead of doing we do. Which is one year to be and one year to be and one year. And the way Paul McCartney is doing this is whenever the chords are long, like long by long, I mean for an entire bar or at least four beats, right? Whenever it's that long, you do the the fancier pattern. And whenever it's quick changes between chords, you just do the first pattern. Or if the chords change every beat, you would want to use the slower pattern. Which is exactly what happens in the intro. It's G, a minus seventh, G over B. And end on a regular old G major for a long time. It's an entire bar of four. So one, two, three. One, two, three, four. Also note that the song is not on an evenly or a regular time signature, like three endlessly or four endlessly. It keeps changing. It's three, four, four. Then it comes back here and there to a two, four. So follow along and the notation will really help you. The notation is there for the entire lesson, the entire arrangement, really. So let's get cracking, guys. So the intro will be the same thing as what you do for the line one of the verse, which is Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Blackbird singing in the dead of night. OK, so against that, what do we play? That's your first line. Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Again, slowly. If you can't jump your hand there, what I'd encourage you to do is just stick along with the same octave range and just play the G's as a toggle. That also works. That kind of works. But the original arrangement could should probably be where you jump your hand just like how he jumps the guitar. Verse starts singing in the dead of night. Let's move forward to line two. So what happens there? Take these broken wings and learn to fly. So at the word fly, take these broken wings and learn to fly. You do because it's a longer change. However, the chords change every two beats. So it goes to E minor and then E minor with an E flat bass. Which is sort of like an E flat augmented. So take take these broken wings and learn some beautiful chords there, which he's implying, which is C major. That's an A over C sharp or you can call it a C sharp diminished A 7th over C sharp. You could also call that as a C sharp diminished chord C major C sharp diminished D major D sharp diminished or B 7th over D sharp E minor going to E flat augmented. Okay, let's do that whole line. Okay. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. Again. Take these sunken eyes and learn to see. Okay, so single, single for that first bar and now the pattern. The Travis picking pattern. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. Busy. That's the Travis picking pattern again. Take these sunken eyes and learn to see. Little faster. Take these sunken wings and learn to fly. Okay, both lines again. Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Taking wings and learn to fly. Okay, coming to that all your life part. Remember, the middle note is always G. That's the beauty of this performance. It has G in the center everywhere all the time. That's like a D major with an add four with a G. That's implying a C sharp half diminished chord or a minor 7th flat 5. Sometimes I get carried away and play the melody line. See what he's doing on the guitar just for it to be understood from a theoretical perspective. He's always harmonizing his vocal line. So what that ends up doing is he's sort of like a backing vocalist to his own voice on the guitar. So that goes. Check that out. That's the lower third of the melody. So this is like another part in the choral arrangement, so to speak, which he's producing on his guitar. Okay, so coming back to that line. All your life. There's some beautiful chords there. All the D major. Add four. C sharp minor 7th flat 5. C major. C minor. There we go. Out of scale, but it works perfectly well. Okay, let's move forward. You are only waiting. So how I've designed it is I'm not doing that busy one. Somewhere in between would be... And now busy. Again. In the left, A. So that's implying a G over B. A, that's implying an A dominant 7th. Now there's a D with the left that's implying a D7 sus 4. Back to good old G major. Okay, so let's do the whole thing slowly again. Moving forward, there's a little interlude where he goes... The usual suspects. The same chords we've played already which is... That's C major. G over B. A7. D7 sus 4. G. One more time interlude. Super slow. And then the second verse happens. Carbon copy of the first verse. That goes on. Now it goes to the bridge which is beautiful. It's just leaving the key of G. It's almost going into a borrowed scale. If you were to call it that, you could call it as G mixolydian. Where you have more access to the F and we don't... The F will kind of replace the F sharp. And the progression will be something like... Remember that faithful friend of ours. The G below middle C. We play that at the end of everything. Every single beat. So the movement of the rhythm is pretty much the same. It's the chilled out one. But what's the melody going? A G F E. What's the bass harmony going? Okay, so... With our G rhythm. Blackbird. Busy. Blackbird. And you kind of stop it with an A7. Voiced this way. Again remember it's a guitar finger style playing way. So he's using three fingers. Or arguably you could play it with three fingers. So you don't want to play more than three notes on the piano. Unless of course you want to have some fun. So I'm going to spend the last few minutes of the video just having a little bit of fun from a piano perspective. With no disrespect to the original song. It's just a way you can vibe with it on this instrument. A few things which could come to help you serve the song a bit better hopefully. Okay, so coming to the bridge again. Blackbird. Blackbird. Blackbird. Blackbird. Blackbird. Blackbird. Blackbird. Blackbird. Into the light. So we're voicing that D G C F. ways to look at it right guys so we pretty much covered all the segments of the song so we have our intro all important where you jump your hand line one black but singing in the dead of night same as the intro line now whenever the chords go long you play that Travis pattern on the busy pattern the groovy pattern when the chords change fast you play the more easier pattern because you don't have time to play that and then bridge right so now to have some piano fun if you will with the song the first thing is you can kind of stack up a note or two with your pinky or the upper fingers of your right hand so you could go things like that makes it slightly thicker if you wish so I'm just adding the pinky on the G and the other thing you can do on the pianos you could spell out the actual chords of the song like these broken wings and learn the only way all this momentum that but sing it in the dead of night spell out the chords a bit especially the more fancier chords that no waiting for this moment to be can a few country things could work any time you play a G you could do that another thing I like to do sometimes just approach each note you don't have to do an overkill of it I'm just showing you to show you each note of the melody stuff like that could work things like that instead of doing good to adding that G as I suggested or you can flam it here and there and try to play it on the piano with a lot of dynamics because that's all we've got really on the piano notes and volumes of notes so can do things like for the bridge right so there's some few fun piano things to do if you want if you don't you can just play the original version as we've been doing throughout this lesson right guys so that was blackbird by the Beatles hope you found the lesson interesting useful fun and hope you can try it on the piano and do let us know what you thought about the lesson in the comments if you'd like to learn something else some other song you can put it out there and don't forget to give the video a like share the video with your musician friends and hit the subscribe button hit the bell icon for notifications and the notation is waiting for you on patreon if you would like to get that thanks a ton cheers and see you in the next one