 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this video, we are going to focus on two very interesting things, one genre and one technique, and put them together into a nice compact tutorial. I'm going to call this video Indian Arpeggios, or maybe we should also call it Eastern Arpeggios. You'll find these sort of rhythms a lot in the Eastern parts of the world, like the Middle East, India, the subcontinent in general. And a lot of these cultures have a rhythm pattern which is based on a beat division system, which you need to know, which probably didn't originate that quickly in the West as it did in the East. And it features triplets dividing the beat by three. So in this video, I'm first going to teach you triplets, what is a triplet, how you divide it, how you count it, etc. Then we are going to create arpeggio patterns rather organically, if you ask me. It's going to be something where I just give you a kind of a prompt or a guide, and then you can take it to town. And the left hand is purely organic, but we will try and keep it as diatonic as possible. For today's lesson, I've chosen the D major scale which is two sharps, F sharp, G, A, B, C sharp, D. Okay, you can do this on any scale, which I like D because it kind of suits my singing voice as you heard in the intro video. So yeah, and to support all of these methodologies or all these techniques, we have all of the exercises notated for you and waiting on our Patreon page. The staff notation is there as a PDF download. You also have MIDI files. It's waiting for you on our Patreon. Before we get started, it'll be awesome if you could hit that subscribe button and turn on that bell icon for regular notifications. Or you could go through the video and maybe at the end of the video, don't forget to hit that subscribe button and turn on the bell icon for regular notifications. So I'm taking something really simple in the right hand, a fifth chord on the key of D. So that would be D, A, D. D major's root is D. D major's fifth is A. D major's octave is D. A nice power chord, but not played in the lower parts of the piano, played in the higher part above middle C. You could also invert this chord, A, D, A. And for the entire lesson, that's all it's going to be. It's just going to be the D fifth chord, maybe in this position and maybe in this position. I may use this shape or this shape. If you get used to this shape, this is the root position of the fifth chord. That'll be thumb, middle finger and pinky. And this is the inversion of the fifth chord, which will be thumb, index finger and the little finger. There we go. So we are going to play that as an arpeggio. Before we play the arpeggio, I'll give you a few theoretical things and so on and so forth. And the left hand will get acquainted within the D major scale itself. Which are those seven notes. And you'll be playing bass notes to compliment the fifth chord in the right hand. For example, D goes quite well with D fifth. F sharp goes really well and it also adds color because it's a new note, isn't it? D goes beautifully well. That also adds some color. And A makes it a very suspended, dominant kind of sound which resolves back to D. And pretty much all the notes of the D major scale will sound great in the bass. D, E, F sharp, G. And look at my right hand. It's just holding the fifths. That's it. C sharp, D. This goes on. D, C sharp, A, G. They all go well. So we'll kind of build chord progressions without even playing triads, without even playing your usual run of the mill chords. We'll just use the fifth chord in the right hand and the bass note movement in the left hand. And the bass notes I leave to you, it'll be completely as per what you enjoy playing. So the first arpeggio pattern which I've talked about a lot in my arpeggio videos, you can check out a few links in the description. We have some basic ones and we have some fairly advanced ones. So you should definitely scan through our YouTube channel. A few arpeggio links will be in the description. So if you take a traditional arpeggio, this is how we would play it and count maybe eighth notes. One and two and three and four. I'm starting from the lowest note. I guess that works. So this is, you could argue, a simple or a trivial arpeggio. One and two and three and four. Now this is by no means triplets. We're not playing triplets here. So what we need to do is change this around. But I just wanted to start here from ground zero and this can get you places. If you change the bass, it tells a story. I'd encourage you to sing along, sing anything you feel really. Even I'm just singing what's coming to my head at the moment. So that's your eighth note study and more on these eighth note variations in a lot of my earlier arpeggio videos. So I'm not going to spend too much time on that. I'm going to go straight into what I'm calling as Indian triplets or Indian triplet arpeggios. So before we get into even the Indian-ness, so to speak, we will learn the triplet feel, which is easily practiced with two arpeggios, which I'm going to show you. The first style of arpeggios is take the same one, but swing it like we do across the globe. So to swing, you just delay the and one and slightly later. So one might argue you're getting into the world of triplets and a good way to count it would be one and two and three and four and one and two and keep the pulse and one and two and three. You could also say one triplet, two triplet, but I think that's a tongue twister. So you might as well go one and two and three and four. Or in India, we say, tuck it, tuck it, tuck it, tuck it, tuck it. That's the easiest way to say this. Tha meaning the one, kitta meaning the anders. So now bringing that in one and a, two and a, three and a. So when you don't play the and, one and a, when you leave out the and and then access the a, you pretty much get traditional swing as we know it. Yes, there can be percentages of swing which you can mess around with. All musicians like to do that. But for the most part, you can kind of proudly call it swing by just going one and a, two and a, three and a. One and a, two and a, three. Now a lot of musicians will not count this as one and a, two and a. We'll continue to say one and two and three and four by just delaying the one and which is straight eighth notes. You're just delaying that by, you know, there we go. It's just delayed. So if you can feel that with from within, you don't need to count triplets, but you need to count triplets to play the rest of what I'm going to teach you today. So let's get to saying one and a and now bring in the other notes of the arpeggio. And it's pretty much what I did earlier. But we do something like there we go. This is swing swinging straight swing. Okay. I'm not going to spend too much time comparing swing and straight. Right after this video, you need to head over to my video on swing versus straight. We leave the link in the description. I play a variety of instruments and show you the differences between playing music swing. I demonstrated on the guitar and a few other instruments who do check that out. So straight in a nutshell is 50% of the beat swing kind of triplets. Or delaying the and from the 50% mark, you could say traditionally to the 66.67 mark or the two thirds fractional mark. And then you also have the one third, which already starts sounding Indian, which I'm going to break down slowly as we move forward. So that's your swing. So why not bring in triplets as well and create a nice triplet arpeggio, which would be all the divisions. So I've talked about swing earlier. versus. Triplet you're playing pretty much every division. Since there's a lot going on, I would encourage you to maybe slow it down a bit. Relax your wrist. Maybe move your wrist in circles. I'll relax it or use the entire arm to play your music. So. Now for the triplets, I have two interesting arpeggios notated for you. One is you can just go your merry way with start just this pattern. LMH, LMH as I'm calling it, low middle high, low middle high. So you can also create an interesting variation where you go, where you're changing the start of the downbeat instead of the one you're making it five. I quite like this triplet better. And again, organically change your bass. Maybe one note every bar. I like that F sharp. That's the third five play with some dynamics. So these are your sort of vanilla patterns, which I've developed now getting into some Indian stuff. Okay. So I have quite a few Indian triplet patterns notated as arpeggio patterns. So the first one I have here, which I'm calling as Indian arpeggios would be, I'll play it and then teach you this one. So what's going on here? I'm playing one and a two and one. So instead of playing everything at one in the ear, two in the ear, I'm playing one, the ear of the one, and then two in the end of the two. So it creates a very good contrast together. Okay. Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na. I hope Sting will like that. Na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na na. Okay, so that's how you can kind of create some Indian-ness because in the western world, it's just swung. And that's the only use case of the triplets. guess that culture traditionally would have while in Indian music you tend to use pretty much all the triplets and more so moving on to triplet pattern number two let me play it and then teach that'll be so what I do there one and a 2 and I'm skipping the downbeat of the two which is gonna sound really cool one and a 2 and a 1 and a 2 compared to the old one I struck it on the down of the two 2 and 2 and now moving to pattern number three a few more to go so let me play it and then teach so quite predictable really it's one and two and three and four and both striking the one hand and then you kind of leave out the or you can just linger on the and to the of the beat and in these sort of cases in all these cases rather you need to try and imagine some kind of a guest musician which is more of a ghost rather than a real human if you don't have a friend jamming with you so keep a basic kind of groove in your head it could be something like boom just imagine something to play along to I know there's a metronome I know in this day and age there are a lot of backing tracks which you could also consider but this will be a nice way to internally feel a drum groove while you practice you know so okay and then the one we are learning now okay moving on now a little bit more briskly to the next Indian pattern which would be I'll play it and show you so this is called actually in Western music as a polyrhythm or a hemiola it's a so if I maintain a pulse one two three the right hand is going one two three one two three one so it's almost a three against the normal two which is going on in my other hand but actually speaking these are quarter note triplets a quarter note triplet is nothing but an eighth note triplet with every alternate beat as a rest so one and a two and a three and a four and a one and a two and a three and that's how you count it a lot of drum music will go on and on like this in a lot of the Indian folk music one and a three and up and that's your quarter note triplet okay we have a nice polyrhythm video which we made so do check that out in the description so this was the fourth one one and it's all about keeping that count one and a two and a three and a four and a one and as you keep that count going it should work out okay so now I've given you four rather simple ones now I'm gonna call the next few as combos that means I'm gonna incorporate a couple of the rhythms we used earlier and just put them together let me play you one and then teach it so what what started it off the hemiola or the quarter note triplet then two three and three and four and three and a nothing three and a four and three and a four sometimes I tend to get carried away and do some of the old rhythms but you get the idea try to maybe pin yourself down on one or two of these at every 10-15 minutes and then change it as you practice so let me play that again okay moving to the next combo pattern it will be swing and then all in all the triplets so that sounds quite simple actually so swing triplet swing triplet swing triplet swing eighth note triplets right a combo of what we did earlier the left hand is left to be organic but if you see I'm playing simple stuff I'm just playing octaves either on the pulse or I'm just holding them and I'm choosing a note diatonically of course I don't want to play a note like maybe E flat which is not part of the D major scale unless you really like that so moving on to the next pattern we have just a few more left so we go let me play it and then teach fairly simple combo right all the triplets in lmh and then one and or in this case two and one and two and four and one and two and put some dynamics always imagine you're playing with a vocalist or a band or a drummer at least there we go it's the next rhythm let's move on to the next one I'll play it slowly and then teach so this is a combination of eighth notes which we learned at the very beginning of the lesson normally eighth notes right so I'm combining that with triplets so you go you probably would benefit by saying and look at the arpeggio lmlmh that's what I'm doing you may want to spend some time focusing on the triplets very well to compare it with the eighth notes and generally try to get that flavor of the triplets inside you I've done an interesting video called triplets or not question mark so it's basically a lot of the myths or a lot of the wrong notions of what a triplet actually is and I think in that video there are almost all of them so we leave that also in the description most of what you think is a triplet even as a seasoned musician is not a triplet so do watch that video triplet divides the beat into three units that's that's what it is so that was about the quaver meeting up with the eighth note triplet let me play that again there we go and moving on so I'll play you the next one and teach so it's just the same triplets but eighth note in the third beat I've introduced a semi quaver triplet or a sixteenth note triplet sixteenth note triplets divide a beat into six equal units so it's just going to be double speed so slow your whole performance down I would imagine so we have one more for you that would make it a nice round number of 10 let me play it and then teach quite a few combos that I think there are three combos going on you can do four if you want I thought three was enough and more for at least my head so the first beat is kind of swinging second beat third beat are just your usual eighth note triplets and then that's your Indian triplet combo that's one and there we go and an honorable mention needs to be given to a rhythm which we do very often which is actually triplets let me play it for you there we go you know what I'm talking about roadhouse blues and so on right so might as well have the roadhouse blues arpeggios also in this set so that'll make it a non-round figure but nevertheless it has to be squeezed in now all of these variations have been conveyed to you with just a simple fifth chord in root position you could invert it you could also do this over an entire big chord progression I didn't want to complicate things with an entire set of harmonic rules and inversions and all of those theoretical things so I've just kept a simple fifth chord so that we can exclusively focus our attention on the rhythmic aspects of the arpeggio right guys so that was about Indian triplet arpeggios I hope you found the lesson useful and if you're not an Indian musician hopefully it gives you some insights into some of the musical movements practiced in this part of the world and if you are an Indian musician probably you could use this technique while jamming with your friends with arpeggios so we never seem to have enough of them these arpeggios so all of the notes are waiting for you on our Patreon channel just for a five dollar a month subscription do consider heading over there it will also support our channel and what we do greatly thanks a ton for watching the video cheers and catch you in the next one