 Hi guys, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson, we are going to learn how to play folk music on the piano or at least develop a folk style that can be used to play a multiple variety of genres, be it rock music, pop music or country music, whatever it might be. We can look at these styles or these techniques. There are about five of them, maybe more, but at least five rough categories inside those five a fair amount of rhythm patterns. So we'll have those rhythm patterns notated for you. We'll also have my hand written notes to give you some tips and some easy ways to remember this stuff along the way. But this entire lesson will be based on an extremely simple chord in the right hand and something extremely basic in the left hand as well, the most popular intervals used in music. So I think that's what makes folk music sound really accessible and really pleasant sounding and very common across the entire globe. Everyone seemed to accept this style of playing. And I've just tried to put it on the piano and have a defined thing for the right hand and a defined task for the left hand. And all you need to know is a scale and a few intervals, the simplest and the most important interval. So throughout this lesson, we are going to deal with thirds in the left hand and we are going to do it with fifths or a fifth chord in the right hand. Before we get started with all the patterns and the essential theory involved, it'll be awesome if you could consider hitting that subscribe button and turning on the bell icon for regular notifications. Also, these patterns will be notated for you on our Patreon page. Do consider getting yourselves a copy. Let's get cracking. So first off for this entire tutorial, we're going to look at D major scale. D major has two sharps. F sharp, C sharp and then D. I chose this scale because it suits different vocal registers for different genders. So I think anyone could be comfortable enough to sing on D. C sharp is also nice or D flat. We can do it later. But D is a fairly comfortable scale to sing and also for a boy, girl or even an adult to sing on. It should be fine. So let's look at the scale again. D major two sharps, namely F sharp and C sharp. D, E, F sharp, G, A, B, C sharp, D. It's good to write this down and we are going to remember this scale in a couple of ways. First off, you need to know the degrees. So D is the one, E is the two, F sharp is the three, G is the four, A is the five, B is the six, C sharp is the seven and octave. Why the degrees are important is those degrees would be played in the bass and those would essentially be chord roots of the chord progression you desire to play. So if it's a D major chord, you need to play D in the left hand and a very static chord that I'm going to teach you shortly in the right hand. And this base note will work very well with the static chord in the right hand. So what is the static chord now? Let's get to that first. The static chord is built using the root, the fifth and the octave. Root, fifth, octave. Okay, so you can do D, A, D. Now you can even invert that chord if you don't have space for the left hand to move around. You can play A, D, A. That also sounds nice or A, D, A if you want a more deeper sound. So root position, D, A, D and inversion, A, D, A. Let me help you with the fingering as well. Because throughout the video we are going to do the same thing in the right hand. So D, A, D, thumb, middle finger, pinky finger. Inversion, A, D, A, thumb, index finger and pinky finger. Now the left hand is free to experiment. Now even before I give you the patterns, if you just look at some stuff in the left hand, just single notes. You're already making some decent music. If you have a pattern going around here, maybe an arpeggio. Just exploring the scale in the bass. Already sounds familiar I guess. Then that's F sharp. So you should remember those numbers. 3, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3. It's for us if you want to count G, MA, GA, RE. It's a fair enough way to play the song free-falling. You might be also observing or noticing in this video, how am I going to get the melody going? Well, this is an accompaniment lesson. So we are primarily doing this to play with a band or sing or record in a studio. So this is a way to voice your chords in a clean style and also in a folk style while we are at it. So the general principle is exploration of notes in the left hand as a bass which will be chord roots of whatever chord is printed in your chord chart and the right hand holds its ground with a fifth chord. Just that. And just one more additional thing if you can execute in the left hand which will make it sound instantly folk. Even if I don't do a rhythm you'll get what I'm saying. Work out your thirds. So in the left hand we are trying to do thirds. D to F sharp, E to G, F sharp to A, G to B, A to C sharp, B to D, C sharp to E, D to F sharp. These are all your diatonic thirds. D to F sharp, E to G, F sharp to A. So work out all your thirds within the scale. You might want to also map them out. White, black. E, G is white, white. F sharp is black, white. G, B, A, C sharp, B, D, C sharp, E. Now this will sound instantly folk-like in nature if you couple this with the fifth chord in the right hand. Especially things like A, C sharp where you'd expect a normal player would play an A major but you're playing that same D fifth to join with that A and C sharp and with the bass it sounds even cooler. Stuff like this. You can still be pretty melodic in the bass. This is almost like a banjo ecosystem because on a banjo also you'll have very consistent notes being used like the open strings G, D and so on and in the left hand I'm doing floating of the thirds. Let's just give this a spin. Right hand still with the fifths or fifth chord. Thirds in the left hand and as we are going to now see we are going to do some unique rhythms maybe to simulate certain genres or styles but keep the same ecosystem. Left hand is going to do some thirds diatonically. The right hand will do fifths and let's now look at some patterns. The first pattern I have for you is the ballad style, the traditional ballad style and we'll slowly try and graduate it to something or a genre which I tend to enjoy and perform a lot the rock style. So let's see how that goes. Right so with the ballad style of playing keep your fifth chord shape in the right hand and the left hand obviously with the thirds but just try and ensure that the left hand is slower than the right hand in some way. So you could adopt a couple of what I call is ratios. You could say one is to four where you play four hits in the right hand and one hit in the left hand with thirds. Right hand is playing the fifth chord and then you change. One is to four. One, two, three, four, one but in some cases the song might want to change the chord roots quicker. So you may want to consider one is to two. One, two, change, four, one, two, three, four. You may not want to do one is to one. Especially when the two hands are colliding together it there's no value rhythmically in that case. The hands have to do something different and if you're on maybe a triplet feel or a three by four feel you can do stuff like this. So if I take one is to two or one is to four and just play around the choice of notes is up to you. You can take a progression like one, five, six, four. Very common. When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me. No woman, no crime. Oh. Stuff like that. Any song which comes to your mind like a one, five, six, four is very common. Or figure out the chords of the actual song and maybe maybe things like you raise me up on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy when I am strong. I am on your shoulder to more than I can. So I'm literally figuring out the chords as I'm singing. So you raise me up. No, you raise me up. Not so good. You raise me up. That's quite nice. I like the minor there. You could do it. You could only figure out what chords you want or just go with the chord charts. So the chord charts are B minor, G major, D over F sharp. It's probably they are B minor, G and maybe a five. I love the five in this folk style. I even love the, the one chord with a three base D over F sharp because there are a lot of unique chords formed. Even the two will form like an E minor seven. So that's the ballad style. You can do a fair amount of material really. A lot of Coldplay songs will work in this environment stuff like a lot of songs work. Now to make this ballad style maybe a bit more rock like you could do a little bit of syncopation with the two hands like this is a nice pattern your true colors. I have no idea what I'm singing. I'm just figuring out stuff which comes to mind. I'm just trying to also hopefully convey to you that this can work with a variety of songs in different genres. It doesn't matter what genre you're playing on. You know, you can still adopt this technique. So the ballad technique I think would be my go-to for most material and it's a very safe way to play. But now we want to do stuff which is a bit more entertaining rhythmically. So just to make this a bit more rhythmically active we can start with this sort of a rhythm a left-left-right left-left-right kind of a rhythm which I think will work for a lot of folk styles. So if you take D with its third F sharp with the chord there there is a lot of movement right compared to that ballad system which we did earlier. This is my fight song. Take back my life song. Stuff like that. You can do pop songs and now let's make this a bit more groovy. You can do maybe that. A lot of the rock stuff with this technique. So let's try and do this with a few more pieces of music or just keep it simple with the kind of rock technique. Let's break down the technique actually and then do some songs. Let's see. Pretty much a snare drum at every 2 and 4 right. We'll have this notated for you so do check it out. Maybe is a song like that song which Maroon 5 ripped off from Johann Packable Cannon with no copyright issues. Memories. Memories. Let's try some beatless. Pretty much do this for a lot of songs and even perhaps change the vibe of it. So we have a we will rock you start which is left left right and then it goes into this. So I'm calling this a more folk rock style. More bordering towards the rock department. Let's now move on to some very traditional stuff which you can use for you know some country music some gospel music as well. So with a traditional approach what you could do is do a snare drum hit in the right hand one two but at the ends one and two and three and four and one and two and almost like a march you do your left right left right in a marching style. So left will be the root then the right will play the chord which is the simple fifth chord then you could move towards the third but don't collide the two hands that's the beauty of this country very old school technique. What you need to do though to make it a bit more authentic would be to control your legato and staccato in the right hand. So you could do a staccato in the right for certain pieces of music or else put even hold on your pedal or legato it right. So you can do some simple folk songs you know this land is your land this land is my land oh this land was made for you and me okay so just simple thoughts oh what else take me home to the place I belong oh where's Virginia oh take me home a country roads sing something else as well which maybe you know something I think where I'll definitely not forget the lyrics to would probably be this song. Twinkle twinkle little star you get the idea what you are so now to make the technique a bit more interesting let me show you the rhythm so instead of just doing I'm adding I'm breaking my fifth chord um cha ta ta stuff like that and these are very much borrowed from the guitar and the banjo especially the finger style players so practice as well maybe you can even just do a run up around the scale and when you practice this stuff now that you've got the thirds and the fifths under the belt practice it organically if you observe in this lesson there's not too much of a structured plan or an exercise routine it's just fifth chords in the right hand thirds in the left hand and I'm giving you these five techniques so practice them with different songs maybe do it as an exercise and even I would encourage you to compose your own songs you know so start by walking up the scale that would be helpful thirds in this rhythm of course we just did the country umpa rhythm now when this collides you can use the other inversion of the fifth chord let's do that again inversion you can kind of continue your left hand and do some more cool stuff in the right hand at this stage you're getting to a point where the drums or you should have listened to a few folk genres and a few folk performances and you just try and get the drums into your system so I'm just imagining like a it could even be a very Indian drum sounding instrument so and it can all start from umpa going to something like this yeah I'd encourage you to explore and move forward with this on your own as well okay we have a couple more options let's look at the pop genre the pop genre is pretty easy you just adopt this core rhythm okay and it kind of sounds folk as well as modern pop at the same time I feel one E and two those are the hits we also call this structure as a thresio thresio if you want to make the left hand a bit more interesting you can split up the the thirds instead of doing it together you can go there we go a lot more dancy 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 so the thresio we initially did then we sneaked in the you can make this a lot more traditional and folk like by combining the two hands by kind of arpeggiating between the thirds and the fifth chord there we go so this is the eventual technique I'd like you to get into of course you could start with the thresio which is fair enough build it and then interact the two hands there we go so let's just roll with it and see what happens or keep the simple thresio or the busy one of course you need to figure out a way to sing this or sing your favorite tune or your composition along with this so it's important to jam with this as well you know na na na na na na na na na na na now just to conclude the lesson I have one more pattern which will kind of appeal to a more Indian audience or an eastern audience because it uses triplets I usually end a lot of my rhythm pattern lessons with an Indian pattern so why not do this one as well with an Indian style so let's take the same thirds and the fifths and break it up with triplets this way this could work so left right right right right right right so this is the basic pattern roll it over triplets and build but tuck it tuck it tuck it tuck it triple it triple it you need to get that vibe into your head can build on it with a lot of ghost notes as well there we go that's triplets again thirds in the left hand and the fifth chord in the right hand and just to conclude the lesson you may be thinking everything I played was on a major scale right you can obviously adopt this technique to a minor domain or maybe a modal domain like a mixolydian scale let's just deal with a couple before we pack up it just feels a bit unfinished without covering a couple of other scales so if you take the minor to our luck the fifth chord is going to remain absolutely the same it's just that the left hand will bring in some of those darker minor intervals right and you can do all the earlier rhythms see that's the folk technique I told you under the kind of the groovy modern folk technique but look how it sounds on the minor you could also play over the harmonic minor natural so that would make it harmonic and then you can even consider a mixolydian which I think is very folk like just doing that with a mixolydian seventh and the five come down maybe a flat six in there just the six and the seven make it very folk like whether it's major or mixo right guys so you can take thirds in the left hand you can take fifths in the right hand and try to don't think of this as an exercise think of it as an approach with a variety of techniques to explore what I'm calling for want of a better word I guess the folk music style on the piano and the piano is limited but at the same time it is powerful in a few ways too we are trying to pull out a few concepts from the banjo from the guitar from the mandolin from the violin try to put it on the on the piano but then we do have some limitations we can't play like them and after you emulate some of what they do you can then make it your own and then try and add your hands to coordinate with each other which sometimes is very difficult on a guitar or a stringed instrument because one hand will hold while the other hand will will provide the energy for the instrument here the two hands are kind of independent of each other which is why on the piano we practice hand independence a lot so I hope you will find this lesson useful to sing along and play to even compose it's a good compositional environment and it's pretty simple it's almost theory free so to speak there's barely any concepts you just need the major scale you need thirds and a fifth chord with an inversion you're pretty much done so thanks a ton for watching the video do stay tuned to our YouTube channel for a lot more tutorials to do that it'll be nice if you can hit the subscribe and turn on the bell icon for regular notifications the notation for these patterns in a more structured way will be waiting for you on our Patreon page do consider heading over there and becoming a member cheers thank you and catch you in the next one