 Hi guys, this is Jason Zak from Nathaniel School of Music. In this exercise, we are going to develop country piano techniques which can be very useful for not just country, also to play folk music, gospel music, some traditional stuff which you would find out there. And the technique basically will involve what we call as walking up or walking down, that's what it's kind of officially called. And it makes a very simple chord progression, something like or a chord pattern, something like this, which sounds very pop-ish or very standard, you know, and the technique which I teach you will make it go from there to something more country. So we are going to go in a very sequential manner. I am first going to talk about the scale, the essential theory, how we are building this technique, the chords, the notes of each chord and all the notation and my handwritten notes will be available and waiting for you on our Patreon page. So if you'd like to pause the video and get yourselves a copy, that will be awesome. It'll also support our channel or else you can just follow along with the lesson. And before I start, it'll be awesome if you haven't already do consider hitting that subscribe button and there's a bell somewhere there, it'll be nice if you can ring the bell. So let's get cracking. So the way I approach the intro of the song, very similar to Nora Jones's Turn Me On and so many other country gospel songs, you'll be able to play so many songs with this technique. All you need to do is know the one chord, the four chord and the five chord of your respective scale. And just for making the lesson more interesting, I'm going to take a scale which is not C major as most of the tutorials tend to do. So we'll try and take B flat major. So B flat major has two flats, namely B flat and E flat. So what's the scale? B flat, C D, E flat, F, G, A, B flat, coming down, B flat, A, G, F, E flat, D, C, B flat. Now the one chord built out of the one, the four chord built out of the fourth degree, then the five chord are all going to be major chords in the major scale as the rules of chord theory are one, four, five is major. So you have B flat major, E flat major and F major which is your one, your four and your five. So the progression we'll deal with now just so that we can get the one, four, five chords going together will be one, four, one, five. So that'll be B flat, E flat, B flat, F. One more time. B flat, E flat, B flat, F. So you could play this progression however you wish. The traditional patterns could be maybe four hits per chord, stuff like this. And I'm also playing some nice inversions in the right hand to make the shifting process a lot easier. You could also do arpeggios. But this exercise will involve a very traditional country walk up, walk down routine over the same chord progression one, four, one, five and to make it very old school country let's do it in three, four which is the waltz kind of time signature. So you're going to want to count one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three and try to count it the way I'm saying it one with some emphasis, two, three, three to drag back to the next one. So one, two, three, one, two and we're doing three with some swing or you can straight it. So by swing and straight I mean how you're subdividing. You could go one and two and three and one and two and three and one and three. Which makes it very swing. You could go one and two and three and one and two and three which makes it more straight, very folk, very perhaps even rock like, in nature. So the run of swing versus straight will sound like this. while straight would be and so on. So we'll start in a very sequential manner. First we'll begin with the bass, the left hand and here's what you do. So what am I doing there? I'm doing root of the scale. Climb to the 4 of the scale which is E flat. Climb down to the root of the scale which brings us back to B flat. Root to the lower 5th which is F. F to the root. Root to the 4th. It's important to know these intervals as later on in your own journey you can transpose this to other scales. So root. So the roots of the chords are going to be emphasized by playing them as dotted minims. That would be 3 counts each. So it goes 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1. So the climbing notes would be the same root of that chord but then it's almost like a ladder. How do I go from B flat to E flat safely? Well it has to most likely be diatonic which is within the scale. So the diatonic ladder like motion or the climbing stepwise motion would be B flat, C, D, E flat because B and C sharp are not part of the scale. So B flat, C, D, E flat. So we are counting it as dotted minim or 3 counts. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. If you would like you can lift your hand at the 3. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. So first off we are going from the 1 to the 4th. That journey would be 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, the 4th. Now we do the climb down motion ladder down which is 4 down to 1. Again we wait on the 1 for the dotted minim and then 1 down to 5. For variety we are just going down to 5. So up to the 4, down to the 1, down to the 5 and now back to the 1. The whole story. 1, 1 to the 4 chord E flat. So if I just play the chords in the right hand to showcase this journey. 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, E flat has now come in. 1, 2, 3, back to B flat. 3, 1, 2, 3, 5 chord. Back to B flat. 1, 2, 3, E flat. 1, 2, 3, 1, back to B flat. 1, 2, 3, 2, the 1 and then we loop it. So the country technique will now be you play B flat here as always. The same line in the bass and you harmonize it in the right hand with what we call as upper thirds or you can just say thirds. So you take B flat, its diatonic third would be the D. So you build this kind of set of thirds which are all diatonic. So any time you see B flat there I want you to whack D. Any time you see C there you whack E flat. Any time you whack D you whack F. Any time you play E flat you whack G. And what's nice is you can see the chart we have for you which shows you pretty much all the thirds and also the shapes of the thirds. Shapes are nothing but is it white to black? Is it black to white? Is it white to white or is it black to black basically? All those permutations visually it will be very easy for you to imagine the interval or imagine the combo of notes and then play it. So now we add the thirds to our normal bass line which we developed earlier. So that will go 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1 and watch my fingers. In my right hand I am doing thumb, middle, crossing and then index. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1 coming down. 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. You can already make it a little country by sneaking in this. You can glide to the D if you can. Then instead of just going to G you can do. If you are not getting it nicely enough or confidently enough don't bother. So coming down, back to the 5, up to the E flat. Back to B flat which is the root. And remember we are keeping that walls 3 by 4 going. So 1, 2, 3, 1. Bother so much about fingering because the next techniques are anyways going to force 1 or 2 notes to be tied up to 1 or 2 fingers. So let's move forward. So the next addition to this country walk up walk down technique would then be to add the root. So that's B flat. The root of the scale not the root of the chord. So you are doing B flat with... Well you could do the root in both hands. I am just going to do it in one hand for now. The right hand up top. Not here, here. What's the root of B flat major? B flat. So 2, 3. Pretty much every note you are going to play in the lick or in this run or this climbing technique will be complimented by the root note on the top. 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. And now when I drop down to the F because I am approaching the F and also my hands are going to get very, very stretched out. I am going to choose another anchor note. So these anchor notes as I am calling them are the root of the scale and the fifth of the scale. So you could use either of them to kind of thicken or enrich this particular base movement. So I am using the root up to the 4. I am still keeping the root because I am going... And now when I go down to the 5 I am adding the fifth of the scale which is F which is easy on the fingers and also a much more pleasant sound than retaining the root for that A because for the 5 chord when you land there might as well play the 5 of the B flat scale. So follow. The pretty much the same third movement going on except for that additional note on the top register of the performance. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2. Now you want to cross up, cross down your fingers and then to allow you to keep F on the bottom and keep the F going as we climb back to the root of the chord. So whole story... 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2. F. 1, 2, 3. 1, 2. Going up. 2, 3, 1. Now back to the B flat. 4, back to the third root. Okay, so now the next variation or the next addition to this whole party would be to add pretty much the same anchor note as what you are doing in the right hand but by playing that anchor note at the subdivisions or at the off beats, not at the 1, 2 and 3 of the 3 by 4 but at the ends. So first off let's look at a straight performance that means 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and where the thumb of the left hand or the topmost voice of the left hand will be playing this upper B flat. Let me demonstrate and then show you. So you have this B flat at every and 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and 2 and 3 1 and 2 and down, 1 and 2 and 3. Remember there you have to change your drone or your anchor to F in both hands at the upper register. So whole story, 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and 3 and down, climbing. You could also do B flat up here and you could do F here pretty much any of the anchor notes which are B flat in F and 2 and 3. I quite like that as well. So that's straight eighths. You can also swing it 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and 2 and 3. Swinging. It's just this one thumb note which is giving you that element of swing or a straight feel because that's the only note or the only finger playing a note which is in a subdivision. The rest are all 1, 2, 3, 1, 2. All are on the beat. 1, 2 and 3 and 1 and down, down. So that's pretty much the technique guys and you can use it for well turn me on would work good. You can use it for a lot of other tunes. You can use it for maybe a gospel song like Amazing Grace. You just have to play it around depending on which chord. That's F. I went to the 4. Maybe an overkill of the technique but you get the idea. What about something like this? You can modify the tune or I went to the 5 by mistake but you get the idea. And yeah you can do it with maybe folk songs, gospel songs as I showed you, rhymes, explore the technique and you could also just try to sing your own melody as you walk up or walk down. So that's the idea behind the technique. It's just a nice way in a nutshell to kind of describe this when a chord is very lazy or very boring you kind of juice it up by pushing it to the next chord. So it creates this harmonic movement. The harmony is not just the chords, it's how you glide or how you move from one chord to the other and that's the beautiful essence of country music and folk music in general because they take simple 1, 4 and 5 chords and make magic out of that because of these bass movements. And in a way even blues music has a lot of this climbing up walking bass, even jazz music has it. So a lot of these genres rely on the bass to create that movement between the harmony to project the chord a lot better for your brain. And just to conclude the lesson I'd like to just show you a few embellishments which I just keep doing or I keep itching to do, I can't help it, it just happens so I'll definitely gonna walk you all of that. That may not be in our notes but the rest of this entire video, the notation, my handwritten notes, planning, preparing for this entire activity are all waiting for you as booklets on Patreon, you'll also get a midi file so you can see the notes using any virtual midi player of your choice. So let's get to some embellishments. So I'm going, so I'm doing this, instead of just doing G when I land, I'm doing a, I can either do a fast glide or a fast grace note as it's called or a slow one, I can do, so I could do the slow version, the fast version, I could do a nice turn there, a chromatic movement where F and G are ringing but this F sharp is a very sneaky addition, it's very soft so 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, you barely hear it, so you don't want to, you don't want to ever highlight that F sharp, that'll be a counterproductive thing, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 coming down, okay, I could do a little flick of the semitone after G, mind you some notes sound a bit awful but some sound really nice because that note gives you that mixolydian modal change which is a nice embellishment in your performance, so whole thing, so it's almost very vocal like it's something you would also sing as a singer, that sort of thing, so you don't want to overdo it but you get the idea, okay and you can also play a few things staccato and legato that adds to the dynamics, you know, legato, softer, maybe staccato, legato, things like this will add a lot of impact to the song especially if you're following the lyrics of the song in a very musical way, so that's about the lesson guys, so this was a country piano exercise to practice walk ups and walk downs on the piano, very common technique used by all instrumentalists not just piano players, even guitar players do this stuff a lot and hope you found the lesson useful in the description, we'll leave you some more videos which you could check out around this technique, a few more country lessons and for those of you may not know, I release daily riffs on a separate website which allows, for those of you don't know I release daily riffs on a separate website even though those are YouTube videos, we filter them really well with emotion, with genre, with time signature, time feel and a lot of other things, so we leave you a link in description to head over right there and listen to some of my country gospel compositions which you may find useful or hopefully it will inspire you, you can also learn the riffs by going to the end of the video where I played very slowly, you can also download backing tracks for each of these riffs, midi files and all of this will be available waiting for you on the website, have fun with the lesson, hope you enjoyed it, catch you in the next one, cheers.