 Hi everyone, this is Jason Zach from Nathaniel School of Music. In this lesson I'm going to show you about arpeggios and show you five ways to make them sound a lot more melodic and you will find a lot of piano players in their solo music or even during accompaniment There's always something melodic which tends to happen, you know, like even if you're playing like a G minor chord And then changing to another chord the piano player will play like a melody almost a melodic sounding passage along with the vocal line Or in some cases even without the vocal line, right? So the whole idea is on the piano in your right hand, you don't have to just play melodies You can accompany or support that melody with arpeggios Because you have so many fingers in that one hand, right? Why just use one finger out of five when you can use all the five? So we start with a simple arpeggio and then we are going to make that melodic using pretty much the same pattern So we are just going to add a few things and modify a few things along the way, right? Before we get cracking, it'll be awesome if you could consider hitting that subscribe button Hit the bell icon for regular notifications and give the video a like a share and a comment Let's get cracking. So for the purposes of this lesson, I'm just going to take one chord Just to make things easy and then you can obviously build on that So we'll take the G minor chord, which has the notes G B flat D No scale to deal with no chord progression to deal with just one chord because I want to drill this concept throughout this tutorial Okay, and stay tuned till the very end It's very important because there are five techniques and every technique kind of goes into the next one Okay, so I'm gonna start you off with a simple arpeggio pattern Which is starting from the high note because whenever we want to make something melodic with an arpeggio You would prefer to start with the high note the high note rings More strongly in a human being's ear or probably most animals ears because a higher frequency hits us, right? so You want to take the chord and focus on your high note. What is the high note visually? It is The D even sonically it is the D Okay, so you start with a high note and develop a pattern So one standard pattern, which I think you'll be easily able to handle is this one So start with this If you would like you could support this arpeggio in the left hand just with its root G and the right hand The pattern is basically high middle low middle high middle low So I'll keep doing that try to play along with me in the lesson get your keyboards out You can pause the video if you wish Keep that going Add some nice dynamics to it Okay Now if you observe this is sounding nice It's setting the mood for the vocalist to do a melody but in this chapter or in this tutorial You are going to make this sound melodic and unique and give it your own twist or your own flavor So if you take the same chord The first strategy I have for you would be to look at your thumb or look at the lowest note in this case is G and You would want to copy that same G to the higher octave so Okay, and you can toggle your high movement by going To me it's creating a tune Which goes something or you could flip it around So the top notes now are two in number there are two high pitched notes Which kind of toggle to into each other so it could either be or Now the beauty of this technique is the G minor chord doesn't only have one shape right it has many shapes It has three to be exact. So if you go to the next inversion Which is B flat D G also what we call as the first inversion You could now again do the same technique copy the B flat Which is the low note to the top and check this out I Know it's a bit trickier because of the black notes And also your fingers are a bit trapped playing in this inversion you can get used to it. So Then you can do this inversion of G minor which we call as the second inversion. So Which note are we copying the thumb or the low note up the top So we get one more note to add actually you're not adding a new note It's still part of the same chord, but the listener will feel that melody and so will you the composer so And you could play around with that if you want to play more B flats fair enough If you want your melody to be Or maybe I Am playing around with the inversions I'm shifting the inversions That's what my mind is wanting for the melody to grow, right? So that's the first idea the idea is take the same old triad You have three inversions to play around with and then copy the bottom note to the top note And then you have you're figuring out a system to use two high notes and when you have two high notes I think two is better than one. So if you just have that On the high it's not going to give you a very melodic flavor people if you tell them or if you get them to focus on That high note it'll start getting monotonous and then bordering towards annoying. So you have a nice Smallish set of two notes, which is G or You have just two notes to play around with toggle around with and make that melodic in nature So let's move forward now. We are just going to expand the same concept. Let's now do something more So you take the same old chord and now instead of copying the thumb note to the top all I'm going to do is play the arpeggio pattern, which is that and Just study the top note and just see within the vicinity of the chord first off a chord will always be part of a scale So I'm just going to assume the bare minimum deal where the G minor chord Happens to be part of the G minor scale, isn't it? So obviously any other note of the G minor scale will serve well if you want to build a melody Right. So if you take just the top note, remember what I said earlier the top note is what rings in the listener's ear So if you take the top note Boring to just play the D, you know Now what's another note that's also part of the G natural minor Then you can do F octave And you can get like If you can stretch there But always encourage you to sing even though even even if you can't pitch those notes as I'm trying to do You can do it at a lower octave or you can just hum whatever you can Right singing really helps to train your ear and to drive the piano at the same time So whatever I'm singing is in a sense Motivating my right hand to latch on to what I'm singing So I played that I guess because I sang it right so I would always encourage you to sing those top notes And now it starts see seeping into your brain and you can decide whether you like that melody Whether you want to modify that melody and so on and so forth Okay So in a way, this is both Composition and improvisation you're doing things on the fly and you're just observing the results as and when it happens Sometimes you just leave it to chance. You're in the zone of playing the piano and something or the other will will come out of it come out of the keyboard and I'd always encourage you to have a recording app Near you at some points whenever you feel you need to record it or just keep it running for the most part Let's say you practice for 15 minutes. Just keep it on for 15 minutes and you can listen to it later. Okay So that was floating the top note earlier also we floated the top note, but we just octave the bottom to the top So there was not that much melodic freedom or creativity now the top note the high note Keeps moving now you may argue will the chord change right because I am moving a note of the chord Well, you may think it is but because my left hand is still hanging on to that G Which is the most important root, which is the root of the chord It'll still kind of be G minor but a melodic G minor like a melody played over the G minor chord Okay, so that now takes me Onward to the next point or the next way to make this arpeggio sound even more melodic than it currently is Let's move forward. So that brings me to my next way to make arpeggios a lot more melodic Basically, you float the top note, but don't let it be designed or don't let it happen Such that it follows the same arpeggio pattern, which is What is the downside or what is the challenge right now every landing or every melody hit point is governed by the arpeggio Pattern itself so if the arpeggio pattern is high middle low middle like this Then the new note is also going to land at that exact point in other words at the on beat also what I call the boring beat So if you want to keep those notes following the same pattern your melody again won't have rhythmic freedom So in the second part in the first part the melody had Melodic freedom it was able to move around the arpeggio had a voice of its own At a tune of its own now We are trying to enhance the rhythmic framework. So if you have a simple rhythm in your mind, let's say something like this Tongue Tongue Tongue Tongue Tongue Tongue Tongue, very popular It's like almost every arpeggio pattern you will find tongue tongue tongue tongue tongue So if those are your accents or the stress points You see it's a bit irregular right it's going in 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3 1 2 3 so you'll have to modify this arpeggio to serve what's in your head now which is 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 so what what you're doing now is 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 which is rather plain and simple we started like that and now we are trying to convert it to 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 1 2 3 1 2 let's see how that works with the G minor chord this is the normal version now if we do that accent thing with 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 it'll end up being feel a lot more rhythmic freedom or rhythmic interest going on in the performance right bit unpredictable so now the melody is boring but remember the last two points where we said we can float the bottom note to the top to me that sounds like a melody and then if you float it even more if you add other notes of the scale in this case the G minor scale over this accented phrase sing it doesn't have to always be tongue tongue tongue tongue it now 3 3 2 is getting boring so you could play around or you could just sing something and just figure out a way to land those vocal notes which you sung in the top end of your piano and the other fingers will do their part by filling up the missing beats okay so in our description I've I've taught this melodic missing beats concept with a couple of lessons so do check out the melodic missing beats component in our youtube description so it goes um so whatever you want to come out in whichever rhythmic way where did we start where are we now and we are trying to fill up those missing points with the remaining notes of G minor chord so it still sounds nice and rich and you're still playing the G minor chord and it still sounds rich and full and you're still playing the G minor chord there we go so rhythmic interest needs to be brought into your arpeggio you can start with the 3 3 2 and then build it from there any melody which you can sing or think of you need to figure out a way to execute that and I'm encouraging you to start with just one chord so that you don't have to deal with many chord changes and also to show you that even one chord sounds extremely creative if you think about it moving forward to point number four this is something I find very very useful whenever I'm either accompanying a singer trying to develop a movie or a soundtrack for a any visual production this starts making the arpeggio sound almost an entity on its own like that becomes the lead of the music or the song so all you need to think of here you take the our good old G minor chord and think of adding a note to the chord so the common notes which we add to a chord are the two the four the six and in a lot of other cases the seven so two four six seven how do we build those you need to know your intervals so with respect to G the two is A you have two kinds of seconds you have the major second and you have the minor second which is a bit more tense a lot more tense in fact that's your major second A it's your minor second A flat so if you couple that with the G minor chord and just play the arpeggio there we go so you're just adding that A to each G minor chord and you'll be surprised it sounds great everywhere no pattern nothing great I'm just adding the A to the party important to focus on your dynamics where the volume needs to be adjusted as you play in a very flowing hill like manner okay so that was your add two now there's one thing you can do to the add two to make it even more sophisticated remember what we talked about earlier in probably point number two where you can float the top note so why not float the top note and keep this add note going as well it's gonna sound really intense going to E flat just that is enough to create a theme what I like about this now it's also asking a question to the left hand which for the entire lesson has just been doing G what if we access some other notes of the G minor scale kind of works with the same arpeggio I'm only modifying D and E flat in the top end of my right hand and just changing my left hand being very lazy about it changing it after a while wow that B flat sounds quite nice A oh wow some tension there keep a recorder on when you do all this stuff never know you could be making the next biggest thing anyway goes on so we did add two then add two with floating and then add two with the left hand creating a absolute uh uh theatric movement I think now add two is there you can also do an add four or even add flat two some serious tension there also start sounding more like a Phrygian sound which is part of a Phrygian scale very common Spanish scale okay then you can do the add four we don't call it a sus four we say add four you can do the add four add sharp four creating a more diabolic scary feel if you build some rhythmic stuff in the bass that could serve well that's your heavy that's your guitar uh electric guitar and this is like your lead guitar playing together you get the idea so that was add sharp four you can even do like an add flat six there we go but then x files have already done that anyway you're playing x files if you do add flat six pretty much and I guess the add flat six is like the alien sound and then you could do add normal six that's the mysterious sound it's like the James Bond sound you can do an add flat seven add uh well add flat seven is a g minor seventh I love this one minor major seventh major seventh on top so you can add a two you can add a four a six or a seven which are the remaining scale tones if you think about it the chord is one three five which you're committing to and then the other stuff is two four six and seven one two all all the seven notes are covered and with this approach I'm suggesting just do one of the ads don't overdo it because this is already very sophisticated and if you want in the left hand as I showed you earlier you can move things around to your hearts content right and there's a nice follow up lesson to this if you're looking to study add chords only I've come up with a lesson uh some while ago where we talk about these pentatonic fills and some super fast arpeggio runs so if you if you're a speed guy and you want to play these arpeggios with some serious uh speed you know there's a lesson waiting for you in the description you could probably watch that after this one I've given you a lot of options there to fill your arpeggios and fly on the piano if you want to call it that right so I have one more technique to make an arpeggio a lot more melodic before we wind up this particular technique involves the usage of thirds along with a pivot the pivot could be just the name of the chord G so G is going to be there in the chord and you build diatonic thirds of the respective scale so if it's G minor scale diatonic thirds we've written it down in the notes you could check it out so that the diatonic thirds are G B flat A C B flat D C E flat D F E flat G F A G B flat now those are just the thirds what if you combine those thirds with a floating movement along with that G pivot so it's still kind of G minor so there we go so it's kind of still G minor but with all those thirds making it a lot more dynamic a chord to play where can you use this let's say a singer's doing a melody for a really long long time you know and the G minor chord is lingering on for a again a long time you could move it around in this fashion to make the melody more interesting and even the piano part more interesting for example works great if you're doing like eastern songs or you know Hindustani Carnatic music where you don't really change that many chords so if there's an a la up going on on a specific raga you could use this concept by finding thirds up agitating it so you're creating the sense of rhythm for the singer or the audience but then you're moving it around so people also hear the raga in a very different flavor you're giving them thirds while the singer is going to do all the the twists and turns and the gamma cars and so on right guys so let's just have a quick revision and then conclude so first off what did we do we took a vanilla G minor chord right then moved the top note where we copied the bottom to the top with different inversions then what else happened we floated only the top note to get something melodic and try to be diatonic to this particular scale we've chosen G minor then we made that floating stuff more rhythmic by accenting like for example 3 3 2 or you could do something else based on whatever you want to sing that has to be recreated there and then the other fingers will play the missing notes the fourth thing we looked at was to add a note we did add two add four add flat five add flat six and then of course you could change the left hand to play different drones it doesn't just have to be the G the root of this scale and the chord last but not least we looked at floating thirds as I like to call it where you keep an anchor G and just float your thirds around that G and make an arpeggio out of that you could also anchor the D which is the fifth of the chord also allows you to access the top notes more right all of this stuff is ready for you on our patreon page it'll be available as a downloaded pdf all of my handwritten notes for every part trying to summarize everything as you learn it'll be great to get that as you practice it'll be great to get my notes and what's cool is for a subscription of five dollars a month you will get that my handwritten notes for this lesson and everything we've ever done in the past and everything we are going to do in the future right and if you feel that you want something more structured and more regular you can always consider joining Nathaniel school of music for either a workshop or better still a full-on course a six-month course at whichever level you could do foundations an advanced module or whatever it may be so head over to the description if you want or go to our website directly in Nathaniel school dot com you can fill up a form and one of us will reach you and you can also call us or email us or whatsapp us or whatever you want to do also don't forget to subscribe to this channel if you haven't already thanks for watching the video and do give it a like do give it a share and leave us a comment with stuff which you'd like us to cover in a future video thanks a ton cheers