 Hi guys this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music and in this rather detailed lesson let's look at a very cool approach towards playing the piano which is going to allow you to play the melody, the rhythm and the harmony in just one hand that's going to be the right hand. So it's a very powerful technique and it definitely allows your left hand to obviously do a lot more than what it could. It's not tied down to playing just block chords or simple arpeggios which anyways sound muddy right. So I tend to always play my chords from middle C on the piano around there not too high because it can sound too sharp and sort of confuse the listener from the vocalist. I'll keep it around my middle C and anytime I go lower I try to focus more on bass lines and rhythm patterns and so on and so forth. So the bass hand or the left hand needs to get or can get freed up a lot to do the bass duties and the drum duties following the groove of the song and not clutter of the chords. So this technique sort of helps both purposes. It allows you to play all aspects of music in a nice crystal clear way and also give your left hand a lot more opportunities to play. So let's get started. As always we take a scale to begin a lesson. We'll take G major scale in this lesson. So G F sharp E D C B A G. So this is your G major scale. So get used to that. Perhaps you could write it down and the first goal which we are going to try and achieve is to play the scale using chords in a simple arpeggio pattern going up and down just going up and down the scale. So normally we do that quite often right we go G A B C D E F sharp G G F sharp E D C. We have like a fingering technique and whatnot but what I'm going to encourage you to do now is to kind of play the scale with the melody line of the scale pretty much at the extreme fingers. That's your pinky and your ring finger. So you go something with these fingers. So there's no real finger technique because you have to accommodate the chords which are going to be coming up right. So the first thing I want to talk about here is we are going to practice playing the scale up and down just like we normally do in the classical piano and the tried and tested systems but we are going to play it with the chords backing the melody. It's going to sound like this and then I'm going to break it down for you in detail. So it'll be something like so if you observe I was actually singing the top note of every chord. I did G A F sharp G and each of the melody notes which I just sang was just the scale degrees going up 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 octave and then 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 going down the scale. And if you heard it right you may have observed that I was doing it with a lot of harmony with a lot of rhythmic movement. So that's exactly what we are going to do and guys if you haven't already please subscribe to our channel and leave us a comment if you'd like to learn something else or something more in the field of music. Okay so let's get started now to decipher what I played now. What I'm doing is with the top melody G or with the top note G played by the pinky finger I'm going to limit our study for this lesson to just the one the four and the five chords that's the one major the four major and the five major as we know in a major scale there are seven buildable triads and one four and five are major or positive happy sounding chords two three six are minor or sadder sounding chords and the seven is diminished which we rarely use at least for normal pop kind of music. So in this lesson we are just going to look at the one four and five the major chords. Okay let's figure out what the major chords are G major G B D okay and it's important to write this chord down in a circle maybe if you have a book you could write it down in a circle so that you can figure out all the close inversions which is G B D B D G D G B right these are all the close positions which you're going to really need to know in this lesson okay G B D B D G D G B and all these three shapes of the G major chord kind of sound the same but the top end of each of these chords is something which you need to observe in this version of G major the D tends to stand out because it is a higher frequency so it sort of rings more it resonates more to our ears and whatever the case is we seem to hear that predominantly so that's D that's G that's B okay so hence it is very very important to learn all these three shapes you can bring out the melody line in the chord so that's D G B okay so that's your one chord G major similarly you have the four chord and you have the five chord the four chord is C major just C E G as you may already know and let's build the shapes C E G E G C G C E right so G stands out C stands out E stands out right so that's your C major chord and last but not least we have the five chord or the dominant chord as some people call it the D major chord which is D F sharp A this is the five chord of the G major scale D F sharp A F sharp A D A D F sharp these are all the shapes of the D major chord there are three shapes for any triad at least in closed position so you go A is on top D is on top F sharp is on top right try to even sing it so you're more aware when you do play the melody okay that's pretty much all the information you're going to need theoretically at least in this lesson so what what I what I'm aiming at now is if you touch the note G okay and you touch it with with the extreme finger either the ring or the pinky the fingers to the right of your right hand you need to support this G with a chord and what chord will work best with the G a chord which has G isn't it so a great chord to start off with would be the G major chord the namesake chord it has you know G B D but we need to invert it or we need to play it in such a shape so that the G is on top because our intention is to go that's our intention right so we need our root or the melody line on the top so I will find a shape of G major which has G at the top by top I mean right of your keyboard or the highest sounding pitch for your ear so that would be B D G isn't it B D G so now we've made G to stand out now our next mission is to kind of go up to the second note A and now you can try to figure this out on your own A is the next melody note it needs to be supported by a harmony or a chord what chord has A in it well a lot of chords have A in it but in this domain of 1 4 and 5 which I've chosen for the lesson it's the D major chord isn't it D F sharp A and I've played it in such a way that A is at the top end so G B D G A D F sharp A and now I want to play the third note third degree which is B now you could again try this out what chord has B in it the G chord no other chord has B in it at least among the one four five isn't it so you go B D G B D G B B stands out okay now let me proceed towards C C is very obvious you have C major but I'm playing it as E G C let's play the first four notes together G A B C and I'm playing it just as a block triad G with G major chord A with D major chord B with G major chord C with C major chord okay let's move onward you have the D now with D you have two chords which work with it right you have you can come back to G major or you can do D major so this you have to decide which one you want you have two options within the one four five realm I'm going to choose G B D G major the tonic so you go G A B C D but I'm playing it as G B D okay then you have E the only chord among the one four five which has E in it is C C major which I'm playing as G C E E stands out and the last note or the leading tone F sharp which wants to yarn towards the tonic just has one triad which has F sharp in it right that's the D major chord which I need to play now as A D F sharp and finally we end the puzzle with B D G which is where we started so let's just go up and down using these chords which we've mapped out G A playing it four times B G major C C major D G major E G C major F sharp melody D major and G okay we'll also go down later so also what I'd urge you to do at this stage is just to know what chord you're playing play the root of the chord in the bass so that's whatever the chord may be G C and D just play the roots in the bass D major right G major C major G major C major D major G major down G A D C G major C major G major D major G so I've just used the one the four and the five major chords and I'm able to happily play the scale now we need to make the scale move out or move a bit like and get some rhythm so on the piano what do we love to do the most arpeggios right so the arpeggio pattern which I have set up for you is H L M L which I think is quite catchy quite popular you'll find a lot of solo pianists playing that way so you go let's just study one chord B D G the H is G the L is B the M is D that's essentially the middle note from your vision high low middle low that's your pattern you need to sort of practice that and get that into your send it into your subconscious bank of stuff so H L M L H right so another thing I like to do to bring out the melody even more some people would play the melody not louder I think that's a little bit annoying or a bit scary sometimes so I would just want to hold the high note with this finger so this one finger needs to hold on to the high while the other fingers create that arpeggio rhythmic pattern hold the high hold the high okay and now we can start climbing with the same pattern H L M L G major C chord the D chord and end okay let's do that again so what have I done now G is sticking out that's your melody this is your chord supporting the melody G major chord why does it support it so well because it has G in it obviously it'll work really nicely so G A B C D E the sixth F sharp okay I have a few fingertips as well if you're encountering a black note maybe use your ring finger if you're encountering a white note maybe use your pinky right but I'd leave the fingering to you for you to explore because every scale on the piano is a little different in this tutorial we are considering G major for our study but yeah you can do it for other scales and maybe other types of scales perhaps a G harmonic minor you know sounds beautiful okay so we let me not get carried away let's just stick with the major for now so now we've had this this ability to play up and down let me show that for you guys once more so that we are all on the same page G A B C and you see in the left hand I'm also just trying to do something with the left hand sleeping right so let it do something if you can hold the triad or at least the roots of the triad or maybe the root and the fifth whatever you want this lesson is more about the right hand so the left hand should also do something right and this whole the whole point of learning the right hand really hard and practicing really well is so that the left hand your conscious efforts go towards your left and eventually to do all the cool stuff which you can do at least with groove and bass so you go G D G again C D melody E melody F sharp melody G down one more time a little faster right so that's your scale going up and down I think it sounds quite beautiful right I like that a little a lot better than just doing faster faster faster I don't know that I don't feel that for some reason okay so now what I want to do is let's just do a case study with a melody we've just we've seen the scale up and down so the way I look at it is the melody is going to be the tune in the pinky finger but the or the ring finger but those notes are going to skip it's not going to be linear if it was linear it'll just be a scale exercise so if you take a melody like everyone's favorite I would imagine twinkle twinkle little star you go one five five six six five four four three three two two one okay those are the scale degrees on G G D D E E D C C B B A A G now as you can possibly hear it doesn't sound very rich doesn't sound full so I want to get that technique you know which we learned earlier playing the scale up and down into this song so let's do that so let's try it G again this is your G hold for the melody note G you're going to press B D G let's see how that works try to sing don't lose the melody now I have to skip to the five that's going to be a little tricky because I have to jump from the root to the fifth but that's the fun about it right twinkle jump and I'm still playing the G major chord because that's the chord I have for D little star so I did little is E and double E because it's little little star star now I don't want to repeat star so I'll do star I want to hold on to that star how I wonder what you okay so now you may be thinking yeah I have a triad having three notes but then I'm still using only three fingers I can actually bring in sneak in another finger and you'll see why that's going to be very very important in this case so if you do twinkle this you can survive with five with with just three fingers but then when I shift to the five so for the higher twinkle which is the D why not play the same chord G B D but you can take the melody note and bring it back below so you get more sort of arpeggiating options which are non-melody notes so if I do twinkle see I have a lot more options twinkle quite like that so twinkle this I'm playing as three notes twinkle twinkle see how interesting the word star sounds right rather boring because you just sing star and then don't do much after that little star so at that gap where I'm not singing or where there's a gap in the melody I'm still having some fun with these other fingers arpeggiating over the same chord which still works harmonically awesome so I go twinkle twinkle you can go back to three note chords there three note triads so I hope you're understanding the difference there's three note triad and a four note triad but a four note triad doesn't really have four unique notes one of the notes has to get repeated the triad still means three so so if you're uncomfortable using four notes for the triad I would advise you to maybe just start with three it should work out fine at the word R I may want to spread out my triad and add one more note okay let's do that again with again just with right hand left hand sleeping right now pretty much have your rhythm going your chords going chords are moving and I hope you're hearing we've not lost the melody at all haven't we right so the last thing in this tutorial which I want to leave you guys with is sort of like the icing on the cake where rhythm is going to start taking over so you got your melody you got your chords and then everyone's favorite comes to the party rhythm so if you observe what I'm playing right now I'm pretty much playing it either as you can count it as eighth notes or sixteenth notes right one and two and three and four and one and two and three and so right now I'm counting it as eighth notes but what if we think of it in a triplet world the melody is pretty much on quarter notes isn't it two and two three fourths pretty much on quarter notes or crotchets as we call it or on the pulse it's not dividing the beat so what do we do let's try triplets so there'll be something like two something like that where you divide by three let's see how that sounds star see if you like the three feel works so these are eighth note triplets right if you like you can play it with sixteenth note triplets one two three it's a lot more busy or what you could do is you don't have to play all the divisions of the beat you can knock off a few like probably something like that's like a gallop I guess you could say so maybe something like one e and a two e and so it's a sixteenth note feel but the e is missing one e and two so now if you can phrase this with the melody that's the idea right so if you go back to the beginning of the lesson I actually tried to demonstrate a few of these things as best as I could so yeah so this is a very cool approach if you ask me on the piano to play everything music has to offer except the lyrics obviously you can't play lyrics on the piano but yeah you you do melody you do chords you do rhythm a pattern unique stuff just in one hand and it'll make you're playing a lot more professional I can definitely vouch for that a lot of people would would want to work with you you know and also your left hand can have a mind of its own as it should be on on this amazing instrument it's a it's a crazy instrument for developing music right so you'd rather free up things as best as you can and optimize things as best as you can and in this instance the right hand is doing a lot of things so it's really making your left hand well we haven't I keep talking about the left hand we haven't talked about the left hand in this video but I hope you're getting some ideas you know if you can get the right hand sorted with all the three elements melody rhythm and harmony imagine what this other hand can do right the left hand should not sleep so don't get me wrong that's not my intention the left hand has to do something so the left hand will start approaching its own world of ideas once the right hand sort of takes over almost is like a muscle memory so a common approach when we play melodies on the piano is we are consciously thinking of the melody but if you can practice the melody so well that that itself is sort of second nature I think your music will move forward the right the right way on the piano right guys again this is Jason here from the Nathaniel School of Music I hope you found the lesson useful and if you did please 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