Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello, and welcome back
to Knightsbridge Music, and this completes our
fundamentals of music series. And today's course, we're going to learn the
wonderful song, Imagine by John Lennon. Now, if you've joined us
on the previous courses, we've looked at
other Beatles songs, we've looked a bit
at conducting, but we've also looked
at the theory of music. So if you want to
have a little look about how you read music, then you can check out
those courses as well. Can be found on Oodomi
and Skillshare and more increasingly now
on YouTube, as well. So we're going to
give you a lovely overhead camera view of the keyboard so
you can see how to play and how the
chords in this song, imagine by John
Lennon fit together. So grab your family,
grab your pets, grab everybody at home. Let's have a great sing along and learn this song together.
2. Key chords: Why is this piece
our advanced piece of all the Beatles pieces? Because all the way through, you've got what we call
this quaver movement. Now, if you've looked at
our music theory course, you'll know that quaver
movement is a bit more difficult because the chords
are always moving forwards. But the thing is, we've just got three simple chords
in this piece. We've got the chord of C major, the chord of F major, and the chord of G major. Now, if you remember from
the fundamentals course, major chords are what we call
happy chords and they're all about the third note
being really nice and bright. Here's an example
of a major chord, C major in this Is
to make that minor, this Imagine song would be
totally, totally different. Have a listen. Be bloody
creepy, wouldn't it? So we've got to keep all
our lovely chords major. Later on in the song, we do have a couple of minor chords. But actually, right
here at the beginning, we've got three major chords. I'm now going to show you
from above how to play them. So our first one is C major. Okay? And this starts the piece. And we're going to
play it like this. So in the left hand, we've got a C, a G.
In the right hand, we've got a C, a G. So we've got what is called a triad in this right hand. And we've got what is called
a fifth in the left hand. So let's play all those
five notes together. Have a little go with me. Ready? Three, two, one. That's our lovely cord C major. Fantastic stuff. So just
have a little practice with that and get your
fingers around it. Because once you start
to find these shapes, you'll find you can just move to the right and to the left and you can still
keep the same shape. You can actually play different
chords like that, okay? So have a little play
with that shape, the fifth in the left
hand C to G. And then in the right hand C E
and G, our lovely triad. Now, to get up to the chord of F major, and again,
at any point, feel free to pause the video
and just have a work on that first chord and
keeping the shape because that's the key thing about how you're
going to play here. But to get up to the chord of F, we've got to go up
four notes from C. One, two, three, that takes
us to our ord of F Okay. And that really truly
is a chord of F major, except in the Beatles song, the F major chord
that we have to play is just very, very
slightly different. If you go back to the
fundamentals of music, we talked about the
inversions, of course, root position, first
inversion, second. Now, don't worry if you
think what's he on about? He's getting too
technical. Don't worry. All it means is that rather than moving everything up to that F, we're only going to
move some of the notes. Let me show you so we've
got our chord of C. To get to our chord F, I just want to move
the top two fingers in my right hand up to F and A. So actually what is
called a second inversion F major core C F still F
major, though, don't worry. I'm not cheating you. It's still the real chords. We got F major. And now let's go back to
C in this right hand. C. Now move the top
two notes up to F and A and then
let's come back to C. So just pause the
video, go between those two chords in
the right hand. Ready? C F. Sixth. You can actually
play pretty much the first half of the song
with just those two chords. Now, what happens
in the left hand? Well, you go from your open
fifth. Do you remember that? C and G. And we just play one note with
our second finger. Remember, on the piano, the
fingers are labeled one, two, three, four, five. So if I say your first finger,
it's going to be a fun. If I say second finger, index, and then ring that
ring? Can't remember. But your little finger, five, your thumbs are one, yeah. So in the left, I'm going to go from open fifth five and one up to second finger on
F. Okay, that's amazing. So we go from here, C and
G to second finger on F. Now, let's try that.
You're doing so well. Let's try it with the
right hand so we go from here to here. So left hand is
going from CNG to F, and right hand is going
from I'll try C E and G up to C F and M. So let's do the whole
thing together, ready. So cord one, C, going to Cord two, F, going back to Cord one. C, going to Cord two. Amazing. Have a little practice
of that on your keyboard. Now, you don't need
a fancy pad keyboard like this, 88 keys. They really are 88 keys. I've got students and sometimes
you say it's got 88 keys. And they go, No, it hasn't
go, one, two, three, four, at least 10
minutes of a lesson is taken up by them working out how many keys there
are on the piano. So you don't need to
do that, you see. You got to trust,
even if you've got smaller keyboard
absolutely fine, okay? So you've got the start
of the song there. Now, the only thing we need
to do with those chords, we're going to look at
in the next section of this course because
we're going to talk about the quavers
and how that works. But before we do, I just want to teach you one more chord, which is going to help
us in a little wild, and this is the chord of G. So we've done our C,
we've done our F. Now, we need to find
the chord of G. Let's have a go at G. How are we going to play
it so we go from L. And every single note in that F chord is going
to go one to the right. To the chord to G, B to F and back to C. So here are there three chords one
more time, called a C. Cut of F. C Gimi. Cut of F. And cord
C. We call these chords, the tonic chord, C,
subdominant chord, CF and a dominant chord, cord G. And I tell you what,
95% of the music in the world is made up with
just those three chords. There's other chords in
there to spice things up and other more complex movements
that we're going to look at like the quaver
motion in a minute. But look, you're doing so well. Know those chords. You
can play a lot of music
3. Important linking sections: So well done guys,
you've now learned the bulk of the song,
which is fantastic, but there are two
little linking sections which use a different
playing technique, which I just want to cover. You notice in previous videos, we've done right hand first, left hand first, and that
is great if you're at those sort of earlier
stages of learning a piece. But in this one, I'm taking it as read that you've
just a little more advanced in
your playing and you want to just put
the chords together. So you've got a
performance on later, you want to get this
song nailed so you can get the family round and
have a lovely sing along. So these two little linking
sections, in my music, the first one starts
on the second page, second line third bar. It's the bit where the
tune is like this. Words I imagine all the
people living for today. It's a really nice
little section. The bass part is key
here, so it goes at this. Two, three, four, two, three. So your rhythm is quite funky. I'd argue that hearkens back to what we call a walking bass, which is like a blues
thing, more like this. But this is more
of opposite that. The good news is the right hand stays on F all the way through. F chord stays the same. So you don't worry about
that, but left hand goes. Yeah, so we keep playing F, keep playing F while the bass
line has a little party. It's all about that bass that
bass. Don't worry, okay? So you've got to get
really sounding good. My favorite bit
of the piece goes a bit further on on page three, and it starts, where is it on the bottom line or as we say
music, the bottom system. So a system is where you've got multiple staves joined together. Check out the first video on, you know, learning
to read music. You don't need to be able to
read music for this course, but it can help you to
advance your playing. So check that one
out. Um, if you're becoming part of the
Knightsbridge music family, okay? So we've got that little just have a listen to these chords. So beautiful. And let's work
out why they're beautiful. The unexpected cofmes the
chord of E major, right? We've got F. Which we know? G? Wh we know? C, which we know, but E. What this song is doing here is what
we call a modulation, where the harmony shifts
in a different direction. We've been happily
going along a C major. But now we're going off
into a different territory. But further than that, we have what is called
an interrupted cadence. Oh, my goodness me, we're learning a lot
about music today. We go from up to F. Almost as if somebody's
butting in, saying like? What's next? It's a
beautiful moment. Let's learn that chord E major, is EB G sharp B at the top. From that cord, you
then step up to Yeah, E major, F major. Sounds like kind of
tango or something a bit argentie influence there. Look, those two sections
are most beautiful. So while you've learned
the bulk of the song, you've got to learn
those little segments. I'm now going to
play both of them. It's kind of together. So here's our first little linking
passage starting page two, second system, last bar, ready? You try in with me ready. One more time, your turn. Really good. Then we got one other little section we're going to
look at now ready. So we've got this third page bottom line and
we go from here. Try with me three
and four, ready? Guys, absolutely super. Remember, you can stop, pause the video at any point and just have a go at those
linking sections. If you got your
three called CFG, you can play the
linking sections. You are ready for a performance.
Well done. Great stuff.
4. Whole performance : So you're at the stage now
where we're going to go for a full performance of the
piece all the way through. This is the exciting moment
you've been waiting for. Now, if you sat there thinking, Whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm not ready, go back and check out those
earlier videos, the chords, the practice techniques and things that you can
do to improve on. But now we're going to
go through the piece. And there are difficult
moments in the piece. There's the quaver
movement, jam, ja ja ja ja. All
the way through. But once you get
into that pattern, into that rhythm, the piece
is just so beautiful. You could even try playing
it along, you know, to a live recording, or
you can join me, okay? So you don't want your family in just yep
because we want to practice, we want to make
it correct, okay? But if you are
preparing this for a performance,
they're good on you. We want to see down there, you can give us some little videos, little feedback,
little commentary on how you found a piece, okay. That's fantastic. Here we go. Here is Imagine by John Lennon. I
5. Concluding thoughts: Thank you very much
for joining us on this continuing fundamentals
of music series. Now, you should be able
to go into the world to be able to teach yourself new
songs. And you know what? We're always here. If you
want a bit of support. You can check us out
nightsbitchmusic.com. You can leave us a little link
below, and we'll get back. Give us a bit of feedback
on how we're doing. We're always improving
our teaching classes, and we're loving
it as we go along, and we love sharing
the Beatles with you. But we want you to be able
to have the power to choos. So if you have any
particular pieces that you want to
learn in the future, do let us know and we'll try and include them in our
future courses. We've got incredibly exciting
plans coming up ahead, so do follow us. Go out into the world and
imagine what you can achieve.
Ben Lewis-Smith, Musician
