Transcripts
1. Welcome to Piano For Singers!: Hi, there. Are you a singer that has always wanted
to play the piano? Or maybe you want to
start teaching singing, but you don't have
the piano skills to be able to do that just yet? Or maybe you just want
to start accompanying yourself so you can play
some of your favorite songs. Well, I have the thing for you. My name is Rachel Breeze, and I'm a singing
and piano teacher with over ten years experience. I have found over the years
how people really want to be able to do singing and
piano at the same time, but they don't know
where to start. So I've stripped it all
down to the basics. And in one course
over eight lessons, you learn how to do everything from playing oken warm ups, your major and minor chords, and we also teach
you how to play your first pop song and piece, because my opinion is
it shouldn't be overly complicated or intimidating
to play piano as a singer. So this sounds at for you. I look forward to sing than
most of you very very soon. This is piano for sings, by a singer for sings.
2. Lesson 1 - Identifying Notes: Hey, there. We're going to get
started by learning how to identify notes
on the keyboard. So as you can see in
the overhead view, I have a Hal Leonard
standard keyboard guide, which is super useful. You can lay it in front
of your keys or you can actually slot it in behind
the keys, so it's sitting up. Some people also like to use stickers and they actually
stick them on the keys, which is really useful
while you're learning. But I also like having something
that I can transport and take to lessons if you
need some support. So if you don't know where your stickers are, don't worry, because we're about to
go through where to put them if that is
where you're at. So if we are looking
at the keyboard, we are only going
to be looking at identifying the white
notes just for today. If you do have a keyboard guide, I want us to ignore
this notation or these symbols that
we have above here. We're not going to be
looking at that just yet, we're just going to be
looking at the letters because all of these notes have letters that apply to them. So I'm going to introduce
the idea that we're learning anchor notes as a way to identify what all the other rest of the notes are
on the keyboard. In music, instead
of starting at A, which would be really lovely and useful and makes
sense, we don't. We start at C, and we're
going to get into this later, but the key of C major is
really important in music. It's the simplest
one to start with, which is why a lot of stuff is centered around C, especially
when we're learning. You're going to have to
bear with me and we're starting with C
today rather than A. If you can see in the
middle of your keyboard, I've lined up my keyboard
guide to match correctly, and this is what we
call our middle C. I want us to just really check
in with where this is at. We've got two black notes and then it's on
the left hand side. As you can see, the piano is a series of repeating
notes and patterns. We've got two black notes, three black notes, two black
notes, three black notes. Having just looked at
what this middle C is, we can assume correctly
that if we go to the next two black notes that we can see up here on
the left hand side, this is also going to be a C. As you can see,
this matches up on the keyboard so let's play that. So we've got middle
C, sounds great. And then we've got next C, which we can see,
two black notes. Yeah, that's a C on the left. If we keep going up two
black notes, left hand side? Yeah, it's a C two black notes,
left hand side, it's a C. If you're working with a
full keyboard like this is, there's one more
at the top there. Let's do that the opposite
way down to the base, the lower version of the piano, down on the left hand side,
your right hand side. We've got our middle scene which we've already identified. Same thing. To the left, we see the next series. It's two black notes,
left hand side. It's a C, two black notes, left hand side, two black notes, left hand side, and that's
our last one down there. You could challenge yourself and actually move your
keyboard guide. Um, and just sort of check
in with that knowledge. So two black notes on the
left hand side is our seat. That one at the top is a
little harder to identify. But, we'll get used to that one coming back
down the other way. Fabulous. We already know our
first anchor note and especially this
middle C is quite useful for us to
really remember and get a bit of a image of
a photographic memory of because that's just
useful us to match up with any keyboard guide or stickers that
we're working on. If you do have stickers,
you can now put them on all of those Cs. Now, I said before we
start with C, not A, but let's just have
a little look at how things repeat on the piano. We've got A here,
as you can see on the keyboard guides.
We know where C is. We've got A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and then we repeat. So I think a really useful
thing for beginner pianists is to have another anchor note at the other end
of the sequence. In this case, it's
going to be G. Let's do the exact same process
except we're now looking at what does G look
like on the keyboard? We've got three black notes and G sits on the left hand
side on the inside of them. I'm just going to
play that. I'm going to repeat the process of what I did for middle C. You can see the next series
of three black notes. There's a G on the left
hand side slightly. I'm just going to keep
going three black notes. The black notes. Back to the original one, go the opposite way.
The black notes. The black notes, three notes, and that's the last
one down there. Now, I think it's
really useful having an idea of a note in the
middle of the sequence and a note towards the end of the sequence because
then we can use it to anchor ourselves
and figure out what the other notes are with our
knowledge of the alphabet. If we're looking at C, which
we now know very well, what comes before
C in the alphabet? B. Let's go to the note
on the left hand side. We've assumed
correctly that's a B, and then the note before B is A, so we're going to
go down one more. A. Now, if I go
to the next note, that's the next sequence. So we're back at G, which we already have identified
as an anchor note. That's where the
sequence, this is where it restarts. Let's
go the oppose wa. Let's go back to
our lovely nor C, which we know and love so well. After C comes D, we're moving the opposite
way in the alphabet, the opposite way
on the keyboard. F. And now back to G. The whole thing repeats again. It's just really nice having these two anchor notes of
C and G on the keyboard. And when we don't have
this in front of us, it takes a second, but
as you're learning, it's just useful to
have these two anchors and then maybe as we
get more confident, we start to really familiarize ourselves with what
E looks like on the keyboard or what D
looks like or F looks like. It's just really useful to have those anchor notes
to start with as a base of knowing where our white notes are and
what they symbolize. Hope that was helpful, looking forward to teaching you next, which is treble clef.
3. Lesson 2 - Treble Clef, Tones and Semitones, Sharps and Flats : Hello, my singers learning
piano. Welcome to lesson two. I'm going to be jumping
right in this lesson, and we're going to
be starting off with something called treble clef. Now, I mentioned this very briefly in our first
lesson in Lesson one, but I'm just going to
draw your attention to the symbol that
represents Treble clef, and then we'll talk about
what it actually is. If you're looking at
the overhead view, you can see on the left hand side here
of my keyboard guide, I have this funky looking
symbol here, this top one. Very hard to draw. I mean, I might try
do an attempt of what my drawing over Treble Clef looks like, still can't do it. Been reading music for years, but this is a Treble clef. Now you'll notice on the
left hand side of the piano, which we now know
is our low notes. There's nothing in the treble
clef and that's because Treble Clef represents
higher frequencies in music. It's a way of writing music
that's a little bit higher. The reason that we're
looking at it is most singers music is
written in Treble clef. Soprano, Alto, and tennis will all be singing
in Treble clef. We sometimes get bass music. Written maybe baritone
music very occasionally, we will see it in
something called bass clef and you can see it on the left hand side of my keyboard here. But I don't think it's fully relevant for a beginner course. I think a really
good starting place is learning how to read
treble because that's where our four part
harmonies will be written if we're doing
a choir arrangement, most of the time will
be in Treble clef. When you have a
student coming in, it will most probably
be in Treble clef. So let's have a look. Where does Tribal clef
start on the piano? It starts where you can identify yourself at our
lovely middle C here. We're looking from
left to right. You can see Treble
clef is blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank until we hit Middle C, which we know now
from lesson one. You can see our symbols start from this middle C
and go onwards and upwards. Now, the great
thing about this is singers have a very limited
range compared to a piano. You can see here we've
got from our middle C or our C four all the
way up to C six. Now, unless you've got a crazy cultigu soprano in your studio, you're not going to need
much more than that C six unless you have a crazy cultigo we'll deal with that
when we come to it. But for now, all you really
need to know is from this C, up to this tops
and not even that, to be honest, you
could even just maybe get by for a little while learning that first octave. Let's just have a look at the symbols as they move
up. We've got this C here. You can see it's sitting
below the stave, the stave being those
five lines that we draw music on. We've got. You can see it's moving
ever so slightly up. D. We're now moving
up to the line, moving up to the next
space, F, moving up, G, A, B, C. Let's keep going just
in case we go to soprano. Moving up D, E, F, G, A, B, C. As I said, as we're moving
up the stage there, it's unlikely that a lot of music will be
written up there, but just good to have
in the backfoot. But if you're a beginner
learning treble clef, I would recommend really getting familiar with
the symbols that represent from this middle C up to maybe the F. That's what? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ten, 11 notes, 11 symbols
that we look at, and you can see how it's
represented on the music. This means that we can identify what F we want to
play on the piano. For example, we see that this
on the lettering system, that's an F, this up here. It's also an F. But how do
we know which F to play? That's where our
notation comes in. This is where our treble
clef reading comes in because you can
see this F if we're looking at the symbols is completely different
to this F up here. That's a really good indication
of what F we're playing. Let's take another example. Let's look at our Ds. This D here, it's sitting
slightly below the stave. Whereas this D up here, you can see it's so much higher
within those five lines. It's really quite logical if we're moving up on the stave, we're moving up on the
keyboard and if we're moving down on the stave, moving
down on the keyboard. It's actually quite a nice
logical way to look at it. Maybe if you've been in a singing call and you're
looking at your sheet music, and you can see how the notes move up and
down on the stave and it matches what you're
doing with your sight singing. It's just a good indication of starting to get
those music skills, even if you don't necessarily know what each one
means just yet. It's a really good way of
starting together indication. Let's maybe learn for
the purpose of today, our two anchor notes. I would like us to look
at memorizing this C and this G. But let's learn another
two anchores our C and G. You want to get to a place
where you can really know the middle C. We
did that in lesson one. We know this G, lesson one, we know how to recognize
that's a C, and that's a G. But now I want you to know the treble clef
notation for them. This middle C looks
like that G looks like. That you can see it's
moving up on the stave, that sees up there and that she is actually all the
way above the stave. Just like we did in Lesson one, you can use this to anchor
to find other notes. For example, if we
let's cover oh, with my depth, no, let's not do that. Let's just
do with my hand. Let's say, we're looking for an F in the middle
of the keyboard. We can recognize this is G, that's a G. That must
mean that symbol, that second line up on
the stave is a G as well. An F comes before G. If we go to the space below, that's going to be O F. Again, you can use notation
to anchor yourself. If you just learn a couple
of those symbols to start with pretty shortly, those blanks will be filled. It's a really good indication
of how to do that. Okay, moving in to part
two of Lesson two, we're going to be looking
at the black notes. For now, we've just been
looking at the white notes, but we do have to start to get an understanding of
what the black notes mean and how we use them because we're going to be
using them to build chords. That's what we're
working towards. Black notes, what are they? They are incremental
semitones between the tones. Ooh. What does that even mean? There's so many words
there. So a tone is when we do a full
step of a piano. If we're looking at the
song, happy birthday. Happy birthday,
that's a full tone. That's a whole tone, whichever
way you want to say it. But what if we were to look
at what a semitone is? Data. We've got something
a little bit different, a little bit chromatic, a little bit jazzy, or we could look at jaws. You can hear we have semitones in music and they
exist in music, and we need to
understand what they are to be able to build chords, which again is what this
whole chorus is built on. Semitones and tones or
steps or half steps. If we're looking at a full step, we're going from this white
note to that white note, and it means it's got a
black note between it, that would make it a whole note. Whereas if we went
from this white note to this white note, that's also just a semitone because there's
nothing between them. Have a listen. You can hear that's just a semi
tone between them, whereas if we were
to do a four step, you can hear there's a whole tone between those two notes. Let's look at moving
from a white note to a black note to
hear that semitone. There we go we hear a semitone. What if we went from
a black note to a white note? There we go. A semitone. We can get really
complicated about this. We can go from this white
note and E up to an F sharp. This one is. We'll look at
the names for them later. We've got a full tone there
rather than the white note, the white note being a
semitone in that instance. It really is just
about stepping between notes and is it a full
step or is it a half step? If there's nothing between
those white notes, that's going to be a half step. But if there is a black
note between them, that's going to be a full step. We're moving from a
white to a black note, it's a semitone or a half step. All these words to describe it, lots of different systems. Now we're going to be looking at what these black notes called. This is where we get super trixy because they're called
enharmonic notes, meaning that they have
two names for each note. If you've got a keyboard
guide or you can see overhead in my view, we've got a note to the right hand side
of C, we're going up. We are sharpening. I like to think of
it like a pencil, sharpening pencil, it's
getting a little bit pointier, a little bit higher,
that's a C sharp there. However, I said that this note has two names
or it can have two names. What if we were going
from the D going down, we're pushing down, we're
flattening the note. A flat is what we
would call this note. D, down one semitone
would be A, D flat. This note could be a
C sharp or a D flat. Let's try a couple
of other examples. I'm going to skip up to
our ankinote G here. If I was to move a
semitone down from G, it would be flattening, pushing down a G flat. But if I was to move up, a semitone up from F, I'm sharpening, I'm going
up, it's an F sharp. This note could be an
F sharp or a G flat. There's two different ways
of looking at it depending on what key what
chord you're playing. But really, they're
the same thing. Don't get too caught up in it. A G sharp is an A flat, F sharp is a G flat,
they're the same thing. It's just a fancy way of saying that there's two
names for these notes. I'm just going to walk
you through the names of all the black notes in this
middle octave we have here. C sharp or D flat, D sharp or E flat, F sharp or G flat. G sharp or A flat, A sharp or B flat. That is all of the names
for your black notes. Again, you can go
through and memorize them or you can just rely
on your keyboard guide for now until you're
super comfortable identifying those notes.
And that was lessened to. Well done. I'll see
you on the flip side.
4. Lesson 3 - C Major and Singing Warm Ups: Hello singers and
singing teachers. Today we're going to be looking at something that is probably the most requested thing I get asked as a singing
teacher and as a singer, and that is how to play some vocal exercises to warm up your students,
vocal warm ups. I'm just going to
go through three really basic ones
to get you started as your chord knowledge gets built upon in
lessons four and five. You can maybe extend
on this a little bit, but I wanted to get you
started with three that you can use in your studio to
warm up your students. So of course, we're
going to be starting on our middle C. What I'm going to be demonstrating is a vocal siren and I do these
in octaves with students. The great thing about vocal
sirens is we just use one note and then we
repeat it octave up, octave meaning eight notes
above, it's the same note. For example, if we were
going from C, which we are, I'm just going to
play this C and this C and we're going
to siren between them, so we're going to go it
is as simple as that, and then we can
move it up or down. Now the problem
with this exercise is because you're just
playing two notes, sometimes students can exactly mirror what you're
doing on the piano, which is not what we
want. We can get a. Those two notes and really we want to hear everything between. That's what we're
interested in in warming up their voice and their break. We just want to
make sure to maybe demonstrate and check in
with that as we played this. We're doing a that note on the top is really just to anchor them to what
they're aiming for. You probably catch them at
the top of that vocal siren. Then as we're doing the warm up, we'd probably just move
up to the next note. Again, if we're starting on a D, we're just going to be
doing that D and octobu. I'm using first
and fifth finger. You don't have to,
but that's probably a nice easy way to do it. But again, if you're super
beginner and we're still developing these intrinsic
muscles, that is piano, we could just do a
as simple as that. Now, I'm started on middle C, which actually tends not
to be a bad place to start for our mezzos or
altos, or sopranos. For an Alto, I
probably would start a little bit lower
maybe on an A orgy. But if you're working
with a lower voice, we're talking our batones, our basses, our tenors, even, we might want to
start the octave below. You are welcome to
use your left hand if that feels comfortable. But again, you can just shift
your whole body down and start doing it with your
right hand as well. It's as simple as
that those octave sirens and I would just work up. Note by note with a student as we're
warming up their voice. Now we're going to
get onto something a little bit trickier. We're going to learn how to
play a five notes scale, and we're going to be
doing this in the key of C major because it doesn't have
any sharps or flats in it. By that I mean
these black notes, which makes it far
more complicated. But my idea is if you learn how to play this
scale in C major, you can demonstrate to the
student what that scale sounds like and they can repeat
it back to you in any key. Let's say I'm study in
middle C, like we are, the finger pattern
that we're using, nice and simple, one, two, three, four, five, 4321. It's going to sound
like this. A singer can do that on a vowel, on a semi accluded
sound like we could do we could do it
on something semi accluded We can start in that key of C, we can
demonstrate with them. We can also play it. Again, if you're working
with a lower voice, maybe working down there. Then let's say we want the student to move
higher with that sound. Since we've already
demonstrated and shown them and reminded ourselves what that scale sounds
like in that key, I would encourage you at
this stage in your playing, beginner playing to just
play the next note. Oh, sorry, lips
aren't working today. Oh. Moving up. Oh, lips. I mean, you can even
get them to repeat different versions
of it on a hum, something semicluded and
then opening up to a vowel. It's a very adaptable scale, and I would recommend getting really comfortable
with it in C major, so then you can demonstrate
what scale you're looking for series of notes you're
looking for to your student, and then you can give
them an anchor note for a different key as they
move up in their warm up. Okay. Last one. Moving slightly on top of that idea of the
five notes scale, we're going to learn
a eight notes scale. This has got a little bit of
a trickier finger pattern. We're going one, two, three, one, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, three, two, one. That sounds crazy,
but it's going to make sense once we're
on the keyboard. We've got one, two, three, thumb underneath,
one, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, third finger
over, three, two, one. It's the same fingers
coming up and coming down. So a little bit faster. Just like our other
scale of shorter scale, we can do that on an E, an R, a hum, anything you want, so we could do a series of them. We could do then ask for a bowel then let's say we
want to move that scale up, we'd give them the
next node up. Next up. Because we demonstrated
in the QOC, it gives us something to give the student so that they can hear what that scale
is supposed to sound like. You can always come back to it to remind yourself and also them what
you're going for. But it's pretty nice and simple. We've got that octave slide, our five notes scale or
our eight notes scale. I'm going to do this
one a little bit lower. And again, all of
these can be played down the octave for
your lower voices. So that's just some really basic singing warts to
get you started. And again, that is
something you would be able to extend and support more as we get familiar
with your major chords, which we're going to be doing
in this course, as well. But just something to
get you started. Enjoy.
5. Lesson 4 - Major Chords: Hello, singers. This is where it gets exciting because we're learning chords, and this is where
everything changes. I honestly tell
so many students, once you know your chords, you can honestly play anything. So we're going to
start with something called major chords. Major chords,
meaning they sound a little bit happier, a
little bit brighter. Most times pop songs and
music theater songs, every song will have a combination of major
and minor chords. So I'm going to start with major chords because they're happy. And I'm super happy that
we've got to this part of the orse because this is all
the hard work has been done, all that foundational
stuff has been done. You recognize your
notes, you know what a tone and a semitone is. If that's feeling not
super clear in your head, go back to Lesson
two because we're going to be using that idea of tones and semitones quite
a lot in this lesson. So we, I'm just going to check. Yes. No I am recording.
That's good though. It's very unuseful if
we don't have that. Okay, we're going to start
as we always do at middle C because we're not going to have any pesky black notes
in a C major chord. A C major triad, triad meaning try there's
three notes in it, and it gives us this
lovely full sound, and a lot of songs have
a C major chord in it, so I feel like that's
a good place to start. I'm going to give you a formula to build your chords from. We recognize our notes now, so I want you to find
again that middle C. That is going to be our
first note of this chord. I'm going to use my thumb or number one thumb is
one to play that. We've got C. Now we are going to use a bit of a formula to build our
major chord above this. I will edit in the formula, so it's sitting in this video so you can keep
looking back at it. The next note is going to be four semitones above that C.
If we're counting C as zero, we're going to count out
one, two, three, four. In this case, that's an E. Four semitones above C is an E. Well, let's
add that to the mix. I'm going to use my third
finger. Nice and full. Great. Now, our last note
of this C major chord is another three semitones above or seven semitones above
that original note C, which is our tonic
of this chord. One, two, three, in
this case, that's G. Let's add that to the mix. Wow, full beautiful sound
of a major triad chord. That is our C major chord. Let's just go over that formula while we're looking
over the top of it. We've got our C,
which is our tonic, four semitones above,
one, two, three, four. It's our E, and then another three semitones above
that middle note, one, two, three is our G, or you can say that seven semitones from our tonic if
we're looking at the formula, one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven. Lovely and that's fitting
onto my head really nicely. It feels quite nice
and comfortable. Let's get really familiar
with that triad chord. Let's put it somewhere
else on the keyboard. Let's just pick another
C. I'm going to go for this one in my treble, exactly the same thing, Cords can be played anywhere
on the keyboard. It's just going to sound higher. We've got our C as our tonic. Let's count four
semitones above, one, two, three, four. Let's do another three semitones above that, one, two, three. Fabulous. Let's do
one, in our left hand. Why not? Let's go crazy. Let's use some lower
tones for our left hand. I'm going to use my fifth finger to start with because that makes sense. We don't
want to be doing that. Fifth finger on C
four semitones above, one, two, three, four. Nice. Let's add in another
three semitones above, two, three, and there's
our C major court. Let's do one more
for good measure. Let's get really comfortable
with that C major. We've got CSO Tik,
one, two, three, four, one, two, three, basic, all about that bass. That is our C major chord, in its most basic triad form. I'm just going to play
every C major chord on the keyboard just
for good measure. Maybe do the same thing. Let's
start with our left hand. I'm going to start
down here. Very low. Let's switch to right hand for the right hand
side of the piano. Fabulous. That's
all of our chords. Just out of interest, that
would be the beginning. Is the beginning of Image, you already have the
first chord in Imagine. That's what's great about chords that was just a little
bit broken up and we'll talk about how we
can play them with different formations and different rhythms
to create a song. But isn't that crazy We already know the first chord of one of the most famous
pop songs in the world, and this is why I love chords. I get really excited about
them for that reason. Let's to another one. Let's build a G major chord. I'm starting with G major
because we're familiar with it. It's one of our other anchores. So let's go with
this G here. Great. That's now our new tonic. Let's count four
semitones above a G. One, two, three, four. I've got a B. Great. Let's add in another three
semitones above, one, two, three, all together. And there's G major chord. And you can hear it's got
that happy, buzzy sound. I'm going to play another
one up and Octave. So let's find the
next G up again, familiarizing yourself with
those anchor notes and that sort of photographic memory
recall of the keyboard. So we've got G, one, two, three, four, another
three above that. One, two, three,
Aden. G major chord. Let's do a couple in the base. Remember the bass, we're
starting with our fifth finger, then our middle finger,
then our thumb. Let's does do a bas one. Let's start with a G down here. One, two, three, four,
one, two, three. Fab. So that's how
two anchor notes won. We're going to do another one. We're going to break down
another one together, and I want to do a slightly trickier one because
we're going to start to bring in how the black notes
work for other chords. Again, if we just
stick to the formula, this is going to be
nice and simple. Stick to the formula
with your chords. So let's go to D. Right
next to our middle C, we've got D in the middle there. Let's just count up
as we did before. One, two, three, four. Wow. Our first black note. Fabulous. It's a
nice full sound. Sounds like a major chord. One, two, three, above, and A. Let's play them all
together. Chavis. Now, you might notice
in the overhead view, my hand is ever so slightly more forward when I've got to catch a black
note underneath it. So just slide your hand forward, and it should feel
nice and comfortable. Let's do another one that has
a black note in the middle. Again, we're just
following a formula. It's nothing crazy,
more difficult. It's just about maybe sliding your hand forward a little bit more because we need that
black note under our hand. So let's start on E. One, two, three, four, G
sharp in this instance. Another three above, one, two, three. There we go. So it's all just about a
formula with major chords. Eventually, these will become so familiar to you that
you're not going to be sort of sitting there counting
and you will get really familiar with how they
feel underneath your hand. I'm now going to play
every major chord that's available on our white keys,
starting with C major.
6. Lesson 5 - Minor Chords : Hello Hello singers. Welcome to this lesson
where we're going to be looking at our minor chords. Now, the great news
about this is that if you're comfortable
with your major chords that we did in the last lesson, you're going to be
feeling like there's only a very minor shift that you have to do to get to
your minor chords, part of my pun, but
it is a really, really small incremental
difference that we have to do. So this is where the
process of learning piano starts to get much, much quicker, which
is enjoyable. So minor chords. As I said about major chords, they're happy and
they're joyful sounding. So minor chords are going to
be the complete opposite, so we're going to be playing
a lot of sad notes today. So let's talk through. What makes a major chord and
a minor chord different. We were talking in the previous lesson about that formula. Now, there is one
shift we have to make in our formula to
get a minor chord. I'm going to start as we
always do at middle C, which we should be
starting to get really familiar with finding.
Let's find that together. We've got our middle C. Now, I'm going to put up the formula
for a minor chord here. You'll notice it's only the middle note that
we have to change. Instead of doing four
semitones above our middle C, we're only going
to go for three. Let's count that. Remember,
middle C is our zero, we got one, two, three. Got E flat. And, you can already
hear that shift in the tone that's much much Sada. Now, the note that we're going for on
the top is different, but you're going to have to
count four semitones above. We've got one, two, three, four, and that's a G. Just like in our major
chord, it's the same. It's just that middle
note that's different. Let's um Play our minor chord. Let's do that in our left
hand and then I'm going to switch between the major
and minor on that one. Remember with our left hand, same as with major chords, we're going to be starting
with our fifth finger. Let's build that down
here. We've got our tonic, one, two, three
semitones this time. Flat, one, two, three,
four semitones. There is our C minor chord. So similar to our C major. Let's look at how
similar they are. I'm going to go back
to our C major chord, so we've got our Tonic, one, two, three, four. There's our four
semitones above. It sounds so happy. One, two, three, and there's
our full chord. Now, I'm feeling quite comfortable
with that major chord, all I need to do now is change that middle
note. Let's flatten it. Let's take away that semitone. I would suggest getting really comfortable going
between the two. You start to feel what
that's underneath your hand. Let's just for the
sake of doing it, let's do every C minor chord
that we have on the piano. I'm going to start down
here. Sounding very ominous, the minor chords
down in the bass. That's our C minor chord. Now, I would really like
to build a mio chord that only uses white notes because we started with a rather
choky one actually. Let's go to our D. Just right next to that
middle C. I want you to find that D. Let's use our formula. Let's
build that together. We've got D, one, two, three, only three
semitones, remember? Yeah, I'm hearing
that sad minor sound, one, two, three, four. There's our D minor. Cd. Let's now use the knowledge that we have of
the other formula and our knowledge that
only one thing in the middle needs to change
and make that a major. Instead of three semitones, I'm going to sharpen that
middle note my D major. The great thing about this
is you can really hear if it's happy or sad
minor or major. Sad or so it's a really good way of just instantly knowing whether you've played the right thing. Now, before I go in play every minor chord
that we have available, you can use that as a resource when you're reading your chords. I am just going to talk
a little bit about how to recognize when something is a minor because soon we're
going to be reading chord sheets and I'll talk about the resources and
where you can find them. But we need to know how they're represented in chord charts. When we have a major chord, it's just listed as a letter. I I see a C on a chord chart, I would just know
it's a C major. We just assume that,
that would be C major. However, if there's a
little M next to it. A undercase M, that means
we've switched to a minus. So if I see C with a
little M next to it, I'm getting a minor. It's just that little indication that you're playing
a minor chord. Again, you'll probably recognize
if it's major or minor as soon as you play
it because you'll know the song and you'll know
what you're listening for. I'm going to play
every minor chord that's available to
you on the white keys. C minor, D minor, E minor, F minor, G minor, A minor, B minor, and back to C minor.
7. Lesson 6 - Play Your First Song: Hello singers. Welcome
back. This is Lesson five. This is a lesson I get really excited about because we now have all the fundamentals we need to be able to play a song. So that's exactly what
we're going to do. We're going to be
playing without you by YouTube because it is
a four chord song. A lot of pop songs
are four chord based, which means we can very quickly just go
onto the Internet, look up our four chords for that song and immediately play. So I'm going to break down this video into a couple
of different sections. The first is going to be having a look at the sheet music and just getting to grips with what chords are
needed for this one. So this is attached to the
lesson as a PDF document, so be sure to print it out, iPad, whatever you want to do. I like it old school,
so I printed it. So you can see without you, we've got chords and lyrics, and you can see
how the chords are sitting over the lyrics
where they apply. So our intro, we've got D, and that's a D major
because it doesn't have any small
symbol next to it, so we're assuming it's a major. We've got A major, B minor, and then G. And
that's all we've got. If you look ahead, no
other scary chords. If we can just get those
four, we're good to go. Let's give it a go. Just a little reminder about
what our equations are, our formulas. That's better. We're not doing math.
Although it is maths kind. Our formula for a major chord, let's break it
down on a D major, which is the first
one for this song. I've still got my little
keyboard guide ahead of me. I'm looking for that D right
in the middle of there. That's going to be our
beginning of this chord. I've got D. I've got four semitones above that
because we're in major land, one, two, three,
four, it's F sharp. Now another three above
that, one, two, three. There's my D major. Let's just get that really comfortable in our minds
and also in our hands. Let's do it on the
left hand side, starting with fifth finger
because we're on left hand. Let's use a D a little bit lower in the piano,
lower in the bass. We've got D, four
semitones above, one, two, three, four, three semitones above, one, two, three, There's our D
major in both hands. Great. I feel great. This is awesome. You should feel great. If you don't feel great,
that's also okay. Go back to lesson
three and four. All right. Let's look
at the next one A, that's an A major because it doesn't have any
symbols next to it. Let's do that up on this A. Remember, chords can
be played anywhere. You don't have to know where they are because we're not reading notation, we're
just reading chords. So the creative freedom is yours. We could play it up here. But let's play it in the
middle. Let's pick this A here. A, we're in majorandFour
semitones above that, one, two, three, four, Seisa. Another three
semitones, one, two, three, There's A major sounding good. Let's
do one on the left. A, one, two, three, four, one, two,
three, Altogether. Great. Next one is B minor. A little bit trickier. I find Bs tricky. I don't know why. I think it's because they
sit weirdly on your hand. But let's figure
it out together. I'm sure it'll be fine.
I'm going to pick this B nice and in the
middle. Let's use our thumb. We're now in minor land, it's only three semitones above. One, two, three, and
then another four above, one, two, three, four. Yeah. You can really
hear that's a minor. Notice how my hand
is actually sliding slightly forward
because as I said, bees can feel a
little bit awkward. Let's do it on the left hand. Fifth finger on that B, the tonic of the chord. The semitones above, one, two, three, D, four
semitones above that. Two, three, four, F sharp. Again, I've slid my hand slightly forward just to
really catch that underneath. Last chord, and then we're done. We know everything
we need to know. G major, back to major, and that's really
common in pop music, three major chords and
one minor in there. That tends to be a
pattern we see a lot. G major, one in the middle. Four semitones above,
one, two, three, four, three semitones above,
one, two, three. Lovely. Back to major. Other side, one, two, three, four,
one, two, three, above. And there's G major. On the other side. I'm
just now going to play in slow motion those four chords in my right hand and
then my left hand, then we'll move on
into how we can play this as a song.
We've got D major. A major, B minor, and G major. I can start to hear
the song already. Good. I left hand D major. A A major sorry, A major. B minor. G major. Nice and simple. Okay. Let's move into how we can use this
to play our song. So how can we use our
knowledge and understanding of these four chords to
play our song the way we creatively as a
singer, want to sing it, whether that's big and belty
or soft and pulled back, or maybe we're accompanying
a singing student that's brought it in and
we kind of want to match what they're doing. So we've got our
basic knowledge. Let's just start with
the right hand chords. Let's just go with that.
So we've got D major. A major, B minor. G. And if we went into the song, that would be pretty standard. Great. See the stone
set in your eyes. See the thorn twist
in your side. I way it for you. That's quite nice. Quite nice and simple
and I can feel it. We've already got a song, we've already got
the basics there. Let's add something else to it, something
else to the mix. I'm going to think
about our pedal, which is at my feet right
now, but I won't pull it up. You might not have a pedal depending on what piano
you're working with. You can get really good little square petals that
are really small. This is just a basic
suspension pedal and it is that suspension. It's exactly what its name is. It's suspending the sound. I'm going to do with my hand for now just to show
you how it works. If I hold down the pedal, Notice my hand is
up and I'm holding this sound until
that's lifted off. Let me put t on the ground
the way. It's supposed to be. Just be grateful
you're not playing organ because they
have 1 million pedals. So piano, we've just got
that nice one to deal with. Let's say I want to
suspend the sound as I'm moving to my next chord to
make it sound nice and smooth, and I think this use of pedal really elevates your playing and makes you sound
less beginner. It makes it sound a little
bit more smooth and fluid. So I'm going to try to catch a chord and lift the pedal
as I play the next chord. Catch that chord with your foot. Next one. Good. So I'll represent what my foot is doing with my hand if I
can, so we've got. So you notice I'm
lifting and catching it with my foot to make it
sound as fluid as possible. Let's give that a go with the
first few lines we've got. See the stoned in your eyes. See the thorn twist
in your side. I way for you. Nice and smooth. We're going
into the second chorus. Maybe we want something a little bit bigger or maybe
a little bit basier. Let's try playing the
first note of each chord, not the whole chord because I think that would be quite a lot, quite grand for such
a small moment. Let's just try to
play a D in the bass, A in the bass, B minor, energy, just to fill out
that sound a little bit. Again, I'm using
the pedal. I've got the right hand doing the chords, and I'm just filling
in this baseness all about that base
with my left hand. We've got where am I at? Slide of hand and twist
of fad on a bed of nail, she makes me wait and
I wait without you. Oh. Nice. A little bit fuller. I quite like that.
That's awesome. So we're still using the middle of the piano and the bass, and that's quite a nice
standard sort of practice. I use when I'm playing chords, especially for a pop
ballad like this. What about that intro though? Could we do something
slightly different for that intro? And
I think we can. I'm going to talk
about something called arpeggios, which, in Italian means a broken
chord. It's exactly that. We're going to break
down that chord. If we've got our D major, and you can just reconstruct
that using that formula, we've got a D F sharp, and A. We're going to do exactly that. We're going to break it up. Oh et's go to that A major. Let's go to that B minor. This is used all the time in music. If
you recognize this? It's the beginning of Adele
song, someone like you. We're just using chords and breaking them up to play
them in different ways. Let's look back at this intro. We've got that set
of chords twice. Let's go for something
light and gentle, maybe using arpeggio,
and I'm going to take it up in octave to see
what that does for the sound. We've got and it goes again. Maybe we might bring
in some base now. So notice there's so
many different versions of those chords that we can
do to fill out the sound. What do we have at the
beginning? We have basic cords in the right hand. We've got a little bit
of pedal suspension use just to cover as we're
moving between cords. Be sure not to hold it
down too much or s, you get a muddy sort of sound. I've been told I'm
a little addicted to suspension pedal by teachers, so be sure not to use
too much pedal or else we get muddy.
What else do we have? We had a bit of
bass in the sound. Then we had a bit of
our peggios again, you can play them
anywhere on the piano. You could speed them up
double time. And off you go. So we've got those four
different things you can kind of play around
with depending on how much you're giving vocally or your students giving
vocally and gives you that real creative
freedom to play a song within the
confines of these chords. Lots of different
things we can do with these chords, and this
is just four of them. There's a huge world available to you once
these are known. I'm going to give the song a
go and play around with some of these and see how
it goes. Wish me luck. See the stone set in your eyes. See the phone twist
in your side. Away for you. Sign of heads of fad. When a peg of nails, she makes me wait and
away without here Woo here Woo Oh. We's always out here. We's always we's always out Oh oh
8. Lesson 7- Extension of Chords: Well done singers,
on that last lesson, playing your first pop
song, fantastic work. We're almost so close
to the end where we're going to be playing a
piece of music theater, using sheet music
and proper notation, but also using that
chord knowledge. But before we do that, I just want to have a little bit of a conversation about resources for chords where
we can find them, and then also having a look at some trickier ones that may come up that we haven't
quite looked at yet. So first thing
we're going to talk about is where can
you find case. I mentioned the website,
ultimateguitar.com. It is a free resource, and it's fantastic for any
singing teacher or singer. It has so many resources, so make sure to check it out. You can search a song
within the website, and then I'd recommend
going with the one that has the most ratings and
stars next to it. That tends to be the
one that works best. The other thing great
about that website is if you find a song
it's a little too high or a little too
low for your voice, there is a transpose button, meaning if you press the plus, it'll go up a semitone.
You can press it again. That means your
upper tone and you can keep going up until you find a set of chords that
works really nicely for your voice or
a student's voice. Again, this can also be
done the opposite way, so you can transpose using
the minus button to go down. I would just recommend going
through different versions and different transpositions of the song to find the one
that works best for you. Again, it's a free resource. I'm on it all the time, a very regular user of
ultimate guitar.com, so I recommend
checking that out. Now, before we move on
into our next lesson where we're playing using a little bit of sheet music and our chords, I want to talk about some chords that we
haven't looked at, and that's the one starting on the black keys because
in Lesson four and five, we did lots that all
started on the white keys. But now I have this fear that you might go
into ultimate guitar and see a chord that's F sharp
minor or B flat major. It can just be a little
bit intimidating, but really we just need
to remind ourselves we know the formula and it's
exactly the same thing. I'm going to build a
couple of them now and I'm just going to
throw them out at random. Let's do F sharp minor. We're in a minor, so that means we've got F
sharp to start with. That's three semitones
above, one, two, three, four semitones
above that, one, two, three, four. And there's my F shut minor. Notice how my hand has
crept forward a little bit, and that's because when
we start on a black key, the whole thing sits a little bit further into the keyboard. Your hand might be coming a
little bit further forward, especially if you're
coming from something a bit more white note based. Let's try one on the other hand. Let's go for
something different. Let's go for an E flat major. Let's go for a major. E flat, let's pick anyone. We
can play case anywhere. E flat, we're going for major. We're going back to those
four semitones, one, two, three, four, three semitones
above that, one, two, three. Great. Sounds like an E flat
major chord. Fantastic. Now, the other thing I
just want to remind you of is our black notes
are enharmonic, which means they have two names. For example, that E flat
major that I've just played could also be called
a D sharp major. I just want you to
have this awareness when we're working
with the black notes, there's two names for
all of them depending on what key that your chord
sheet is written in. Just be sure to not
get intimidated if something's an F sharp, major. For example, that could
also be written as a G flat major. It's maybe good to get familiar
with all your sharp ones. Then if you see you have
a flat chord in there, maybe you can cross
it out and write that sharp version that you're used to because it is
exactly the same thing. It's just written
in different ways. Very confusing, but
just an awareness that they do have two names. I'm now going to play every available major chord
starting on the black notes, and I will list the
names of them or the two names that they
have in the video as well. Okay. I'm now going to play every minor chord that's available to you starting
on the black keys. Again, I'll put
their double names and harmonic names in the video.
9. Lesson 8 - Play A Music Theatre Song: Hello singers. Welcome to our final lesson of
piano for singers. I hope you've learned a lot, but we have a little bit more to go, but this is probably the most
fun lesson because we're actually going to play a
piece of music theater. So we're going to up those
skills again and look at sheet music rather than
just chord sheets. So I picked a song that I believe that everybody
would be familiar with on my own from
Les Mis by Schonberg. And as you see, I'm
just going to put it in front of my overhead view. It's really different
from our pop song that we did back in Lesson six. And this is because we're
looking at notation. But if you look at the
top of the notation, we still have our
wonderful beloved chords, which pretty much I want you
to think about chords as a very low pixelated version of what the sheet
music is giving you. If we're looking
at this notation and just an awareness
that top line there, that's our singers line, and then the two lines
below is the piano line, the right hand and the left
hand, most of the time, not strictly that, but
normally treble and bass right and left hand
at the same time doing that multitasking. But we're not going to worry too much about that notation. We might delve a little deeper
into what it's showing us and maybe indicating about the chords and how they should
be played and expressed. What I want us to
look at first and foremost is our
chords at the top. Now, I've simplified
these chords a little bit just because
it is a beginner course, but there is potentially some
extensions we can go into. But let's just look
at the basics. We've got D major
chord to start with. Let's just build that
up with our formula. Going nice and quick
because we've done this a couple of times, we've
got D in the middle, one, two, three, four, F sharp, another three
above, one, two, three. Sounds good. Sounds like this song, if you're
familiar with it. Our next chord is an E minor. This is a nice easy transition up because it's just the
note right next door. It's an E minor, just
a quick formula there. E. We've got three
semitones now, one, two, three, four semitones
above that, one, two, three, four. Good. These repeat quite
a lot at the beginning, so you can see the intro is actually just those two chords. Let's play them. Let's just
get familiar with them. We got As you can see, that's a really low
pixelated version of the beginning of the song on my own pretending
he's beside me. A very simple version. If you look underneath
these chords, these D majors and
these E minors, we can see we've got this
lots of notation which may or not make sense at the moment because
we haven't gone into notation too much, but that's given me a
very high pick version of what that D chord should be. If you look at my hands, that first notation is telling me. You can see, I've got a
D here in the middle, an F sharp on the
top and an A Blow. It's just a different way
of playing that chord. We're sticking to the basics, but we want to get
this understanding of what those chords are giving us. It's a low resolution or a low pix version
of the notation, but it works really well
as a singing teacher. So when you're in a
lesson, focusing on the belting or on what
the singer needs, you just be giving them this to keep them in tune and give them something to work against. Let's keep going. I
want to drift through the sheet music and see if there's anything that's going
to trip us up a little bit. Let's have a look. Most of
the chords are pretty basic. I'm just going to
write that E back in. When I edited it came out. But if we look, we've got an
F sharp major chord here. Let's just quickly
grab that one out if any feel a little bit
scary or unfamiliar, particularly if they start
on a sharp or flat note, we can always write them out. Let's write that one out.
We've got an F sharp, four semitones above,
one, two, three, four, that's an A sharp there, three semitones, one,
two, three, C sharp. I'm just going to
write that one out. We've already got
the F sharp there. Let's add what was
it? It was a sharp and C sharp. Plus C sharp. That's how I'd write
it for a student, if you can see in
that overhead view. I just put that
there in case it's a little bit tricky to
think of very quickly. Suddenly, you can
just see it three notes together and not
have to do that counting. Again, these will
become so familiar, we't even think of
them as equations. They'll just be an
F sharp major chord and you'll know exactly what
that is and how to hit it. What about the
next one? B minor? I always find Bs tricky
Let's look at that. We've got B, it's a minor, three semitones above,
one, two, three, and then four semitones
above that, one, two, three, four,
there's a B minor. Let's write that one in
W. So what do we have? We had a D and also an F
sharp. Let's just keep going. Let's see if there's
any more tricky ones. I'm going to go over the page. B flat. B flat, let's have
a look at that. We're starting on
that B flat here. It's a B flat major, just the same
thing. Let's count. B, one, two, three, four, and then three above
that, one, two, three. Great. Let's write that in. Plus plus F. I think I'm changing
some time signatures on my electric keyboard
there that'll be fun. Over the page,
anything too tricky? A B flat minor, that's great because we
just did a B flat major. Let's go right back to it.
How can we make that a minor? The only thing that has to
change is the middle note. Going down a semitone to change that formula, that's
right at the end there. I can actually hear how that
fits in with the singer. But only my. That sounds really nice.
Let's write that in. We've got a B flat,
plus what was it? A D flat plus a F. Again, we've moved away from that four chord structure that a
lot of pop music has. We've moved into something
a little bit trickier, but potentially more
interesting as well. I just conveys a little bit more by throwing
these other chords in. Great. That's we've
identified the tricky chords. I'm going to leave it to you
to put in the equations for the other ones just
because they're a lot simpler and they
all begin on white notes. Now let's have a little talk about other things the
notation tells us. If you look in my overhead view, we've already talked about
how this first top line is our singers line
and you can see how the lyrics are
actually attached and only one thing is happening at the same time because
it's a singer line. They can only sing one
thing at one time. However, we've got
our right hand and our left hand going simultaneously
underneath the singer. Now, have a look at the
bottom right hand corner. We have this number
one and a box and then we have here two symbols, two little dots, and that's for the singer and also
the accompanist. That is a repeat sign. We're going to find
these little dots all the way back at
the beginning here. That means pretty much you've
played it first time round, first time round, get up
to that symbol, B we go. Now what happens when we
play the second time around? We're on in the rain the
pavement shines like silver, that second verse,
we're going along. All I see is and
me forever, Ben. Let's go over the page. I love double printing. Box two second time
around forever. And I know, and then we
continue on into the song. That's just a little idea of how repeat works and those boxes. So if you ever see those number
one or two labeled boxes, there's normally going to
be a little repeat symbol telling you you have to
go back and start again. That's another thing
in our sheet music we want to be aware of. I'm just having a look
if anything else is going to trip us
up in this song. Not quite yet, but I want
to have a little talk about the notation and how we can look at it
and be guided by it. Obviously, our singer
is going to be giving us a vocal quality. For example, here, it says
piano in the sheet music. We know this song
starts in a smaller, quieter, vulnerable place. So we'd probably play a
little bit quietly and potentially a little bit simply. We could even maybe start
a little bit higher. On my own pretending
he's beside me. All alone, I walk with him till morning quite like that a
little bit, Haya, potentially. Can see here now the notation seems to be moving
down on the stave, which means it's moving
down on the piano. That was actually quite
correct starting a little bit higher because
the notes are quite high. We've got this lovely
high tune happening. But here, you can see it's moving down towards the center. I'm going to start to beef
it out a little bit with a little bit more of the
middle section of the piano. That's great. I've got with him. I feel his arms around me. When I lose my way, I close my eyes and
he has found me. I like that would go
back for the repeat. What else can we look at? When we get to I know
it's only in my mind, I see this little MF symbol
meaning moderately forte, moderately loud, we're starting
to pick up a little bit. That's where our vocalists might start to thicken up as well. I'm noticing we're getting
these four beats in every bar. The chord is
changing, but we have these four beats in
every single bar. Maybe that means I'll play my chord four times in each bar. For example, we've got
Io and I It's only nyn and I'm talking
to myself and not to. That feels right. We're sort of mirroring what's happening
in that notation. We don't have to
read the notation, but we can easily see
without reading music, we've got four of those
beats in every bar, so we want to reflect that in
our chord playing as well. I love him. Now I can see these chords are
super broken up. What did we talk about before? Broken up chords, arpeggios, maybe we'll bring back some
arpeggios, I love him. When the night is off. He is gone. Rivers a river. Oh, I actually feel like that needed to be lower.
It's a big moment. I love it. Ws. He is gone. Rivers, a river. Yeah, that feels a
little bit bigger. But again, you can
play it's chords. We're not going for the
exact notation there. We're just having an
awareness of what the music's giving us and what the singers giving us, as well. So that's something
I want to sort of invite you to just
look at that notation, have an awareness of where
it's sitting on the stave, how many beats are in each bar, the bar being those two lines
on each side of the music. I'll just point out the bar. Bar just looking if we've got our peggios in the
right hand and maybe two pulses
in the left hand. These are things we
can just build on. We can always start
with a nice and simple right hand chord with a little bit of
petal. All right. Let's get this song a go. We've identified
the tricky chords. We've looked at the
repeats on the song, and we've also had
a little bit of an idea of the notation
and how it sits. I'm going to give
this a go, feel free to just watch my hands, play along with me,
sing along with me, and you can also put the
video on half speed, if that's a little bit easier
as well to follow along on the keys and wishing you and
myself luck. Let's do it. On my pretending he's beside me. Oh I walk with him
until morning. Without him, I feel
his arms around me. And when I lose my way, I close my eyes, and he has found me. The pavement shines like silver the light of misty in the
river in the darkness, the trees of starlight. A I see is him and me
for eFi and I know it's only in a that I'm
talking to myself and the two To I know that he is a still There's a way for us I love him Wells overs on the
River's just river. Without him, the world
around me changes. The trees everywhere, the
streets awful strangers. I love him, but every day
love all my life I'm only be pretending Without me his world on turning a world
that's full of happiness that I
have never done. I love him I love him I love but only a
R B
