Right Hand Piano Techniques

1. Intro: Hey, and welcome to my course on right handed piano techniques. This course is meant to complement the other one that I've created left handed piano techniques. But now, for all of you that are looking for right hand techniques that you can apply to pretty much any style at any speed, this course is for you. We're going to start off by talking about the functions of the right hand, and then I'll give you some warm ups that you can apply to the right hand before jumping into some of these techniques. Some of them are quite quick and flashy, so you'll want to make sure that you do your warm up ahead of time so that you can get the most out of those classes. So I'm going to be giving you some techniques that'll help you apply various rhythms to the harmony that you're supplying within a song. But don't worry. I'll also give you some techniques to help you develop and beef up your melodies, as well. As pianists, in this right handed world, it's really important for us to make sure that our right hand is feeling confident at the instrument. So I want to make sure that I've given a course that'll help you develop the strength and agility that you need in your right hand to come across as a professional pianist. There is going to be a project for this course, and it's pretty simple. What you're going to do is take a section of a song that you either wrote or that you know, so it could be original or a cover, and you're going to apply one of the techniques from within this course to that section. Now, it's probably going to be a four chord chord progression, but it could be a progression by itself where you are accompanying or a chord progression with a melody. Depends on which technique you liked the most. If you want to try to spruce up your melody, then you could maybe try applying octaves or something similar. But if you want to really just work on your accompaniment and there were some harmonic rhythmic tricks that you liked, then feel free to try those out, as well, too. Let's say there's a verse with the chords F minor, B flat minor, G diminished, C dominant seven. And you want to try to apply one of the techniques that I've given you within this course, maybe you try oscillating up and down through three note versions of these chords. It might sound something like this. You can try applying inversions. There's lots of things you can try here. So that's a basic idea for now, but you can also choose something more advanced from within this course and try to apply it in a unique way within that composition you're working with. Now, that's a kind of basic version of something you could apply, but feel free to get creative with it. Take a technique or maybe even two if you're feeling adventurous and try applying it in a way that you think is unique to the song that you're working with. Now there is going to be a class that fully outlines the details of this project, so make sure you check out that class. So I want to be clear, you can review each of these courses as many times as you see fit. In fact, it's encouraged. Don't just go through the course once through and assume that everything is going to be absorbed. Just like practice, it's going to take time to really develop these techniques. I hope you're ready to really beef up your right hand. Let's get some speed, strength, and stretch going for that right hand, and I'll catch you in the first class. 2. Class Project: Alright, let's talk about your project for this course. As usual, with most of my projects, I get you recording something. It's either audio or video with you applying some of the techniques that you've learned from the course. And even better still, your favorite techniques. I want you to make sure that you're applying something that you're passionate about. Allow me to explain. Take a song that you're working on, whether it's an original composition or a song by someone else, maybe a cover, and you're going to take a section of that song. Let's say it's the verse, and the verse has four chords and a bit of a melody. You're going to choose to either apply one of the right hand techniques to the harmony or the melody of that section. So as an example, let's say the chord progression is F minor to B flat minor, G diminished, to C dominant seven. In the right hand, you can make each chord a three note version and then apply the right hand oscillation up and down. This might be one technique that you want to apply, or you could try applying some oblique motion, in other words, petal tones. It's up to you. Now, that's in the case of you applying it to harmony. If you want it, you could also try something like right hand octaves to beef up a melody that you're working on. So let's say the melody is. You could try octaves. Keep it simple, but make sure that you're applying something that you're passionate about and that you had fun learning. Now, if you are doing a video recording, it's preferred that I can see your hands playing. I don't have perfect pitch. I'll allow me to get a little bit more insight as to what you're playing. Now, once you have your audio recording or your video recording, you're going to upload it to the Internet and share a public link with me. So in terms of uploading, I'd recommend for audio using SoundCloud. You can create a free account and it's really easy to share a link. If you're recording video, I would use YouTube or vimeo. Now, make sure that you're supplying a public link so that I can easily check it out, and you're going to supply that link within your project submission. Make sure that you're recording this on a day that you're feeling really in the zone and make sure that you do plenty of practice leading up to it so that you're not feeling stressed or nervous or just generally not prepared. Put in the time, put in the practice, and when you feel like you're ready, make sure you do your recording so that I can give you some feedback as to what I think you did best and some areas of improvement. Really, a big part of this project is just me holding you accountable to apply the material. So you might say to yourself, that was a fun choruse and I learned a couple of things that I'm going to apply soon. But sometimes soon doesn't happen. So this project is a way to make sure that you apply the material in a way that's best suited for the type of musician that you are. Whether that's a composer, producer, or performer, you're going to be able to get something out of this course and you'll be able to apply it within your project. Now, if you are a producer or a composer and your right hand still isn't feeling like it's up to speed for this project submission, you could supply either a sheet music version of the song that you're working on with some of the right handed techniques within that song. Or you could supply an audio recording of a production that you're working on that applies some of these techniques. But generally, it's preferred that I get to hear or see you apply it with your right hand within the audio or video submission. If you need a bit of help from your private lesson instructor, it's highly encouraged that you take the idea of this project to them so that they can help you develop it before you submit it. That's it. That's the class project. I hope you have some fun working on it, and I'll catch you in the next class. 3. Function of the Right Hand: Alright, let's talk about the functions of your right hand on the piano. As many of you may know, the primary function of your right hand is going to be to play melodies, but it doesn't always have to. In fact, there's a lot of really fun right hand techniques that we can explore that are a bit more ornamental or a little bit more sort of set back from that main spotlight of the melody. That's what I'm hoping to give you within this class is some fun, sort of flashy things that you can do in your right hand that doesn't steal the melody away, whether it's something fast and flashy or something a little bit more kind of laid back within a mix. There's going to be lots of options available to you within this course. Now, our right hand does occupy the higher notes on the piano, and quite often high notes, because of the way our ears perceive sound, can kind of steal the spotlight a little bit more than we would like. So as you probably know, the right hand is going to be covering the high notes on the piano. And because our ears perceive higher pitches with a little bit more sensitivity, you have to watch how you approach some of these techniques. If you're really heavy handed, you might end up stealing the spotlight when that isn't your main intention. You want to make sure if there's a melody happening that you subdo your parts a little bit for producers out there, maybe that means putting a cut off filter, so you're rolling off some of the high frequencies. But at the same time, you can also just simply take your volume down and try playing a little bit lighter. Now, not all the techniques within this course are going to be fast and flashy. Some of them are going to enhance your melody playing while others are going to help you enhance some of your harmony playing. So whether you're looking to beef up your melodies, enhance your harmony or be a little bit flashier on the keys, this course is going to have something for you. Because most people are right hand dominant, there's going to be a lot of right handed techniques are just a little bit faster. So keep in mind, if you're left handed, this course is still for you. Maybe growing up in a right hand world, you are able to be quite nimble with your right hand, but just keep in mind, there's going to be some pretty quick stuff happening in the right hand. And that's why I'm going to also recommend that you do the warm ups that I'm going to supply for this course before you get trying these out just so that your right hand is feeling nimble and ready to go. So whether you want to improve your playing or apply these within music production and composition, all the stuff within this course should be available to pretty much all types of keyboard players or piano players. So I hope you enjoy the content that's available within this course, and I'll catch you in the next class. 4. Right Hand Warm-ups: Alright, so I'm going to give you five really simple right hand warm ups that you can try. Of course, if you know scales, inversions and arpeggios, and you're a bit more of an advanced player, those would be great warm ups. But for beginner players, I want to give you something that you can play around with. So I'm going to give you a few simple right hand warm ups. If you're a bit more of an advanced player and you know some scales, arpeggios and inversions, by all means, use those as part of your warm up but if you're more of a beginner player, I wanted to give you something that you could practice so that you can play some of the quicker material that's coming later in this course. Now, there is going to be a PDF for this class. So if you prefer to read the exercises, that's also available to you. Let's start it off. We're going to go really simple to start. We're going to be in C position, which means we have the notes CDEF, G available in our right hand. You're one of those players that tends to avoid playing fingers four and five. Like, I get a lot of beginner players that are always using fingers one, two, and three for everything. These fingers here. And keep in mind, these are the finger numbers one, two, three, four, five. But if that's you mostly using these fingers, then this is a great little way to get using four and five in a really simple fashion. Let's try it out. You're in C position, and we're just moving up through the notes and back down. Now, you're not repeating the bottom note. You're not repeating the top note, and you're going to oscillate up down. Up, down. Like a really simple version of a scale. Think of it that way. Now notice, I'm not playing lightly with inconsistency. So notes are loud, some notes are quiet. I'm like a mezzo forte medium loud or even forte loud all the way through. You want to really build those little muscles, make sure everything's feeling relatively even. The bottom note and top note have a bit more of an accent. One and a two and a three and a for anda. That's intentional, just based on how we generally pulse our scales and music in general. Now, you could try being very equal across, but again, I think the pinky in the thumb, with a bit of an accent is a great way to approach this. From there, you can start to build up speed, start slower and gradually build up that speed. It doesn't have to be lightning fast. Maybe around that speed. I mean, sure, I could get a bit quicker, but my pinky starts to feel a bit weak. So if you start to compromise some of the volume and the evenness, with the exception of the thumb and pinky accenting a little bit, then dial it back and see what speed you can work up to while keeping the exercise intact. So the next exercise I'm going to teach you does work with petal tones, which is a class that we're going to be working with much later within the course. Think of petal tones for now as a repeated bottom or a repeated top note while some other notes are moving around. So here's the second exercise. You're playing thumb up a step. You're in the same position as the last one. Thumb up a skip. Thumb up a fourth to F, thumb up a fifth to G, working your way back. So up to F, some up to E, some up to D, and you're going to continue this. But let's go more even with our rhythm. Doesn't have to be super fast. You can start to work on some speed. And that's the second exercise. Pretty clear cut, pretty simple for the most part. And exercise three is also quite simple. Now we're repeating the pinky up top and working our way down with the other notes. So pinky down a step, pinky down a skip, pinky down a fourth to D, pinky all the way down to C, pinky down a fourth, pinky down a skip, pinky down a step. And same ID. You can work out some speed with that as well, too. Now, I have a hand injury right here. So some of my speed in my pinky has been compromised, but feel free to move up to whatever speed you're comfortable with. And you might find that playing a little bit lighter is going to help you achieve a little bit more speed. But again, try to make sure that your volumes are either equal or if you're accenting, make sure that it's on purpose. In other words, some notes are a bit louder. Make sure that's applying to some sort of a groove or a pulse and that it's not a byproduct of one finger just being stronger. Exercise four also quite simple, and we're going to be working with chords. So you're going to play a C major chord. Broken. If you can play a C major chord, which I hope you can, you're gonna play bottom, middle, top, middle, bottom. Same idea. You can work out some speed, start slow. And start to work up some speed from there. You can also do each chord two times and move up. You don't even have to stay on all white notes. You can find some other major chords or minor chords that you can try out, especially the ones that are giving you trouble. I B flat minor gives you trouble, just stay on that one for a little bit. You'll notice my hand is rocking back and forth a little bit. You could play deeper into the keys, but on a real piano, the keys will feel heavier. A little bit of a rock back and forth with the arm in and out can help sometimes. So in the PDF, I'll give you that exercise just with the white note cords. And if you want to try some of the other cords and you know a bunch of other chords, then just apply the same technique and the same fingerings. Last exercise also pretty simple. We're going to play an octave in our right hand. If you can't stretch it, you are exempt from this. But do your best to try to stretch it. I have students with smaller hands that eventually do get up to this octave, so it's not just hand size, it's also the ability to make that stretch over time. Going to play a C octave up to C sharp, and you're going to be moving things up chromatically. Once you reach the top octave, you're going to work your way back down. And again, we can do this with a bit of an even sort of rhythm. So something like Now, I am pulsing a little bit. Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, that sort of idea. A little bit of a pulse. Every two or four beats is fine, or just slam it all, do whatever's comfortable. But again, we don't want accents that are unintentional. So there it is working our way up and down through the notes, some oblique motion or petal tones, where one note is repeating in between moving notes. We have our chord isolated and some right hand octaves. That should be enough to get you started and warmed up so that you can jump into the next class. I'll see you there. 5. Pulses: Alright, let's start off super simple and just talk about how we can pulse the right hand. So what do I mean by pulse? Well, there's something in music called accents. We can play a note at a pretty regular volume or an accentuated accented volume, where we're playing it a bit louder. And this is true for every dynamic. If you're playing soft, you can play a little bit more than soft on specific notes. If you're playing loud, you can play a little bit more than loud on specific notes. So it might sound like this to create a pulse. Let's say we have a C major chord, C, E and G, something like this. So, every two notes, I'm a bit louder. Loud, soft, loud, soft, loud, soft. It's also very common to have loud, soft, medium soft or strong, weak, medium weak, something like this. Like I said, you can do this at any dynamic marking, so I could have something like very quiet but still accented every second note. So an accent in general, is playing a little bit louder or, again, accentuated. So this is how we're going to create this pulse, this pulsing sort of boom boo boom boo It just kind of creates a little bit more rhythmic motion and a little bit more interest to the listener. If you're playing a chord in the right hand and trying something like, it sounds a little bit amateur and childlike, like a kid slamming at the piano full volume for every chord hit. But again, this idea of Creating a pulse really helps establish a groove within your piano part. We're going to try some quarter note pulses and some eighth note pulses that are a bit faster, and I'm going to guide you through it. Hopefully, you're at your instrument. Let's try out a C major chord in the right hand. And we're going to create a slow tempo somewhere around here, and we're going to be loud, soft. Loud, soft. Let's try it. One, two, three, four. Keep it going. Good. Let's stop it there. So you can see at a slow speed. The pulse doesn't work quite as well, but I wanted you to get started with something very basic. We're going to create a bit of a faster pulse. Now we're going to be at about this speed, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Here we go in one, two, three, four. To keep it going with the snap. Now let's try it a little bit quicker. Somewhere around, one, two, three, four, one, two, here we go in. One, two, one, two, three, four. Make sure you're pulsing. A little bit louder every second note. Good. A couple more. Let's stop here. Great stuff. Now we're going to try this with a chord progression. If you're a total beginner and you find this part tough, feel free to come back to it later, but I'm going to keep the progression pretty simple for now. We're going to go four on C major, four on A minor, four on F major, and then four beats on G. So it's C down a skip down a skip up a step. Let's give it a try. In one, two, three, four. One more time. Finish it. There we go. So once you start to develop your chord progressions and apply this pulse, the color of the chord progressions can add intrigue. The pulse of the rhythm can add rhythmic drive and groove, and this is where you really start to pull together your style from various angles. As an example, something like I elaborated a tiny bit, but that's basically an example of where this can go. This Ja I really starts to feel like it lands in that pocket or in that groove. Let's try some eighth notes. Similar idea. Now we're thinking one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three and four. So we're faster, but the concept is the same. We're just shifting how we're thinking about the counting. So let's try C major again to start in one and two, and three and four. Keep it going. Two more counts of four. One, two, three. Here we go and finish. There you go. So there's the basic pulse again, faster. That's pretty much how it feels. So now we're going to try it again with our chord progression. C major, A minor, F major, G major. Again, 1 bar for each. So four beats one and two, and three and four end, and then we'll switch into the next chord. Let's give it a try. In one and two, and three and four. Three, and four switch. Another switch. Back to G one more time, whole way through without me counting. Ready to finish on C. Here we go. There it is. So those are the basics of pulsing a rhythm. Now, we can also try a three beat pulse or a six beat pulse. So we're in 34 when we're thinking quarter notes, and we're in 68 when we're thinking eighth notes. For those of you that understand time signatures, that's what I'm referring to. So we're going to try some three beat pulses, which is loud, soft, soft or strong, weak, weak. We're going to start on C, and we're going to move up to F major, and then we'll just move back to C. It'll sound like this. One, two, three, so we'll do 2 bars of C. One, two, one, two, three, and then back to C. To bars of each. Here we go. Let's try it out. In one, two, three, one, two, three, C two. C two. Now we move. F, two, three, F two, B to C. C, two, three, C two. F two. F, let's wrap it up on C. And now we're going to try it a bit faster. Something like one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six. This is really good for old, like, kind of 50s style baladsT sort of like can keep playing on that, but that's kind of the basic idea. So that sort of doop sort of sound, this pulse will give you a lot of mileage. So now we're thinking one, two, three, four, five, six, and we're going to play one, two, three, four, five, six, and then move. We're not worried about doing 2 bars per chord, just 1 bar per chord. So now we're going to go from C major down to A minor. Down to F major and back up to G, like we had before. This is such a classic doop sort of chord progression that instead of just going from C to F again to keep it super super simple, I'm going to give you that full CAF G progression because it works so well with this particular 68 sound. Let's give it a try 1 bar per chord, so six beats, and then we move. We're in in six beats. Here we go. One, two, three, four, five, six seat. A F. Back to G. One more time, C to A, then to F, back to G, and finish on C. Nicely done. So we've talked about pulsing in four beats with quarter notes, eighth notes. We've talked about pulsing three beats and also pulsing six, eight or six beats. So in terms of a right hand part, so this will give you a lot of mileage in your right hand over many styles, and it's super friendly for beginners. If you do want to understand how to put it together, just try holding some octaves in your left hand as you're pulsing in the right. If your chord is C major, play a set of C octaves. If it's A minor, play a set of A octaves. If it's F major, play a set of F octaves and same for G, play G octaves. And then you can have some fun with it from there. But, alas, this is a right hand piano technique course. So do what you will with the left hand, feel free to experiment with it. But that right hand technique of pulsing, I'm sure you will get plenty of mileage out of. I hope you had fun in that class, and I'll catch you in the next one. 6. 1 Octave Arpeggios: H So this is an exercise that's going to focus on counting three beats. But if you think of three beats as triplets, you can also put it into the context of four beats. So the difference of one, two, three, one, two, three, or one, two, three, four, and fitting threes within each beat of a 44 pulse. Allow me to explain. So let's take our C major chord with fingers one, two, three, and pop up an extra C with our pinky on top. We're going to lineate or play the notes in a linear fashion. This is what an arpeggio is. Upward, and then just coming right back down with no repetition on that top note. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. Played quicker, and I'm going to try G minor as a different chord here with a B flat to mix up the shapes a little bit, it would sound like this. We've heard this a lot in film scores. Like, imagine So you want to work on dynamics, playing loud, playing soft, playing slow, playing fast. There's lots of different ways that you can try changing this right hand part to let it fit into different scenes of a film, genres within a jam, whatever your context of playing might be. Step one for you to try this out. Let's try it on a minor chord. We're going to choose a minor a bit more friendly. And we're going to be thinking one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, starting with the thumb. I'm going to create a pulse, but if this already seems like it's way too much, pause the video, try it out slowly. Just get used to how this feels at your hand 'cause I'm gonna be giving us a beat, and you're gonna want to try to follow that beat. So get used to the feeling first. But once you have that, let's go for it. It sounds like this. One, two, three, one, two, joining. One, two, three, one, two, three. I have my pedal down. I'm pretty certain I'm not gonna play any wrong notes. So the pedal is just gonna help add some atmosphere, which sounds really cool with this particular technique. Let's keep this going. Two more times. Good. Now, I'm not going to assume that you can play this quite quickly at this point. Work up speed with a metronome. Even if you don't have a metronome, you can start slow, gradually speed it up. Then see kind of how fast you can get in every day, see if you can get a bit faster. Remember, if you want to play really quick, it's important to play light. You can't really play. You can play loud and fast, but it hits a wall really quick. Like, if you know any heavy metal drummers, ask them how they play to be able to go with your feet for an entire performance, you can't be over using those muscles. So playing light enough that it's not strenuous, but loud enough that it's still clear and the audience can hear it. Now, before we move into this idea of thinking of it within a context of four beats, we can also just try playing around with some left hand octaves. This isn't necessary, and it's a little outside of the context of this class, but I want to give you some ideas as to where these right hand techniques can be evolved and where they get used, how they do complement the left hand. So whether you want to try this or not, that's up to you, but here's what I'm going to recommend. We're going to take an A octave down in the left hand and move down to skip to F. Then we're going to move it up to C and then down to G. We're not gonna change our right hand part. We're gonna keep it the same the whole way through. It sounds like this. You can join in after. Just listen first. Now, does my right hand perfectly complement that left hand part? Maybe not, but when it's sounding a bit odd, like a G in the left hand, with this A minor chord, there's a sense of tension, and it's not super dissonant. It's kind of colorful. So this still works. It's kind of like the training wheels version, but that's what we're going for here. So remember, we're going to play each arpeggio two times before we move our left hand. We're starting on A octaves. Remember it's AFCG. So we have A in the left. Here's our right hand A minor arpeggio. Let's give it a try. Remember two times per chord so the right hand plays up and down, and then up and down again, then the left hand moves. Let's go for it. In one, two, three, one, two, three. Down to F in the left. Up to C. Down to G. Back to A, we'll finish there. Great job. So you might be able to assume from here now we can move our right hand part around. So we have A down to F, up to C, or down to C. I'm gonna go up to G. Back to A. It's going to take a little bit more sort of nimbleness to jump around in time, but why don't we give it a try? So we're going to go a bit slower than that. It's going to be one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, and then we'll move both hands. The hands are moving in parallel motion. So my left moves from A octaves down to F, my right hand is moving from an A minor chord down to an F major chord. Let's give it a try getting position. As in the left, A minor positioned in the right hand. Here we go in, one, two, three, one, two, three. Two times on A minor. Everything moves down. Here we go. Oh to see? Now, I'm using my pedal to help smooth out these transitions back to A minor. So I'm only lifting the pedal as I press the first note of the next chord. Lift press. And to see, lift press. That allows me to jump and connect the sounds. So there it is the right hand moving around and following the left hand movement. Now, again, this left hand stop isn't necessary. This is a course on right hand technique, but you can see if I get playing It sounds like something like from a motivational video, put some reverb on that piano, and you get a really fun right hand sound. But I want to give you some context for how you can eventually put these hands together. Now, talking about how you can view this all in four, four. Let's say you're playing with a band. You have a rock band, po got to got too. So there's your four beats. How do I put this in context so that within the four beats, I can make this technique work. So let's stay on AmnorF now and imagine our beat is one, two, three, four. I mean, at this speed, we'll have to play pretty quick, but it'll be triple, triple triple, triple, one, two, three, four, one to foot to one, two, D to foot to one. That sort of idea. So let's try it out with a beat. We're just going to stay on A minor for now just to get used to the feeling. Let's try it out in one, two, three, four, triple, triple, triple, let triple, a triple, let triple, a triple, triple, two, three, four, one. So that's kind of the basic idea. And again, from there, you can start to move your chords around. It might sound something like this, two, three, four. So I was doing some classical harmonies, but you get the idea. I was having fun with it. I'm also using inversions. This is not a class on inversions, but I went from G minor to E flat major. Two of the notes are common between those two chords, so I only moved the one note that I had to. So you can find little shifts between chords to keep it simple, and it also allows you to play faster going it's really hard to make the transitions at that speed between those two chords. But if we're using inversions, it's a whole lot easier. So as you can see whether or not you're adding in a left hand part, this right hand part stands as being very potent all on its own. It's a very important technique to learn because you want to be able to break up your chords and have some way to span a little bit further on the piano. And also emotionally, it just creates such a sense of, like, it's like, cinematic almost, but at the same time, it can be very serious. I picture something like this maybe in, like, a song by use or a rock band that uses synthesizers that are monophonic. So you want to outline a chord, but you can only play one note at a time. This would be a great technique to try out. So imagine something like this backing up a rock band. Sound really cool. That's it. On this class for right hand one octave arpeggios, in the next class, we're going to talk about how to play a more traditional arpeggio. We're going to go two octaves. Let's dive in. I'll see you there. 7. 2 Octave Arpeggio: All right, so we've covered one octave, right hand arpeggios. Now we're going to cover two octave arpeggios in the right hand. And for classical musicians, you guys might already have a little bit of a head start. But for non classical musicians, do understand that this is a very fundamental thing that students need to learn when they're doing, classical music exams. So this is really going to push you forward as a pianist. So you're going to have to be a little bit more nimble for this technique because there's a lot of big crosses of the thumb or the fingers over the thumb that are needed to pull this off. I'll give you an example of how it sounds. Again, I really like the sound of minor, so I'm going to demonstrate this on D minor. Similar to the last class, we start with a one, two, three, but instead of capping it with the pinky, we're going to cross our thumb to that next D, one, two, three, one, and that sets us up for another two, three, like we had down here, one, two, three, one, two, three, and then we cap it off with the pinky. So the top is still going to feel like the last class, but we kind of take this jumping point to get to this, and then we have to jump our way back down. In this case, a finger three down to A, and then pull our way back down. Overall, it sounds like this. Now, not every chord shape is going to use the same set of fingers. So I will supply a PDF that gives you all the right hand arpeggios, major and minor, as well as their proper fingerings. So, for example, B flat minor, we start with two, three, cross our thumb to a white node F, 23, cross our thumb to a white node F, and then two or three is optional at the top. Then work our way back down in reverse order. For now, what I would say is get comfortable with the all white shapes and the white, black, white shapes. Whether they are major or minor, in the right hand, they're always going to use the one, two, three. So D major, one, two, three, C minor, one, two, three, C major is one, two, three. It's a really nice place to start, and it covers half of all the major and minor chords. And it also works up on the black nodes like E flat minor or FA. Major. But again, I'll supply all the fingerings for the major chords and minor chords for those right hand arpeggios. So, still, we're kind of locked into these three beats, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. Now it's feeling more like a total of six, one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six. You can think of it as one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one. And the way you pulse it, going back to our other class on pulsing is going to determine if it feels more in three or more in six. If you're pulsing on one, two, three, four, five, six, one, then it'll feel like six beats. But if you're pulsing on one, two, three, one, two every three beats, then it's going to feel like three. Listen to the difference. Here's a three beat pulse. Here's a six beat pulse. Now, technically, six beats is like strong week week, medium week week. But even if you just kind of pulse the first of every six, you'll still get that pulsing of six beats across. So now let's try it out together. We're going to play on Good Old D minor. Our pulsing is going to be one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six, one. Let's give it a try. And again, if this already looks like it's too intense, pause the video, try it out at a speed that makes sense for you. But I think this slow speed, once you're ready to jump in on a beat should be appropriate. So let's give it a try. In one, two, three, four, five, six. Now my pedal is down again. I'm pretty confident I'm not gonna hit any wrong notes. If you do hit wrong notes with the pedal down, then you're in trouble because it's gonna hold that wrong note. So you can try it with or without pedal. That's up to you. But what I would say is as you get more comfortable, then try it with the pedal. So there's our basic version of this. Now, what we can try is adding in a little bit of left hand for context. Again, this is a course for right handed piano techniques, but I want to give you a little sneak peek as to how you can develop this into a more full piano part. So we're going to hold a D octave for the first group of two, six beats, so 12 beats, and then B flat for the next 12 beats or two groups of sixes, right? So, one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six, then down to this B flat. You don't have to change the right hand part. We're gonna go slower than that. Something like one, two, three, four, five, six. Let's try it out. Here we go. In one, two, three, four, five, six. So basically, every time you reach the bottom, the left hand is changing back to D. And that's the basic idea of what you could try with your left hand. Now, you could also try raising the A up to a B flat when the left hand moves down to this B flat octave. This is for slightly more advanced players. But again, if you're a beginner, feel free to try to work up into this. So it would sound like this one, two, three, four, five, six. We're getting ready to change the B flat in the right hand. Back to D minor. Let's keep it going. And switch the shape. Let's get ready to finish. Give you a full cord to finish. I actually prefer keeping it on that first chord shape because you end up getting, like, a B flat major seven chord. It's a bit more colorful, and I love color. In fact, the way I would try this would probably be something like this. I would start to take the concept of these arpeggios and play around with different types of shapes, one, two, three, four, five, six, and I'm just jumping up. So as you start to develop this right hand technique, feel free to explore slightly different patterns. Again, here I went one, two, three, one, two, three, and then I jumped up to a full pattern and did a reverse one, two, three, one, two, three from the top. That's outside of the context of this class, but the whole point here is to show you that experimenting is highly encouraged. Once you have the basics of this technique, play around. You find yourself playing around with something like this for like 15 minutes and you're just kind of lost in it, I promise you you get the piano player badge at that point. That is sort of like the sign of a true pianist is when you can really get lost in your study, and it doesn't feel like study. It feels like playing around with a concept or an idea. I'd imagine it would be kind of similar to a chef starting to kind of get off the page of the recipe and having some fun with the tastes that they know and that they want to explore within a particular dish. Now, I do want to give you some context for the other fingerings that you're going to need to know for some of these other chords. So in general, when we have a shape that has a lot of black notes, but a white, you want to get your shortest finger, your thumb to the white note. So you'll notice that within the PDF, I'm going to start you sometimes on a finger two and get you to cross to a white note. Like, here's C sharp minor. So two, one, two, four, one, two, four, or B flat majors, another kind of weird one, where we're starting with two, one, two, four, one, two, four. But I want to say the reason why we have these really weird fingerings is mostly to accommodate the thumb to a white note. So follow the fingerings that I've given you. If it ever doesn't make sense, you're like, How can I connect this finger to this finger? There's likely a cross involved. So watch out for those crosses like two to one. You can't cross that thumb over. So try to make sense of how you can smooth this out crossing the thumb only ever under the other fingers. And the other fingers, two, three, four, five, only cross over the thumb. You can't cross under. This is super fundamental stuff, but I want to make sure that you're not left in the dark. So nearly all the cords will use the same fingering. If they are all white, if they're white, black, white, if they are all black or even B minor, which is white, white, black, they'll use this one, two, three pattern. There's some exception, which would be black, white, black shapes, as well as B flat minor. So to cover those, B flat minor is two, three, one, two, three, one, crossing our thumb, the short finger to white notes, and a two on top, and then coming back down in reverse order. In C sharp minor, F sharp minor and G sharp minor, you could try to play one, two, three, and cross. It's technically doable. It's a bit clunky feeling. So the proper fingering would be two cross the thumb, the short finger to a white note, yet again, and then 24. So two, one, two, four, one, two, four, and then reversing 21, cross four over, 421, and then down at the bottom. Two again. Same thing works for something like A flat major, two, one, two, four, one, two, four, and then similar to the black, white black shapes, B flat major is also two, one, two, four, one, two, four. So again, I'm going to put all of this in the PDF, but I wanted to make sure to give you a glimpse at how all of this works, so you compare this video with the PDF to properly make sense of how to execute all of those major and minor chords. Have some fun experimenting with the sounds that you select. Have some fun experimenting with the speeds that you choose and the genres that you try this over top of. That is a two octavrpeggio in the right hand. I hope you had fun in this class, and I'll catch you in the next one. 8. Ostinatos: This next right hand technique is much more open ended. Up to this point, we've been working quite a bit with specific chords and how we can apply those into the right hand. Now we're going to start experimenting and playing around a little bit more with astonatos. An astonato is usually actually played in the left hand, but it can be played in either hand, and it's very popular in Latin music, where a bassist will play some sort of repeated phrase and the band will play over top. So maybe something like And then the band plays over top of something like that. But the right hand can also play Ostinato's some sort of repeated phrase, and in this case, maybe the left hand shifts and shapes the harmony that the right hand is implying at that point. So we could have something like And just repeat that. Now, it's not quite I mean, it's outlining a G minor chord, but it's not quite only G minor notes. It's the first five notes of G minor sort of shuffled up a little bit. Now, again, slightly outside of the context of this course, I am going to give you some left hand tips, but just so you can see the full picture of how this Ostinato works when the harmony is changing below it, or the implied harmony, I should say. So we have G down in the left hand, set of octaves, down to E flat, down to C, and then up to D. With that right hand ostinato put together, it would sound something like this. So when your band is playing a certain chord progression, let's say you're in a band and the harmony is changing and the basis is playing along with the harmonic changes, and everything's already kind of feeling locked in, it might make the most sense for you to just play something simple and repetitious. Let's try another ostinato. Again, we'll stay in G minor. Let's try something like A, B flat, F, D, so maybe with this rhythm here. So let's say the band is playing something like same chord progression, G minor, E flat, C to D, just to show you, like, you can have almost randomized ideas in the right hand. If it's diatonic and the rhythm grooves a bit, it should pull together. It would sound like this. Now, that might sound a little weird at the end. So quite often on certain chords, at the end, especially, I might change it a bit. So just changing a couple notes, but it still very much fits around the theme of the Ostinato, the same sort of big leap up and then coming down a note and also the same rhythm. Now, at some point, if you take a phrase and make it small enough, it doesn't quite feel like a full Ostinato anymore. Like, if I just took the first three notes of G minor and played them ascending over and over, I don't know that you would call this an ostinato, but I don't want to brush over the fact that you can really simplify this concept. So I'm not calling this an ostinato, but I'm putting it in this class because, again, I think it's really worth exploring. So let's just say we have those three notes, same left hand part, so we'd have something like Then maybe and then slowly expanding into some other part. But again, now we're sounding a bit more cinematic, or at the very least, we're really taking a back seat as a keyboard. So this more like adding a texture to the overall, whether it be like band performance or cinematic score or whatever it might be. You can almost think of these sort of like a counter melody within a film score, violins. Judo d judo d judo while the rest of the band is developing the harmony and maybe a main melody. And at some point, it all starts to kind of blur together. This idea of a counter melody of a violin or a right hand ostinato on the piano. They serve a similar function, which is to add texture and to sort of tie parts together. And especially if you find that there's quite a bit of space and it just needs to be filled. Sometimes it needs to be filled with something very simple, and this is a great concept that you can try. So right hand astonatos simple phrases. Let's say, generally, as a rule, like four to eight note phrases that repeat the left hand in our context as a pianist, or the orchestra or the band, whoever is going to fill out the harmony and maybe even a melody as well to complement the astonato that you're playing. But again, this is all about repetition, keeping it simple, adding texture, and filling in space. Now, if you're not sure how to make an ostinato, take a scale. Let's say it's G minor with seven notes and randomize maybe four, five, six numbers 1-7. I do this with students all the time. So let's say they say two, three, 754. So this is the second note, the third note, seventh, fifth, fourth. So how can I put two, three, 754 in the context of, let's say, four beats? This is where you have to start to experiment a little bit because we have one, two, three, four, five different notes, but we're trying to put it in four beats. So let's try expanding some of these notes so that we can fill out a full eight beats or two groups of four. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, boom, boom, but ba. And then you can kind of just repeat it from there. Again, there's some experimenting that's going to need to happen on your end. But you can randomize the notes pretty easily just by taking, again, the seven notes from your scale and choosing a handful of them, maybe four to eight. It's the rhythm that you're going to have to play around with to make sure it fits into the context of whether it's three beats, four beats, six beats, whatever song you're playing on, that will determine the number of beats. But that's where you're going to have to start to experiment the most. So as you can see, there's a lot of variety involved within this concept, but it's very potent and it has a really great sound to help you fill out things as a pianist, keyboardist, or composer. I hope you enjoyed that class on right hand ostinatos, and I'll see you in the next class. 9. Octaves: Alright, this class is going to get real simple, but it's super effective and it's used a lot. Not every technique has to really challenge us. Some of them get to be simple, and this is one of them, which is playing right hand octaves. So I'm assuming that if you're taking this class, you can stretch a right hand octave. That's the hope. So take your thumb and your pinky in your right hand and play a C to a C to start. From there, I'd recommend moving up chromatically by semitones, the smallest amount possible. What you'll notice is that no octave feels wider or narrower than another octave. Sometimes we have to move our arm up into the key bed a little bit to hit these black notes. But it's always exactly this stretch, and I can tell you in the left hand, it's this stretch. That's an octave in both hands. So if I had, like, a statue, like a cement hand that was shaped like this, I could just slam it around and it would play octaves. So the movement of the arm in and out of the key bed is really important to make sure that we're getting up to these black keys. Now, I can't just say play an octave in the right hand. There you go. That's a great technique. I'm going to give you some ways that you can apply these octaves to help you develop your plane. The first is within the context of a solo. If you're trying to build a lot of sort of momentum towards the end of a solo and make it big and bombastic, moving from single notes into octaves can sound really cool. So let's try it out in the context of a jazzy solo. We're going to start with single notes, and we're going to move up to octaves. It might sound something like this. If you want to take that one step further, you can play a homophonic rhythm where both hands are playing at the same time. I'm going to trigger that sort of rhythmic approach once my right hand gets into the octaves. Do the same chords again, which is F minor seven, E flat dominant, D flat dominant down to C dominant. A good example of a song that uses this progression might be song for my father by Horace Silver. So let's try it out. It would sound like this. Notice, but bu bu bu, but B playing both hands together. If you want to develop that one step further, now you can play octaves, but also with a fifth in between. And sometimes this fifth is going to give you some kind of spicy sounds. I don't want you to change the fifth for now. Just keep out a straight up, perfect fifth. A great example of a player that uses this technique a bunch would be like, Red Garland. I'm not assuming that everyone here is a jazz pianist, but this is a great context for this particular approach. So that might sound something like this. Okay. So you can use a two or three in the right hand. I actually quite often like using a two, but I think three is probably more traditional. For me, that's part of a hand injury that I have. So the two, that stretch just feels a bit better. Case in point, always listen to your body and make sure that you're doing what feels most comfortable. So again, these octaves in the right hand with some sort of homophonic rhythm where the hands are playing together. The exact same rhythm. That's not exclusive for jazz. You could try this in other styles as well, too, but it does work really well in jazz. Let's try a more classical example, and this time, I'm going to let the left hands rhythm influence the right hand's rhythm. We're still going to be playing homophonic, but instead of improvising the rhythm, I'm going to get locked into a bit more of a pulse. I'll show you something like this. Again, it's building up a bit of a bigger sound and letting the melody grow and evolve and develop. Another thing worth trying, and I do this quite a bit is flamming octaves, where we play the thumb and the pinky shortly after the thumb. You could try it the other way, but I almost never do it this way. You'll almost always hear low to high, similar to how quite often a guitar is strummed low notes up to high notes. It can be strummed the other way, especially in like ska reggae. But for the most part, people are strumming down quite often on the downbeat, and it's just a sound that we're used to hearing. So flamming thumb to pinky. Again, this can be used in many different contexts. Let's try it again in the jazz context where I'm playing a homophonic rhythm, same rhythm in both hands, but with these flamed octaves. Sounds something like this. I really like that sound. I strum quite often from chords to octaves. My old teacher used to get me in trouble for this. He's like, You got to play more, like, everything at the same time. But I know the style that I like to play, and strumming is something that I really like to do on piano. Maybe because deep down, I wish I could play guitar better one way or another, strumming is something that I think sounds really fun on the piano. This idea of flamming or technically, arpeggiating the notes, but it's such a fast arpeggio that you can kind of start to blur the terms a little bit. So those are some really fun ways that you can apply some right hand octaves to develop, whether it be a melody or a solo. Again, you can throw a fifth in between. That's kind of more of a bonus tip, and again, very specific for a particular style of jazz. But what I wanted to show you is that when you're moving the right hand around, the chords don't have to move. You can just stay on one chord. In this case, F minor seven. So have some fun playing around with those right hand octaves. Whatever style, whatever speed you happen to be playing at, I'm sure you'll get some mileage out of it, and I'll see you in the next class. 10. Reverse Stride: So let's talk about something that I'm calling reverse stride. Is this an official term, not that I know of. But it gives you the context of what stride piano is, how we can reverse it into the right hand, and let's start by talking about stride piano. So stride is this sort of boom, chat, boom, chat, boom, chat, boom, chat. Really huge strides or leaps in the left hand used in genres like, for example, ragtime. We're going to try and we're going to keep it much more simple is a chord in the right hand and then up to a single note of some sort. So instead of single note chord in the left, we're going chord single note in the right. Now, we're not doing this fast like ragtime music. We're going to keep things nice and slow. Start with a chord voicing that you like. Maybe it's something like C minor nine, and then jump up to one of the notes in that chord or at least in the scale of C minor, but it'll usually sound best if you mostly select chord notes. So it sounds something like this. Let's move to another chord. A flat, major seven, flat five, to F minor seven, and then to G dominant. You can explore double notes or two notes in the right hand. Maybe moving higher. Octaves And what this allows us to do is sort of create these little sort of reflective overtones or we can even create a melody using these top notes. As long as when you're leaping back up to a note, you're close to the last note that you played. So we would have something like so we could have something like G, G A flat. A flat. A flat, G. So without me talking, And you could have the rest of the band or orchestra or whatever you're playing around with kind of complementing that melody. Da Da Di Di Di Da kind of working with that. So it's a great way to kind of create this dreamy sense of a melody. Or, again, you can play multiple notes, you can strum into notes, and you can create something that's less melodic and a little bit more reflective, something like So I even used a bit of left hand there, but it depends on how many notes you want, how much you want to develop that sound. This concept doesn't have to be particularly difficult because you can play really slow and it works really well. Pedal down for most of this because you want that dreamy reverberated sort of sound, and you need to be able to hold the chord as you're moving up to these higher notes. Again, octaves can sound really nice up top. So C minor with a G, let's say, set of octaves, you can flam it or play it together. Again, C minor, you could play a whole chord flammed or together, you'd say, arpeggiated or together, or again, just single notes. How lonely do you want it to feel? How separated do you want it to feel? How colored do you want it to feel? It really depends on what you're going for in that moment. But the left hand is following a chord progression or doing nothing at all. This is a course on right handed piano techniques. So again, you can just use the right hand. Now we're really feeling lonely, right? Everything is just very stripped down and simple. So you can take this as far as you want, but I do think that it doesn't really get to an advanced stage unless you do a lot with it. So I think this is very beginner friendly. You can easily do some hands together stuff if you want, but the right hand play a chord, top note by itself or play a chord, Octave, play a chord, flammed octave, play a chord, play another chord, play a chord, play an arpeggiated chord. There's all these different options, and it really depends on what you're going for in that moment. Let's work with five different examples that you can try out with me. We're going to play a C minor chord. We're going to go up to a C. And then we're going to try the same thing again with an octave, two Cs. Same thing again with a flamed octave, same thing again with a C minor chord, same thing again with a strummed or arpeggiated C minor chord. So here's our tempo, two, three, four. Let's try to single C, C octave, C Flamm octave. C minor chord, strummed C minor chord. From there, you can start to work with coloring the ord, using inversions, or even, like I said before, instead of just playing a C octave, maybe two notes or if you can squeeze it in three notes. So there's lots of options with this. I want you to feel free to explore lots of different chord progressions and lots of different variations with what you do with these top notes. But ultimately, it should be simple, fun, and reflective. Hope you enjoyed this class, and I'll catch you in the next one. 11. Top Notes - Thumb: Alright, so what is this cryptic top notes thumb? Let's break it down. Basically, you're going to take a chord shape. It could be three notes. It could be four notes. Let's say it's C major. Really easy place to start. You're gonna play the top notes, not the thumb, and then you're gonna play the thumb. So pretty self explanatory. This sort of rocking back and forth. Can give you a lot of mileage from the Beatles to some simple mozart. We can use this sort of sound in a lot of different styles. Now, it can sound really fun at different speeds, too. Again, for context, I'll give you some left hand octaves or chords to kind of pull in the sound of the right hand. But like assuming you're playing with a band, you don't need to play a bass part. You might not need to play chords. Maybe your guitarist is playing chords. Sometimes you need to be very simple. So I'll show you the right hand part so that you can apply it, but I want to give you a left hand for context, as well, too. So let's say we're just playing these notes here back and forth, you can start to move between that and other chords. Just a great way to sort of have a sort of childlike and kind of jolly, joyful sort of playing style. But at the same time, we can shift it, so it's minor. Now it feels quite grave and serious. So it really depends on the chords that you're selecting and the sound that you're using here. But let's add in some left hand to really pull this whole sound together. So let's come up with a chord progression. Let's say it's F minor. B flat minor, G diminished, C major. And I'm using some inversions, so I'm reordering the notes to keep my left hand in a very similar sort of position on the piano. But together, it might sound like this. Building up, same chords, different inversion. So you can see it does have a very fundamental sort of sound. It's not really getting in the way, but it's creating some rhythmic drive, jun chun jun tune, jununja. Now, the left hand part doesn't have to just be chords holding. Again, it could be a guitar strumming or a full string section playing some sort of fundamental harmony. But if you are a pianist, keep in mind, you could also play something like open voiced chords, which could sound really cool. There's a lot of ways that you can approach this, but I'll give you a basic way to get started. It would sound something like this. And at and you can continue to develop it. Now, that's more in the context of a balled, but it just goes to show that what the band is doing in terms of how are they playing this harmony, how fast are they playing? What is the overall style? There's few styles that this approach would not work in because again, like, the sound that you're selecting, the speed that you're playing, all of this is very flexible and really easy to apply with this right hand technique. So let's try it with an electric piano, a bit more staccato and with more colorful chords. We could get something that sounds like this. So now it's a bit more funky based on the playing style. Again, I have four notes, but it's all the tops, and then the thumb. So top notes, thumb. So whether the piano part is imagined by the Beatles or something funky by Wolfpek, you really have a lot of flexibility for how you can use this sound within your own playing. This class was short and sweet because the concept is kind of short and sweet and simple. I hope you enjoyed that, and I'll see you in the next class. 12. 3 Note Lineation: Next up, let's talk about right hand three note lineations. Again, a lineation is putting the notes of let's say a chord in a line or one after another. Let's say our chord is C minor. The two main types of lineations that we'll work with would be ascending, moving higher, or descending, moving lower. Although I think you'll find that ascending gets used generally a bit more. Let's try a chord progression in our left hand. We'll keep it kind of jazzy. We're going to go C minor seven, A flat major seven, F minor seven to G dominant seven. It would sound like this. If you will change on this last chord. Now we could change each chord in the right hand to reflect some notes in the chord in the harmony. Again, I'm using some inversions for this. So let's break it down. The first time. I'm just playing C minor, moving the left hand, still playing C minor in the right hand, moving the left, still playing C minor in the right hand. Now, I know that on G dominant seven, some of these notes will sound a little off, so I'm changing the notes very slightly to accommodate my left hand chord. GBD F now in the right hand has BDG, three of the notes from that chord. The other approach was taking three notes from my chord. And then on my next chord change, I still have to have three notes from this next chord. I can keep those three notes the same or I could have an A flat on top. Both of these notes, G and A flat are in this left hand chord. So that's why I can keep it C minor or change to those other three notes. Then we have F minor. Let's say I have CF and A flat now. Again, you can change. It sounds really nice actually when you do. So instead of all four with F in the middle, let's do two F. Two on E flat and then changing again to a first inversion G major chord for the last shape. Allow me to play it again, but I'm going to change the middle note for most of the chords after two patterns, so something like this. At the end, I did a G dominant SS four to a G dominant, but that's the basic idea. Now you can start to change a lot more as well, too. Let's say I had Middle notes can change, top notes can change. It doesn't really matter. As long as you're staying diatonic and mostly playing chord notes in that right hand, you can get some really cool results just from playing three notes, descending, and again, sort of scirling your way around through different combinations. So you want to make sure that you're comfortable playing finger three in the middle, finger two in the middle, or finger four in the middle to accommodate some of these different chord shapes in the right hand. Now, if you're looking for a way to put the hands together, what you would do is match the shapes in both hands and play contrary motion. So something like this, where we're moving inward, matching our shapes, You can try inversions in one hand. It starts to develop from a beginner exercise to what could be quite advanced. So feel free to take it as far as your current technical knowledge can take you. But even to start with just a basic chord, descending three notes, playing around with some octaves in the left hand. I'm not even changing my right hand shape. Okay. So have some fun with the descending version of those three notes. Keep in mind, the ascending version basically works the same way. It's just used a little bit less. I think maybe because of, like, rainfall and all these things that we do in cinema to reflect something within a scene, descending just happens more. I don't know. I mean, there's some room to debate about that. But for whatever reason, I don't hear the ascending one as much. It's more like a 60, 40 split. It still does get used quite a bit, just not quite as much. So let's take that same progression, C minor. A flat major. We're using an inversion. F minor, G major. That would sound like this. And again, you can play around with the notes. When you're moving one of these middle notes down or up, just try to make sure that you're moving it diatonically. In other words, in this example, you're staying true to the notes within a C minor scale. So that would sound like this. As a very similar effect, right? Now, what I'm also doing is moving my top note around. There's nothing wrong with that. Generally, I don't move the bottom note around nearly as much as my middle note or my top note. That's not to say you can't move the bottom. But again, I'm just letting you know from my perspective what I see more often. I'll see descending groups of threes more than ascending, and I'll see the tops or middle notes moving or shifting to other notes beside them more than I would see the bottom note moving. Just to give you context of moving the bottom note, it would sound something like this. Still sounds fine. It just goes to show how many variations and permutations there are within these sort of simple concepts. You can take them to the highest level that you want. You can develop the harmony. You can start moving the thumb, the middle, top notes. You can play around it any way that you see fit, but start with the basics and expand from there. Now, a thorough way to approach this in terms of, like, a technical study to help you within a chord progression would be outside of the context of the progression, you're going to take each chord individually and try all the different variations of how you can move notes. So in the case of the C minor chord, I can have C on the bottom, B flat on the bottom. Or D on the bottom, based on the notes available within C minor. My middle note could be E flat, D or F, because again, those are available in the C minor scale. The top notes could be G, a flat or F. Now, as you get doing this more and more, you'll be able to sort of improvise what you're feeling in that moment. But instead of moving the bottom note and then the middle note and then the top note, I'd recommend try to stick with one more than the others. Like, if you're moving the top note mostly, what'll end up happening is a bit of a melody will get created. So let's say, again, we're back to the descending version. So if I have G, A flat, B flat, A flat. Now, this melody is ringing out up above. Or again, maybe we're ascending through the notes and moving the thumb. Now we have There's our little inner melody. So you could call this a counter melody, or maybe it's actually complementing the main melody of the song and playing the exact melody, but sort of hidden within all of this motion. So while this concept is simple of moving down three notes or up three notes, these little sidestep variations can give you tons of mileage. So again, you can think of this as one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, or in the context of a song that's four, four, where there's four main beats, triple, it, triple, it, triple, it, triple one, two, three, four. So get comfortable with descending or ascending the three notes of your chords within your progressions, and you can get tons of variations from that simple technique and plenty of mileage from it. Hope you enjoyed that class, and I'll catch you in the next one. 13. Pedal Tones: Oh Up next, let's talk about petal tones. We're going to talk about lower pedal tones and upper petal tones. But first, we have to talk about what a pedal tone is. Quite often, it can be associated with something like a drone. So if I'm just playing ease in my left hand, you might hear this drone happening in the left hand. It's just a sound that kind of keeps continuing. But pedal tones are actually used quite a bit slightly differently within Baroque music, and Bach used these all the time within his preludes and fugues, where the note on the bottom or top continues to repeat, but in between other notes that are moving. This sort of Or you could have something reversed, something like this. So we're going to kind of explore that concept, but that is basically it. You're taking a single note, and you could even go, just kind of finger two in both hands to first start to play around with this. But it's a really good way to challenge the fingers in the right hand so that you're not just using certain fingers. Like, if you're one of those players, it's like, I use these three fingers for everything. I don't really use these fingers much. I don't know that that player exists out there, but if that's you, this is going to get you playing a little bit more with different fingers. Now, you could just use finger two, but don't cheat it. Try to play around and really challenge your hand to see if you can get comfortable playing with all five fingers. Now, let's switch over to a church organ sound because that's where this is going to sound particularly great. Let's say you're going for something kind of like Boston or one of those bands that would use, like, a church organ sound to really, fill out a big sound. Maybe it's a metal band or something. This might be a really cool concept if you're playing in that sort of style. So let's say we're in C minor. I'm going to go with C harmonic minor, which has a B natural. Harmonic minor is going to sound a little bit more classical, and this technique really does sound very baroque and classical. So let's play around in C minor with this church organ sound. We could use C Natural minor with a B flat or C harmonic minor with a B natural. The B natural is going to sound a little more classical Baroque, part of that harmonic minor flavor. So let's work with it. If we do end up playing the seventh note, we'll choose most likely a B natural. To start, though, I think we're going to avoid the B altogether. So starting with that note that is lower, C, we're going to play C up to C, D, up to C, E flat up to C, D, up to C. Just this. We're already starting to tap into that sound that spooky sound of the Baroque preludes and fugues. Now, here I have to use my thumb to move around between these. I was mentioning before to try to use all five fingers. That's more just if you're in, like, a standard position, but if you're really spread out, you're gonna have to make sure that your thumb is feeling quite nimble to play around. So what you could do is come up with some sort of simple melody. So maybe it's super simple do re me fa sofa mere do for people that speak soul fish. That's all we're doing is playing the pinky in between each of those notes. Now, keep in mind, I started with my thumb, but you could also start with the petal tone, the top note. There's no rule against either of those. Start with the low note up to the high or the high note up to the low note. It does feel quite a bit different, but both totally work. So that's the idea of an upper petal tone. Let's try a lower petal tone, where C is on the bottom, and we're moving up through the top notes using other fingers. Or, again, if we're stretched, you might just have to use, like, a pinky and finger four on those top notes. Let's come up with a small melody, maybe something like. Something like this. So that was I think I did a pickup on the C, so I'm picturing it like a one, two, three. So my melody is on the main beats, a one. But you could have one and two, and three and four, and one and two, and three, and four end. You'll want to get used to feeling it both ways where the melody, the note that's moving is on main beats, but also on offbeats. So, for example, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, or one and two, three, four, one, two, three, and four end. Again, both work perfectly fine. So whatever melody you're working with, if it's something really simple, try upper pedal tones, try lower pedal tones, and try the repeated note, the pedal tone on main beats, and try it on offbeats. That gives you four variations, and you can see which one you like the most. So let's try playing a really simple melody where we're going to try it with lower pedal tones and upper pedal tones, and we'll try flipping the beat so the petal tones feel like they're on the main beats, one, two, three, four, or so that they feel like they're on the and one and two, and three and four. That'll give us four different variations, and from there, we can pick our favorite. My favorite might be different than yours, so it doesn't really matter which one I like the most, and maybe they're all kind of the same to you. Maybe you like them all, which is great. You can pick any one of them at that point. But let's try out the four variations and see the difference in the sound. The melody is going to be super simple, E flat, F, G, F. Three of the notes from our C minor scale, and our petal tones can be a high C or a low C. Let's try the low C first on downbeats. It would sound like this. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Let's try the petal tone on offbeats, one and two, and three and four and one and two, and three and four end. To me, generally, I like when the melody is on the downbeats a little bit more, but again, they both sound great. Let's try upper petal tones with a high C petal tone on the downbeats on the main beats, one, two, three, four, something like this, one, two, three, four. Now on the offbeats, one and two, and three, and four end, one and two, and three and four end. So, as you can see, there's four really solid options there, and we kept it nice and simple with some lower petal tones and upper petal tones. But needless to say, even without the church organ sound, it does sound very baroque, right? It's really coming from that era. Now, what you're doing with your left hand, I think, opens up a discussion that is much too big for this course because Baroque music is very nuanced. But again, you can try holding some chords that outline a chord progression, play some open voicings where we're spreading out those chords, or you could try some counterpoint. You could try to really work out something kind of similar to the right hand, but maybe not with pedal tones. In other words, we're playing a lot of single notes that are moving around in a line that complement the right hand's part. Now we're starting to get into counterpoint and Baroque harmony, and that is outside the context of this course. So whatever you're doing with your left hand, just have some fun with it, and maybe you're doing nothing at all. Maybe the rest of the band is supplying some harmony, and you're just creating a little bit of a counter melody using this repeated low or high note. In other words, the petal tone. So play around with this technique and make sure to use plenty of different sounds. It sounds really great with organ and sustained sounds, but it sounds fine with piano, electric piano, synthesizers. So make sure you have some fun with it, really explore and experiment upper and lower petal tones. I hope you enjoyed this class, and I'll catch you in the next one. 14. Inversions: All right. Lastly, let's get talking about inversions in the right hand. I know at this point, I've kind of within some chord progressions, given you some inversions, like in the case of C minor to A flat major mentioning that you can raise the top note, but I wanted to go a little bit more in depth and talk about inversions so you better understand them and also how you can apply them to the right hand. Now, first and foremost, an inversion is taking a chord, whether it's three notes or four notes and taking the bottom note up one octave or top note down one octave. If you do this enough times, you end up finding yourself back at the same shape you started with in a different register of the instrument. For example, here's a C minor chord. We call this root position because it's built off of the root. First inversion would put the C on top. It's no longer on bottom, and second inversion would have the E flat on top and it's no longer on the bottom. So inversions can be played blocked, altogether, or broken in many different ways. The way we name our inversions is the first basic shape is called root position, because we're building the cord off of the root or dough. When I move that dough or the root up an octave and get rid of it off the bottom, I'm now in first inversion. When I do this again, bottom note up an octave, I'm now in second inversion. And if I do this one more time, I'm back up to another root position cord. And as I mentioned, you can play blocked on each of these shapes. In other words, play all the notes together or broken. You can break them up ascending, so all three notes are moving higher each time. You could move up through these chords, but play the notes descending as well, not quite as common. And if we're moving down through each shape, where the top note is now moving down an octave, we can descend each group of three, or we could ascend each group of three. It's just a lot harder to smooth out the transitions. So in general, you'll see ascending groups of threes as the chords are ascending and descending groups of threes as the chords are descending. Now, you could also technically sort of rearrange these notes almost randomly, like middle, low, high, middle, low, high, middle, low, high. It's still broken, but it's functioning a little outside of the standard sort of techniques that we learn with inversions, and you're starting to explore a little bit more and create something that's a little bit more randomized. Now, in this case of middle low high, when I move to my next shape I actually end up repeating the last note that I played from the first pattern. So you can get some really cool patterns out of this. But I think it's the register shift of moving from this C minor to this C minor that can be so important in the right hand. If I'm trying to get, for example, from this C minor chord up to this B flat major chord, it can be quite jarring to the listener. But if I start to sort of use inversions to pull my way up to that chord, it can really smooth things out. Let's say I have a C minor chord and I want to work my way up to a B flat major chord. This leap might feel quite jarring to the listener. But if I ease my way up through those notes of a C minor chord and their inversions, up to a B flat major chord, that can sound great. Same thing if I'm trying to move lower. Let's say I have a C minor chord and I'm trying to come down to B flat major. Now, I've eased my way through all these different versions or inversions of C minor before I play that B flat major chord. This also works in solos. But let's say I'm soloing in F minor, and I find my way a little too high up on the piano and I want to come back down. Inversions of let's say F minor or whatever chord happens to be being improvised over in that moment. So in a chord progression, there's multiple chords happening. Whatever chord I'm on in that moment, play that chord in the right hand and use its inversions to find your way back down. So let's say the chord progression is F minor seven to B flat minor seven. Here's the improv. Or solo, I should say. So this working down through those F minor inversions helped me bring the solo down a little bit more. So if you ever find that you're creeping too low or creeping too high up on your instrument during a solo and you want to recenter it, you can use inversions to help you pull back to that more sort of meaty part of the piano. Now, where inversions are super important is when you're transitioning between chords. So let's say the chord progression is D minor to G minor to A major. So D minor and G minor have one note in common, and that note is D. So instead of raising everything up from a root position to another root position, why don't I just keep the D in its current orientation? In other words, right now it's on the bottom of the chord. There's no reason for me to make it a middle note or a top note of my next chord. Let's keep it on the bottom, and I'll just move to the G and B flat from my G minor chord with these top notes. Now I have a G minor chord. In this case, D is on the bottom. And D stays on the bottom because it's common. If there's two notes in common, keep both of them in their same orientation. If I'm moving from D minor to B flat major, D and F are common between both chords, but I have to get this B flat in my second chord. So here's D minor. Simply raising this top note to a B flat would give you a B flat major chord in first inversion. It still outlines the harmony of that B flat major chord, and so it works great. Now, when chords are neighbors, let's say, in the case of D minor, G minor, and then A major, G and A are neighbors, so they have most likely no notes in common if you're just playing a three note version of those chords. So keep whatever inversion you have, in this case, second inversion and move your A chord up to second inversion. So now we'd have D minor, G minor, a major. So whatever chord progression you're playing, and again, let's say it's in a band context, do a little bit of puzzle solving and see which inversions make the most sense. When I was playing in my band, I had to kind of work things out off the start until eventually I had done it enough that you can just see these inversions in your head even before you play them, and you'll eventually be able to kind of approach it with a more intuitive approach, but it really is puzzle solving off the start. I think of it like chess. Like, I'm a pretty novice chess player, and I watch other chess players, and they just kind of know it's like I've done this enough times to know that I have to move this piece here or this piece here. Or six moves down the line for where I want to develop things. So whatever it is you're doing, whether it's piano or chess, you have to really work up to that point of intuitively knowing, then I would switch to this and switch to this. But if off the start, it just feels like you're puzzle solving a bit and you're kind of going about it slowly. That's probably where you should be starting, and that's perfectly acceptable. So now you can start to take these inversions and apply some of the techniques we've talked about. Maybe it's the descending groups of threes and we have a very smart way to approach that set of chords, right? We could even continue on using more inversions. Here's my A chord. Now it makes more sense to actually move to this D minor inversion, and you can keep moving things higher and higher or do what you want to develop it further and further. So while inversions are super important in the right hand and in the left hand, I wanted to make sure that some of the techniques and approaches I've given you within this course, you could also stack inversions on top of to take those to the next level. So inversions quite some time to master. I'd recommend if you're taking private lessons, take the concept of inversions to your lessons. So when I was studying classical piano, I had to take these inversions, play them blocked, play them broken, play four note versions. There was a lot that I had worked on, but I didn't understand the context of how I would be applying them until much later. And that actually refueled my love for inversions to then practice them enough that I could internalize. It doesn't have to be complex and super fancy. If you take your time with it and again, treat it sort of like solving a puzzle. You can take a four chord chord progression and lay out the notes so you can have the most efficient movements between those chords. And from there, you can then start to stack and apply other right hand techniques. So I think I've covered some of the basics of inversions and how you might want to use those in your right hand. I hope you enjoyed that class, and I'll catch you in the next one. 15. Outro: Congratulations. You made it to the end of this course on right handed piano technique. Now you should be feeling more confident with your right hand at the keys. But at the very least, you should feel like you have lots of options available when you're approaching new songs or compositions that you're working on. Make sure to apply the material within this course as many times as you see fit to really absorb it. And then a little bit more. It's not about memorizing this material, it's about internalizing it, getting the muscle memory to work with you, and being able to recall these techniques on the fly. Now, don't forget there is a project for this course, and there is the class that outlines all the details that you would have saw earlier. So make sure you go back and review it. But I do want you to submit a project where basically you're taking either a cover song or an original song you're working on. Take one of the sections, let's say, it's a chorus or a verse and take the chords from that section or maybe the chords and melody, depending on what technique you want to develop. And you're going to be taking one of the techniques from within this course and applying it either to the chords or the melody to help develop that section. If you're just recording yourself with audio, you can supply a SoundCloud link, or if you're recording yourself with video, you can supply a public link to either a YouTube or Vmeo video. From there, I'll review your project and give you some feedback as to what I think you did best and some areas of improvement. But again, make sure that you check out the class that outlines all the details for this project before you submit. It's highly recommended that you take the material from this course and bring it into a private lesson setting. If you're working with a teacher, this is fantastic. I want you to make sure that you bring it to your teacher because they understand your learning style better than I can on the other side of the Internet. So especially the things you feel most enthused about, bring those to your teacher so they can help you develop them in some things that you're working on, whether it be original compositions, or if they just want to show you some exercises that you can apply to better develop these techniques. Now, if you don't already have a teacher, I do have a music school called Cook Music School, where we have teachers that do teach virtually. You can check out more at Cook music school.ca, whether you're hoping to learn music production and theory or composition, piano, violin, horns. It doesn't matter. We have teachers for everything. So make sure that if you're enthusiastic about music and you're looking for a teacher, to check out that website. Speaking of websites, if you want to learn more about me, you can head over to Cook hyphen music.ca, where you can find me on social media. You can check out my portfolio. You can also see some of the films and video games that I've scored music for and much more. Lastly, if you want to see some of lastly, if you want to see some of the original piano music that I've scored, as well as check out some merch that I have available, you can head over to Cookmusic dot store. Once again, I want to thank you for taking this course and congratulate you for getting all the way through. Remember to review all of the classes as many times as you need so that you feel this material is really internalized. I hope you had fun, and I hope you have fun applying this material. Thanks for now, and I'll catch you in the next course.