In this lesson, we're going to learn a few new concepts. So I want you to stay with me, it might seem like it's a lot, all at once. But remember that we're going to get plenty of practice putting these concepts to use. So they'll become part of your musical language and they will not be challenging. But at first, it's a lot. I know.

Watch me play. I know I'm gonna find my first note, f AC E, right? It's the first space. No first finger goes on. Now watch. I'll talk you through it.

Don't do anything but watch. Now they're going lower. are skipping to a face and then see a face that on top of each other rest. Now we're gonna jump up. Every good burger deserves fries. Keep stepping up, there's a black key.

Now stepping back down another black key, same one. Now here I am going back to that highest note that I play which happens to be C, skip down From my note to online notes, which I know means I'm going to skip a key on the piano. skip down again. Keep up. Rest. Again on the same row.

Oh, isn't that? All right? Let's talk about it. First of all, let's state the obvious this piece is a lot longer than anything we've played so far. So now what we're also working on is increasing your endurance and your attention span. And it's not as tense that you're running a marathon.

But mental endurance. Sure, you're seeing people play concerts, you know, where they're playing for, like an hour and everything's memorized. Well, that doesn't just happen by talent, or some kind of magical thing that you do. It happens through increasing your endurance, your mental endurance, and that's what we're doing now. All right. See, notice a bunch of things I'm sure one of them is, when I came to the note with the sign to the left event, I played black key, same here.

And then here and here. Okay, what else was new? Well, I played more than one note at the same time. And here another thing we had new was a new rest. And then the last thing is we played even higher on the keyboard than we've ever played before. So that's a lot.

Let's talk about it. First thing, this sign to the left of the key, we call that a plat. When we see a flat, it tells us to play the key to the left of the one that it's modifying. Well, that's a mouthful. So if there were no plot there, I would play the second measure like this. And the third measure like this, that I did, but I see the flat.

So I know instead of playing be going to go one key to the left, you might be saying, well, that's not to the left, this is to the left it there off to the left, but this is the one that's a very next key to the left, even though it's a short key of black keys short key, it really is the next one to the left of B. So start looking at the black keys as being part of the keyboard. So here's my B, I see the flat side, which tells me to play one key to the left. There's B flat. So now I can play the second measure like this. A B flat, D flat.

What is the flat war in front of the A? Then instead of playing a I would play a fun What if the flat were in front of you? So we already know that we're playing g i would play left when keeping the left. But what if the flat were in front of us? Okay, if I go 123 to the left, that's not a black key. Should we keep going till we get to Blackie?

No, don't. So get ready. Get a flat fee a white key? Yes, it can. Most of the time it isn't because of the layout of the keyboard, but twice like a flat, C flat. It is a white key.

So, B flat, a flat, flat. You might be saying why would I call that F flat if I can just call it e? Are we making things more complicated? They need to know. To put it as simply as possible. Within the context of this course, which is a beginning reading and piano course.

I'll say that it's a matter of spelling. To make a very rough comparison, let's look at the word sight. If I spell it this way, as I gh T, it refers to what we do with our eyes, the act of seeing, if I spell it sight, CIT E, it means to quote something. I can also spell it a third way, side and i t. And if I do that, it refers to a location. Now all three words sound exactly the same site, site and site, but we spelled them differently to indicate the different meanings and the different ways that we use those words. So notes don't have meaning in the same way that words do.

But there are rules of spelling and music. Just like there are rules of spelling and any other language, you don't really need to know about these spelling rules in order to play the piano. But you do need to know that flat can be black keys or white keys. And that spelling a white key as E or a flat. Both are correct. When you put a flat in front of a note or to the left of a note, it lasts for the entire measure for that letter name.

Okay, what does that mean? If I have a measure with four B's in it, and the first B does not have a flat, but the second one does the third and the fourth B and that measure will also share that first flat I don't need to put a flat in front of each note. So in the same measure, those B's would be flat because of that first B flat now, the fireline cancels a flat. So going to our example we have a B, then B flat, B flat, B flat. Here's our bar line, and I have a B, I have to play B flat, B flat. If I want that note to be flat, I must put a flat in front of it, because the bar line canceled our B flat.

Now let's look at the stacked notes here. As you know, when I came to these notes, I played them at the same time. The reason for that is they are stacked on top of each other vertically. Remember that when we read music, we read vertically as well as horizontally. So if I see these three notes at the same time, I have to play them at the same time. When I play a group of notes together like that, I call that a corn ch o RG chord in this case, the notes and a spell out what we call an F chord.

I don't know you might have heard a guitar thing, play, play a C chord and play a G chord or whatever. So this is an F chord. That's a C. Now moving forward to those high notes. Don't let them scare you. Okay? Remember, every good burger deserves fries.

Well, this is the fries. Every good burger deserves fries. All right. And from there, we're just stepping up or stepping down or skipping. So we know that then we're just using the letters of the alphabet. G, A, here's a B flat on top of a ledger line.

Okay, now here we've got two ledger lines, which means we have to go even higher to see. Alright, one more thing we need to talk about. In this new rest, it's a black rectangle. What's the other black rectangle that we know? The whole rest, which takes the whole measure, right? This black rectangle, unlike the whole rest, sits on the middle line of the step.

So this black rectangle is called a half breast. And it represents a value of two counts of silence. When I was a child, I used to get these two confused which one was the Horus which one that was the half price, they both look the same to me, until somebody told me and this was after I was already an adult, and I was learning how to teach. That's when I learned that the whole rest looks a little bit like it's a hole dug into the ground. And the half breaths looks like it's a hat sitting on the line. So Horace looks like a hole in the ground and half for us.

Looks like a hat. Whoo, that was a lot. One more thing. I'm about to lecture. You ready? For the lecture three to one, do not I repeat, do not get a pencil or a pen and write down the letters of these notes on the page.

Why am I trying to make things harder for you? Well, no, I'm not trying to do that, although that's what it might seem like. Okay, so let's think about this. Which are you better at reading letters of the English alphabet or notes on the staff? Obviously, it's the letters you've been doing it a lot longer than the notes because it's the beginning reading class for music. So if you write letters on your sheet music, which do you think your eye will be drawn to the familiar letters, or the unfamiliar and scary notes?

The letters, so if you keep reading letters, at what point will you start getting comfortable reading the notes? Answer, maybe never It's true. I've seen people who have been playing piano for years. And they still write in letter names on their sheet music. So it's not something that you're going to do for a little while and then graduate out of it, don't do it at all. force yourself to read the music.

It's like learning a new language, you're going to learn better if you go live in that country, like whatever the language is, and you interact with the people day in and day out, making lots of mistakes, but using that language, saturating your brain with it, then if you use an interpreter the whole time you're there, you're probably going to learn a few words within interpreter. But if you force yourself to communicate, in this new language, both understanding and speaking, you'll learn a lot more and you'll be more fluent. Same thing in music, okay. All right. So don't do it for your own sake. Now we're playing longer exercises.

We all know about physical endurance and that we need to build it up a little bit at a time. Same goes for mental endurance. So as we play longer pieces, you'll have to focus and concentrate for longer amounts of time that requires mental endurance. If you find yourself getting tired, please take a break. In fact, it's better for you to practice in small bursts of like 10 minutes at a time. So you would do 10 minutes in the morning 10 minutes after lunch 10 minutes in the evening, then it is to sit for one really long practice session like for a 30 minute session.

I'm sure there are scientific reasons for this. But I can tell you is after having taught hundreds of students and being a professional musician myself, it's true every single time. Short practice sessions more often give you much better results than long practice sessions once in a while, and remember, don't write the note names on your sheet music