Black Snake: Right Hand

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today we're learning how to play a traditional folk song called "Black Snake".
Before we learn it, let's have a listen to "Black Snake". ♫Black snake, black snake, where are you hiding?♫
♫Black snake, black snake, where are you hiding?♫
♫Black snake, black snake, where are you hiding?♫
♫Don't you bite me♫
♫Black snake, black snake, where are you hiding?♫
♫Black snake, black snake, where are you hiding?♫
♫Black snake, black snake, where are you hiding?♫
♫Don't you bite me♫
Here's the score for "Black Snake".
Let's do our usual checklist.
Whenever I'm learning a new piece,
I love to check the tempo indication first off, because that will kind of tell me the mood
or the speed or tempo of the piece. Moderato means kind of a medium tempo. Treble and bass staff. What's our time signature?
If you said 4/4, you're correct.
Now, just kind of scan through the first line and tell me what you notice.
Lots of staccati,
and we've got lots of chords in the left hand. Looks like the melody's up in the right hand.
Oh, and here we have one of our interesting syncopated rhythms. Eighth note, quarter note, eighth note.
That can be a tricky rhythm so let's come to the heartbeat mat to try it out.
All right, first a quick rhythm review what can you tell me about this rhythm right here.
If you said they're two eighth notes, you're correct.
Each gets 1/2 of the beat.
Now there's another way you can draw two eighth notes.
if you add a flag to the stem, that also makes it an eighth note.
This would have the exact same sound: TI-TI, or 1-&.
Now the reason that's useful, is sometimes we want to split these up.
In "Black Snake", when the music goes, 'where are you', we have an eighth note followed by a quarter note. Now you know an eighth note takes up 1/2 of a beat, but a quarter note needs a full beat,
so it's going to take up half of beat 1, and the first half of beat 2.
So we have 1-& 2-&.
Can you count that with me? Let's say 1-& for beat 1, and 2-& for beat 2, and we'll clap it like this: 1-& 2-&
Try it three times in a row, go: 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&, 1-& 2-&.
This is called syncopation, because we have a lot happening on the & of the beat.
You may recall this rhythm from "Kye Kye Kule" in a previous lesson.
Now we're seeing it again in "Black Snakes". We have, 'where are you', or TI TA TA,
and then on 'hiding',
it's followed with two eighth notes and a quarter note. TI-TI TA
Let's practice this rhythm now with rhythm syllables.
It will sound like this: TI TA TI TI-TI TA
Can you sing and clap that with me? Let's do it three times in a row, go:
TI TA TI TI-TI TA
TI TA TI TI-TI TA
TI TA TI TI-TI TA
And that makes, ♫where are you hiding?♫ Now I'm showing you the rhythm for the end of "Black Snake" where we have ♫Don't you bite me♫ Rest, rest.
This is a half rest, and I remember it's half because it kind of looks like a hat, and hat sounds like half.
A half rest gets 2 beats just like a half note takes up 2 beats.
So let's practice saying this rhythm together. We'll say TWO-OO for the half notes, and TI TA TI for the syncopated rhythm here.
And rest, rest, for the half rest.
Try to say it with me, ready go:
TWO-OO TI TA TI TWO-OO REST REST
Nice, now back to the sheet music.
Let's check out how to play the right hand part here.
What letter do we start on?
If you said D, you're correct. Finger 1 is on D.
D D D D D, then wow a fairly large skip here. Can you tell me the interval from here to here?
We have D up to B which is the interval of a sixth.
Normally our hand is just spanning five notes, so we've got to just go up a little bit from DO to LA, DO LA SO.
Then after DO LA SO, then we skip down to F-sharp for MI RE DO.
We must be in the key of D major, because we have that F-sharp, and we seem to be centered on DO for D. Let's try to play this.
All right, let's place our right hand in the D major pentascale.
And you'll see by looking at the first four quarter notes, that they're marked staccato. So a quick review of how to play a good staccato,
you want to keep your fingers close to the keys, and let your wrist lift slightly as you play the note.
So the first four notes will sound like this:
Now you try.
Good, now let's look at the next measure.
So we start with a finger 1 on D, and you'll notice in the score the curved line over these notes tells us that now instead of staccato
we'll be playing legato, smoothly. So we'll go from D up to B,
and remember that B is one step above the top note of the pentascale, so you're going to just gently reach over or shift your fingers up
one key to get to this B, then you step down to A,
then finger 3 has ...