Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and today we're going to learn a really fun and popular song to play called "Heart and Soul".
Since "Heart and Soul" works best as a duet, I've invited my son Isaac to play it with me.
Hello!
Thanks for joining us today.
And for you watching out there, I encourage you to find a duet partner as well who can play this song with you.
It will make it lots more fun.
I'll teach you both the accompaniment and the melody today,
and then you can play either part and your duet partner can learn and play the other part.
Okay, are you ready Isaac?
Yes.
Then let's come to the piano and have a listen to "Heart and Soul".
All right first up today I'm going to teach you the accompaniment part that I was playing,
and then I'll teach you the melody part that Isaac was playing,
and then it will be up to you to choose which one you play with your duet partner.
So, the chord progression that I was playing is the same one I showed you in an earlier lesson on diatonic chords in chord progressions.
We had the I chord
followed by the vi chord
followed by the IV chord,
and then finishing the progression with the V chord before it comes back and repeats.
Okay, let's try that just with the right hand.
Play the I chord, play the vi chord, and again skip down for the vi chord. Starts on A.
Then down to the IV chord with the root of F, then up a step to the V chord.
Let's try it one more time. 4 beats on each chord, 1 2 3 4
one two three four one two three four good.
Now, let's work on the left hand. The left hand plays the root of each chord, so play C.
Try this with me. Let's place finger 1 on C, and then finger 3 plays A, finger 5 plays F,
finger 4 plays G.
Try it again. C, goes down to A, goes down to F, steps up to G,
Good. Now when we put this together, we play two
of, we play the left hand twice on the route C C, and then chord, chord.
So let's try that. We're going to play C, C, I chord, I chord, then left hand goes down to A.
A, A, vi chord, vi chord, F, F, F chord, F chord, G, G, G chord, G chord.
Two times left hand, two times right hand. Let's try this slowly together. Ready, go.
C, C, chord, chord, then A, A, chord, chord, then F, F, chord, chord, then G, G, chord, chord.
Good, now press pause and do that several times until you're really comfortable with it, then press play to go on.
Good, now we're going to do something really fun. The rhythm of this accompaniment
is eighth notes. We play two eighth notes, so it's like: TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI. But in pop and jazz,
we play eighth notes in a special way in certain songs called swing.
If you swing the eighth notes, you don't play them evenly.
Normally, I would really be upset with a student if they didn't play their eighth notes evenly. Like if you played your scale,
instead of TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI, if you were like:
If you weren't even with them, that would usually be not very good, but in swing we make them not even on purpose.
It's kind of fun. Instead of TI-TI TI-TI, we go TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI
TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI
Will you say that with me?
Let's swing our eighth notes. Ready, go.
TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI
TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI it's kind of the rhythm of skipping.
Okay, and it's going to sound like this:
Now I'd like you to press pause and try to swing this accompaniment.
So here is not swing TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI
It sounds very straight.
With pops, sometimes we want to swing it.
TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI
So again, two times left hand, two times right hand with swing. Press pause and try that on your own, then press play to go on.
So, once you have that accompaniment mastered,
you just repeat that chord progression again, and again, and again, until you get to the end. Finish with a I chord, and then I like to add a low C at the end just for fun.
So when you get to the end, here's the last chord progression.
I just play C chord together with a low C to finish it off.
Now, let's learn the melody.
If this is your middle C, I recommend going to octaves up. Otherwise, you're going to crash into your accompaniment
person. Whoever's playing the secundo,
remember, is playing the low part, and so the primo part, who's playing the melody, will be up here.
Again two octaves above middle C.
Start with finger 3 on C. You play it three times,
then these eighth notes are also swung.
So notice how we step down, then step right back up, then repeat E E.
And I recommend after you play finger 5, switch to finger 3, because then you'll be in position for these next few notes.
Step down, step up.
From G, skip down to C.
Okay, let's watch that section one more time.
So three C's.
Now you try.
Good, now watch the next part.