Popular Music Lesson

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

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The trick is to pull one of these out,
and then you got to stack it on top.
Can you try it?
you're not very good at these reindeer games.
For this tutorial we'll start with the right hand melody.
What's great about this melody is we're only going to use white notes,
and we're only going to really need three positions.
For this first position we'll put our thumb, finger 1, on F.
And use the rest of our finger numbers one at a time all the way until we get to our pinky, finger 5, at C.
The second position we'll need is down one step,
with finger 1 on E, and finger 5 on B,
and the final position we'll
need is on G with our finger 1 thumb on G,
and our finger 5 pinkie on D.
Let's start with the first line.
We're going to want to check out this rhythm
first because it's a bit syncopated,
which means that the beats don't always
line up with the rhythms that we have written.
For "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," you'll notice that we have an eighth note that's separated,
a quarter note, and then another eighth note that's separated.
Here's how we can clap this beat:
1-& 2-& 3 4
For 'Rudolph the red nosed'.
To play that, I'll put my right hand in our first position.
With my thumb on F.
Starting with finger 2 on G.
1-& 2-& 3 4
You might have noticed there that my thumb stretched down a little bit.
We're going to have to do that a couple more times in this video,
so get used to moving your thumb
one note down without moving the other fingers away from your position.
Here it is one more time.
1-& 2-& 3 4
We're already in position to finish this line.
I'll simply use my finger 3 on A, and finger 2 on G to
close that out
Here's the entire line.
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
For the next line I'm going to keep my position,
and this time I won't even have to stretch down, which will make it a bit easier to play.
We'll start with finger 2 on G,
and go:
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
The beat isn't syncopated here,
but I still like to count the & beats on that first line
just to make sure that I have all of the eighth notes in the
right spot.
Here it is one more time one.
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
For this next line, we'll move down to the next position,
with our thumb on E.
Here you'll notice the same rhythmic pattern that we had at the beginning.
Let's start on our pointer finger F,
and count along as we play this first rhythmic figure.
1-& 2-& 3 4
You might have noticed that we have
the exact same rhythmic pattern
in this line that we had at the very beginning.
Even down to moving our thumb, stretching it down to D like we did at the very beginning.
The only difference between how we play the first and the second line.
Is that we'll end this time with our 4th finger and our 3rd finger.
rather than our 3rd and 2nd finger.
Here is the third line with the last measure added on.
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
Moving on to the fourth line the first ending.
You'll notice that we have again another
rhythmic structure we've seen before:
four eighth notes, two quarter notes, and
a whole note.
This time in our E position.
Here it is with counting:
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
Great job!
Next, we would repeat back to the beginning and play
that entire section of music before moving on to the
second ending.
Let's jump right to the second ending and learn these notes so that we can put everything together.
The second ending is the only time that
we'll use our third position with our thumb on G.
Here's what this music sounds
like with counting:
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
You might have noticed that this felt very similar to line two where we played a section of eighth notes,
quarter notes, and a whole note ending on our 4th finger.
Let's try putting all of these measures together.
I'm going to start at the very beginning.
Go until the first ending repeat sign hits,
and then go back to the beginning.
On my second playthrough, I'll skip the first ending and jump right to
the second ending
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 repeat beginning.
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 second ending here we go.
1-& 2-& 3 4 1 2 3 4
Nice job!
Go ahead and pause the video and practice along for a minute,
and repeat that section of the video when you're ready to play along again.
Once you have that down we can move on to the left hand.
You'll notice
that this section of music is going to mostly stay
mostly stay in a C majo ...