Super Secret Agent: Part 2

Hello and welcome back. I'm agent Hoffman and today your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to continue learning how to play "Super Secret Agent." So, let's get started by checking out the score. Today we're going to be learning this main section that starts here after the double bar line. We're going to focus on the right hand part. So, starting here in measure seven. Tell me what you notice about this right hand part on the top staff. You probably notice we start off with these staccatos, and then sometimes we have slur marks. So let's really pay attention to when we play staccato, and when we play legato which would be any time we have a slur mark. You may also have noticed this symbol. I don't know if we've had this before or not, but this little note with this flag and that little slash, that's called a grace note. So let's look at how to play this grace note. We've got the F grace note going to a G-flat, and a grace note should be played almost instantaneously with the next note, but it's just like a little buh-duh. And it helps if you kind of just turn your hand. You're going to try and think of it as one motion. And you're just going to kind of rock from one note to the next. See this motion with my hand? I'm just kind of rolling from one note to the next. Almost instantly. Buh-duh, buh-duh is the sound you're going for. Now you try. Pause the video if you need a little extra practice with that to get the feel for it, otherwise let's keep going. Now, on these first two lines can you find and point out on your screen, point to another grace note. Can you find it? If you're pointing right here, you're correct. Here's another grace note. You'll see it's on a C, and then it goes up to a D-flat, and remember grace note. You're going to play it so fast it almost blurs together. Try that on your piano. C to D-flat. Just a little grace note there. Any other symbols you notice in the right hand part? Probably notice some dynamics. Now let's also notice this symbol. See this flat line that's directly under those note heads? That is called a tenuto. A tenuto marking means to play these notes with a little extra emphasis. They're not considered as strong as accents, but a composer will generally use a tenuto to say give those notes some weight. Play them with importance. Not quite an accent, but the composer wants those notes to stand out. They're important. Can you find any other tenuto marks from uh measure seven to the end of this line? There's a tenuto mark right here, so we're going to play that G-flat a little stronger than the notes around it. But again not quite an accent, and then same here we've got four more tenuti. tenutos. At the end of this line, so these four notes again play them like they're really important. Now last of all, let's hunt for any keys that are automatically flat because of our key signature, because sometimes it's really helpful to circle those notes in your own music. For example in this first measure which notes are going to be automatically flat? We're hunting for any B's, E's, or A's. Well, we start off with an E, so we'll need to flat E E E, then we have a C. Is C-flat? No Here's another E, so that's also flat, and then we have an F. Is that flat? No. All right, now pause the video if you would like to, and in your own music at home, circle any notes that have an automatic flat. If you like, you could also circle notes that are flat because it's written right in front of it like this G-flat. But the notes that are flat because of the key signature those are the easy ones to forget because you don't see it in front of the note. You have to remember it from the key signature. So sometimes it's helpful to circle all of those. So pause the video if you want some time to circle all the automatic flats, otherwise, let's keep going and I'd like you to see if you on your own can figure out as much as you can from measure seven to measure twelve. I'm not going to show you at first, I'll show you in a minute, but I'd like you really to get used to tackling notes on your own for the first time. There's a lot to think about here. Not just the notes, but also we've got this grace note you've got these fingerings to watch out for. Because there's going to be some crossovers, some cross-unders, see how much you can figure out by yourself by looking at the notes, looking at the finger numbers. If you get stuck, don't worry. I'll show you how in a minute, but just challenge yourself. See how much you can learn by yourself, then press play and we'll look at it together. So, hopefully now you've taken some time to try and figure this out on your own. Let's review and check one measure at a time to make sure that what you learned is correct. So starting here in measure seven, remember we have an eighth rest. So on beat 1 we'll have half a beat of rest 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& Let's stop right there. Notice, you have to switch to a finger 2 on that E-flat and that gets you ready for the grace note that's coming in the next measure. 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& Okay, watch that one more time. 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& Now if that sounded like what you played, great. You're in good shape. If you need some extra practi ...