Hi, this is Brett with pianoAHA and we’ve got a small Christmas project for you: “Joy to the World”, playing “Joy to the World” in all keys; mostly by ear and with a little help from some structure. >>>
So let me show you what I mean. So put your hands on the keyboard in this way, in other words: The left hand plays the notes C, D, and E with your thumb being on E, and the right hand plays F, G, A, B, and C with your thumb being on F. This is, of course, the major scale.
And we want to use these notes to play “Joy to the World”. So let’s get started. I’m just going to play the melody and I want you to notice where the melody has some leaps in it. In other words, where the melody is not just going one up or one down or is repeating the note. So…so far so good, right? And then here, there’s a leap. So we’ll need a way to remember that, but we will come back to that. Again, the next note is going to be a pretty high note, so that’s another leap we’ll need to remember….repeated note…it goes down…down again. Now it leaps again, and here we skip a note, in other words, we don’t play this B here. Ok. All I wanted you to see there is that most of the melody is just a scale, either going up or down, or repeating a note. And a few points we need to remember how big a leap is. So let’s look at that more exactly.
This was the first point we wanted to remember. This is the 5th scale degree. So if you want to find the fifth scale degree, just play every other note starting at the bottom and you get this triad. We’ll need to remember that 5th scale degree because that is where the melody continues. And this leap here, we just need to go up to the very top again. And it turns out that that is a good trick for this piece, to think the following: If you ever wonder about where do I need to jump to because I can hear that the next note is pretty far away, always just jump to the highest note that you have. In other words, that 8th degree of the scale, up top, except for two cases which we are going to talk about. So this is one of those cases where we jump to the highest scale degree and here the notes just repeat themselves, and go up and down. And again, we hear here that there is a leap coming; again, it is just the highest scale degree. And here there’s the skip. So to sum this up: Anytime you are wondering where the next note is – including the very first note of the piece – the answer is this note here, the highest note. Except for in two cases: here, where we have to remember the 5th scale degree, which you can also remember as being your pointer finger with the fingering that we are using. Just think of your pointer finger pointing at the note letting you know what it is that you want to play. And then at the very end – after this leap – here we have a skip. That’s the other thing. There are only two things we need to remember and that’s the other one. That after this high note we have a small skip. In other words, we are skipping over this 7th scale degree here. And the rest you can play simply by hearing that the notes are going up a little bit or going down a little bit or are repeating themselves. So we are only remembering the one time when we have to jump to the 5th scale degree and when we skip over this one note. So: two things to remember.
The principle behind this is: You only want to try to commit to memory something that you are liable to forget. For example, let’s say you were in the store yesterday and you met someone named Verna. And you discerned within the conversation that she likes to play chess and she likes to eat Chinese food and that she is a human. Now think about if you want to remember these facts about Verna, which one of them do you really have to memorize? You might want to remember that she likes to play chess and that she eats Chinese food, but the fact that she’s a human you don’t need to remember because you are not going to forget that. If you met here in the store and she likes to play chess and eat Chinese food, she’s probably not a rat, for example. She might like to eat Chinese food, but then she wouldn’t like to play chess, right? So don’t remember that she’s a human; you are not going to forget that. Same thing here.
Most of the melody is just going up or down by step, right? Just steps up or down the scale. The only points we need to remember are when there is some sort of leap; something that we are liable to forget. And since most of these leaps leap to the highest scale degree in the scale where we have our fingers, we can just say “Okay, anytime we are wondering, jump to the highest scale degree”. And there are only two exceptions. One of them at the beginning when you jump to the fifth scale degree and one of them at the end when we skip over the one note.
So, try it out in C major and if you are looking for a challenge, try it in another key or in all other keys. For example, let’s take a look at G major. This is a G major scale. Now we’ll try the piece there. Again, we start at the highest note because if we are ever wondering where the note is, it must be the highest one. And we remember now that this is the 5th scale degree. Some sort of high leap…must be the highest note. Another pretty high leap: must be the highest scale degree. And now we remember the one skip; we are skipping over a note.
And let’s say you wanted to play it in C# major. This is the scale here. By the way, a good little tip for making sure that you’ve found the right scale is seeing that between your two thumbs there will be a half-step, in other words, no key between them. And up top there will be a half-step; otherwise you’ll just have whole steps everywhere. We remember the 5th scale degree. We are in a different key, but it’s still our pointer finger. Right? We just jumped up to the highest scale degree again. Another leap: must be the highest because that was our rule. Now we skip one.
So, using these ideas, in other words, playing mostly by ear and a little bit of help from your memory and from the structure of the piece, you should be able to play this piece in any key. So have fun and we’ll see you in the other videos.