Lesson video

Hello and welcome to your music lesson.

My name is Miss Al-Hanoush and today, I'll be exploring with you how to play the last two phrases of Amazing Grace.

We'll also be looking at how we can add an accompaniment to make it even more exciting.

So, it's time for a warmup, up on your feet, let's go.

Let's start today's lesson by warming up our minds.

Copy me.

♪ Na na na na na ♪ ♪ Na na na na na ♪ ♪ Na na na na na na na na na na na na na ♪ Good song.

One, two, three and ♪ Na na na na na ♪ ♪ Na na na na na ♪ ♪ Na na na na na na na ♪ Excellent, bring your left hand out in front of you.

We're labelling our fingers, one to five.

One, two, three, four, five.

Just like we do on the keyboard.

Watch.

♪ One two three four five ♪ ♪ One two three four five ♪ ♪ One two three four five ♪ ♪ One two three four five one two three ♪ Well done, putting melody and the numbers together.

One, two, three.

♪ One two three four five ♪ ♪ One two three four five ♪ ♪ One two three four five one two three ♪ ♪ Four five one two three ♪ Moving on.

♪ Four five one two three ♪ ♪ Four five one two three ♪ ♪ Four five one two ♪ ♪ Three four five one two three four five one ♪ Keep going.

♪ Two three four five one ♪ ♪ Two three four five one ♪ ♪ Two three four five one two three four ♪ ♪ Five one two three four ♪ Do it again.

♪ Five one two three four ♪ ♪ Five one two three four ♪ ♪ Five one two three four five one two ♪ ♪ Three four five one two ♪ ♪ Three four five one two ♪ ♪ Three four five one two ♪ ♪ Three four five one two three four five ♪ ♪ One two three four five ♪ Excellent if you managed to keep up with that, you can rewind the video and have another go.

Okay, before we do some singing, let's just make sure that our body is nice and stretched.

Roll those shoulders backwards and roll them forwards for me and see if you can touch the ceiling and down to the floor.

And can you touch both sides of your walls, have a good stretch up and down.

Okay, make your heads reach to the sky and down to the floor and move left and move right and draw a number eight with your nose really slowly.

It's been now all nice and we should be floating, okay.

Make sure that your feet and shoulder with the parts and your arms are nice and loose down both sides, and imagine an imaginary tape or string holding you up to make your posture a little bit taller and relax your shoulders down.

Okay.

We're going to begin by singing through Amazing Grace that we looked at in the last lesson.

Forking it.

♪ Amazing Grace how sweet the sound ♪ ♪ That saved a wretch like me ♪ ♪ I once was lost, but now I'm found ♪ ♪ Was blind, but now I see ♪ With me.

Again so I'm counting after two.

One, two ♪ Amazing Grace how sweet the sound ♪ ♪ That saved a wretch like me ♪ ♪ I once was lost, but now I'm found ♪ ♪ Was blind, but now I see ♪ Awesome job.

As we sing this, I would like you see, that you can sing first few phrases forte, and the second two phrases piano, quieter.

On the last slide, I'd like to see if we can do it diminuendo which means getting gradually quieter, down to minimum sound.

Here's your counting up to two.

One, two ♪ Amazing Grace how sweet the sound ♪ ♪ That saved a wretch like me ♪ ♪ I once was lost, but now I'm found ♪ ♪ Was blind, but now I see ♪ Did you manage up to the dynamic markings there? What difference did they make when we were singing? I'll leave that question for you, and you can maybe answer it as the lesson goes on.

Let's see what we're up to today.

In this lesson, you will need a piece of paper, a pencil, your body, and a keyboard or an app.

I'm about to use a free virtual instrument called virtual piano.

And if you would like to use a virtual instrument with me, please ask your parent or carer to help you find one.

This is mine, and you can play everything that we are going to do today on this virtual app.

So for example, So it's while worth downloading it up if you don't have a keyboard for today's lesson.

Also, please take a moment to find yourself a quiet space where you can work and you won't be disturbed.

And also take a moment to turn off any notifications on any electronic devices that might disturb you during the lesson.

So if you want to pause the video now and go and get all the equipment and make sure you're all ready yourselves, and then press resume once you're ready and rejoin us for the rest of the lesson.

Here's the agenda for today's lesson.

We're going to begin by learning what dynamics are in music.

You're then going to be explore the background of Amazing Grace, and then play the last two phrases of Amazing Grace.

You're going to then create a simple accompaniment to Amazing Grace and then perform Amazing Grace with some added expression.

We use dynamics in music to describe the music's volume.

We use Italian words to describe them.

Take a look at the symbols and the Italian words on the screen.

What dynamic marking do you think that each one represents? Do you know the English word for them? Let's take a look.

On the left-hand side I've just put the English for each of these words.

So, the Italian pianissimo, in English means very soft and it's got a symbol of pp that we would see written on the music if the composer wants us to play it very softly.

Piano means soft, and mezzo piano means moderately soft.

Diminuendo, it means to get gradually softer.

And it's got a symbol that looks like a closing crocodile's mouth.

That's how I remember it.

What about the words on the right-hand side? Well, fortissimo means very loud.

And forte means loud.

Let's say forte means moderately loud and crescendo, which is the opposite of a diminuendo, means getting gradually louder.

And for this, we've got the symbol of an opening crocodile mouth.

Take a look at these words for a couple of minutes.

If you want to write them down on your piece of paper So you've got them to reference, that's a good idea.

And then I'm going to give you a quick quiz on what you can remember.

So here's the quick quiz.

How did you do remembering the words for dynamics? So pianissimo, does it mean very soft? Is that true or false? Well done, it is true.

What about diminuendo? Does that mean getting gradually softer? Is it an open crocodile mouth, or a closed crocodile mouth? Well done.

It does mean gradually softer.

It's getting closed crocodile mouth.

Forte.

Does that mean quiet? Nope, it means loud.

So if you've got something that's forte, you play it loud.

What's quiet mean? It's piano.

Mezzo forte means moderately loud, true or false? That one is true.

So the word mezzo means moderately.

And crescendo means gradually quieter.

That one is of course false.

Okay.

So crescendo is when we see open crocodile mouth.

It means actually getting gradually louder.

Mezzo piano.

Does that mean moderately soft? It does, well done.

So hopefully now you've got a better understanding of what the dynamics mean in music.

And we might see some of these on our musical score later on.

Now we've learned what dynamics are.

We're going to be exploring the background of Amazing Grace.

Take a look at the lyrics to Amazing Grace.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind but now I see.

Which are the important words? Why do you think that is? What do you think that Amazing Grace is about? Amazing Grace was written by a man called John Newton.

And it's a song about desire for freedom.

It's been used in many films, and it's also the name of a super-villain.

Can we sing for each phrase.

You can sing along with me if you like, and as an extra challenge, can you point to each of the pitches while she sing them? Let's have a go.

♪ Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound ♪ ♪ That saved a wretch like me ♪ ♪ I once was lost, but now I'm found ♪ ♪ Was blind, but now I see ♪ Okay, this time, can you sing instead of the lyrics, I would like you to sing the actual note to pitches.

For example, ♪ C F ♪ ♪ A F A ♪ ♪ G F D C ♪ Are you ready? Here we go.

After a counting of two.

One, two.

♪ C F A F A G F D C ♪ ♪ C F A F A G C ♪ ♪ A C C A F A G F D C ♪ ♪ C F A F A G F ♪ Well done if you've got that.

That's a really good exercise for you to do before you start to play it on the keyboard.

Now that we've explored the background of the song, we're now going to play the last few phrases of Amazing Grace.

Before we begin to play three phrases, three and four, let's have a quick finger warmup.

Show me your right hand.

Show me finger number one, show me number five.

Show me number two, Show me number four, show me a polite three.

Show me number one, show me number five, show me number four.

Okay.

Show me your left hand this time.

Show me number one.

Show me a number two.

Show me a number five.

Show me number four.

Show me a polite three.

Show me a number one.

Excellent, so we've recapped which numbers our fingers should be.

So we've got number one, number two, number three and number four and number five.

Amazing.

Do you remember where we need to place our fingers for Amazing Grace? Well, it's on the top of the screen if you can't quite remember, but our right hand should be going on thumb on F, second finger on G, our third needs to go on A, we don't actually need the B but we can rest our finger there.

And then we will for phrases three and four, need this topsy here.

So, your left hand now you need to go and put your thumb on D and you need to put your second finger on C and that's actually all you need.

You can rest your other fingers one per note on the other keys if you like to.

So, remember your hand position.

It's not like this down on the keyboard and flat hands, we're not just playing with one finger, we're playing and using all of our both our left and our right hands to play this.

Pretend that you've got a ball or an orange underneath your hand here.

So if you think of it like that, that's the hand position that you should then be adopting onto the keyboard.

So here is how Amazing Grace phrases three and four should sound.

So, this time when I play it, can you wave your correct hand as I play? So if I'm playing with my right hand, you're going to wave your right hand.

If I play with my left hand, you're going to wave your left hand.

Here we go.

Did my fingers move off that keyboard? Did I use one finger per note? So that's what you need to be doing when you learn how to play phrases three and four.

Remember, I'm not playing like this, I'm not doing that, I'm playing nice in the garter.

Nice and smoothly.

On the screen, you can see the music for phrases three and four.

When you come to practise these, I have highlighted which notes you need to play in your left hand, and I've made this stems go downwards on purpose so you know that they are left-hand notes.

If you have a look here, you should be able to see these.

I've also highlighted them in pink for you, and they're on the screen, circled in pink as well.

So those are your left-hand notes.

Usually the stems should actually go up on this, but I've done that on purpose to show you where the left hand is.

Where would you think phrase three starts and ends? And where do you think phrase four starts and ends? Where would you draw the phrase markings of both? Exactly.

So, phrase three starts on a bit here, so it starts here and do it end on our bottom C here.

And where would phrase four starts and end? Well, that would start here on our middle C and it would end on our last F over here.

Can we sing the numbers, the phrases three and four out loud with me like this.

♪ Three five five three one three two one one two ♪ ♪ Two one three one three two one ♪ Here we go, let's try it.

After two.

One, two ♪ Three five five three one three two one one two ♪ ♪ Two one three one three two one ♪ Well done.

This time, as I play the phrases on the keyboard, can you place your hands on your knees and tap the correct fingers in time with me playing.

As an extra challenge, can you sing the numbers at the same time? Here we go.

For your pause task, can you practise the last two phrases of Amazing Grace on a keyboard or on your app like I showed you earlier, making sure that you are using the correct fingers and your hands are in the right place.

Your right hand, first finger, so your thumb, should be on A F.

And your left hand, your thumb, should be on middle C.

If you think playing phrases three and four is quite easy, can you perform phrases one to four fluently and in time? You could also add your dynamic markings of your choice like we did in our warmup, or, you could play Amazing Grace using a different pentatonic scale.

You could also play the whole of Amazing Grace on your instrument if you play one.

And as an extra challenge, can you play the melody in your right hand only? You will need to work out which fingers to use.

You could write this down on the downloadable resource.

Pause the video now to complete your task and then resume once you're finished.

How did you get on with your task? Were you able to start each phrase with your left hand? And were you able to hit that top C with your little finger? Your number five.

Why am I asking you to play a note per finger instead of just playing with one finger? Well, the reason is, if you just play with one finger, you don't actually build any muscle memory.

And that's really really hard because when you come back to play it again, you won't really remember the notes.

Whereas if you learn a pattern to it, you're more likely to remember the notes.

Let's move on and see what we're going to learn next.

Now that you've had a go playing the last few phrases in Amazing Grace, we're going to see if we can create a simple accompaniment.

So, what is an accompaniment? Well, an accompaniment is something that plays alongside our melody line.

So, Amazing Grace, everything that we've done so far, phrases one to four are melody lines.

However, we need to put an accompaniment with this.

And usually, your left hand would play the accompaniment.

So, I'm going to ask you to create a simple accompaniment.

Form an accompaniment.

All you have to do is play one or two notes from the F major pentatonic in your left hand.

Now, I recommend either the notes C or F.

And you can play these as a drawing, which is a continuous long note.

, like this.

I've just played them for three beats.

But you can hold them down for longer.

You could add in the C if you want to make it a little bit harder.

If you want to make it even harder, you can make an ostinato out of these notes, for example, playing F and then C.

Or you could play C and then F.

But this being an accompaniment though, it means that you're going to have to play the whole of the melody line.

So phrases three and four in your right hand only.

So you will have to work out the thing that positions for those.

That's an extra challenge.

So what does that sound like if I put in a simpler accompaniment with Amazing Grace? Well, here it is if I play a drawing.

I'm going to play C and F together.

And if I wanted to play an ostinato with it, Let's try that.

And so on.

So there are two options that you can use to put in a simpler accompaniment.

If you want to make it even harder for yourself, can you work out the chord progression with your left hand.

For your next pause task, can you practise pressing in your left hand accompaniment with Amazing Grace? If you want an extension, you could work out a more elaborate left-hand part.

For example, adding chords, broken chords, you could also add an accompaniment in left-hand part phrases one to four of Amazing Grace.

Not just three and four.

If you have other household members present, you could get them to play a simpler accompaniment for you, such as a draw, well, for you to perform the melody line.

Or, if you're from a musical home you can let this play alongside you using the pentatonic scale in F to create some harmony lines.

Pause the video to complete your task and resume once you're finished.

Now that you've played for your phrases three and four, what else do you see in the music? Think about our dynamics that we looked at earlier.

That's right.

I can see a forte sign.

What does forte mean? It means to play loudly.

So at the beginning of phase three, we need to play loudly.

What other dynamics signs can you see? I can also see my closing crocodile mouth sign, which means a diminuendo.

What does a diminuendo mean? Exactly.

It means to get quieter.

What does this dynamic sign hear mean? This is piano.

That's right.

It means to get, that's right, it means to play quietly.

So we begin phrase three by playing loudly, and by the end of phrase four, we need to gradually get quieter and then play quietly, softly.

Here's how that sounds on the keyboard.

If you have the option of touch on your keyboard, or if you're playing on a piano, you will need to press the keys slightly harder to get a louder sound out of them or softer to get a softer sound out of them.

For your next pause, can you add the dynamic markings into your performance? as an extension, play Amazing Grace with an compliment and the dynamic markings.

Pause the video to complete your task and resume once you're finished.

How were your performances of Amazing Grace? Did you manage to put in the dynamics and expression? Were you able to add in a left-hand part? Did you manage to get all the pitches of the notes correct? You can check by going back and re-watching my example and making sure that you had the same correct pitches there as well.

So we're now drawing our lesson to a close, and I'd like to just revisit a question that I posed right at the beginning on the green screen.

Which was, how can melody be accompanied? So, I've showed you two ways and I did suggest a third way that you could do it as well.

So on your piece of paper, take two moments to answer that question, and then we'll go through the answers.

What did you come up with? So we looked at two different ways that you could build a simpler accompaniment.

The first one was a drawing, where you could hold down a long held notes.

And the second one was an ostinato, where you repeated a rhythmic pattern.

The third one that I mentioned was to add chords in as well.

So if you're a bit more advanced, you might've wanted to see whether you could add in chords to the melody line as well.

So well done today.

You guys have been absolutely fantastic.

And don't forget, to complete the quiz and show how much you have learned today.

That's all for me, have a great day, go and give your fingers a nice rest now, and I will see you soon.

Goodbye.