Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman.
So, what would you like to learn today? What was that? Hmm, I'm having a little
trouble hearing you, but I'm going to assume you said "Mr. Hoffman, I want to
learn how to add chords to 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat.' Great, that's just what I was
hoping you would say. That is what you said, right? Please say yes. Okay, let's get
started. All right, for "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" we're going to need two different
chords, the one (I) chord and the five-seven (V7) chord. The I chord is built on DO, MI
and SO of the pentascale, like this. Let's try to play that with
our left hand which will be in charge of the chords.
Place your left hand on the D flat major pentascale, using fingers five, three,
and one. Try to play the I chord, should sound like that.
Good, now I'll place these back to show us the I chord. When we play a V7
chord, DO moves a half step down to TI. In this case a half step below
D-flat would be C, and MI moves up a half step to FA, which in this case would be
G-flat. So now these three notes make the V7 chord which will play with
fingers five, two and one like this. Remember that fingers three and four
will float gently in the air and play like that.
Can you try that with me? Let's play it three times. Ready and ♫ ♫ ♫ Good. An optional
way to play the V7 chord is just using fingers one and two on A-flat and
G-flat. If it's too awkward to add in your pinky, that's fine. But the full
version would be all three. Alright, now we're going to try singing "Row, Row, Row
Your Boat" while we play the chords. Basically we'll play a chord every three
beats, like this. ♫♫♫ The whole song is one chords until we get to ♫"life is but a dream."♫ On the word
"life" we change to a V7 chord, and then on "but a" we also are playing the V7
chord, and then on the word "dream" it goes back to a I chord. Let's
practice that together, we're going to sing "life is but a dream." Play two
V7 chords then return to the I chord. Ready, go. ♫"Life is but a dream.♫
Good. One more time, two V7 chords: ♫"life is but a dream."♫
Nice. Now let's try the whole song. Sing along and play the chords. Ready, go. ♫♫(Row, Row, Row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream.)♫♫
Nice job. Now the next step would be to try playing the right-hand melody while
your left hand plays the chords at the same time. Let me show you what that
would sound like. ♫♫♫
You probably noticed that since the left hand had to cross over, you're going to
have to take a break from playing the chords during the "merrily merrily
merrily" part, but then it's back in place in time for "life." Great, now press pause
and try that on your own. You're gonna play chords in the left
hand while your right hand plays the melody.
You'll only play chords on beat one of each measure,
so you'll notice sometimes the right hand will be playing a note while the
left hand doesn't play anything like "gent." On the word "gent" they play
together, but on "-ly" the right hand is playing by itself because that's on beat
three. One two three, one two three three. Make sense?
So now press pause. Practice on your own, then press play when you're ready to see
some more advanced ways to add the chords.
Okay so now you know how to play chords for "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," but the cool
thing about chords is there are actually so many ways you can do it instead of
just playing them all three together like this, which we would call a blocked
chord. You can also do broken chords, which is where you play the notes one at
a time like an arpeggio. (plays arpeggiated I chord) ♫"DO MI SO, DO MI SO"♫ So instead of going ♫"one two three"♫ (holds blocked chord,) you play one note on
each beat: ♫one two three, one two, three♫ that would sound like this: ♫♫♫ ♫♫♫
Now we cross over
Now you've got to find the V7 chord, and you're gonna go ♫one, two, three,
one, two, three♫ the same three notes as the V7 chord, but now one at a
time for "life is but a dream," like this ♫♫(demonstrates "life is but a dream" with arpeggiated V7 chord.)♫♫
You can end on a DO. That would be one advanced option. You can try another
advanced option is called, not so technically, but you could call it the
"oom-pah-pah" accompaniment which is you play DO, and then you turn MI and SO
into a two-note chord like this. DO by itself on beat one, and then MI and SO
together staccato and gently so it doesn't sound boom POP AH, but ♫demonstrates playing gently.♫ Now you
know two advanced ways that you can make chords sound even more interesting,
either broken or oom-pah-pah. So for fun if you'd like an extra challenge you can
try out those more advanced versions too. Great job learning how to add chords to
"Row, Row, Row Your Boat." By the way if that's not actually what you wanted to
learn about today, you could leave me a comment below about what you'd really
like to learn. I'll read your comment and maybe in the future I can make a lesson
for you about whatever it is you want to learn. I want to say thanks for being a
great piano student. Have fun practicing and I'll see you next time.
"Dear Mr. Hoffman..."
"Uh Chef, whatcha doin?"
"Well Mr. Hoffman said we could tell him whatever
we wanted to learn about, so I'm leaving him a comment on his website to ask my
question.
"I see."
(Notification sounds) "Wow, a new comment on my site. Oh! Looks like it's from Chef. 'Dear Mr. Hoffman, I'm looking for a new hairstyle.' I didn't even know chef had
hair. 'So, my question is, how do you get your hair to do that wave thing. Has it
always done that? Your Friend, Chef.' That wave thing...? Well,
Chef, I'm certainly no hair expert, but I'm happy to try and answer your
questions. My hair is naturally wavy, and believe it or not I've pretty much been
using the same hairdo since, well, since high school, and that was over 20 years
ago. Interestingly, about two or three years
ago, I heard somewhere that most presidents of the United States and
Superman too by the way part their hair on the left, not on the right like me, so
I thought I'd try a left part, and, you know, see what it did for me. But then I
realized, I don't even want to be President, so I went back to my old right
part and it's been pretty much the same ever since. So to get this look, basically
all I do is: Step one, get my hair wet. Step two, towel dry it a little. Step three, apply
some gel. Step 4: Just kind of go like this with my fingers for awhile until I
like it. And... voila. Well Chef, I hope that helps."
"Oh yes, thank you Mr. Hoffman, it really has helped."
"Yep. It's done wonders for me too."