Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman and in this lesson
we'll be learning how to add chords to "Mary Had a Little Lamb".
Let's come to the piano to get started.
Here I have our E major pentascale.
You'll recall that to build a I chord, we use DO MI and SO.
We skip over RE and FA,
but when we put these three notes together,
that builds a I chord.
It has a great sound.
With your left hand, go ahead and find
the notes DO MI and SO
of the E major pentascale with fingers 5 3 1,
and try I chord.
Now remember for smaller hands, if that's too uncomfortable to play that three note chord,
you can modify by just playing these top two notes, the G sharp
and the B.
That can work too,
but if you're able to handle it, the full three note chord sounds nice.
Now for a V7 chord. What do we have to do?
MI moves up a half step to become FA,
and DO moves down a half step to become TI.
Remember, a half step is the very nearest note white or black, whatever is the nearest note.
So you see how those two kind of move in opposite directions, and that gives us
our V7 chord.
Which if your hand can reach, you'll play with your left hand finger 1 2
on this FA and SO, and your finger 5 will play TI.
So try that now.
Again, for smaller hands you can just play these top two notes.
So this would be your V7 chord.
This is your I chord,
or if you can do all three, I chord, V7 chord.
Pause the video now and just practice going back and forth
from a I chord to a V7 chord.
Try that several times until you're comfortable with it, then press play to go on.
Now let's figure out where to play I chords and where to play V7 chords
with "Mary Had a Little Lamb". We're going to be playing the melody in the right hand,
and we'll add chords in the left hand.
Now how do we know which chord we should use?
Well, we're going to figure it out by ear.
For example, let's just take these first four notes.
Let's try that with a I chord.
That sounds pretty good, now let's try it with the V7 chord.
What do you think? Which one sounded better?
Here's the I chord:
Here's the same notes again with a V7 chord:
To me the I chord
sounds much better.
Now, how do we write that?
For chords we use Roman numerals, so we'll write the
Roman numeral one for I chord, and then in your sheet music
which you can download from our website, you've got these dotted lines to kind of
help you draw up this first I chord.
I'm using a marker so you can see more clearly on my music, but at home
I would suggest you use a pencil just in case
you make a mistake it's easy to erase and then correct it.
Now, let's see what we like in measure two.
By the way, these arrows will show us every time we want a chord.
Which is basically the first note of each measure.
So we have our chord here,
by the way, we leave the note heads empty,
don't fill them in because that makes it a half note,
so it can last the full 2 beats of the entire measure.
Let's see what chord we want here.
What about another I chord?
Let's also try it with the V7 chord.
Which did you like better?
Because we're playing that MI MI MI,
MI's sound much better with I chords. With a V7 chord,
it kind of makes it a more dissonant sound.
So we're going to go with a I chord for measure two as well.
Pause the video if you need some time to draw this in your own music.
Now, let's take a look at measure three. We have:
Now let's try another I chord.
Now if I stay on a I chord there, how does that sound?
Let's try with a V7 chord now.
Aha! I like that so much better.
It so happens that when you're on a RE often that sounds best the V7 chord.
They just belong well together.
The symbol for a V7 is we use a Roman numeral V.
The Romans like to put those lines above and under
their numerals, and then we use a regular number 7.
Don't ask me why, but in music that's just the way we do it.
Okay, so the Roman numeral V7, and you draw it like this:
Okay, because the V7 has, remember, this DO steps down to TI,
and the MI steps up to FA and SO which are just a step apart so it's hard to fit them
stacked so we draw them side-by-side like that.
That's the V7 chord.
Now,
on your own I'd like you to pause the video,
and see if you can figure out the rest of these chords.
Just like I was showing you here.
You're going to try to play it and just see which one sounds best. Like here in this measure
you can try it with a I chord:
or try it with the V7 chord:
Try both,
see which sounds best. Remember to write it in pencil and then I'll show you what I came up with.
So, pause the video, see what you can figure out for chords, then press play to go on.
So, here are the chords that I came up with.
We have a 1 chord:
1chord:
V7:
I chord:
V7:
I:
Now, yours might not match that exactly,
maybe you thought something else sounded good.
Remember, there's not always one right or wrong answer,
but in general again because RE's
generally sound best with the V7 chord,
these measures that started on RE that's why I chose the V7 there.
and these other measures generally are starting on a MI,
and MI sounds better with the I chord.
Alright, so again
If you came up with something slightly different that's okay too,
but if you want to do what would be considered
the standard, or the most typical way
to do the chords would be what I'm showing you here.
Why don't you see, as a super challenge in your practicing this week,
see if you can figure out how to add chords to some of your
other songs that we've learned in previous lessons. Like,
"Let Us Chase the Squirrel"
starts most songs are going to start with a I chord, but when you get to this note,
Is there a better chord for that RE?
Yeah, maybe the V7 chord. ♫Let us chase the♫
That's as far as I'm going to show you. So I want you to figure out the rest.
But you could do "Let Us Chase the Squirrel", you could do "Who's That?".
Pretty much any song you've learned in the past
you can try adding I and V7 chords. See what sounds good to you.
Another super challenge would be having your hands trade jobs.
So for like "Mary Had a Little Lamb" that would mean playing
the melody with your left hand and doing the chords in the right hand.
At first that is so tricky, but if you want a big challenge, do it.
Nice work figuring out how to add I and V7 chords to "Mary Had a Little Lamb" today.
Thanks for watching and happy practicing!
♫It followed her to school one day, school one day--♫
Ahh!
Hey! The lamb's supposed to make you wanna laugh and play! Don't you know the song?
[Crying]
Awe, you're such a nice giant Lambie.
BAAA