So, let me now about basic strategies for expanding and improving your ears. Singing while playing the piano is an activity that is not only low cost, but is highly effective. With the guide tone progression that we discussed in a earlier segment, we can experiment with the following play and sing activities. One, we can play the right-hand content while singing the root of the underlying chords. Two, we can play the chordal roots and sing the seventh line, starting our guideline on the seventh. Three, we can play the chordal route and sing the third line. And the last activity, number four, which is a little bit more intricate, involves playing the base note and one of the guide tone lines while singing the remaining one. And needless to say, that activity is the most challenging. But again, the main premise of play and sing is to develop your ear and make a connection between what you're playing, what you're hearing, how you process that information, and how you can utilize the information during improvisation. And I think with the four different strategies we covered, basic strategies, and again it will greatly improve your ears. You'll make a much better connection with the music, and you're going to experiment with a voice reading force as you're going to understand what these voiceing forces really mean and how you can capitalize on these voice reading forces in your improvisation. So, on the screen you're going to sing, you're going to see different slides that indicate the strategies that I will now demonstrate. And the thing is you don't have to be a great singer to engage in these activities. And certainly I'm not a great singer, but the most important thing is to try to sing in tune and really focus on the difference between different chord members. And in particular, pay attention to the way they sound and where do they lead. So the first activity that we're going to do, I'm going to sing the root of the chords and play the guide tones. And we'll try to play in time. You know so we have some kind of reference right? So we'll put the metronome on 60, clicking count two and four. And I'm going to sing the root of the chord while playing the guide tones, and remember without the root, we don't really hear the underlying, what the chord is. It can be, [SOUND] this or it can be, [SOUND] either one, so you have to really hear with your inner ear what you're going to react to, right? So let me sing. And I'm going to use numbers to indicate a specific notes like one indicates the root, three, five, and so forth. One, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one. One, one, one, one, one. Okay, so here's a very simple activity, but the point here is to really hear those roots. And when you hear the piano player or the guitar player, playing those rootless formations, you have to imagine what is their intended base note, okay? So now we're going to do something else. I'm going to play the root of the chord and I'm going to sing one of the guide tone lines. And I'm going to capitalize under good voice leading. And, again, you can make appropriate adjustments, depending on your range, but I would encourage you to sing a little bit, don't sing your sevens below the base note, because you're not going to the identity of that note, all right? So if this is my base note, I would try to sing sev, right? That's my note. Okay, so I'm going to seven and three, right, so let's try. [SOUND] So follow my playing and singing with the screen. One, two, one, two, three. Sev, three, sev, sev, three, three. Sev, sev, sev, three, sev, three, sev. When you sing, especially when you get to seven in the context of two, five, one progression, I mean, your voice really wants to go to the third. There's no other way, and the same kind of natural progression, you should try to capture while improvising on your own instrument. You can do the same thing playing the bass line and singing the third, right? Three, one, two, one, two, three. Three, sev, three. Three, sev, sev, three, three, sev, three, sev, three, sev, three. And again, when you sing in tune, when you get to the seventh you will notice that the note sounds a little more dissonant because that is natural tendency, to be dissonant. And it's to resolve that tension while moving down the third. So now what we're going to do, we're going to sing the third line and play row number seven. All right, so it is a little more complicated because now we have to be kind of multitasking. So three, sev, three. Three, sev, sev, three. Three, three, sev, three, sev, three. Well, you can do that with basically any chord progression, and I would strongly encourage it. It's a low budget activity. As long as you have a piece of keyboard, and your voice, and you're able to match pitch you can engage in these activities. So the final activity is to be able to play the third line and sing the seventh line. I'm going to use my falsetto voice now. Sev. To really get that note in the upper register. One, two, three. Sev, three. Sev, sev, three, three, sev, sev, sev, three, sev, three, sev. Okay, I'm not a singer but just to demonstrate that you can also do that. But on a serious note, these kind of exercises, and we'll do more of these exercises, are extremely useful. And with these exercises you can start hearing the identity of specific notes and their voice running behavior. Because the point here is to be able to hear those natural tendencies within your lines, within your chords. [BLANK AUDIO]
