To see the full listing of what’s in this Module click here for an overview.
--:--
↺
--:--
Below is the audio track for “The Rain”, a song I wrote with my friend Paul Trudeau. You could listen to it with the video paused on the chord chart if you’d like to practice counting through the measures.
This video (and entire Timing Module) is included as a free bonus when you register for your trial membership to see if being a Piano Genius member is a good fit for you, I encourage you to try it out! 🙂 -Tim.
Great song Tim! Sitting here in front of the fire with my arm around my bride of 50 years feeling the love.
Sounds perfect! 🙂
Love The Rain. Amazing how much confidence one can get after following your instruction and achieving something that makes a pretty sound. Added to favorites so I can access easily and use to help with moving up/down keyboard smoothly. Added left hand which is a bonus, nothing flash or fancy but ok. Thanks for sharing.
Yay, that makes me so happy! (Not the part about you liking the song, which is nice too, but that you’re happy with how quickly you’re progressing!) Thanks for your comment. 🙂
I love this song!! Beautiful!! Very helpful!! Thank you!
Wow; it amazing I love this song!
God bless u Tim
I’m still disconnected on the BPM? If you can represent timing with the notes themselves… how does BPM help? Wouldn’t they all have to be a multiple of 4? A bpm of 70 would be just under a second per beat?
Correct, a BPM of 60 (beats per minute) would count a quarter note every second: 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4…
In the old days there were mechanical metronomes that “ticked” back and forth, now there are electronic ones. If you have a smart phone the most convenient way to get one is to download a metronome app for a dollar or two. Some metronomes have a pronounced sound to stress the “1” count, some do not. You can also just go to youtube and type in “60 BPM” or 79 BPM” etc and odds are you’ll find a metronome count for that exact beat.
For instance, you asked about 79 BPM as an example, and here’s one on Youtube at 79 BPM.
FYI musically I don’t think about how “long” a measure is time-wise, but at 60 BPM, a measure would take 4 seconds (one second for each 1, 2, 3, 4 count) meaning you’d play 15 measures in a minute. (15 x 4 = 60) but that’s NOT something to pay attention to, BPM is just the way to tell someone how fast a song is. Hope that helps.
Ahhh… I see… Thank you, Tim… I definitely over-complicated this. Thank you, again.
Great explanation and lovely song – thank you ?
This section on timing is fantastic….. I love the way you explain things so that the novices among us can easily understand. The clarity which you are bringing out with your examples are great!!!!
Hey Tim thank you for making this lesson. Cool song to listen to while following along and understanding BPM. The yellow circle helps too
Beautiful Song.
Absolutely love all your lessons and extras so far Tim. Wow, you make piano easy. I took up to grade four in classical piano when I was young but gave it up as I hated it and could figure out all the songs I wanted to by ear – way more fun and an awesome challenge. But it also meant my reading notation and a great deal of theory went down the tubes for many years. Publicly I do vocals and harmonies but always wished I was up at that piano jamming. Problem …I haven’t got a clue how anyone figures out where to go so quickly when playing with others. This course makes it all “ make so much sense. Wish I’d known about it before but I’m only 64 it’s never to late and I’m loving it. Thank you so much for what you do here.
Glad this is helping then. 🙂
Is that really an F major chord in the chorus? It sounds minor-ish to me.. or at least very different from the F major in the verse.
Chords can feel/sound differently depending on what chord is leading up to it. In the verse there are two minor chords before the F (Dm, Am, F) so the F-Major kind of “resolves” the two minor chords so it stands out as being a Major chord. I think the reason it sounds different to you in the Chorus cord progression is that the chord right before the F is D… D-Major chord notes are D-F#-A, and the F-note would be the MINOR third of the D chord. So when your brain hears the D chord move to an F chord, it’s still “remembering” the D chord and hearing the F note of the F chord as the minor-3rd of a D chord, even though we’re no longer playing D an longer.
What’s cool about this “phenomenon” is that by creating an unusual chord progression you can play simple Major and minor chords and have them sound really interesting. For instance, listen to the old folk song “Greensleeves” (search Youtube), it’s kind of a mind-bender, very cool chord progression. 🙂 Hope you found that helpful.
That’s cool! It indeed has to do with the chord progression. I just tried it on the piano. F major preceded by D major sounds a bit sad-ish, F major in isolation sounds happier. Funny. Same effect with F major followed by E major in Greensleeves. Kind of an ‘optical’ illusion for the ear, I guess. Interesting.
Thanks for the fast reply!
Love the lyrics,Tim and you know how to sing as well!!
Besides good explanation, the song is great as well!
Thanks! 🙂
beautiful
Hey Tim,
I was following the “dot” on the chords as you went through the song, and I was not only able to play the chords, but also the inversions! I didn’t think I was at that stage yet, but it gave me a lot more confidence. I’m not ready for Carnegie Hall yet, but I feel a lot better about my progress than I did two days ago.
Thanks for all of your insight, and your teaching method.
Paul
Loving the method so far Tim and really enjoyed playing this song Tim….can I get the lyrics from somewhere so I can sing the melody while playing the piece?
THE RAIN – LYRICS
There’ve been times I fall
There’ve been times I cried
there’ve been times I thought of giving up or giving in
It shouldn’t take a fall
To bring me to my knees
So let the rain come down and wash all over me
But if you stay by my side
I can walk ten thousand miles
Take me down to where the river flows out to the sea
And let the rain wash over me
Take me down to where the river flows out to the sea
And let the rain wash over me
Many things I’ve heard
Many things I’ve seen
Many things I’ve learned that I have wished I could forget
Sometimes I hide away
Sometimes I pretend
Sometimes I forget who I could be or who I am
But if you stay by my side
I could walk ten thousand miles
So take me down to where the river flows out to the sea
And let the rain wash over me
Take me down to where the river flows out to the sea
And let the rain wash over me
Hi Tim I’m loving your lessons thankyou
Just a question when playing a song do you have to start the 1st chord in root position or can you do an inversion
You can definitely start the first chord of a song in any position. Playing the first inversion (which puts the root note on top of the chord) can be a good way to start a song, all things being equal, because having the root note of the chord be on top can make it sound nice and “resolved”.
sir i am happy to do so, little fear for not catching the snare or the drum hit, thank you for the information.
Thanks for all of this information.
Hi Tim, Im really havin fun, I always like piano but learn guitar instead, this course explained me a lot of things I never realize on guitar and music theory.
But just to clarify something to other students like me,
1. on the song youre using, the sound of the “snare” is a cross stick sound instead, do the same but sounds different (I say it cause maybe someone new to music is waiting for the snare sound and can’t recognize it on your song cause it doesn’t sound like the snare sound on your past video).
2.the bass drum sound is on 1 and 3, but in your song the bass drum sound on 3 sounds twice.
I understand whats going on cause I played on bands before, and know the struggle and the confussion can cause to a new musician waiting to hear the bass drum just one time on 3.
Hope you understand what Im trying to clarify, thanks for you time and awesome class series…
Best Regards from PR
Yes that is all correct Waldemar, the drum machine I used is playing a “cross stick” sound on the snare instead of a normal snare sound, and the kick drum is playing the 1 and 3 count but is also playing the “two AND” count leading into the 3 count. Glad you’re enjoying everything so far! 🙂
You are The MAN!!!!, thanks for all…
Hi Tim,
I’m really enjoying your course. Your instructions are informative and extremely easy to follow. Thank you!
BTW, Awesome song!
Love the song! I really enjoyed practicing the timing tip on this
I love this song. And with your help thus far, I am already sounding like a Pro?
Hi Tim, following up your course from begining, this is the first time i see you started adding F and D, in a G major scale song. Can you please explain what is the logic behind it or how does it work?
This is covered somewhere else and it’s not the purpose of this timing chart, but the most common chords in Major song keys are 1-4-5 chords, followed by the 6m, 2m, 3m, and flatted 7. “Earth Angel” is a good example of a 1-6m-4-5 song popular in the ’50s (In C: C-Am-F-G). The beginning of “Lean On Me” is a 1-2m-3m-4 chord progression (In C: C-Dm-Em-F). The flatted 7 chord note is NOT in the Major scale, it’s a whole step down from the 1 note. Examples of songs that go between the flatted-7 chord to the 1 and back are “You Really Got Me” and “Two Tickets To Paradise” (In C: Bb=>C=>Bb=C…. In G: F=>G=>F=>G). An example of a minor 5 chord in a Major key is “Louie Louie” which is 1-4-5m-4-1 (In C: C-F-Gm).
Those song examples put the chords in this song in context, in the key of G these chords are 1(G) 5m(Dm) 2m(Am) F(flatted-7) 6m(Em) 4(C) 5(D)
I hope you found the song examples helpful, and for anyone confused by this, don’t worry, this discussion isn’t what this timing Module is about anyway, this is all explained better in other Modules so no worries. 🙂
I love this explanation! I never took time to realize what the other chords might be in a chord progression, like the 3m and the 5m. Thanks for a thorough but simple explanation, even if this was a ‘timing’ lesson! I always enjoy reading the comment section–I learn even more. Love your folksy, ballad-style song, by the way…it’s my favorite genre:)
Beautiful song… tried to find it on YouTube so I could listen to it at my leisure, there… no luck… 🙁
So I’m confused… 60 BPM is divisible by 4 (15 times). So if I noted this on a staff, I would see 60 quarter notes… 4 in each bar/measure… for 15 bars/measures… right? So each beat is 1 second…
So how does 70 bpm work since that’s not evenly divisible by 4? This being a tad faster would mean that each quarter note would have a duration a little less than 1 second in order to fit 70 beats into 1 minute (60 seconds).
If I noted this on a staff, trying to divide 70/4 (17 with a remainder of 2)… I’d see 17 bars/measures… but the 18th one would only have 2 notes in it… right? My guess is that there would probably be a 1/2 note rest in the 18th measure to “even things out,” yes/no?
-Lucky-
It’s not important to know how many measures there are per minute, that’s not really the point of BPM (beats per minute) so while it’s true that a 4/4 song played at 60 BPM would play 15 measures per minute (60 divided by 4), that’s not something I ever think about. It’s simply used to tell you how fast the song should be played. Songs aren’t written out based on number of measures per minute. They’re written out as how many beats per measure, then how fast to play the song. (Whatever that happens to work out to how many measures per minute are being played doesn’t matter.)