Hello and welcome back to Hoffman Academy. I'm Alex.
In today's tutorial we're going to learn one of the most popular songs from one of today's most popular music artists:
"Believer" by Imagine Dragons.
For the sheet music, check the link below this video and when you're ready, let's go to the piano and check it out.
Okay, as always we're going to look at and discuss a couple things first.
If you're looking at the weird notes in these first few measures, you probably already have a hundred questions,
but we'll get to that in just a second.
The first thing to look at is the time signature, which is 6/8.
6/8 literally means six eighth notes per measure, but what it also means is that you have two strong pulses,
each divided into three notes.
It sounds like
1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6
Or you can think of it as
1-&-a 2-&-a, 1-&-a 2-&-a
Counting to 6 can be helpful early on when you're practicing really slowly and carefully, but as you get better and faster
you might try transitioning to counting just the two larger beats.
If you want more help with 6/8 time, there's a link below to one of our other videos all about these kinds of time signatures.
Moving on, maybe you've already noticed the key signature with all five of its flats.
This is the key signature for B-flat minor.
Five flats is actually one of my favorites because it uses every black key.
Instead of trying to remember which notes are flat, it's easier to remember which two notes are not flat, which are C and F.
But if you just watch my hands and follow me, I think you'll do just fine.
Okay now we can talk about these cool looking notes.
In the beginning, we're not going to be playing any keys on the piano.
This is kind of what percussion notation can look like or unpitched notation.
You'll notice that the note heads are little x's instead,
which can be a good way to remind you that it's not a note for the piano but for something else.
For this song the three middle lines of the staff are assigned a different tap or clap.
The G line here is for the left hand to tap on your lap, and I'm just going to tap on the piano so you can see.
The D line is for the right hand to tap on your lap, and the middle line here is for the clap.
You see how it has two stems? Stem up for the right hand and stem down for the left hand.
Notice that these spots here where both hands tap, there's also an accent which means we can try to tap a little harder on those.
In the original song they use actual drums which we might not have lying around, so we're going to have to do our best to make up for it.
Let's see how this sounds.
Here are the first eight measures slowly.
Left hand tap, clap, both hands tap,
right, left, right, left,
clap, both, right, left, right, left,
clap, both, clap.
And here it is a little faster:
1 2 3, 1 2 3, 1 2 3,
tap, 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6
Great, one of the challenges you'll encounter is once you finish that tap and clap section,
you have to jump right into the piano part and find your position right away.
So you might want to just practice finding that position after a clap. Let's find this position right now.
It's B-flat with the left hand thumb, and F with the right hand 3rd finger.
But I'm also looking ahead at the next few notes and I see there's an E-flat and a D-flat in the right hand coming up as well.
So I want to get my hand ready for those notes as well, like this:
Now let's try to get here by starting on measure eight, which goes: tap, clap, position.
As I practice that, I'm also going ahead and just play that first note when I get into position like this:
Tap, clap, position.
And at full speed it'll be this fast:
Tap, clap, position.
Okay, moving on. Do you see that word 'detached' above measure nine?
A lot of us are used to playing piano with a nice beautiful legato sound where all the notes are smooth and connected.
Detached is a word we use in music to mean not legato, but maybe not really staccato either. something more in the middle.
In the original song, he doesn't sing: ♫First thing's first♫ with a legato sound,
he says ♫First thing's first♫
So the best way to know how to make it sound just right is to go listen to it again,
and then play it how you hear it.
All right let's play this whole first section. I'm going to play from measure nine all the way to measure thirty-nine,
and then we'll talk about some things when I'm done.
1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6,
1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6
Okay, one of the things you might have noticed were a couple notes that were clearly not detached.
For example, these two notes here in measures eighteen and nineteen are played legato because of the slur marking above them.
By the way, these two notes, measures twenty-two and twenty-three, also have an odd fingering.
You don't usually see finger 5 slurring to finger 5.
This is one of those rare times where it is actually easier this way.
For one, it's easy on these two notes in particular because it's a black key to a white key.
So you can just slide right off the B-flat and drop down onto the A natural.
By the way that's what this sign is next to the A. It means that even though the key signature says our A's are are flat
this A will be played without a flat.
Also, if I had used finger 4 like a more traditional fingering,
That would put my hand in kind of an awkward position in order to find my way back to the F in measure twenty-five.
This motion here,
see it sets my hand up perfectly to go on to the next F.
Alright, if you're ready to learn more let's get to the next section, measures forty through fifty-seven.
This section is challenging. I imagine some of you might want to skip this part and that's totally okay.
Not only are the rhythms here a little tricky in some spots, but physically playing it is going to be very difficult.
Normally, rapid repeated notes are a challenge for all pianists, so we have to rethink our technique here.
Notice that the first B-flat has a finger 3 with an asterisk.
Since it's just a lot of the same note over and over again, we're going to want a really strong finger to do it with,
and I'll show you a neat trick for making it even easier.
I'm going to put my thumb right under the last joint of my middle finger like this.
This will give it a little extra support. I can also kind of hug the sides of my middle finger
with the other fingers like this.
And basically what I'm making is a little tiny hammer out of my third finger.
And when I play, I'm going to use a wrist motion like this.
Kind of how you might knock on someone's door.
Like that.
Can you see how only my wrist is moving here?
That's what we want.
Now, when you think you've got a good hammer figured out, test it out on a key of the piano.
See if you can play some fast repeated notes without too much effort.
It's kind of like a chicken head pecking at the ground.
Now there is one spot here in measure forty-four where I will briefly switch to my thumb,
and that's so that I can use my 3rd finger again when it changes to D-flat in measures forty-five.
If I keep using only 3rd finger, there's a risk I might miss that skip up.
So watch for that.
And if you look ahead for example in measures forty-one and forty-three, you'll see a tie connecting two notes.
Remember that these ties mean to play the first note and hold it through to the second note,
and so you won't actually be playing that second note.
We also have the option to tap the beat with our left hand
while we play it. This might actually make everything easier, because it can help you keep track of where you are in the measure.
All right, let's play it starting in measure forty.
Get your hammer ready.
And 1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6,
1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6,
1 2 3 4 5 6, 1
Great, the rest of the song is pretty straightforward, and if you've made it this far, then you might not need much more help from me,
but I'll quickly show you a few things like the different chords you'll be using here.
This first one is F, B-flat and D-flat like this, and I use the second finger on that middle note, remember that.
Then that changes to G-flat, B-flat, D-flat,
and now I'm using my 3rd finger, and that's all black keys, and then that slides down to F A C, like that.
Remember again that you don't play the second note of a tie like in measure fifty-eight.
There's a couple more natural signs to watch out for. Also check out measure sixty-five.
There's an optional low B-flat for the right hand.
If you want to add that, you just reach over the left hand and play that B-flat with whichever finger you choose,
and then come right back to where it was before.
Okay, I'm going to play this entire section one time slow starting from measure fifty-eight.
1 2 3 4 5 6,
6 1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6,
1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6, here comes the left hand.
4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6,
1 2 3 4 5 6, 1 2 3 4 5 6,
1 2 3 4 5 6
All right, are you ready to put it all together?
Let's start at the very beginning. Before I do though,
I hope you notice that as I played these sections before I was counting to 6 for every measure.
Remember that that's a really good way to make sure that you are getting every beat and every note accounted for.
But as I said, when you get better and you play faster you can count to 2, which is the first and fourth eighth notes of the measure.
All right, let's do this. Starting with the taps and claps.
And a 1 2 here we go:
1 2, 1 2
1 2, 1 2, 1 2
Thanks for learning with me today. Don't forget to like and subscribe,
and go check out our website hoffmanacademy.com for all kinds of videos and tutorials.
And as always, happy practicing!