Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman,
and today we're going to learn what may become one of the most useful songs you ever learned.
What do you mean useful?
Useful because it's a song most people I know sing every year on a very special day.
"O Christmas Tree"?
"The Star-Spangled Banner"?
No, think of a song you always sing right before you eat cake.
Oh! "Happy Birthday to You".
You got it!
"Happy Birthday" is a song that you'll probably be singing your whole life.
Any time you or a friend has a birthday.
And by the end of the lesson today, you'll not just be able to sing to your friend on their birthday,
you'll be able to play "Happy Birthday" on the piano for them.
Let's get started by checking out the sheet music.
Here's the sheet music for a "Happy Birthday to You".
Take a second and just tell me what you notice.
You might have noticed we have just a treble staff this time.
Usually we'd see a treble staff and a bass staff in what we call the grand staff,
but since we have just the treble staff only today,
we could call this lead sheet style where we just see the melody
and chord symbols up above, which we'll use to improvise our own accompaniment.
Today we're just going to learn how to play the melody though.
I always like to check our time signature.
How many beats per measure?
That top number tells us we'll have 3 beats per measure.
But hey wait a minute.
This first measure only has 1 beat.
Hey, did somebody steal some beats here?
Oh, don't worry I wasn't blaming you Monkey.
Wait, you didn't take any beats did you?
Oh, good I didn't think so.
You see, this can happen sometime in music where
you have an incomplete measure at the start of a song or piece.
And when you have an incomplete measure, those notes are called pickup notes.
Pickup notes are what we call notes at the beginning of a song
before the first full measure, which you can see here we have 1 2 3 beats. Here's our first full measure,
so these are pickup notes.
But why would a composer want to do that? Why wouldn't we just start here on beat 1?
Well, the answer lies in that sometimes a composer doesn't want to start on a strong beat.
Remember that in music
our beats are arranged in groups of strong and weak,
and in music the first beat of a measure is always a strong beat,
which we sometimes call the downbeat,
and when we're singing along, there are some words that are more important.
If you're saying happy birthday to someone, what's more important?
The happy part? Well, you can be happy any day, right?
But the birthday that's the really special part right?
So you say 'happy birthday,'
and then 'to you', 'you' is the next important strong one,
so it creates this pattern of strong notes falling on the downbeat, or beat 1 of the measure.
And so here, how do we know what beat this is?
Well, when you have pick up notes you count backwards from the first full measure. We know that this is beat 1.
What beat comes right before beat 1?
Well, since we're in 3/4 time this has to be beat 3.
♫Happy birthday to you!♫
So that way we have the strong words or syllables on the strong beats.
And if we were writing the counts we'd see a beat 3 1 2 3 1 2
Now before we try to play it, anything else you notice?
You might have noticed these slur or phrase marks.
This phrase mark goes off the edge because we're starting a new phrase. 'Happy'
See it goes off the edge, continues on this line ♫Happy birthday dear♫,
and then you can fill in the blank here whoever's birthday it is. ♫dear Sarah♫
And what do we have here?
It's our fermata. Remember we like to hold this note extra long ♫Happy birthday dear Sarah♫,
and you hold that extra-long,
and then we start a new phrase for the end. ♫Happy birthday to you♫
Now what do you notice about this measure?
Well it's also missing beats.
Don't worry Monkey. I know it wasn't you
How many beats do you see in this measure?
That's right, 1 2 beats. It's missing beat 3.
Sometimes when a composer uses pickup notes,
when they place beat three here at the start,
they'll make up for it by only having 2 beats here. 1 2
beat 3 is up at the beginning.
Let's try to play it.
All right, can you figure out where to place your hand?
Take a look at the first note and check out the finger number over that note.
So it's asking for a finger 1 on middle C.
So on your own piano, can you place a finger 1 on your middle C.
And now pay attention to the rhythms. We start off with a TIM-KI TA TA TA TWO-OO
I'd like you to pause the video and see if you can figure out these first four measures or the first two phrases
of "Happy Birthday to You" on your own.
Pause and see if you can figure it out. Read the notes,
and then press play and we'll try it together.
All right, it should sound something like this: 1 2
♫Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!♫
Now pause the video if need more practice to get it to sound like that,
but if that sounded like what you played, then let's keep going to the next line.
Now here's something kind of tricky happens.
We have ♫Happy♫ to start the next phrase and you'll notice that phrase goes off the line to line two,
and now what no do you see next? Can you tell me it's name?
Now we're all the way on treble C, but look our finger 5 naturally lands on G.
What are we going to have to do?
We're going to have to glide over to that high treble C. We're going all the way up an octave.
How do you do that? You can kind of just reach your fingers over
or if that's too far to stretch, just glide over. You want it to feel comfortable ♫Happy birth-♫ And then what?
Skip down, skip down. ♫Happy birthday dear♫ Pause the video,
and I'd like you to practice just ♫Happy birthday dear♫, then press play to go on.
Now here another tricky thing happens.
We just played ♫Happy birthday dear♫ Now look at the notes. What happens next?
It steps down, but how do we step down? We're out of fingers!
Well, no problem. I'm going to teach you an advanced technique.
Your fingers can just glide over your thumb. See how all my fingers just kind of glide over?
Now my finger too is on E for ♫dear♫ if it's ♫Henry♫,
and then after my finger to plays, look my thumb has to sneak out under to the D.
So watch again. ♫Happy birthday dear♫ my fingers glide over ♫Hen-♫ thumb sneaks under,
♫-ry♫ or I guess glides out, sneaks out.
♫Happy birthday dear Henry♫
That's called a cross over. My fingers are crossing over my finger 1, or my thumb,
and then the thumb slides out for that next note.
♫Happy birthday dear Henry♫
Pause the video and work on that phrase with the fermata at the end, then press play to go on.
Now after you have ♫Happy birthday dear Henry♫, with the fermata.
Now tell me the name of this next note.
If you said B-flat you're correct.
Now are any of my fingers on a B-flat?
No.
What finger number does the sheet music ask for on the B-flat?
If you said 4 you're correct.
So we're going to have to shift our hand again, finger 4
up to the B-flat.
So this will now feel like the F-major pentascale.
♫Happy♫ and then step down, ♫birth-♫ skip down, ♫day♫ step up, step down.
♫Happy birthday to you!♫
We end in the F major pentascale.
Okay, pause the video and work on that phrase starting with finger 4 on B-flat,
and then press play to go on.
Now it's time to put it all together
If you'd like to try playing along with me you can, or you can just listen.
I'll count 2 beats, and then we'll start playing on beat 3.
1 2 ♫Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!♫
♫Happy birthday dear someone! Happy birthday to you!♫
Great work today learning how to play the melody for "Happy birthday to You".
I hope you'll practice this until you have it memorized so well
that next time someone you know has a birthday, you could just sit down and play it for them.
Happy practicing, and happy birthday whenever that may be!
See you next time!
Hey Scuba, want to hear a birthday joke?
Sure, but it's not even my birthday.
That's okay, mine's next month.
Yeah, close enough. Let's hear it.
Alright, why did the birthday cake have to go see the doctor?
I don't know, why?
Because it was feeling crummy! Hahaha
I got one! Why didn't the teddy bear want cake on his birthday?
I don't know, why?
Because he was stuffed! Hahaha
Okay, okay, what do you give a three thousand pound rhinoceros for his birthday?
Uh, what?
I don't know, but you better hope he likes it! Hahaha