All of Me by Jon Schmidt (Intermediate)

Hello and welcome I'm Joseph Hoffman and in this tutorial I'm going to help guide you through learning to play a simplified version of "All Of Me" by John Schmidt. I'll be using the easy piano version you can purchase from sheetmusicdirect.com. Find the link below. But please note even though it's labeled 'easy piano', I wouldn't call it easy. This version is actually what I would call intermediate level. It's fast and has lots of technical challenges, but is it worth the effort? Absolutely! It's a fantastic piece which is why I use it as the intro theme song for most of my own Hoffman Academy videos, with permission from the composer of course. Let's get started by checking out the score. Here's the sheet music for "All of Me" page one. Notice that John Schmidt, the composer, suggests playing this freely. When a composer says freely, they mean don't play it like with a metronome really strict in time. You're going to let it flow. Sometimes speed up a little, sometimes slow down a little, very freely. Also, John Schmidt indicates to play this with pedal. There's no pedal markings, so you're going to use your ear, listen, and use a generous pedal. I pedal through most of this piece, but we'll do frequent pedal lifts to keep it from sounding too blurry. Our key signature is C major, no sharps and flats, 4/4 time. One of the trickiest aspects of "All of Me" is the rhythm. So I suggest you take the time to learn the rhythms correctly from the start, and possibly by writing in the count to your music. For example, you could write in the counts just like I've done here on line one. Even though it says 'freely' we still want to learn the rhythms correctly,and then we'll let it flow, and not be super strict about it, but we still want to learn them correct. So for example, this first line could be 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-& and then note the fermata so you might linger on 4-& 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, another fermata. Note that whenever you have 16th notes you'll have to fit both 16th notes inside 1 count. So at first try and learn the rhythms really carefully and exactly and then onceyou have it mastered, try it freely where you're going to sometimes move the rhythms forward a little faster, and then maybe coming up on a fermata you might slow down a little bit like this. Here's how I would play it freely. So notice how through here I kind of rushed forward a little bit to add some excitement, and then as I came close to that fermata I slowed down a little bit, and that's what a composer means by freely. Sometimes you're going to move it forward sometimes you're going to relax it. You go with the flow of the notes. Let's check out line two. I've added in the counts once again. So in your own music, which again I highly encourage you to support the composer by downloading your own copy using the link below. Print this out and write in these counts so you can learn the rhythms accurately from the start. Note we've got a 16th note connected to a dotted eighth. So you'll play that kind of quickly. 4 In fact if you wanted to use 4-e-&-a, 16th note subdivisions or just think 4-&, and then 1-& 2, then this is a triplet 16th note, so all three of these notes have to fit inside that &. So 1-& 2-& 3 & 3-& 4-& So let's listen to this line with counting. 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-3-&-a, 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, fermata, 1-& 2-& 3-& 4- &, and then this & leads us to the next line. So let's stop there for a minute, and now listen to this played freely. And then we're going to move that on down to the next line. Let's see what the counts look like. Once again we have a triplet 16th note it's all fitting inside this &. So let's listen to this line again played freely. I'm going to start with this eighth note because this eighth note leads us right into this phrase. So we want to think of this note belonging to the next line. And then going on to line four. Note the poco retardando, which means slow down a little bit. We're coming up to the end of this introduction section, and a composerwill show us that sometimes with a double bar line, which tells us this is the end of a section and the start of a new one. Now we've got it marked fast. Put all of yourself into it. All right, so now instead of playing it flexibly where we're speeding up we're slowing down, now we need a very strict exact tempo. Very rhythmic, a very different feel starting here as we go into a whole different section and new feel. The rhythms are also going to be extremely important to learn correctly from the start, so let's look at how the counts fit in. I highly recommend you write these counts in your own music, and start really slow and careful. 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, 1-& 2-& 3-& 4-&, it's going to go much faster in the end, but you'll learn it so much easier if you start super slow and count. And then we're into the fast section. I'm not going to show you the counting for the whole page, but looking at this first line on page two, note that whenever you have a dotted quarter note it has to ge ...