Popular Music Lesson

Aloha 'Oe - Early Elementary Version

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Hi, this is Stephanie with Hoffman Academy. Today I'll help you get started with a song called "Aloha 'Oe". It's a beautiful song written by the only queen to ever rule Hawaii, Queen Lili’oukalani. This song is in English and Hawaiian. Do you know the Hawaiian language has twelve letters in it? English has 24, and Cambodian has 74. Some letters they don't even use, but this song is simple and lovely. You can grab a copy of the sheet music in the link below. Let's have a listen. ♫Aloha ʻoe, aloha ʻoe♫ ♫E ke onaona noho i ka lipo♫ ♫One fond embrace, A hoʻi aʻe au♫ ♫Until we meet again♫ You're going to start withboth hands on the piano. Your left hand and right hand will be right next to each other so your thumbs are adjacent, or on keys that are next to each other. Your right hand will start on C, and then every finger will have a white key. Your left hand will start right next to it on B, and every finger will have a white key as well. Most of these notes will be stepping up, meaning going from finger to finger, and some will be skipping, meaning they'll skip over a finger. So pay attention to which finger we're playing. The form of this song, meaning the poetic pattern, is A B A C. The first A section starts: ♫Aloha 'oe, Aloha 'oe♫, Now the B section, ♫E ke onaona noho i ka lipo♫ Another A section: ♫One fond embrace, aho i a'e au♫ And the last C section: ♫Until we meet again♫ So, we have A B A C. The first A section will start on your 3 finger. Step up to your 2 finger, then skip to your 1 finger, andgo to your 4. G A C F One more time. ♫Aloha ‘oe, ♫ Pause and rewind and play on your own at any time. The next part goes 2 finger first, then 3 finger. Skip up to your 1 finger, and then skip up again to your 3 finger. ♫Aloha ‘oe ♫ So the first part starts on your 3 finger. Then the second part starts on your 2 finger. We're going to play the two parts together one more time. So that's the first A section. Pause, rewind, and practice that as many times as you need. Now going on to the next section: the B section. ♫ E ke onaona noho i ka lipo ♫ So now we have a few more notes, but it's still stepwise motion. That means you're going from one finger to the next, and you're not skipping. We start with the right hand, ♫ E ke ♫, and then we step down, and do a lower neighbor there. B A B. So we have C C B A B. Then we step back up to our right hand. ♫na noho ika lipo♫ So you play C D D E F, then come back down E D C. ♫E ke onao na no ho i ka lipo♫ So you notice it's mostly step wise motion. We do have a couple notes that repeat, but mostly just going up and down. We go all the way down to our 2 finger, all the way up to our 4 finger in our right hand. I'm going to play it one more time you can play it with me or just watch. ♫E ke onao na noho i ka lipo♫ Pause and practice that on your own. Let's play the two sections together starting from the very beginning, and going all the way through ♫lipo♫ Starting on your 3 finger, ♫Aloha ʻoe, aloha ʻoe♫ ♫E ke onaona noho i ka lipo♫ Pause and practice that as many times as you need. Now on to the next section, the A section. ♫One fond embrace, a ho 'i a'e au♫ So, this is the same as the A section at the first part of the song. There are a few more added notes. ♫One fond embrace♫ That's the same as before. 3 2 1 4 Now listen to the next part. ♫a ho 'i a'e au♫ So we start on our 2 finger again, step down, go to our right hand, ''i a' ''e au' C C D E ♫a ho 'i a'e au♫ So the whole A section starts: ♫One fond embrace,♫ then, ♫a ho 'i a'e au♫ Pause and practice that on your own. The last section, the C section, starts on your right thumb. ♫Until we meet again♫ So we go C B, come back up to C, skip to our 3 finger, ♫meet♫ then our left hand. ♫again♫ So go right, left, C E D left, right. One more time. You can watch or play along. ♫Until we meet again♫ Pause and practice any section on your own. When you're ready, I'll play it for you from the beginning. Starting with your 3 finger. ♫Aloha ʻoe, aloha ʻoe♫ ♫E ke onaona noho i ka lipo♫ ♫One fond embrace, A hoʻi aʻe au♫ ♫Until we meet again♫ Thanks for playing with us today. Remember, if the song felt a little hard, that's probably because it was, but that's okay just try it again. Pause, rewind, practice on your own, and you'll get it eventually. Like this video if you enjoyed it and remember to subscribe to the channel if you want to see more tutorials. Happy practicing!