Hello and welcome back! I'm Joseph
Hoffman
and today we're learning how to play
"Deck the Halls". This video is my
preparatory level piano tutorial. If you
try this and it seems too easy and you
want something harder, then please check
out my Level Two "Deck the Halls" tutorial.
Ok, let's check out the sheet music to
get started. Here's the sheet music for
"Deck the Halls" and I highly recommend
that you print this out yourself. You can
download the sheet music right from the
Hoffman Academy website. So, I just want
to kind of look this over with you to
check out a few things. We're going to be
playing this lively and we're in 4/4
time signature, so 4 beats per measure.
And a few things to notice,
we'll see this rhythm; a dotted quarter
note followed by an by a flagged eighth
note and that rhythm pops up several
times if you learned the "Ode to Joy"
lesson with me, you're familiar with that
rhythm BA-BA. So we have TA-TI-TA-TA. Try to say
that with me. Go TA-TI-TA-TA. That dot
stretches out a note an extra fifty percent half
of its original value and then this
eighth note goes a little bit quicker
like a TI-TA-TI-TA-TA. Over here we see
the rhythm like this, TI-TI-TI-TI-TA-TI-TA-TA-TWO-OO.
and that makes ♫Fa la la la la la la la la!♫
Okay, now, a few other things to notice
we've got these staccato dots. If you
haven't learned that yet a dot over or
under a note head means to play that
note a little bit detached like this 'la
la la' instead of smoothly 'la la' that
would be not staccato but with those
staccato dots
we'll play those with a quick-detach
sound ♫la la la♫ Here's another symbol to
note. A repeat sign sends you back to play
it again and so we'll go all the way
back to the start and play it one more
time after we get to that repeat and
then the second
time through we just keep going.
Let's find our hand position for "Deck the Halls".
Our right hand begins with finger 1 on
this treble staff D. So go ahead and find
that. Here's my middle C, so find just the
note a step above your middle C and
later on in the song we're also going to
need an F-sharp so if you want to go
ahead and get finger 3 ready on F-sharp
that will be the hand position for your
right hand. Your left hand you can see
starts on middle C with finger 1. So
go ahead and place your left hand here
right next door to your right hand and
in a little bit you're going to need
this F-sharp played by finger 5 as well
so but if you'd like to just hang out
here on F and then just shift when you
need it that works as well. So with your
hands in this position you're ready to
play. I'd like to challenge you to try to
learn the first four measures of "Deck
the Halls"
on your own. Use your skills that you've
learned about reading notes on the staff.
First maybe figure out the steps skips
and repeats, maybe point and name the
letter names of each note. Use the sheet
music which you've downloaded from our
website by now, press pause and see if
you can figure out the first four
measures of this piece and then press
play and we'll try it together.
Okay let's try it together now. I'll play
once and then you copy. ♫Deck the halls
with boughs of holly♫. Now, you try.
Good! Then we're going to have the 'fa la la'
starting with finger 3 on A. ♫Fa la la la la la la la la!♫
now you try
Good! Then we see that repeat sign, so we
do it again. My turn, ♫Tis the season to be
jolly fa la la la la la la la!♫
Now you try.
Good! Now the next two measures go
♫Don we now our gay apparel♫. Notice
that we start on this A with the left
hand which is finger 3. Step up, step
up, skip down, then step up, step up, step
up, and then skip back down to that A. ♫Don we now our gay apparel♫
now
press pause and work on those two
measures on your own then press play to
go on.
Good! Now let's look at these next
two measures. We have starting with the
left hand on B, which is finger 2 we
have TI-TI-TA, so three notes stepping up ♫Fa la la♫
then three more notes stepping up again
with the F-sharp, don't forget the
f-sharp. ♫la la la♫ so watch that together we
have ♫Fa la la la la la♫ Now you try, start with finger
2 on B. Go.
Good! Then after that we step back down to F-sharp, step
down to E, step down to D. Now you try.
Good, let's put all those
'Fa la la's' together. We have ♫Fa la la la la la la la la!♫ Now you try
Now let's put that together with 'Don we
now'. We have ♫Don we now our gay
apparel ...