Hedwig's Theme

Welcome to the Hoffman School of Piano Craft and Wizardry.
Today you will be learning Hedwig's theme,
a rather famous tune from a movie about a young wizard you might have heard of before:
Harry Potter.
I would teach you myself, but there is some trouble in the Forbidden Forest,
so I leave you in the very capable hands of our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher and
piano instructor, Professor Hoffman.
Thank You, Headmaster.
And now, I must be off. Farewell for now.
Well, let's go ahead and get class started.
Just grab hold of this port key with me,
and we'll transport to the piano to start learning Hedwig's Theme. Go ahead! Just reach out and touch it,
but be ready for a wild sensation.
Whoo! If that's your first time traveling by port key, you may feel a little dizzy or nauseated, but don't worry, the feeling will pass quickly.
So let's start off by looking at the keys you need to use in your right hand for Hedwig's theme.
Here we have an E; F-sharp;
G; A; and B; and that's where you'll place your five fingers of the right hand at
the beginning of the piece.
Sometimes instead of an F-sharp
you'll actually need an F-natural, like here on line two. That little symbol is a natural sign
which means play the regular white key instead of the sharp.
Let's go ahead and place your right hand over those five notes to be ready, and then
you'll notice the first note of the piece is actually played by the left hand which you can tell because it's down here in the
bass clef. It says finger four is playing this B, a step below middle C.
So, you'll notice that your hands have to kind of share this E, or your your thumbs will both be around there.
So just share nicely and your left hand thumb actually doesn't even need to help. It can kind of just rest off the keys like this.
So go ahead and find this position, and then let's try and play the first five notes,
like this. The left hand starts on B, then E,
G, F-sharp, E
And a little faster, like this.
Now you try.
Now, once again. Now you try.
Let's focus on the rhythm of the right hand for a second.
Throughout Hedwig's theme you'll see this rhythm of a dotted quarter note then an eighth note
followed by another quarter note, and that sounds like this
I added that half note at the end.
Let's do this like five times in a row together, because that rhythm is so important in this song to give it the feel.
Can you play that with me? You skip up from E to G, and then just step down in that rhythm
Together with me, go
Try it again, go
Again
One more time
Good. Now if you need extra practice with that just press pause and keep trying it on your own. Otherwise
Let's go on and add three more notes after you have
Then you'll notice you have this skip up of the fifth with which takes us up to B, and then we step down to A
Skip down to f-sharp, and you notice the A is three beats, so hold one two three, one two three.
So together with the B before it we have B A
2 3, F-sharp 2 3. Will you try those three notes on your own? Go.
Good now remember to play Hedwig's theme correctly
It's not just about playing the right notes you want to play the correct rhythm. So as you're holding
those longer notes make sure you count
1 2 3
1 2 3 or the song won't sound correct. Now. Here's the whole first line
One two three, one two three. Now
Will you press pause and work on that first line on your own try it several times?
Make sure you're playing with the correct rhythms and
then press play to go on
Okay, let's try line two now here on line two you'll notice we start off with this pattern again that we've we've seen
before
So will you play that with me? Go
And that's
E, G, F-sharp now here, we have
A D-sharp and in order to play the D sharp we're going to use our left hand finger two that's what that
LH2 means and
D is here. D Sharp would be right here so our LH2 is gonna come up to help on that note
Which holds for two beats, and then the right hand, you'll notice it's an F-sharp
so the right hand finger two has to move to F natural
Did I say natural? It's not F-sharp it's F- natural this time so left hand plays D-
sharp and right hand plays F-natural
Then left hand plays B, so let's practice those three notes. With me, left hand play F-
sharp with finger sorry D sharp with finger two
Right hand plays F-
natural with finger two and left hand plays B
And the rhythm is this one two three, one two three, one two
You hold that note for three tied to two more beats, which means you basically add it together five beats
Okay, let's try that together get your left hand finger two. Ready go. One two three, one two three, one two

Good now. Let's back up and put that together with the first measure of line two
Goo ...