Remember Me (Accompaniment)

Hola y bienvenidos. Soy Joseph Hoffman
and in this lesson I'll be teaching you
how to play the accompaniment for
"Remember Me" from the movie Coco. Once you
know the accompaniment you can play
along while you or a friend sings or
plays the melody. In the original
soundtrack, the accompaniment is played
on the guitar, but since I don't know how
to play the guitar, 'Gracias amigo!', de nada! I'm going to
teach you how to play it on the piano,
which also sounds cool. So, let's come to
the piano to get started. Okay, so for
playing the accompaniment for "Remember
Me", I suggest you position yourself on
the lower half of the piano. Whoever's
playing the melody for you, I recommend
that they take it up one octave higher.
If here's your middle C, you know playing, ♫Remember me♫
Will be ideal so they're not crashing
into your hands, because you'll be mostly
down here from middle C and below. So,
let's take these chord symbols. You're
going to use these chord symbols as your
guide. And again, with chord symbols there
are so many options, there's no one right
or wrong way to improvise an
accompaniment. I'm just going to show you
one of many possibilities. So with a
right hand you'll see this first chord
is a C major chord. A capital letter for
a chord symbol just means that major
chord. So our first chord is C major,
which is built on C E G and it's
traditional to have the left hand play
just the root of the chord so I'm gonna
play this low C with my left hand, then
my right hand is gonna do repeated block
chords, almost like i'm strumming a
guitar. 1
and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Okay, let's try
that together, go. 1 and 2 and 3
and 4 and. Good, now you'll notice that,
♫Remember♫ actually comes before the
accompaniment begins. So again if you
have a duet partner, they'll be up here
playing that all by themselves, or if
you're accompanying yourself singing,
you'll sing, ♫Remember me♫ and on 'me' is where
you start the chord. ♫though I♫ Okay, so let's try
that together. Okay, sing along with me,
and we'll start playing on 'me'. ♫Remember me,♫
and 2 and 3 and ♫though I♫ Okay, now let me
show you just one other option. If you
don't like how that chord sounds, you
know because we're kind of getting low
on the piano, you can invert that chord,
and put this C up on top like this and
go, 1 and 2 and 3. Okay, either is a possibility. This C-major, again take this C and put it on
top it's still the same chord. ♫Remember me,
though I♫ Now, let's go on to the next
chord. Whenever you see one of these
slashes, the symbol you see before the
slash is the chord, and whatever you see
after the slash is the bass note. So
whatever you see after the slash, that's
what our left hand will play.
So it says A-flat, so we're gonna play
that A-flat there, then we have an F-
minor 6 chord. F-minor is this, F A-flat C. Now an F-minor 6 means you take a
sixth above the F, one, two, three, four, five, six. We can add that D ♫though I have to say goodbye♫ Okay,
you can take that D and put it on the
bottom if you want. And this is called
inverting chords where you take one
chord tone and just place it in a more
convenient spot. Okay, so if we're using
that first inversion we can have,
♫Remember me, though I have to say goodbye♫
I'm using that F-minor 6 in inversion
there. Okay, and go ahead and press pause
to try any of this that you want,
otherwise I'm gonna keep going.
♫Remember me♫ we're back to the C ♫Don't let it make you cry♫ So notice there I had a B-flat seven. So B-
flat major is this. The seventh of B-flat
is here. This is a dominant 7 chord,
and then I threw in the ninth too
because I think that sounds kind of cool.
Okay, what you can do ♫let it make you♫ so again you don't have to play all four of those notes. You
can use these three, or these three, you
know, any of those notes from the B-flat
major, sorry, B-flat 7 with, I'm adding
in the ninth. Totally optional. Okay, so
♫Let it make you♫ and then we have an E7 chord. So left hand plays E, and then E
7 is this. Okay, E G-sharp B D, which
I'm gonna invert and put that D down on
the bottom and leave out the E since
I've got it down in the root anyways. ♫cry♫
So my B-flat 7 I'm actually gonna do
this, just play D A-flat and C, with the B-
flat in the root I'm gonna leave out the
F. ♫let it make you cry♫
See how I did that? ♫Don't let it make you cry, For♫ Then on A-minor, gonna play A with
my left hand for the root of the chord, and
then here's our a minor chord, A C E ...