Silent Night - Easy

Hello and welcome. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this piano lesson you'll learn how to play my easy version of "Silent Night", which will be just right for you if you have one or two or three years of piano experience.
If you're looking for something even easier, check out my super easy tutorial,
or if you're looking for something more challenging, check out my intermediate level tutorial.
Alright, let's get started by checking out the sheet music. Here's the sheet music for "Silent Night", which I encourage you to download and print out
from our website so you can have your own copy to work from at home. Now I've added this little chart. In my tutorials I like to do more than just show you how to play the notes. You can find that in any tutorial. In my tutorials I like to
actually teach you something about music, which you can then apply to any song.
So I made this little chart of rhythms, because the rhythm of "Silent Night" I find is one of the most important things to be sure you get right. The time signature is 3/4. What does that mean?
3/4 means there will be 3 quarter note beats in every measure,
and I encourage you as you're learning this to count those beats out loud.
A measure is every one of these little boxes of notes,
and 3 beats, we've got 1 2. Now if we look at this chart we'll see a dotted quarter note equals 1 1/2 beats.
So it gets all of beat 1, it only gets half of beat 2, which means this next note comes on the
second half of beat 2, which in music we usually call the & of the beat, and we can mark that with a plus symbol, and then this quarter note gets beat 3, so we would count this rhythm like this: 1 2-& 3
Or if we clapped it, 1 2-& 3
Can you try counting that out loud while you clap it with me?
Let's get ready, go: 1 2-& 3 Try it one more time, go: 1 2-& 3
That rhythm you're going to see again and again in "Silent Night", so I want to make sure you get it correct. And then this next note is a dotted half note, which is 3 beats. We can see from our chart and that means it takes up the whole measure 1 2 3, so if we put that together we get 1 2-& 3 1 2 3
I find that with students sometimes they want to rush these beats, so make sure you count a steady beat
so you're holding the notes the correct amount of time.
Now looking ahead let's just review some symbols.
We've got this repeat sign pointing forward,
and you may recall, if you've learned about repeat signs, that you'll just ignore that the first time. You go through it,
because it's pointing this way kind of in the flow of the music. So you just go past that one, and then when you get to this one which points this way,
this repeat sign teleports back to this repeat sign.
So the flow of music will go zoop, zoop, you ignore it, then here
this repeats and teleports you back to here, you do this again, and then you'll keep going on from there. Let's find our hand position. Our finger 1 of the right hand is on middle C,
and left hand finger 3 is on A of the bass staff. So you'll see that our thumbs are going to be a little bit crowded here if you want to put one slightly below the other that's just fine.
Find a way that it feels comfortable,
and let's look what's happening here in the first two measures.
Our right hand will play C while the left hand plays A. 1 2-& 3
Notice the left hand has to hold that A down for all 3 beats of the measure while the right hand is playing the melody. 1 2-& 3, and then the left hand takes over the melody here
in the next measure, and we play this chord F and A.
So altogether we get 1 2-& 3 1 2 3, and I'm playing it softly because of this piano mark. Now, your turn to try. Ready, go:
Good, then what do we have in measures three and four?
Same notes again 1 2-& 3 1 2 3
Now I want you to pause the video and work on these first four measures until you feel very confident,
and I encourage you to count the beat out loud as you play 1 2-& 3 1 2 3
and that will make sure that you're getting all the rhythms correct. Pause to work on those first four measures then press play and we'll go on.
Next let's look at just the right hand alone. What's this next note?
If you said G you're correct, and we've got our finger 5 on G, so go ahead and use finger 5 1 2 3, then it skips down 2 3, steps up to F 1 2 3, then what's this note?
If you said middle C you're correct.
So all together: 1 2 3 1 2 3
1 2 3 1 2 3
Now pause the video and work on those four measures on your own, then press play to go on.
Let's look at what the left hand is doing here.
We start with finger 2 on a B-flat. 1 2 3, then skips down to G 2 3, steps up to A 2 3, then what?
It skips down to F, step up, step up, and quarter note so we get 1 2 3.
Let's listen to what that sounds like with the right hand. It's beautiful.
1 2 3 1 2 3
1 2 3 1 2 3
Now I'd like you to pause the video and work on t ...