This is Me (from "The Greatest Showman")

♫Ladies and gents this is the moment
you've waited for♫
♫Sitting in the dust--♫ Oh,
wow!
Looks like the lights are back on. Well,
I'm Joseph Hoffman
and today we're going to learn how to
play the chorus of "This Is Me" from The
Greatest Showman.
So let's come to the piano to get
started. Let's go ahead and learn the
melody first using our right hand. In
playing the melody we'll need two
different kind of positions for our hand.
One position will be here. This is my
middle C. I'm just a step above that on D.
I'll place my finger 1 right there, and
we'll need an F-sharp for this song, so go
ahead and try out these five notes on
your piano. That's D E F-sharp G A. So
sometimes our hand will kind of be in
this position, every once in a while
we'll need to go one key higher to this
B. I do not recommend that you try and
have your pinky go back and forth and play
both these notes because sometimes
you're gonna have to go quickly between
these two notes, and it just won't be
very musical to do it that way. So what
you'll want to do is also sometimes have
your hand in this position with finger
2 on F-sharp, and then fingers 4 and
5 on this A and B. And that's actually
the position we'll start off in. So go
ahead and get your finger 2 on F-sharp,
and then fingers 4 and 5, your
ring and pinky fingers, on A and B, and
then we'll be ready to start learning
the melody. Okay, the first three notes go,
I'll sing the finger numbers 2 4 5 on
♫When the sharp-♫ Now you try.
Good, we'll add two more notes now. ♫When the sharpest words♫ and that's fingers 2 4 5 4 4. Now
you try.
Good, and then we're gonna add ♫wanna cut♫
and that's gonna be finger 2 on F-
sharp, ♫wanna cut♫ You try.
Good, let's put it
all together. ♫When the sharpest words♫
♫wanna cut♫ Now you try.
Good, now quickly, let's notice some
things about the rhythm, because if
you're playing this song you want to get
the rhythm right. The rhythm is what
makes this song really exciting, or one
of the things that makes it exciting. You
can see in the music when it has this
double beam, that makes those notes
sixteenth notes, and sixteenth notes go
twice as fast as eighth notes, and this
is an eighth note. It only has one beam.
So when you see the double beam, those
notes are gonna go faster on, 'When the',
those notes go pretty quick, and then
'sharp-' is a little bit, well it's twice as
long as the sixteenth notes, because it's
just an eighth note. So we have, 'When the
sharpest words'. So notice how those
sixteenth notes are going faster. Then
you'll also sometimes see these ties,
like between this sixteenth note and this
eighth note. When you see that just hold
that note down. You actually add the
value of both of them together, so even
though you see two notes, you only play
the first note and then hold it. So,
altogether we have, ♫When the sharpest
words wanna cut♫, and then after that
you'll notice in the music a finger 5
on A. That's your clue when you see that
5 over A in the music, to shift to
this position. so now you've got to bring
your 5 down to A and 3 on F-sharp.
That's so you have enough fingers to get
down to the end of this measure. ♫me down♫
So the finger numbers are 5 3 2 1.
Now you try.
Good, in the words there are
♫me down♫, then all together we get, ♫When
the sharpest words wanna cut me down♫
Good, now pause the video and practice
just that first phrase on your own until
you feel comfortable, then press play and
we'll learn the next phrase.
Before we go on to the next phrase,
notice how the last note of ♫down♫ is an
eighth note tied to this dotted half
note. Now, you may not know a lot about
music theory, or maybe you've been doing
my lessons online so you already know
some of this. If that's you just smile and
know that you're ahead of some people,
but if you're new to this, this dotted
half note means to hold for 3 beats
or counts. So when you're playing music
you want to always be counting the beat
in your mind. We have, 'When the sharpest
words wanna cut me down', then you have to count
1 2 3 with a steady beat so you
know how long to hold that note,
otherwise you're going to get ahead of
your rock band who's playing along with
you, right? Because you want to be able to
play this along with the movie
soundtrack, okay, and you'll be able to do
that by the end of this lesson,
especially if you're counting the beats.
So remember to count 3 beat ...