Black. All important piano tutorials start with a black
screen, and a golden round logo that rolls
ominously off the screen.
Yep, that's the song we're going to learn today. It's about me.
You know, the guy with the huge pecs and the nine pack. Any questions? Didn't think so. Then let's get started.
Hello and welcome,
[cough] much better.
I'm deca-billionaire Joseph Hoffman and
today we're going to learn "Who's the
Batman" from the Lego Batman movie. Oh
Batman.
Mr. Hoffman, throat lozenge?
Thank you.
Actually they've never done me any good.
I look forward to learning your, I mean
my song.
Thank you, Batman.
Well let's come to the piano to get
started. Okay
the main, shall we say melodic part, of
this song is actually found in the bass
guitar part, so that's what we're going
to be focusing on today. In the intro for
"Who's the Batman" you hear this bass
guitar solo, and I'm going to be showing
you different levels of difficulty that
you can try. The easiest way would just
be to take either the right hand or the
left hand, but if you want to try both
hands playing this at the same time that
can sound cool too. Now for bass guitar
we definitely want to be in the low part of
your piano so here's my middle C. I'm
going to go down one, two D's and place my
left hand in the D minor pentascale
starting with finger five, or pinkie, on D.
My right hand is going to be on the same
five notes up here one octave higher,
okay, and the pattern goes like this.
Okay now let's break that down.
Basically it's playing D twice in a row
pretty quick D D, D D, D D, okay and it
does that four times in little spurts of
two notes in a row, one two, one two, one
two, one two, and you hear there's a very
slight pause in between each one.
Musically speaking technically it's an
eighth rest in between each one and all
of these are eighth notes, ba ba ba ba ba
ba bum, but all you got to think is, one
two one two one two one two, and it does
that four times. You're actually playing
eight D's in little groups of two. Okay?
So let's try that in slow motion once, so
either right hand or left hand, or if you
want to try both you can, ready go. D
D, D D, D D, D D. Good, let's
try that one more time.
Ready, go. One two, one two, one two, one two.
Good, so we've done that four times, then
the next part goes F F G F, so from D you
skip up to find F, so we were here on D,
you skip up, F F G F, okay? F F G F. So I'm using my
finger 3, or my middle finger for those F's
because I had thumb or pinky if you're
using left hand for those D's. Ok so let's
try the F F G F now in slow motion
ready go F F G F.
One more time go F F G F. Good, now you put
that together and you get this 1 2, 1 2, 1
2, 1 2, F F G F. Now press pause and try that
on your own a few times. Remember you've
got four groups of two on the D, and then F F
G F. Press pause and try that on your own
then press play when you're ready to
learn it a little more. Okay now for the
intro that pattern we just learned
happens three times, so we have, that was
one, here's two, three then on the fourth
time it starts off the same way but it
doesn't do the dah dah dah dah, okay? The music just
kind of makes some crazy guitar noise,
BIAOWWW, but you can't really do that on the
piano, so you could just wait there on
that fourth time, you just do the groups
of D's and then that's where Batman
starts singing, or growling, speaking his
his lines. Okay so let's try the whole
intro that far, here we go, starting with
the repeated D's. A one two three four
number two, three, four, wait wait
good, and then that's where Batman start
saying, in the darkest night, so because
he's not really singing it is just kind
of saying it, in the darkest night, you
could just go "In the darkest night" and just
play a bunch of D's there,
I'll make the bad guys fall, but if you
listen you'll hear that while Batman
singing that, you can call it singing,
the bass guitar is continuing to play
the same pattern we heard in the intro.
You kind of have two choices here, you
can kind of play along with what Batman
is singing, in the darkest night, or you
could just keep doing the bass guitar
part, which I think kind of sounds cool. So
again you've got a choice here how you
want to play it. Let's assume for now
that you want to play along with the
words that Batman singing here, so he's
going
"In the darkest night" and then you wait
"I make the bad guys fall" then "there's a
million heroes"
ok ...