Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Beautiful/ pretty pop songs to learn?

@lucky - I provided a link earlier in the thread to the version I learned from. I purchased it from musicnotes.com. Here it is

http://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0096080

@dogperson - I'm not sure if I understand your question. I said 5 only because that's what I saw on Piano Syllabus website. If that's incorrect, I apologize.

9?? I think I'm going to have to ask my teacher about this now.

I'll say this, if one can play this well after a few hours, my hats off to you. I certainly couldn't. I feel like I'm still trying to play it well.

Maybe a good level description would be 3.14159 and it's irrational ...

I linked the sheets is that one similar to yours?

Hmmm, that could be my level; it would explain why sometimes I seem to be going in circles.

I saw that. I'll have to look closer during my lunch hour, but it looks very similar.

Both of the sheets you posted are the real ones, with possible minor deviations here and there, but for all intents and purposes practical, the sheets can be considered identical.

Now, as far as learning it matters, when I worked on it at first, I would be very honest, I spent over 5 days just trying to get the first 6 measures. To be more precise, at least 3-4 days to get the first 4 of them down. That was my level when I attempted it. Ambitions. I think.... :grins:
It got so frustrating at that point that my girlfriend would bring me cups of coffee throughout the day while I just sat there hammering my hands on the keyboard in frustration over why exactly I'm unable to ever play both hands together at the same time. The concept of different notes, in different hands, played at the same time freaked out my brain. I dropped it after m6 or m7. Then my teacher suggested Comptine D'un Autre Ete when I was nearing 15 days of my practice. After that, I re-attempted RFIY, at nearly 2-2.5 months into piano.

In short, pro tip - Don't attempt something way way out of your caliber if you don't want to cry tears of blood. RFIY after 10 days of starting on piano is never a good idea. The only good thing that came out of it was, I still find arpeggios easy. xD

At my current level, if I had never attempted RFIY, I could probably get it up to concert speed with reasonable expression and accuracy in about 3 days for a recording.
It was excruciatingly hard for me back then and almost scarred me somewhere. It's plain easy by now. So, depends on circumstances.

I'm not going to comment on the difficulty but just the concept of "finishing" any piece in 5 days bothers me. To do that a piece has to be light years below your current level so that you can easily sight read it and then spend the next couple of hours polishing it. But I simply don't believe that Cutestpuppie has achieved anything near mastery of this piece after 5 days.

Did you really listen to your playing? Even in a piece like this there are so many things you can work on to make it sound beautiful. This piece can be used to teach dynamics, legato pedaling, balance of the hands, relaxed arpeggios, evenness of scale passages, rubbato, ornaments, and overall form. Are you sure you got all of these and it really sounds like you imagine it in your head? (which doesn't have to be exactly how Yiruma plays it, BTW)

This is so cool!

Just curious cutespuppy, but how long have you been playing? Have to agree with Qazsedcft you must be playing a piece way below
your current level since you say it took you 5 days to learn.
Are you another James Pavel Shawcross?

It may not count as Pop any more, but what about Moon River? I have a nice arrangement in "Great Songs of the 60s". ("Nice" = "I can play it")

And I keep thinking how weird but also how wonderful that Mozart, Beethoven, Grieg, and the rest - were all rock stars in their day.

Don't always find arrangements that I like or are suitable, also takes me too long to transcribe a piece by ear myself. There'd also be copyright considerations...

Playground Sessions (software based subscription service) has a lot of decent 'pop' content split conveniently into different ability levels. I'm currently still going through the beginner tutorials (which also use mainly pop samples) and working my way through Alfred's book 1 in parallel. But once I'm through those I'm planning to dig into the pop song library from PS. They cover pretty much all modern and classic pop songs and the arrangements seem very good from what I've heard so far.

I enjoy playing a few popular songs. (When I was a teenager I would ask my teacher to help me with them, and she obliged. I went on to play in a pop band so she could tell I was not going to be a concert pianist...!)

Back then I learned "Sorry seems to be the Hardest Word" by Elton John, and it is still one of my favorites. It is not easy to play though. I was grade 5 or 6 back then and it took me a quite a while to get right - it was like working on one of my pieces. I played it for a school recital (singing it in Gaelic no less...)

Or how about the best of both worlds?! I picked up a songbook called Bach 'n' Roll. These are popular songs arranged as if written by famous composers! So imagine "Imagine" written by Chopin (I just started that one and it looks good). More info on Hal Leonard's page https://www.halleonard.com/product/viewproduct.action?itemid=2501724&subsiteid=3
or Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/Bach-n-Roll-Piano-Solo/dp/1603784004

Lately I've been playing the songbook from "Twin Peaks" and it's relatively easy to play and very satisfying if you are a TP fan. I recorded the theme for the "40 Pieces a Year" challenge, and almost have Laura's Theme down too. They are repetitive but the jumps and fingering are challenging in places:

Twin Peaks Theme – Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. (Ambient Grand and Strings). From Twin Peaks songbook, Cherry Lane Music. [Soundcloud]

The songbook sells for silly money as it's out of print currently, but hunt around the web as there are "fan sites" that have it.

Enya has a few songbooks on Amazon (for different CDs) and the piano accompaniment is quite lovely and satisfying to play. Unfortunately for a beginner, she loves lots and lots of flats in her keys!

There's also Hal Leonard's 100 Most Beautiful Piano Solo book:
https://www.amazon.com/Most-Beautiful-Piano-Solos-Songbook/dp/1476814767/

In general, I've found pop music sheets very unsatisfying to play if they say "piano+guitar+voice" as the voice is so important and the piano is usually just accompanying. Look for arrangements or songbooks that say "Piano Solo" - that means it sounds good without singing. Also look for artists that are musicians or piano players at heart (like Elton John etc) rather than songbooks by vocalists.

There is a site that has a running list of top 100 pop type songs. Might be worth a look.

http://sheetdownload.com/top100

Here are a few suggestions:

Climb Every Mountain:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUzX4tTy7FM

Love is Blue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YESpZ9j_DUs

The Prayer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?annot...mp;src_vid=31bAg8Njwyk&v=6pyCmDRuPEg

Let It Go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBAQd2v-_J4

Question: Is there a way to bookmark this thread other than bookmarking it in the browser? Can it be bookmarked within the forum? My Stuff says I am Following more than 1600 threads (I don't know why) so that isn't helpful!

When it says a level 5 I don't think their talking about rcm levels. I think they mean method book level. It seems more at the level of faber piano adventures level 5 books that i just finished.

I can't say what the number on piano syllabus really refers to. But why is it level 9 in the RCM popular selection list (meaning it could be substituted for an etude)? Probably because if you play it, it needs to be extremely well played, and not just hitting the right notes. I'll ask my teacher on Saturday about it.

Are you implying that the rest of the pieces can be played by just hitting the notes right? Right?

I couldn't help but grin like an idiot reading that. It's just too interesting. Do let me know what your teacher has to say about this.

@Rosewood I don't know about the rest of them, but as far as the last one is concerned, any pianist able to play one of kylelandry's arrangements wouldn't be wondering about which pop pieces to play.

I'd be interested in to hear what your teacher says , or if any other qualified teachers have an opinion to offer.

I've never tried it out but looking at the score, and given for it to be played well and at the speed I heard it played, my ( I know nothing guesstimate ) RFIY is at least grade 4 ABRSM, and 5 not out of the question, that would put it at a higher number on the RCM level. That is what I guess a teacher would say, but who knows .. shrugs.

My gut feeling if a teacher said it is only grade 2 and well familiar with the ABRSM scale, then I'd be a little concerned/surprised.

@luckiest_charm Right you are! LOL!