10 Pop song to learn for piano students

Do you have students asking you wanting to learn song of his/her favourite tunes?

Pop songs are great for motivation. There are a lot of benefit in learning pop music, such as musical theory, harmony, chord progression, technique, structure, improving self confidence, and above all keeping them highly motivated. We are know that motivation is very important in learning 😉

I would like to share to you what songs would I introduce to them and how I use them to teach. Some of them i used for a beginners students and it is great start of their musical journey.

Here is my list of 2015:

1. Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen
2. Imagine – John Lennon
3. I won’t give up – Jason Mraz
4. Stay with me – Sam Smit
5. Firework – Katy Perry
6. Someone Like You – Adele
7. Pianoman – Billy Joel
8. Let it Go – Demi Lovato (Frozen)
9. Hall of Fame – The script
10. Clocks – Cold Play

How do I use them in the lesson, here is my insight

Note:  For the purpose of example of this post, i attach my own arrangement of the music which I have written in Sibelius notation program specially for my students. This is only for teaching purpose and I don’t intend to use commercially, so I am sorry if I can not share the sheet with you.

1. Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen

This song is beautiful in quite slow tempo. Melodic playing is not too difficult because many people know the tune. I have written the notes in Sibelius program with chords and piano version.

I normally start with chords version for beginner students, because it is easier for the Left Hand. The more advance students or the one already familiar with classical music I introduce them with arpeggio in LH.

I work with the students on having to learn playing 12/8 beat ( beat in three eight notes) comfortably. The students should learn to feel correct beat in three, like a “rocking”  (in Dutch it’s called “wiegend”) without so much bother to count. In my experience when we spend too much time in counting the notes, it will interfere the flow of the music.

2. Imagine – John Lennon

This song is one of my favourite one to start teaching popular song. Almost everyone knows, especially in older generation (born older than me 😉 )

The structure of the piece is so clear. We can see a pattern in the couplet, and that is a help for students for quick learn the piece. Some students plays all the couplet the same way, some prefer more detailed depending on the text, I always encourage my students to choose what they want.

Chord wise; it is very simple, i keep it simple in C major. The original song i think is in C# major.

First we learn basic chords in root position of C, F, G, Am, D and E. Get familiar on how to play that on Left hand.

The melody in this songs is quite simple and we can recognise pattern of the motive which can be repeated 4 times. Look at the sheet music example below, the first four bars in very simple, if they can play two bars, then the rest will be easy.

I’d take time to listen the music together in the lesson (for ex from Youtube), then I ask my students to listen the intro. We try to play them too by ear. They learn to recognise which chord to use, how many chords (only two), how is the pattern, etc.

I do have students who love to sing, this is a great one to learn how to learn accompany yourself in piano. The students will play chords in both hand, complete with intro and similar pattern like in the original songs

3. I won’t give up – Jason Mraz

This songs is so great made, it use only I IV V  and I normally start in C major. I will explain to students the basic of I IV V chords in pop music, which we called them as primary chords.

The melody is very easy for the students to play, they will again also learn to feel beat in three.

I wrote for them this song in Sibelius for couplet and refrain (chorus). For very beginners i wrote in 3/4 beats instead of 3/8 beat.

With this song, I teach them about the basic of structure of pop music (INTRO, COUPLET, BRIDGE, REFRAIN) and try to recognise them in this music.

Some other challenge I use is the let them transpose it to the other key, for example in E major. We can start to learn to transpose only the melody, then later on also with the chords. For more advance students I teach them to play with broken chords on LH.

4. Stay with me – Sam Smit

This is songs is quite easy because it use only three chords: C, F, Am, and the chord is repeated in the whole songs. When you first teaching about chords, or about playing chord accompaniment this songs is a great example to use.

For more advanced students, I teach them about chord-progression and learning the degree of the chords. As a challenge i ask the student to define the primary chords I , IV, V chords for C major – and that is C, F and G chord. Then the secondary chords II, III, VI – Dm, Em, Am. I asked them to play on the piano and listen them and recognising whether this is major or minor chords. I’d like to start also to listen the beginning of the songs from Youtube together on the lesson than I ask these question:

1. How many chords do you hear in the song?
2. Can you try to find them? (after we learn about the degree of the chords)
3. Which chords do they use, can you try to play on the piano?
4. Optional: Do they use inversion on the chords? Which one, can you play it?

This songs can be thought with leadsheet, piano version, or just chord accompaniment depending what you or your student’s preference.

As a homework, I normally ask my students to listen the song at home and learn to play them in whole.

5. Firework – Katy Perry

I’d like to transpose this piece to C major. The melody of the couplet is quite easy to learn. The melody has four phrase, in which the first, second and fourth can be played in 5-finger position in C.

This is piece great for students to learn play with both hand: melody in RH and chord in LH. The wonderful thing in this piece is that most of the piece doesn’t require the RH and LH to play at the same time. This is helpful for a beginner students. Look in the example of the sheet i’ve made for my students below:

6. Someone Like You – Adele

This song has a beautiful piano intro. If you have students who loves to sing, this tune a great start to learn accompaniment technique. I normally learn the piece in the original key A major, since it is a good key to sing. We can learn the piece only the accompaniment (and I will play the melody with them), it will be a great Duet.  Another possibility is to learn sing and play together, or learn to accompany someone else who will sing the melody. For more advance students can learn the piece with both hands too.

TO BE CONTINUED……….(i’ll come back again in the future to write for the next songs from the list)