You can Play "Let it Go" from Frozen

Now that the school year is winding down, could you use something inspirational to draw your second- or third-year student to the piano?  Then make your child's day with a simple and fun version of "Let It Go," arranged by Let's Play Music teacher, Nicci Lovell in Mesa, AZ.

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Second-Year Students:
Play the chords with your right hand.  Then try your left hand.  Then try hands together!  You sound great when you sing along (I am guessing there's a good chance you already knew the words to this one.)  Now you're having a great time and giving yourself more practice with our favorite chords and one interval (see the third?).

Here's a video of a student playing. He chose to use his left hand and was too shy to sing on camera, so I did the singing:

Third-Year Students and Graduates:
Play through those chords: pretty easy, right?  Now you have the freedom to improvise!  Instead of playing long whole notes, play two quarter-notes and a half note, or two half-notes, or some other combination you like.  Here's a video of some improvisation: after you play the chords with different rhythms with the left hand, you can learn to play the melody with your right hand and put it all together.

The Power of Chords

Delightfully,  many songs can be harmonized using the I, IV and V chords (or as you know them, Red, Blue and Yellow.)  With careful listening, you and your child will learn to pick out chord progressions as you hear them in songs, and be able to play your favorite songs!  Stay tuned for more popular songs for your LPM student.

You can click here for a piano video demonstrating how just a few chords can be used to harmonize over 40 popular songs.  To our 3rd-year students: A common chord pattern you'll hear over and over in that video is I-V-vi-IV.  Hey! it's the same pattern that we saw in "Let it Go".  That 3rd in "Let it Go" (C-E) was not a full triad, was it?  Do you see we could complete it to make an A triad?  Or we could call it the vi chord, since A is the 6th step of the C scale.

Have fun exploring with chords!

-Gina Weibel, M.S.

Let's Play Music Teacher