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Good Beatles piano songs to learn?
11 May 2013
9.04am
sinco
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Which Beatles songs would be nice to learn on the piano that are not too difficult (started playing 2 months ago)? So far I’ve learnt bits of Let it Be, Hey Jude , In My Life , Here There And Everywhere and Imagine

Also how would I learn new songs on the piano besides watching youtube videos (youtube tutorials seem to be incomplete a lot of the time)?

11 May 2013
12.02pm
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TwoAfter908
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There are a lot of Beatles piano books out there. And Hey Jude is pretty easy, you should try and learn the whole thing. It’s fun.

11 May 2013
5.11pm
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Funny Paper
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Paul’s 1976 hit “Let Em In” (from the album Speed of Sound) is a fairly easy, and fun piano accompaniment.

Faded flowers, wait in a jar, till the evening is complete... complete... complete... complete...

11 May 2013
9.16pm
Ben Ramon
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For No One is very easy and lovely to play and sing.

 

SHUT UP - Paulie's talkin'

12 May 2013
6.34am
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Gerard
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There’s a guy named Pianojohn113 on Youtube, he can help you learn some songs, majority of them are from the Beatles. He also makes tutorials for Elton John, Billy Joel, and Paul McCartney songs. Lately he added Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen to his tutorials. His tutorials are easy to follow because he annotates the notes as he plays them, and the notes and chords he plays are relatively the ones the original artists used.

If you want to learn songs other than using Youtube, either have to know your chords or develop a good ear but in the end you are going to need both.

A Day In The Life is relatively easy as some parts only change one note each chord, although the orchestral orgasm may be hard to play at first, but it gets fun later. I can’t say what other songs are easy because I already had experience playing the piano before learning about the Beatles.

12 May 2013
11.58am
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TwoAfter908
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Best description of the orchestra swell, ever. 

 

Gerell said

A Day In The Life is relatively easy as some parts only change one note each chord, although the orchestral orgasm may be hard to play at first, but it gets fun later. I can’t say what other songs are easy because I already had experience playing the piano before learning about the Beatles.

12 May 2013
8.20pm
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Linde
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Pretty much everything I wanted to suggest has been named already..hmm..

What about Golden Slumbers , or If I Fell ?

13 May 2013
2.05am
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Gerard
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TwoAfter908 said

Best description of the orchestra swell, ever. 

 

Gerell said

A Day In The Life is relatively easy as some parts only change one note each chord, although the orchestral orgasm may be hard to play at first, but it gets fun later. I can’t say what other songs are easy because I already had experience playing the piano before learning about the Beatles.

I forgot to thank George Martin for that description. Golden Slumbers up to Carry That Weight will be fun to play but once you get to the guitar solo in You Never Give Me Your Money (plus that bass line) you will have a hard time.

13 May 2013
6.08am
sinco
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Thanks for all the replies! I think I’ll actually start with For No One since its one of my favourite songs. I’d love to invest in a piano book but I’m not very good at reading music so I’m not sure how much that will help me.

 

Edit: Also thanks Gerell, I looked up PianoJohn113 on Youtube and found that most of the songs that I’d like to play is in his channel!

15 May 2013
1.31am
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TwoAfter908
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For No One ” is a great song to play on piano. I have a version with the vocals isolated on my laptop that I play along with.

And Gerell…are you thanking George Martin for the amazing “orchestral orgasm” or did he actually describe it like that, too?

15 May 2013
6.25am
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Gerard
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He described it like that, and I am also thanking him 

28 April 2014
11.40pm
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Mr. Kite
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Martha My Dear is a bit difficult, but fun. I learned it from pianojohn! Great teacher..,

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29 April 2014
12.14am
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Linde
The Netherlands
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I bought keyboards myself a few months ago, and I actually taught myself how to play Let it be by ear. I just figured out the chords by trying out random key combinations. It actually went fairly fast considering I never really had music lessons, except for playing the recorder but that doesn’t really count. So I would say Let it be is an easy one as well.

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Mr. Kite
1 July 2014
4.30am
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Mr. Kite
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It’s Wings, but Dear Friend is fun, and it’s pretty much the same thing over and over once you get it down.

If I spoke prose you'd all find out, I don't know what I talk about.

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17 March 2020
2.11am
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Iamthewalrus_
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Youtube is a great place to start learning songs from The Beatles, but so are their chord charts! Experiment with your inversions, learn all your chords and try to learn songs by ear. That being said, I’ve learned a lot from youtube such as,

Let It Be
Hey Jude
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Fixing A Hole
The Fool On The Hill
Imagine
Maybe I’m Amazed
Oh! Darling

But, from learning on my own with The Beatles Complete Chord Song book,

Strawberry Fields Forever
I Am The Walrus
I Want To Hold Your Hand
Eight Days A Week
Something
I Me Mine
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
For No One
All My Loving
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
With A Little Help From My Friends
Here, There And Everywhere
In My Life

If I would like, I could keep learning more, and you do get quicker as time goes on. But there’s no better way to learn pop/rock piano and your chords/chord progressions at the same time, then from the masters themselves. And getting to sing their awesome melodies, too! I went to school for music (4 Years). So, I can easily say that learning these Beatles songs that I mentioned, on piano, is easily the equivalent to a year at a reputable music school.

I started with Imagine and am still working my way through their songs (I think “A Day In The Life ” will be the last one I look at and I’d only learn it, if I could play it properly, that’s why I’m leaving it to last), but I’ve listened to The Beatles my whole life and I’m still blown away by what they accomplished. They’re easily among the best songwriters of all time. Hands down.

Pianojohn is great place to start, but The Beatles Complete Songbook is like a bible for learning their songs! Get an iPad and take shots of whatever song you’re learning from the book to put on your stand, too. The book doesn’t stay open very well on a music stand.

Here’s to the best band of all time. The Beatles!

10 April 2020
7.27pm
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Rollo Greb
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I once owned a good book called ‘The Beatles Complete’ with quite authentic guitar chords. I was sure there was a piano version of the same so yesterday I searched for it and came across this post on Google. I thought I might share something with you.

I’m a bass player predominantly but a while ago I bought myself a digital piano and jumped in at the deep end. I wasn’t satisfied with just learning a few chords and, foolishly or not, I decided to learn something complex – something to sink my teeth into. The piece I chose was ‘Cavatina’ by Stanley Myers, It was originally written for piano but was made famous by John Williams on guitar as the theme for the movie ‘The Deer Hunter’.

Now, I certainly wasn’t in any way a pianist and in fact I was a complete novice but my theory was that all I had to do would be to learn small sections one after the other, in other words – a bar or two at a time, commit that to memory and move to the next passage etc. etc. The trouble was I can’t read the grand clef (traditional sheet music) and I wasn’t prepared to learn. I turned to Youtube tutorials and found an excellent one by Annemie van Riel. In a split screen was her hands playing the piece along with the keys being highlighted as they were played. That’s fine but a very impractical way to learn the piece. Rewinding, trying to look at two things at once (my keyboard and the video) and so on.

Stay with me here.

I realised I had to simplify the methodology if I was going to keep my sanity so I developed my own chart system using Annemie’s video as the basis for the chart. I transposed each note or chord to a virtual keyboard in Publisher with numbered dots. The dots were coloured dark for the left hand and light for the right. The dots were numbered for the sequence in which each key is pressed. OK, this might not seem simple to you but I’m a graphic designer and it was easy enough and quick enough to complete the score in a few hours. And – blow me down – within a relatively short period I learned ‘Cavatina’ to a pretty damn good standard. It’s 4.30 mins of tricky piano. It was all head memory and muscle memory and I have no idea what chords I’m playing but there you go.

The point of all this is that now I use the same method for all the songs I learn on piano. That includes several Beatles songs. I had to learn ‘Hey Jude ‘ for a small concert. I was confident I could do it because it is a fairly simple piece and with my Join-The-Dots method I learned it quickly. I’ve done a complex arrangement (from Youtube) of ‘If I Fell ‘ with the melody over arpeggios. Really nice to play. But I’ve also started work on ‘Here, There And Everywhere ‘, ‘It’s Only Love ‘, ‘Lucy’ and ‘Dear Prudence ‘.

What I was looking for yesterday was some more Beatles to add to my repertoire. I would probably just do chords on the beat but I would use the same dot method.

The thing about these charts is that they can be printed out and used as reference for the repertoire when you need to brush up on songs. Much more practical than other methods I think.

So if anyone is interested I can make available Beatles songs I have completed and I can work on others by request. No promises.

This is my first post here and I’ll wait for admin approval and any interest from you guys and then I’ll post a screen shot of a Join-The-Dots chart so you know what the hell I’m talking about.

Sorry for the long post. I thought you might need some convincing. And I’m a Beatles nut. One of the great joys was bringing home a new Beatles album. You know what I mean.

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sir walter raleigh
11 April 2020
5.13am
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QuarryMan
Rishikesh
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That sounds intriguing @Rollo Greb (welcome to the forum, by the way!). I’d like to see a picture of your notation style

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11 April 2020
6.00pm
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Rollo Greb
A Beginning
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cavatina chartImage Enlarger

 

Thanks for the welcome.

This is the intro to ‘Cavatina’. It’s a simple arpeggio and will give you a good idea of how the system works.

The dark dots are the left hand obviously. Play the keys in the numbered sequence. (If you were playing a chord the numbers would all be the same as you would hit the keys simultaneously.)

This method doesn’t indicate which fingers to use or timing. That’s up to the user!

More later….

11 April 2020
6.14pm
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Rollo Greb
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if i fell introImage Enlarger

 

This is the intro to ‘If I Fell ‘.

I love playing this passage. Your hands dance across the keyboard.

It’s a bit tougher for beginners I suppose but it will come to you slowly.

It’s playing the melody and we are all familiar with it and that helps.

12 April 2020
12.56am
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sir walter raleigh
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i normally go about it by ear but with your charts i’m not sure how to read the rhythm. i’ve gotten some exact arrangemnts for some of my favorite piano Beatles tunes, ie. Sexy Sadie , Martha, Rock n Roll Music, In My Life , but they are on regular staff. I’ve been playing piano since I was young and I’ve never seen charts like that. 

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