Piano-Player Ability Rating: Beginner Intermediate Advanced
👩🏫 Below I cover how to play this sheet music for self-taught pianists.
💿 About Apologize by OneRepublic
The song, “Apologize”, was released by OneRepublic on . Listen it on Spotify, read the Wikipedia entry.
A beautiful composition doesn’t mean a difficult structure. “Apologize” conforms to the convenient formula of a Pop-song: a binary verse-chorus form that consist of two four-bar phrases with a modest harmonic combination.
The arrangement for solo piano fits well under the fingers, is technically simple, well-crafted, enjoyable, and isn’t too hard to memorize. The tone is clear, idyllic, but rough.
Play vocal line in the right hand if you don't want to sing.
📚 How to Play Piano
🎯 Relax muscles and focus the mind. Stiff muscles are slow and unresponsive.
✋ Warm up fingers and wrists & shoulders and arms with slow rotations and stretching.
🤏 Arch the fingers for the health of your wrists. Slacking your fingers will overwork them and cause strain. Playing pianissimo at the very beginning stage saves you energy.
💬 Count tA-ta, tA-ta out loud to ensure precise rhythm. Use a metronome app at the later stages.
3️⃣ Practice no more than three repetitions in a row as you risk to decrease your ability to concentrate.
🥁 Focus on phrasing in the right hand:
- Guard against a bar-by-bar approach#nbsp;— phrases don’t obey the barlines.
- Play the first bar of any phrase louder than the last bar.
- Peak near the highest-pitched note of a phrase.
🥁 In the left hand focus on strong beats.
📅 Playing OneRepublic — Apologize Sheet Music
The success of the piece depends largely on attention to the details.
📝 Break the piece down into tiny bits (enough to hold in our working memory) and play them at the slow speed to avoid mistakes.
⏳ Work on the hardest bits first without caring about technical difficulties — repetition and practice will do the job and you will learn the sheet music faster than you think. You might focus on just one or two bits in a single practice session.
⏯️ Don’t begin at the beginning — start from any section so you will be more secure in performance.
✋ The Right Hand
Start learning the score music with the Right Hand part. Play the ornate melody line by itself with the minimum physical effort to develop a confident mastery over the shorter 4th and 5th fingers. Keep the wrist and the hand loose and relaxed.
Listen “Apologize” as you begin to learn the arrangement. Mark phrases with a pencil — stop where Ryan Tedder stopped. Notice how short the phrasing is.
🤚 The Left Hand
The LH is busy but always softer than the RH. The LH is the rhythmic foundation over which the dramatic RH melody shines. Don't let the LH overshadow the RH melody because the melody and accompaniment are so close together.
👋 The LH has been given a lot of the melody here:
- When playing figures, start slow and steady. To learn figures and their fingerings, play all notes within the bar together simultaneously first. Then play as written in the sheet music.
- In octave-long wearing movements, instead of using solely your fingers (1st and 5th), rotate the wrist and forearm while keeping the fingers fixed.
- In the bars with the quarter notes add an accent on beats 1 and 3.
- Keep the upper notes lighter (those usually played by the “heavy” thumb), and focus on adding color to the lower notes in the left-hand pattern.
- In ascending passages watch out the rotation of the wrist with which you assist the fingers. Banging on the keys, twisting, curling or overstretching will lead to micro-injuries and fatigue.
👍🏽 While it might seem counterintuitive to use the left thumb to reach down for single bass notes, it ensures a smooth, decisive downward progression.
🦥 Start practicing the both hands slow before gradually increasing the tempo.
The both hands should play smoothly (tenuto) if not indicated the opposite (staccato) although not with the fingers glued to the keys.
🧑🤝🧑 = 🤲 Play with an obvious emphasis on the topline while playing the accompaniment as gently and calm as possible. In playing any piano transcription of a song, the aim is to give the impression of a singer (the RH) that is being accompanied by the LH. Imagine a duet between a band and a singer, so color the two hands differently: sometimes the LH doesn’t follow the RH in dynamics. Ryan Tedder’s voice is more of staccato and the instruments play legato, aren’t they? The singer must always prevail.
⏲️ Use a metronome. Pop music contains a firm beat and pulse, so accent a stronger beat but remember that more is less. Avoid over-using your left hand; be humble.
⏩ When speed is added, lighten the touch. Focus on soloing with the right hand without relying on the accompaniment in the left hand. Make every single note that you play to mean something.
🦶 Pedal
Practice without the pedal until fluent and smooth.
At the very late stage of learning “Apologize” add a pedal: sustaining or sostenuto — your choice.
Pedal twice per measure — short dabs of the pedal are better than long ones.
You should remove the pedal wherever you see a rest symbol. Be very sparing with the pedal because I know you aren’t.
Articulation
🎭 Accuracy in articulation is essential for playing “Apologize” piano sheet music. Make the piece sound as expressive as you possibly can. Imagine the sound you want to hear in your head and only then try to play it this way. Judge every tone that you produce. Play with the eyes closed.
🤷 The song creates a certain atmospheric mood. Find out what OneRepublic’s message was and express it. Imagine that you are performing in front of people.
⏩ Keep your fingers close to the keys and do some firm practice from the knuckles to control your articulation.
✖ Accent every note, varying the accents each time you play. Play as if you are being listened to.
🖐 The articulation in this piece is tricky because it alternates between legato and staccato. This creates a drama of a performance.
🔊 There’s a lot of repetition throughout, so be creative with a wide range of dynamics (the sound volume levels) when repeating the same phrase. Be generous in varying the dynamics, it’s the easiest way to sound expressive:
- In the Opening phrase try softly plucking each note with the tip of the fingers.
- The Verses are in fact generally reminiscent of bright wind sound. They are played softly but without whispering. Make a gradual crescendo so that when you arrive at the chorus, you have reached forte.
- The Choruses should be in direct contrast to the verses. Feel free to play strong Forte. Here the contrast of staccato and legato must be attended to most carefully. Make a gradual and smooth decrescendo at the end.
- At the Bridge, the mood changes, the articulation becoming legato, the sound is losing its weight, so it’s important to change your touch. Make it sound significant. There is potential to make a small crescendo.
- The Coda requires a full tone and a slight diminuendo over the final bars — make a sudden lowering of dynamics to piano here. Place the last chord with a soft, emotional sound and a sensitive touch.
✍️ Write down all these crescendo/diminuendo (< & >) and piano/forte (𝓟 & 𝓕) markings in order to make your piano sound more noticeable or prominent, to emphasize Ryan Tedder's lyrics.
Even more, play each time in the way you want it! Re-arrange, improvise. Go loud or quiet, do slow or fast. Play octaves lower or higher.
🧠 How to Memorize Sheet Music
🙈 Start memorizing “Apologize” from the very beginning. Read one-two bars and play them from memory. Some days later, avoid looking at a paper sheet (or a monitor) as long as you can when rehearsing the music piece.
🛏️ Read the score in bed in the evening, analyse the whole piece to see where the different themes parts and how the first verse differs from the second.
🎙️ Sing original lyrics, la-la-la or ta-ta-ta, or simply hum the melody out loud when playing, so you can easily memorize the notes.
🔠 Learn harmony chords, there are only 24 of them. It is easier to memorize that in the left hand is “a chord Am” instead of three-four notes from the sheet music. Usually, in the left hand there are only four chords that are repeated for the whole song. Carefully note the chord progressions, as apart from the melody line. It takes nothing to remember only four chords instead of 100 bars of an accompaniment.
✍ Finally, do whatever you want. Print the pdf, take correction fluid and a black pen and add or delete whatever you want in this arrangement. Music needs to be personalised to make it work.
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