Level: Beginner
Download Boombayah Piano Sheet pdf
BOOMBAYAH - BLACKPINK by Carlabiete
💽 About Boombayah
“Boombayah” was released by Blackpink on . On October 13, 2020, "Boombayah" became the first K-pop debut music video to surpass 1 billion views on YouTube. Listen it on Spotify, read the Wikipedia entry.
“Boombayah” conforms to a convenient Pop-song formula: a binary verse-chorus form made of two four-bar phrases and a modest harmony. It moves at 110 beats per minute.
🪑 Playing Boombayah Sheet Music
Overall sound tone is smooth.
Focus your attention on differences in touch and attack: dynamics (loud vs. quiet) and articulation (legato vs. staccato). Make every single note that you play to mean something.
✋ The Right Hand
Start learning the score with the right hand part. Play slowly to avoid mistakes and with the minimum physical effort. Keep the wrist and the hand loose and relaxed.
Count tA-ta, tA-ta out loud to ensure precise rhythm.
📝 Song Parts
Learn “Boombayah” in parts. Work on the hardest parts first without caring about technical difficulties. You might focus on just one or two parts in a single practice session.
Differentiate dynamics when repeating the same part: you cannot play three verses with one sound volume. Avoid a loud and enduring surge of volume. Write down all these crescendo/diminuendo (< & >) and piano/forte (𝓟 & 𝓕) markings:
- In the Intro softly pluck each note with the tip of the fingers. There is no crescendo (rise in loudness).
- The Verses are bright in sound and played softly but grow with ever-increasing intensity.
- The Choruses should be in direct contrast to the verses: play strong Forte. Here the contrast of staccato and legato must be attended to most carefully. Make a short but smooth decrescendo at the last bar.
- The Bridge is a turning point to piano (quiet sound). Closer to the end of the bridge let music rise again to moderate Forte.
- The Outro is the climax of the piece. It 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.
😮 Phrasing
The key point in playing the melody line is to understand the phrasings.
Sing a lyric phrase emphasizing the lyrics and then repeat your intonations on the piano keyboard. Do you feel the difference? Mark phrases with a highlighter — stop where Blackpink stopped. Notice that although the phrasing is short, 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.
Add personalized fingering in complicated places to achieve the required for phrasing legato.
🤚 The Left Hand
The accompaniment is always softer than the right hand but tolerates no fluctuation in the tempo.
👍🏽 While it might seem counterintuitive to use the left thumb to reach down for a single bass note, it ensures a smooth and steady motion.
👋 Figures
- Start slow. Play all notes within the bar together simultaneously first — you will understand the comfortable fingering.
- In octave-long passages, keep the fingers fixed but rotate the wrist and forearm.
- Add accents on beats 1 and 3.
- Keep the upper notes (played by the thumb) lighter and the lower notes (played by the pinky) louder. Make sure that the thumb uses the least weight.
🤲 Both Hands
- Start practicing the both hands slowly.
- Play with an obvious emphasis on the right hand while playing the accompaniment as gently as possible.
- Color the two hands differently: sometimes the left hand doesn’t follow the right hand in dynamics and/or articulation. Blackpink’s voices are more of staccato and the instruments play legato, aren’t they?
- Make “Boombayah” sound as expressive as you possibly can. Judge every tone that you produce. Play with the eyes closed. Imagine that you are performing in front of people.
- Use a metronome app.
🦶 Pedal
- Practice “Boombayah” without the pedal until the both hands are fluent and smooth.
- Pedal twice per measure when the harmonies change — short dabs of the pedal are better; don’t be afraid of sound gaps between notes. Often the pedal interferes with the right hand and ruins the melody.
- On an upright piano, focus on pedalling at the end (not beginning) of phrases to soften them (it doesn’t work on digital pianos).
- You should remove the pedal wherever you see a rest symbol. Be very sparing with the pedal because I know you aren’t.
📚 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.
- Keep a comfortable posture. Hang a mirror above your piano so you can see yourself.
- Practice no more than three repetitions in a row as you risk to decrease your ability to concentrate.
🧠 How to Memorize Sheet Music
- Understand the musical structure of “Boombayah” — where a chorus starts and which chord progression are used.
- Read the score in bed in the evening, analyse the whole piece to see where the different parts and how repetitions differ from each other.
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. It takes nothing to remember only four chords instead of 100 bars of an accompaniment. - 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.
- Sing the original lyrics by Blackpink, la-la-la or ta-ta-ta, or simply hum the melody out loud when playing, so you can easily memorize the notes.