🎤 Featuring Selena Gomez, co-written by Ariana Grande.
Piano Player Ability Rating: Intermediate🎹 Download PDF
👩🏫 As I learned, many of you are self-taught piano players and never had a piano class. I try to cover several piano-playing techniques.
💿 About Ice Cream by Blackpink
The song, Ice Cream, was released on . Listen Ice Cream on Spotify, see wikipedia entry for more details.
Blackpink certainly liked a challenge of recording! Beautiful doesn’t mean difficult. This simple song conforms to the convenient symmetrical pattern for the K-Pop-song: Ice Cream is composed in a binary verse-chorus form that consist of two four-bar phrases. It's perfect for those who have passed the elementary stage of playing. Thу transcribed piece fits well under the fingers, makes coherent musical sense, is technically simple, and isn’t too hard to memorize.
📚 How to Play Piano
🎯 Clear your mind, relax the body. Piano is called so because you should be soft. Stiff muscles are slow.
✋ Before touching the piano keys, warm up your fingers and wrists with slow and soft circular motions and moderate stretching, rotate your shoulders and arms.
📝 Concentrate. Instead of sight-reading the piece as it is, get to know snippets of the music bit by bit. Break the piece down into tiny units (enough to hold in our working memory) at the speed of no mistakes (this might be extremely slowly to start with) and with the mind fully engaged. 🤏 Make sure to arch the fingers for the health of your wrists. Slacking your fingers will overwork them and cause strain. Keep the relaxed, flexible wrists, hands and arms when playing Ice Cream — it allows producing a warm sound. Both hands should play smoothly (tenuto) if not indicated the opposite (staccato) although not with the fingers glued to the keys. Playing pianissimo at the very beginning stage saves you energy.
💬 Count out loud to ensure precise rhythm. By counting I mean the tA-ta, tA-ta, not the old inefficient one-and, two-and. Use a metronome app.
3️⃣ To begin with, practice hands separately but no more than three repetitions in a row as you risk to decrease your ability to concentrate (a phenomenon known as habituation), and this is when mistakes will creep in.
⏳ 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. The time required will surprise you by its shortness. You might focus on just one or two sections in a single practice session if you are learning the piano notes for the first time.
⏯️ Don’t always begin at the beginning; if we you able to start from any section you will be much more secure in performance.
🥁 Focus from the very beginning primarily on phrasing. With the right technique, a pianist’s phrasing can be as persuasive as a singer’s. Guard against a bar-by-bar approach — phrases don’t obey the barlines.
Create the illusion of a singing piano by
- accenting strong beats,
- playing the first bar of any phrase louder than the last bar,
- peaking near the highest-pitched note of a phrase.
🧠 How to Memorize Sheet Music
🙈 Start memorizing Ice Cream 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.
✍ And the last, be artistic, be creative. Print the pdf, take correction fluid and a black pen and add or delete whatever you want in this arrangement.
📅 Tips for Playing Blackpink & Selena Gomez — Ice Cream Sheet Music
Articulation
🎭 Accuracy in articulation is essential for playing Ice Cream 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 Blackpink’s message was and express it. Your touch should be bouncing and cheerful. Imagine that you are performing in front of people.
💤 To sound quietly, keep your fingers close to the keys and do some firm practice from the knuckles.
⏩ Ice Cream is speedy. Always keep the hands relaxed, especially with repeated notes, piano keyboard is not lightweight and causes a muscle pain. Its rhythmic basis is sustained throughout, so the LH’s primary duty will be to provide an even and danceable footing.
🖐 The articulation in this piece is tricky because it alternates between legato and staccato. To learn the legatos hold them as a chord, it stretches your fingers and helps to learn the fingering naturally.
✖ Accent every note, varying the accents each time you play. Play as if you are being listened to.
🔊 There’s a lot of repetition throughout, so be creative with phrasing and dynamics when repeating the same phrase. This will create some drama in your performance. Blackpink presents us with a wide range of dynamics (the sound volume levels). Be generous in varying the dynamics, it’s the easiest way to sound expressive:
- The Opening phrase imitates quiet guitar picking. The RH should be short and snappy.
- The Verses demand two different tone-colors. The first verse requires an intimate tone, the second is more energetic. Give the music a beautifully graded, warm tone. Make sure to grade the repeated patterns s they don’t sound monotonous. Think in long lines, not short phrases.
- Save a full weight and depth of tone for the Choruses. Feel free to play a strong Forte. Keep the phrases as long as possible. Pedal carefully in this section. Make a well-judged decrescendo at the end.
- At the little Bridge, the mood changes, the articulation becoming more legato, the sound is losing its weight, so it’s important to change your touch. Make it sound significant. Try plucking each note with the tip of the fingers. 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. Make a gradual and smooth decrescendo to pianissimo.
✍️ 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 the Blackpink's lyrics.
Even more, play each time in the way you want it! Re-arrange, improvise. Go slow, go fast. Play octaves lower or higher.
✋ The Right Hand
Start learning the score music with the Right Hand part. To begin with, play the melody line by itself to develop a confident mastery over the shorter 4th and 5th fingers. The fifth finger is firm with all knuckles supported, the arm aligned behind it on every note. Keep your wrist and hand loose and relaxed as you do this.
Listen to the track Ice Cream as you begin to learn the arrangement. Think like a singer — breathe where a singer would, and aim to contour every phrase and line imaginatively. Notice how short phrasing is. Put the emphasis on the first note of each phrase. Don’t attack the keys.
🤚 The Left Hand
The LH is generally soft throughout. Ensure that the LH line is 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.
The accompaniment in this score changes from chords to figures:
🔠 The hardest technical challenge in this piece is the execution of the chords.
- When playing, the chord background ought to be subdued. To voice each chord effectively, give the lower note greater emphasis, tone and shape by rotating your hand towards the weaker 4th and 5th fingers.
- A chord is too big for the left hand? Leave out repeated notes or/and transfer the top to your right.
- Or arpeggiate the chord.
- Get your hand in position for each chord before playing it.
- A relaxed wrist will help you to balance chords so that all notes sound at the same time.
- In the left-hand’s chords use the forward and backward movement along the axis of the hand. Instead of twisting the left hand to the left to reach the next lower chord in the progression, move your arm closer to the black keys, thus allowing for the hand to remain in a linear, more natural position.
- In the left-hand’s accompaniment we can avoid the build-up of tension in these left-hand octave-long wearing movements: instead of using solely your fingers (1st and 5th), rotate the wrist and forearm while keeping the fingers fixed.
👋 The LH has been given a lot of the melody here.
- When playing figures, start slow and steady. Aim to “block out” these figurations – play each note within the bar at the same time, forming a chord. Only as you become more accustomed to the notes and fingerings of the figure, play notes separately and begin to increase your speed.
- 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 of the fingers to their maximum limits will lead to micro-injuries and fatigue. Instead of the motion of your fingers, employ the natural rotary movements of both the forearm and the hand. Professional pianists protect their fingers from fatigue this way.
👍🏽 While it might seem counterintuitive to use the left thumb to reach down for single bass notes, it ensures a smooth, decisive downward progression. Some pianists insist on changing fingers on repeated notes.
🦥 Start slowly before gradually increasing your tempo.
⏲️ In the last phase of learning a piece the use of a metronome is vital as you will be working on rhythmic partnerships between both hands. Nearly all modern pop music contains a firm beat. Become aware of the underlying pulse and accent where the stronger beat falls but remember that more is less. Avoid over-using your left hand. Aim at simple and clear playing.
⏩ When speed is added, lighten the touch and the playing should feel easier, with fingers running smoothly over the keys. 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.
🧑🤝🧑 = 🤲 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 a sensitive pianist (the LH). Imagine a duet between a band and a singer, so color the two hands differently. Girls’ voices are more of staccato than legato, aren't they?
🦶 Pedaling
At the very late stage of learning the Ice Cream add a pedal, sustaining or sostenuto — your choice. Practice without the pedal until fluent and smooth.
Pedal twice per measure.
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