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September-4-08

You And Me (Tutorial)

(Piano Tutorial follows below article).

Every 4 years when an Olympic Games comes by, I look forward to hearing the theme song

The alluring 2008 feature song, You And Me , sounded very ‘learnable’ and piano-friendly; while there’s nothing better ensuring of popularity in a song than when a popular Chinese singer (Liu Huan) and British opera diva (Sarah Brightman) collaborate.

Here’s how I went about learning it….

The day after being one of the billions of people around the world who watched the song sung at the Opening Ceremony, I clicked to the most obvious source for the music - YouTube. I simply keyed in ‘Olympics 2008 theme’, and the video was there, uploaded by someone just as eager to be the first to share it, as I was the first to put up a piano video (link) on it.

Using YouTube’s ‘Download Video as flv’ feature, I saved the video as an .flv file onto my folder, and then used my simple FLV program (it’s free - Google it) to convert the video file instantly into an .Mp3 file.

With my usual ‘learning by hearing’ tools set up (see blog), excitedly (hey, being able to quickly learn song via hearing IS so much fun!) I clicked on the song and it started playing on my laptop’s WinAmp….

Then, as I do with all the songs I learn, I first listen and learn the main melody of the entire song… starting with the piano intro, and then all the other elements. After writing all these melody notes down alphabetically, I then figure out the chords – with particular attention to the basses - to figure out the chords.

Here’s what the song structure of You And Me looks like, and I of course write the notes I’ve heard and learned under each of these sections:

INTRO (‘Bb’ key): Short Piano

MELODY 1 & CHORUS: Liu Huan sings

Change To ‘A’ key

MELODY 2 & CHORUS: Sarah sings

MELODY 2: Kids Choir sing

Change To ‘B’ key

MELODY 3: Man sings

Change To ‘G’ key

CHORUS : Sara sings

ENDING MELODY: Sara and man sing.

Enjoy!