Pop Piano Lesson! Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
I just posted a quick lesson for the Michael Jackson song, Billie Jean. It covers the verse of the song, and has some extra information about chord inversions. Let me know what you think and any difficulties or questions you have!
Inversions are when you take a chord like C major and re-arrange the order of the notes. C major in its root position (or regular position) has the notes C, E, G (from left to right). An inversion of C major would be either E, G, C or G, E, C (from left to right in that order). They are both still the C major chord, but now they have different notes in the bass.
The great thing about inversions is it allows you to keep the melody note of the song on top, while adding harmony underneath. Keeping the melody note on the top (AKA to the furthest right on the piano) is a great way to get it to stand out from the rest of the notes.
The first clip is a little silly. There is a guitar part in the song that I wanted to play, but my hands are too busy doing the other parts so I had to sing it. When I’m playing this song for an audience, the audience will sing along with high “whoo” if you teach it too them. Its really fun.
hi chris,
great lesson!
hope even though you are very busy
(…hope one day i can be busy in that nice way too!)
you will find the time to make a chorus part of the lesson.
love it.
all the best and saludos
celine
Thanks Celine!
It looks like I’ll be doing a lesson on the chorus of the song within the next week or so
hi chris,
hope you will have time to make a tutorial on the chorus.
i’ve been practicing:)
greetings
c
uuu and what i wanted to ask is,if you
maybe would like to show how to play some reggae?
by the way i love the country lick.
some more of that would be great too!
really appreciate your tutorials.
thanks alot
Sure!
Reggae is very fun!
I will spend a week on some reggae patterns
Thank you for the great idea
I cant wait for you to finish billie jean. i dont use my left hand like that
very often so this song has been fun. do you have any advice on
eartraining(pitch only)? My ear is decent and i work in terms of relevent pitch
only, but i would like to improve it to the point that i know what im hearing
before i even go to transpose.
-Travis
Travis!
About the ear training, thats really hard. I don’t have perfect pitch either. But at berklee I did practice a lot of sight singing. I would recommend that. They have ear training work books that you can get from their bookstore online, those books are perfect for sightsinging exercises.
In the meantime here is a great exercise:
Listen to 100 songs, and try and “hear” the key after playing only one note. Then try and write down the chords to the whole song after playing only one note on the exercise.
As far as ear training goes, see if you can hear the last part of billie jean as well. Learning songs from the record has been a huge help for me in ear training.
I’ll be doing a very thorough lesson on billie jean soon, but I don’t want to give it away on youtube.
Thanks!
Chris Marx
hi chris..i love your lessons but i can’t find my lovely song:norah jones_don’t know why..soo plz if you can send me on e-mail how to learn it or.. i’m waiting for youuuu…bye
hey chris, just joined cause I saw all of your lessons on youtube and Billie Jean finally got me to sign up! I was desperate to learn the rest of it! but i cant find it on your site? Could you give me a link or an email on how to play the rest of it?
Thanks loads! I’v been playing piano for about 8 years, and although this is pretty simple, it is technically challenging with the left hand and off beat chords and I’m having great fun learning it! Hope you can help me!
HELP ME PLEASE I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW TO PLAY IT EVEN WITH THE TUTORIAL!
have u put the chorus up yet
i luv ur tutorials
hey i’m looking for the chorus to this song but i can’t seem to find it could you please send me a link to it? I would really appreciate it.
Thanks,
vince
ahhhhhhh! that was brilliant
Hi Vince!
I haven’t had the time to make the chorus for billy jean yet.
In the key I do it in F#, you use the following chords, Bminor, Dmajor and Dbmajor.
Sorry!
Chris Marx
im lv 4 and im 13 and i want to learn dome MJ songs is the video u posted for a higher lv because it seems hard to me email the answer
Hi Cris
Could you please send me the piano notes of Michael Jackson’s Speechless & They don’t care about us
Hii, would you be able to send me the piano score for MJ’s “They don’t really care about us”? It’d be awesome if you could!
Thanks in advance
awesomre now i know how to play my favorite song…..KICK ASS.
bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla
This way you get hands on experience with each technique as you learn. And don’t worry about not knowing how a piece of music should sound or how you should be playing it. Each piece has an audio example to show you what it sounds like.
y’as pa en français?????!!!!!
could u send the notes on how to playbillie jean on the piano
Hi Chris,
I found this lesson on youtube and think it is great. I loadup Michael Jacksons version and play along to it, except the chorus, I have to sit that part out. any clues to information on what to play here?
thanks
Ron
d00d th4nkzZz F0ar da l3ss0n mai m0mmy w1ll b3 verryyyyYYY Pr0uD!!!! OMGz0rz thxxxx ;D