How To Play '100 Years' by Five For Fighting on the Piano

Piano Lessons.com The #1 Name in Piano Lessons Online Five For Fighting – 100 Years – Nate Bosch Hi! I’m Nate Bosch with Piano Lessons.com. Today I’m going to teach you how to play Five For Fighting’s 100 Years and the main hook of the song is right here, I’m just going to play with the right hand. [Demo] Now, we have the left hand, it’s just a series of a four five chords . [Demo] And start with the G, you move to the C . [Demo] Drop down to the A minor to the D. [Demo] And here we have a G over the B, to the E minor back down to the A minor, to the D. [Demo] And here we just do a little perfect fifth there G and D to play the D back to the G. I’ll play that again, this time a little bit slower. [Demo] C [Demo] To the A minor [Demo] To the D [Demo] D over B to the E minor [Demo] To the A minor to the D [Demo] Now when you’re playing this line you’ll notice that the left hand is basically playing on the bit, so you get the [Demo] One chord per bar [Demo] And the right hand. That line keeps on pushing and what that does is that just propels the melody forward. So here we have the melody, we just do an octave jump, so were basically wrapping ourselves around a G chord. [Demo] Move up to the C [Demo] And just this three notes here it just goes down and back up again and when we go to the A minor, we do that octave jump. [Demo] And even when playing on the A minor on our left we’d still kind of going around that, that G major chord [Demo] So as you know it is, those first two lines even though the left hand is moving to different chords, we basically play the same line twice, I’ll play that again [Demo] Now I’ll do it again [Demo] Changes up a little bit [Demo] So we’re still working with the G chord in our melody [Demo] That’s just a little walk up the scale [Demo] And here at the end we set back up for coming back down to the G. So if you’re obviously key to playing this song is from the key G [Demo] And these are the note for using in the G major scale, that’s for their, you know, centering that melody around. So I’m going to play it one last time and when we’re done it I’m going to play it one last time slow [Demo] Now an idea to trying to figure it out and for practicing it, start with one hand at a time. Practice the right hand and get that melody lying down and even just practice one section at a time. Practice it slow and build up the speed. When you’re confident with that, add the left hand. Now, the song continues on and [Demo] And what we play in the intro basically makes up the melody line for the verse [Demo] So as he’s singing [Demo] Sings that again at time and when we get to the, get to the chorus [Demo] So those chords that they’re playing on the chorus is the G, the D, the C and then back to the G. So it’s a very popular chord progression, the one which is the G in this case, the root. The five chord which is the D, the C which is four chord and the one. So that one four five progression, they use that so the note on top of the melody here we’re dealing with the B. [Demo] Now this chord here before we resolve it to an actual C chord is just the C with the sixth. That interval right here is a sixth, we call it a C sixth. [Demo] So we sort of, I mean play that again [Demo] Now he moves, he doesn’t go back to the one that time. Also the E minor [Demo] And just walking down on the base [Demo] And get down to the fourth. So let me start from beginning of the chorus again [Demo] Here’s the E minor [Demo] Then we get to the C [Demo] And he repeats that again [Demo] And then it changes a little bit here to set up going back into the intro [Demo] So all he does there is use the melody line [Demo] E minor [Demo] To the D [Demo] Get to the C [Demo] So there’s the line that sets up getting us back into the intro [Demo] Now there’s a basic make up of the song and sort of explain the chords that are involved and I slowly played for you can see where the melody is going. Let me just play it up to speed for you and I’ll kind of fill in the chords a little bit just to give you an idea of how the song can sound when you’re adding the melody to it. I’ll play the melody a little bit but I’m more just working with the chords for this type of setting and so just listen here [Demo]