Piano Sheet Music
Amateur Transcriptions Piano/Vocal/Lyrics with Digital Playback
💘 Jacob Hoover — What Falling in Love Feels Like Piano Sheet Music
👩🏫 Level: Easy (I cover below how to play this sheet music for beginners)
💽 About What Falling in Love Feels Like
“ What Falling in Love Feels Like ” by Jacob Hoover (jake25.17) was premiered on March 14, 2020 and since then had several TikTok virality waves (watch TikTok original video). Listen it on Soundcloud, watch Youtube video.
“ What Falling in Love Feels Like’s ” recognisable Instrumental -melody is large in size (made of four-bar phrases), clear in structure, and fused with an intricate turnaround harmonic progression. The key is E-flat major, which is described as “the key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.” The perceived sound quality here is light and airy. Music moves at the strict tempo of 160 beats per minute.
The transcripted score is accessible yet beautiful.
🖨 Playing What Falling in Love Feels Like Sheet Music on Piano
- Relax, stretch, and warm-up hand and feet muscles every time you play.
- Arch the palms — touch the keys with fingertips not with whole finger pulp.
- Keep a good posture. Hang a mirror above your piano so you can see yourself.
- 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 by pressing the keys lightly or heavy and suddenly or smoothly. Add these markings on the printed paper so you won’t forget.
- Playing pianissimo at the very beginning stage saves you energy.
- Practice no more than three repetitions in a row as you risk to decrease your ability to concentrate.
If I forgot something, leave a comment.
✋ The Right Hand
Start learning the score with the right hand part because it’s where emphasis goes. 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.
😮 Phrasing
The key point in playing the melody line is to understand the phrasings. Mark phrases with a highlighter — stop where Jacob Hoover stopped. Notice that although the phrasing is short, phrases don’t obey the barlines. Add personalized fingering in complicated places to achieve the required for phrasing legato.
- Play the first bar of any phrase louder than the last bar.
- Peak near the highest-pitched note of a phrase.
🤚 The Left Hand
The accompaniment is always softer than the right hand and tolerates no fluctuation in the tempo.
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.
👋 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 strong beats 1 and 3 .
🤲 Both Hands
There are two competing ideas on hands timing: the first idea is to press the right and left hands simultaneously, the other is to press the right hand a millisecond prior to the left hand (asynchronisation).
For centuries the first idea was dominant, but now both classical and pop/rock/electronic artists tend to let the melody lead.
- 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. Jacob Hoover’s voice is more of staccato and the instruments play legato, aren’t they?
- Make “ What Falling in Love Feels Like ” 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
Pedal as little as possible!
- Practice “ What Falling in Love Feels Like ” without the pedal until the both hands are fluent and smooth.
- Pedal twice per measure or more with short dabs of the pedal at the end of right-hand phrases. Delay pedal pressing to weaken the resonance.
- Don’t be afraid of silence between notes : separated by a millisecond notes are the basis of the famous airy “Jeu Perlé” (Pearl Technique) — there is no way to achieve it with bar-long pedaling.
- Remove the pedal wherever you see a rest symbol.
Lift the left hand from the keyboard whenever the pedal is depressed — it minimizes muscle fatigue.
🧠 How to Memorize Sheet Music
The more pieces you learn — the easier for you to learn them. Sight-read a new piece everyday (I post every other day!) to develop memory.
- Understand the musical structure of “ What Falling in Love Feels Like ” — where piece parts start and end, which chord progression is used.
- Read the score in bed in the evening , analyze how repetitions differ from each other.
- Memorise as you learn: 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.
- Improvise! «Always conduct with the score in your head, not your head in the score».
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