Hey guys. Here’s another addition to my piano portfolio and the most recent song I have covered to date. I have been actively trying to incorporate more modern and contemporary songs like this into my practice and repertoire this past year or so.
Historically, I have tended towards playing oldies in my cover version sets because that's where my taste in music typically rests. I adore 60’s music: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, Motown, bubble pop, Rock ‘N Roll, etc and have always over relied on that playing those songs.
As timeless as that stuff is, and it often goes down well at gigs, playing only oldies can tend to alienate a younger audience and thus potentially prevent me from getting gigs where I am asked to entertain that demographic. So, to diversify my repertoire and increase my employability as an artist, I have been actively learning more contemporary pop songs. Call it ‘strengthening in weaker areas’, if you will.
And one of those songs is this one from 2020. When I first heard it, I was struck by a few things. Tate McRae’s voice was the first thing. There’s something vulnerable about her vocals in this, an anguish in her voice that I found enthralling. And since hearing some of her other work, I have become even more captivated by her singing voice. Like Miley Cyrus, Lana Del Rey or Sia, there’s just something about her singing voice that gives me goosebumps. There’s a character to it, a level of humanity and imperfection that appeals to me. The producer accentuates these qualities by adding some heavy BitCrushing effects to her voice which fit in with the chilled out, Dubstep feel of the song.
She also constructed and performed these melodies in a swung and sometimes seemingly lazy way. It feels like it is fluctuating in and out of time with the meter of the song. Lagging behind and catching up. It doesn’t really, but the flow of the song makes it feel that way to me. I found that I mimic this style when I play it on piano by actually varying my tempo; speeding up in the middle of bars and slowing down towards the end of them. This character became embedded in my performance of the piece and thus when I sat down to record a performance of it, I discovered that I couldn’t use a click track at all. This is a free hand performance, with no metronome, click or drum track because that’s how I play this song, with endless free expression.
The second thing I noticed was the topline melody that she was singing, it’s just so gorgeous. The chord progression (6, 4, 1, 5) is pretty standard, if not cliche, at this point. But the melodies of the different sections that she has written for it I think are sublime. There’s an energy and a drive to them that pushes the song forward. They seem dramatic and add dynamism to what is all in all a pretty chilled out song.
It’s one of the first songs I started learning with the left hand arpeggio (1, 5, 11) method that I now often use when playing in 4/4. I used this song to familiarise myself with it within the key of C#m (Aeolian, 6th mode of E Major). I have one song that I practice for every key in Ionian and Aeolian (24 songs) and play them on rotation to help me nail down the method in every ‘natural’ key signature.
This track is called ‘You Broke Me First’ by Canadian singer/songwriter Tate McRae and was first released as a single in 2020. It later featured on her second EP ‘Too Young To Be Sad’ which was released in 2021 through RCA Records.
Thanks for listening - Pete Brennan (Musician - Songwriter)
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