How to play “Malibu” by Miley Cyrus on piano

Miley’s got a new one, and it sounds much different than her last few! If you ask me that’s a good thing, because this song is fun and melodic. Perfect for an accessible intermediate level arrangement. But it’s not all easy.. The chorus picks things up quite a bit, and that’s why I chose to teach it on YouTube. Here’s how:

Syncopations between hands

The left hand pattern gets fun when the chorus kicks in. Up until this point in the arrangement, we’ve seen block chords, but now at the chorus we see a broken arpeggio pattern. That means we are outlining the chord shapes by playing them one note at a time and with some rhythm. 

So that’s the left hand. But the right hand, even though it’s playing the melody, also has some interesting rhythms to throw in the mix. And those rhythms don’t always match up perfectly with the left hand where our ears want them to. This means we have to really work out the hands together at a very slow tempo to make sure we’re getting the rhythms to match up where they’re actually supposed to!

A great lesson in slowing things down as well as a technical exercise for getting syncopations between the hands to feel comfortable.

So dive in! Make sure to watch the video while you’re at your piano or keyboard so you can play along with me as I guide you through the lesson. And don’t forget to hit subscribe so you don’t miss any other YouTube videos lessons… I’m now doing 2 new videos a week, EVERY WEEK!

Now it’s your turn to play “Malibu” by Miley Cyrus on piano

If you love using your favorite songs to learn the piano, check out ‘MALIBU’ at the Playground Sessions YouTube channel. 

If you like what you see you can download our app to learn the rest of this song with our interactive sheet music.

Subscribe to Playground’s YouTube channel for more song lesson videos.
Download the Playground Sessions piano learning app for full interactive learning.
Thinking about learning piano? Read our complete guide on how to play piano.