How To Play the Verse to “Sorry” by Justin Bieber: YouTube Tutorial

Accompanying Blog Post For Video: “How to play ‘SORRY’ by Justin Bieber on the piano”

 

This song is one of my favorites to play in the Playground Sessions library! Bieber surprised me with this one, since up until this point, he was more strictly hip hop and R&B. But ‘Sorry’ came out of the gate with a specific kind of rhythm usually found in upbeat latin music or, more recently, pop club tracks. Pitbull, Justin Bieber, Drake, and many more have used this pattern in their beats (learn more about what I call the ‘3-3-2’ rhythmic grouping in my video lesson).

Here are a few more specific musical reasons why I love this song and chose to teach it here on YouTube:

 

1. Big Triplets in the Right Hand

This is a fantastic song for practicing different rhythms between the hands. Specifically, the quarter-note triplet pattern in the right hand against whole- or half-note rhythms in the left hand. And to add an extra layer of difficulty to the rhythms in the right hand, sometimes we shift out of triplet mode and into normal quarter note and 8th note rhythms. And the trickiest thing about that is switching our rhythmic conception… from that of a tertiary conception (subdividing by threes, or “triplets”) to that of a more evenly, symmetrically divided conception (subdividing by fours or twos).

 

2. Big Intervallic Jumps in the Melody

This melody jumps around a decent amount, but it does so within one main wide position. This is great practice for reaching across wider intervals!

 

If you love using your favorite songs to learn the piano, check out ‘SORRY’ at the Playground Sessions YouTube channel. If you like what you see you can download the app to learn the rest with our interactive sheet music.

 

– Phil

For more blog posts by Playground Teacher Phil Anderson, click here.

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