Remember Me - Grade 1 Piano

Teaching Notes

"Molto espressivo" at the start of the music instructs us to play this piece very expressively. It comes from a song from the Pixar film "Coco" and as a song, your performance should have a vocal quality about it. One way to achieve this is to understand where one would breathe. Clues are given in the music by the phrasing marks. For example, in the 2nd bar, the curved phrase mark goes to the 5th quaver and then a new phrase starts from the 6th quaver. If you listen to the video performance above, you will notice the slightest of pauses before the first top E, as if one were literally breathing here. Similar "breaths" can be found in bars 8 and 10.

Another means of making your performance expressive is the use of "rubato" which refers to some freedom of time. Again clues are given in the music. Look at the long "tenuto" lines above the 1st and 5th notes of bar 4 for example. Then play the above video again and notice how it lingers slightly longer on these tenuto notes. 

The melody is in the right hand throughout and so you should be careful to keep the left hand softer at all times, especially in the repeated quaver chords of bars 1, 3, 9 and 11.

The last two bars will need some careful attention to timing. There is a pause on the first beat of bar 16, but once you play the left hand chord on the 2nd beat, the pulse should be constant (albeit slower). Then in the 3rd and 4th beats, some students may be tempted to play these crotchet Cs as quavers, reminiscent of the three quavers that start most phrases of the melody. These are supposed to represent an elongated version of that melody.