Easy Piano Arrangement of "If" by David Gates (arranged by Rose Gindl)

Hi all:

The other day, my husband and I were taking a long drive (4 and 1/2 hours) and he very considerately made a playlist of hits from the 1970's, to while away the time in the car. We found ourselves singing away to most of those songs. Somehow, I seem to remember a lot of the lyrics from decades ago. I personally love 1970's music. I will admit here, that I was in high school in the 1970's, so music from that era has an especially fond place in my heart. Ok, I have now officially dated myself with this confession. You can now probably guess how old I am but I won't ever admit it!!

I have digressed:

One of my all time favourite songs from the 1970's is "If" by David Gates (Bread). I have always loved the hauntingly beautiful chord progressions in that song and when I got home from our drive,  I tried to find an easy piano arrangement that I could play : to no avail. Web searches turned up nothing - or maybe I wasn't patient enough to look through all the websites. Anyways, me being me, I thought "I can write an easy piano arrangement for myself" and so I did.

It took me many hours to play around with the chord voicings (David Gates may not agree with my attempt) but I finally have a version that I think, sounds pretty nice.

I am sending it into the universe for everyone to try and I must insist on 2 things:

1). That I am always cited by name (Rose Gindl) as the arranger of this particular piano arrangement

and

2) That a more accomplished piano player than I, video themselves playing this piece and post it on YouTube (citing me as the arranger of course and citing my blog site: everythingisalwaysrosie.blogspot.com) so that I can hear how it should really sound. (without all my flubs, mistakes and poor technique). I hope David Gates is Ok with this experiment.

Below is my arrangement. I play ALL the left hand chords as indicated in the first 4 bars: broken, then held to the end of each bar. I also wrote a very easy Right Hand melody, which I embellish with alot of syncopation. The notes are just guidelines. In the final bar where the right hand has the fermata on F, the left hand plays individual notes as written, which carry on to the final line of the staff paper and end in a 4 octave F Major arpeggio. (I just wanted to fit everything on 1 piece of paper).

I am really hoping someone will video themselves playing this piece. Piano is not my first instrument, so my bumbling attempts at playing it, cause my family to run for the hills. I hope this arrangement sounds as good as I hoped it would.

Enjoy.

Rosie