I bet you have heard of the song "I Dreamed a Dream" from various media sources.

To be honest, the first time I heard of this song was on Britain's Got Talent 2009. Susan Boyle made her angelic musical debut when she sang "I Dreamed a Dream" beautifully back then. You should have seen Simon Cowell's reaction when he heard of Susan's rendition of the song.

His eyes literally lit up as he watched her performance.

The song's first appearance was it's Paris production from 1980, entitled J'avais reved'uneautre vie ("I had dreamed of another life") and was originally sung by Rose Laurens. The first English production of musical "Les Miserables" opened in London in October 1985. The lead would even later feature the song on her 1993 album Patti LuPone Live!

The song has been translated into 21 languages over the years and many singers have recorded the tune.

I have also put together an arrangement of this beautiful and inspirational piano music on Youtube -

"I Dreamed a Dream" is a wonderful song. You can hear me play this song in a ballad format. This is not a difficult piece as the melody is quite straightforward and simple. What made this song stands out is the use of musical expression and generous usage of crescendo and diminuendo. Right at about 2 minutes into the video, I applied a run technique called “scale runs” interwoven with dynamic and ritardando expressively to achieve greater heights on this song. You can learn more about scale and other runs in my “Hand Coordination, Runs & Fillers ” course.

Throughout the whole song, the left hand heavily uses the root fifth-octave technique. This is a common left-hand style for ballad music. You can also learn more about other ballad styles in my “121 Left-Hand Piano Styles” course.

Feel free to share what you think about this song and the techniques we can apply to play the song.