Getting Your Hands on La La Land Piano Sheet Music
Justin Hurwitz wrote the score for Damien Chazelle's film, and the piano arrangements have become some of the most requested pieces across beginner and intermediate players. The main themes—City of Stars, Audition, and the title track—sound deceptively simple but actually contain some specific chord voicings that trip people up if they're just reading generic transcriptions. I spent about three months working through these pieces for a friend's wedding gig back in 2017. I'm not going to link to any specific download site because copyright exists and legitimate sheet music publishers control this material. You can find official arrangements through Musicnotes, Sheet Music Plus, or Hal Leonard. The cost runs anywhere from eight to fifteen dollars depending on whether you want a simplified version or the more complete jazz-inflected arrangements.
La La Land Piano Sheet Music: What You're Actually Looking At
The key thing most people miss is that Hurwitz's writing sits somewhere between traditional piano pop and actual jazz harmony. The City of Stars theme in particular uses a lot of added sixth and ninth chords that aren't obvious from the melody line alone. If you're looking at a transcription that just shows C major with some fancy notes thrown in, it's probably not accurate to what's actually on screen. My biggest frustration was tracking down a version of Someone Who Is Waiting on the Right One that matched the film's tempo and feel. The official Hal Leonard sheet music lists the piece in G minor with a 4/4 time signature, but the recording uses a swung eighth-note feel that most straight transcriptions don't capture. I ended up transcribing it myself by ear from the soundtrack. It took about forty-five minutes for a twelve-bar section, which would have saved me time compared to digging through dozens of fan-made versions online. Here's something nobody tells you about these arrangements: the left hand does most of the harmonic heavy lifting. If you're playing through these pieces alone and it sounds thin, it's almost always because the left-hand part isn't dense enough. Hurwitz writes bass movements that outline the chord extensions in a way that makes the right hand sound richer even with simple melodies. I learned this the hard way when a venue pianist substituted his own left-hand voicings and completely changed the color of the piece.
The other thing that catches people off guard is the Rubinstein-style rubato in the Audition piece. The sheet music marks it with tempo indications, but the actual feel requires you to slow down on certain cadences and push forward on others. This isn't notation that works well metronomically. I've seen players nail every note correctly and still make it sound flat because they treated the tempo markings as rigid instructions rather than guidelines. If you're a beginner, start with the simplified arrangements. They strip out the added tensions and present the melody in a more straightforward way. The advanced versions are worth the effort, but working through a simplified City of Stars first will teach you the harmonic progression without getting bogged down in extended voicings. I'd recommend spending about two weeks on the simplified version before moving up. Most people can get comfortable with the basics in that timeframe if they practice twenty minutes a day. The main pitfall is trying to learn all three major themes at once. They share harmonic vocabulary, which helps, but it also means you'll start blending them in your head. I had a student who started confusing the chord changes between City of Stars and the opening number, La La Land. It took him three weeks to untangle that. Learn one piece until it's solid before picking up the next one.
Get the Full Details
For those who want the authentic sound, I'd suggest getting the official Hal Leonard collection rather than individual transcriptions. It includes the most accurate versions available and the left-hand parts are written out fully instead of using chord symbols, which makes a significant difference in learning the actual voicings Hurwitz intended. The simplified versions in that book are still better than most free transcriptions you'll find online, which often have incorrect accidentals in the second half of City of Stars. The file formats available range from PDF for printing to MuseScore files if you want to adjust the presentation. The PDF versions tend to be more reliable for print, but the MuseScore format lets you slow down the playback to work through difficult passages at a fraction of the original tempo. That feature alone cuts practice time roughly in half for the trickier sections.
