Set Of Fire To The Rain

Piano Tutorial: Set Of Fire To The Rain by Adele

This one comes up constantly in my studio. People want to play it but either rush through the intro or crash out during the chorus because they aren't handling the chord transitions cleanly. The song is in Fminor, sits around 78 BPM, and runs through a pretty standard pop structure with a bridge that changes the harmonic momentum. Let me walk through how to actually nail it instead of sounding like you're fumbling through. The main chord progression in the verse is F#m7 - D - A - E. That's what carries most of the track. The chorus shifts to D - A - E - F#m7, which gives it that lift people recognize immediately. The intro uses the same progression but your left hand should be playing bass notes moving stepwise, not just blocking chords. I've watched students play the left hand completely static and wonder why it doesn't sound like the record. Here's the thing nobody tells you: the original track has a lot of density from the strings and percussion. When you strip that back to just piano, your chords need to be voiced properly or the whole thing sounds thin and amateur. Don't just smash root position blocks. Spread them out. Put the root in the low register, then stack the third, fifth, and seventh above middle C. That gives it breathing room.

The bridge section goes F#m7 - B - D - A - E. The B major chord here is where most people get tripped up because it doesn't resolve where they expect. It's a borrowed chord moving through the relative major area before landing back on E. If you practice just that transition cold - B to D to A - you'll find it lands easier than you think. I worked with a student last year who was trying to perform this at a wedding and kept rushing the chorus. The problem wasn't tempo. She was anticipating the next chord change in her head instead of listening to what was happening. We slowed it down to 60 BPM and had her play only the right hand first, then only the left, then together, no metronome, just counting out loud. Took about three sessions. Once she stopped thinking ahead and started actually hearing the progression, the rushing stopped completely. For the dynamics, start quiet on the verse and build. The chorus should hit harder but not maximally hard - leave some headroom. The bridge is where you go heavier, then pull back into the final chorus. That's what makes it feel like the song rather than a mechanical exercise.

One edge case worth noting: if you're transposing this to a different key for a vocalist, watch out for the F#m7. It's fine in Fminor but in some keys it becomes unwieldy or sounds muddy depending on the instrument setup. I had a gig where we moved it up to Gminor and the m7 chord on the tonic just didn't work cleanly in that register. We dropped back to Dminor instead and it sounded much better. Test the range before you lock in a transpose. The sheet music is available on several sites. Musicnotes has an official arrangement and it's accurate enough for someone who knows basic chords. If you're reading tabs or chord charts online, double-check them against the original recording because there are a lot of incorrect versions floating around.