Beethoven's "Fur Elise" & How It Was Written

One of the best-loved of all classical pieces is Beethoven's Fur Elise.

Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the most famous classical composers of the western world. Beethoven is remembered for his powerful and stormy compositions, and for continuing to compose and conduct even after he began to go deaf at age 28.

Beethoven scholars are not entirely certain who "Elise" was. The most reasonable theory is that Beethoven originally titled his work "Für Therese", Therese being a gal named Therese whom Beethoven intended to marry in 1810. However, she declined Beethoven's proposal, which no doubt contributed to his depression.

The piece begins with a trill-like melody flowing into an arpeggiation of Am and E7 -- the I and V7 chords in the key of A minor. The next section uses the same theme -- or an approximation of it, but in C major and G major. At the end the minor theme returns.

For details on the piece and how it was written, go to:

Fur-Elise

Christmas Carols Galore

Here are some familiar old carols that can be played on the piano (or guitar0 with just a few chords:

Silent Night
Away In A Manger
Joy To The World
Deck The Halls
Go, Tell It On The Mountain
O Come, O Come Immanuel
Star Of The East
The First Noel
The Holly And The Ivy
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day
O Christmas Tree
Angels We Have Heard On High

For a quick way to learn how to do that, go to:

Christmas Carols for those just starting out

Music Scales -- A Ladder Of Notes

If you were anything like me, you hated to practice scales when you were a kid taking lessons. I couldn't see any possible use for playing scales, or even knowing them.

Boy was I wrong!

Without scales I wouldn't have a clue how to form chords, improvise, make up fills and riffs and so on. Plus I wouldn't have the technique to play what I need to play.

So thank heavens for my teachers who drilled scales into me.

If you need to brush up on your major or minor scales, please go to:

http://www.playpiano.com/101-tips/Scales-Major-Relative-Minor-Special.htm

Christmas Carols By Ear

If you enjoy playing Christmas Carols, check out the free sample videos by Jermaine over at http://www.playpiano.com/christmassongsbyear.htm.

Pretty taste stuff!

Previn & Peterson together playing the blues

Two of my favorite pianists play the blues: the great Oscar Peterson and Andre Previn together.

Dig!

What fingers should I use?

Lots of people have asked me over the years what finger to use on such and such a piece of music.

I can usually suggest a workable fingering, but people's hands are so different, that it is hard to generalize.

I have a very small hand, so I can't reach things on the keyboard that people with big hands can. So I use a different fingering than they do.

For some general principles of fingering, please click here.

Playing Songs On the Black Keys Only

When I was in high school I had a wonderful friend who played the piano, but mostly just using black keys. I was just the opposite -- at that point in my learning experience, I tried to avoid the black keys -- the dreaded sharps and flats!

But he got a great sound out of just the black keys, and in time I found out that he was playing the pentatonic scale -- a 5-note scale used a great deal in Asia and in Africa. Of course you don't have to play the pentatonic scale on black keys -- you could play it on any major scale just by leaving out the 4th and 7th degrees of the scale; for example in the key of C the notes would be C, D, E, G, and A -- leaving out F (the 4th degree of the scale) and B (the 7th scale degree).

Here are a few melodies you can play using a pentatonic scale:

Swing Low
Amazing Grace
I'm Just a Poor Wayfaring Stranger
Deep River
Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen
This TrainAmen (1 white key)
Kum Ba Ya (1 white key)
Were You There?
When the Saints Go Marching In

What can you play on just the black keys?

Yesterday I wrote an article about the pentatonic scale, and mentioned that the 5 black keys on a piano form a pentatonic scale (penta=5). A student of mine sent me a YouTube video which illustrates this perfectly. Here it is:

How to learn to read music without it taking forever

I read this in an article on the web:

"Sight reading is the act of reading and playing a piece of music before having ever seen it: on sight. This technique is a vital one for musicians to learn. Being skilled in sight reading makes reading a piece of music easier; the musician doesn't have to labor over every note and re-teach themselves the common patterns. Sight reading, after a decent amount of practice, becomes like second nature."

Well, nice, but not quite.

Sure -- it's great to be able to do that, but about 99% of working musicians CAN'T do that -- including me, so don't feel bad if you're one of us. (I can sight-read most printed music, but there's plenty of complicated scores that take me lots of time to master.)

For the classical musician it is imperative to be able to sight-read well, but for most pop and gospel and rock musicians, something less is usually quite adequate. Why? Because in pop and folks and gospel and rock and jazz, musicians don't usually play a song as it is written anyway. Instead, they use the sheet music as a "map" to give them the general directions of a song, then by adding their own skills to it create something much more exciting than the usual piece of sheet music.

All a pop musician really needs is a knowledge of chords and some music theory, then an overview of how reading music works. After all, music is made of melody, harmony, and rhythm, so you can get a fairly clear picture of reading music as a whole in just a short time.

You won't be great at reading music, of course, but you'll get the idea, and you can develop your sight-reading skills lots more as you go along. That's what I call "coming in through the back door."

Can you learn to read music in just a few hours?

Would you like to Tango? (on the piano, that is)

Latin-American rhythms are a lot of fun to play on the piano because they keep both hands busy -- sometimes playing different rhythms.

But the rhythm of the tango is not as complex as one would think, but because of the interplay between various instruments, one micht get that impression.

There are two basic types of tangos — the Spanish Tango and the Argentine Tango.

The basic structure of the Spanish Tango is in 4/4 with a quarter notes on the first beat followed by an eighth rest on the first half of the 2nd beat followed by two quarter notes in each measure, whereas the Argentine Tango is in 4/4 with three quarter notes followed by 2 eighth notes per measure.

To complicate things a bit, the Spanish Tango sometimes has a two measure rhythm, with the 2nd measure consisting of eighth, quarter, eighth, quarter, quarter.

All this plus many other rhythms are covered in detail in Rhythm Piano.