Dance: Right Hand

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman. Today we're going to be learning another piece by a composer we've heard of before. Cornelius Gurlitt. Do you remember what piece we learned by him in a past lesson? If you said Vivace then you're right. Today we're learning another fun piece by Gurlitt called "Dance." Let's have a listen to it. Let's check out the score for "Dance." When I'm learning a new piece, there are a few things I always like to check out first. The clefs, the time signature, and this: the tempo indication. This may be kind of new for us because we haven't seen a lot of these, but we're going to start to see them more often. A composer, to give you an idea of the tempo or speed of the piece and the mood, will usually put a word or two right here at the start of the song. Often it's an Italian word like this, allegretto. That means medium fast or lively. So that's how we're going to play dance. Now let's check out the clefs. What do you notice? Oh my goodness, two treble clefs. That's interesting. Usually we'd see a bass clef here, but this simply means that both hands will be playing on the upper half of the piano in the treble clef range. What do you see for the time signature? That's right, it's 3/4. This top number 3 tells us there will be 3 beats in every measure. Well, let's check out the rhythm now. We're going to speak the rhythm of the first line together. We'll say TI-TI for all of these eighth notes, TA for the quarter note, and let's say THREE-EE-EE for the dotted half note. Can you try and speak the rhythm words with me? Ready, go: TI-TI TI-TI TA TI-TI TI-TI TA TA TA TA THREE-EE-EE Nice job. Now, let's try to sing the solfège for "Dance". We're going to start on DO, and let's see what is the letter name for this first note? If you said C, you're correct. It's a treble C. We've got middle C down here, it's the next C above that. Now, if this is DO, can you tell me the solfège for this first measure? It starts on DO. Try it by yourself once. Say the solfège. They're all stepping up, so the correct answer would be DO RE MI FA SO. Can you try to sing that with me? Ready, go: DO RE MI FA SO. Now let's keep going. What do we have here? That's right, it's the same thing again. Let's try it. DO RE MI FA SO Now what do you see here for solfège? Remember where C is. It's a step higher. So what would that be in solfège? That's right, it's RE. Then what do you see here? That's correct. RE SO SO SO Let's sing it again. DO RE MI FA SO, DO RE MI FA SO, RE SO SO SO Super, let's try it on the piano now. All right, first measure of "Dance" for the right hand starts on treble C. If this is middle C, can you point to the note on your screen that would be treble C? If you're pointing right here, you're correct. So that will be where we place finger 1. We'll be in the C major pentascale. Now, I'm going to let you try and play this without my help this time, so take a look at line one of "Dance", and try playing the first line. Remember, don't just look at the notes, but also try and remember the rhythm. TI-TI TI-TI TA, TI-TI TI-TI TA etc. So press pause and try playing line one on your own, then press play when you're ready to hear me play what it's supposed to sound like, and hopefully it will match what you just played. Time to press pause and try line one. Here's line one on the piano: You've probably noticed these curved lines in the music. These are called slurs, and when they go over a group of notes like this it means to play those notes legato or smoothly. So let's remember that as we play. When you play those legato notes stepping up with the eighth notes, I'd like you to not just hold your hand stiffly in one place. You'll get a better tone and it will feel more comfortable if you let your wrist shift to the side as you play those notes. Let's look at that from another angle. Feel like you're gliding through those notes, and your wrist and hand and arm are all shifting as you play. Then when you play those repeated G's, let your wrist float up as you play each one so it doesn't sound like a karate chop. You want it to float up almost feel like you're pulling or inviting the sound up out of the key. You'll get a more beautiful tone that way. Now let's check out line two. On line two, can you tell me if it's the same or different? Look at the right hand. If you said it's the same you're correct, except for what can you find any notes that are different? You have to look carefully. So where before we repeated on SO, what do we have this time? We have RE SO SO, then what? if you said DO you're correct. Now let's try line two on the piano. All right for line two our right hand will be once again in the C major pentascale right here, and once again this time I'll have you press pause to try playing it on your own first without my help. Then once you've figured it out, press play and I'll show you the correct answer. Here's what line two sounds like: Notice I played it piano because of the dynamic marking. Now if that's not quite what it sounded like when you played it, press pause and try and fix it, but if that match what you played, then you're ready to practice line one and two together. You'll notice that at the end of line two the ...