Etude in C: A Section

Hello and welcome back! I'm Joseph Hoffman.

Today we are learning an "Etude" by Albert Biehl,

an etude is a musical piece whose main purpose is to be a kind of learning tool.

It's a musical exercise or study.

In fact, the word etude means study in French.

In my opinion some of the best etudes in the piano repertoire are the incredible Chopin etudes.

They are a lot of fun to play.

This is "Chopin's Etude in G-flat Major Opus 10 No. 5."

It's nicknamed 'The Black Keys Etude,' because the right hand only plays black keys the entire piece, and a true prestissimo speed.

And another favorite of mine, is "Chopin's Etude in C Minor Opus 10 No 12." nicknamed 'The Revolutionary Etude.'

If you continue to work hard for several years, you'll be playing those etudes too.

But for now let's tackle this Etude by Biehl.

Here's the score for "Etude in C." What do you notice?

I'm noticing a tempo indication of allegro moderato.

Allegro, you know, means fast, moderato means medium tempo. Sometimes a composer can combine to indicate medium fast

for the tempo of this piece.

You might have noticed a new term in this piece poco a poco, which is Italian for little by little,

and so we're going to crescendo from starting at piano, or very quiet,

and then little by little implying for the whole duration until you see a new dynamic, we're getting louder, louder,

louder, louder, louder, louder, all the way up to forte.

We should always check our clefs: treble and bass. No surprises, and then now we're also looking for a key signature, which

if there was one would go right here in between the treble clef and the time signature, and you could also

find one down here in the bass clef. Do you see any sharps and flats? No.

So that means we are in the key of C major or A minor. How do we know which?

Could be this, could be this, well the title of the piece kind of gives it away.

"Etude in C," or we can look at the first note or last note.

The first note is C.

We know the title is C and because we have no sharps or flats, we know we're in the key of C major for this piece.

And our time signature is 4/4.

So you know we'll have four quarter note beats for every measure.

Now let's take a look at what's happening.

Our left hand is playing these whole note, two note chords.

Our right hand however is doing what?

How would you describe what's happening in this first measure?

We start on a C, and if we see a pattern: line, space, line, space, etc., we know we're going up by step.

We go from C all the way to what?

We have a one octave scale from C to C all white keys.

What do you notice about this measure?

Is it the same, or different?

We have a sequence going on here. A sequence is where you take the same pattern,

but move it up a step, or down a step.

And in this case we've gone up a step to D, and we have another one octave scale from D to D,

then what happens here? What note do we start on now?

If you said E, you're correct another one octave scale starting on E.

Now, can you look ahead and see how long that pattern continues. Remember you always have to check every note.

Are we always stepping? Are we always going up? See, each of these first notes is also stepping up.

Start on C, then we're on D, then we're on E. How long does that pattern continue?

Take a look and find where the pattern might break.

If you look carefully, you'll notice the pattern continues here. We start on F,

going up a one octave scale, we start on G, up a one octave scale we start on A,
up a one octave scale, we start on B up a one octave scale.

Here is where the pattern breaks.

Can you tell me what notes we see inside this box?

Pause the video and figure out the letter names of these four notes, and I encourage you to download the sheet music from

our website so you can mark and analyze, and have your own sheet music at home. So pause and download if you need to

figure out the names of these notes, and then press play and we'll check it out together.

These notes spell C E G C, and put all together that's a C major triad with an extra C on top

played as an arpeggio, and then back down to C here.

A C major arpeggio

to end this section.

So that brings us to the end of the A section. There are more lines to come that we'll learn in a later lesson, but for now let's try to play

this section.< ...