Hello and welcome. I'm Joseph Hoffman and
today we are going to learn one of the
most famous classical pieces of all time.
"Für Elise" the grape Ludwig van Beethoven
composed "Für Elise" a little over 200
years ago in Vienna and then dedicated
it to a mysterious woman named Elise. In
German, "Für Elise" means for Elise. And
who was this woman Elise? No one knows,
but as you listen to "Für Elise" you can
get some hints about how Beethoven
felt about her. By the end of this video
you're going to be playing one of the
most famous, beloved classical piano
pieces of all time. By the way, this "Für Elise" tutorial is my easy Level One
tutorial, which is perfect for anyone
with I'd say about six months to one or
two years experience with piano. To help
you master this song, I highly recommend
that you get the accompanying sheet
music for this tutorial which is
available for purchase online at the
Hoffman Academy store. Or if you're a
premium member of Hoffman Academy, the
sheet music is free included with your
premium membership. If you have less than
six months experience you may want to
check out my super easy preparatory
level tutorial, or if you're a more
experienced pianist and you'd like to
learn Beethoven's original advanced
version of fear Elise check out my level
4 or level 6 tutorials. Ok let's come to
the piano to start learning. Let's
briefly check out where we need to place
our hands and which notes were going to
be needing for "Für Elise". These two
blue notes are all you need for the left
hand. All you're going to need are your
left hand finger 1 on this E and your
left hand finger 3 middle finger on
middle C. Your right hand will be up here
on this a minor pentascale and every
once in a while you'll also actually
quite often you'll need this D-sharp as
well. So your right hand finger 4 will
sometimes be on D but most often on this
D-sharp
We have to kind of play double duty.
Then every once while your finger 1
will also have to shift here to G-sharp
When you do that don't twist your hand
like this that will put pressure on your
wrists. Go ahead and just slide your hand
forward like this to reach the finger
1 there, and then there's this one spot
you'll even need this really high E here.
So those are the notes we'll need for
"Für Elise" let's start playing. Okay so
go ahead and find this position with
your hands and check out the first five
notes of the sheet music. You'll see that
we alternate between E in the right hand
right here and this D-sharp. The first
five notes go E, D-sharp, E, D-sharp, E
as you're doing that go ahead and
let all of your fingers just comfortably
shift where they're going to be happy as
you go back and forth between fingers
5 and 4. You don't have to keep
fingers 3 2 1 locked on these
white keys, they can shift down
to those once you need them 1 2
3 4 5 now can you try those
first five notes?
Good, now notice in the sheet
music it says pianissimo. Beethoven
wanted this to feel really tender and
sweet so nice and soft as you play those
notes. Play it one more time and be sure
you're playing pianissimo, go. Good after
you play those first five notes the next
four notes go B with finger 2, then D
with finger 4, so we skip up and then
step down to C, skip down to A.
So we have a skip up and then a step
down then it skip down. B D C A Now you try
Now if you put all that together
we get E, D-sharp, E, D-sharp, E B D C A
Or without the letters. Now I'd like you to
press pause and try that on your own
several times until you feel like you've
really mastered it. Be sure you're
playing pianissimo to get the right
sound that Beethoven was going for.
Now one thing I'd like to point out is
as you're playing don't play with the
flat pinky. That's kind of a bad habit that
you'll not want to get into. Your
pinky should always play near the tip
like this. Okay, will you try one more
time, using really great posture playing
near the pinky tip. Let's try it together go.
Great, now pause if you need extra
practice, otherwise let's keep going.
Check out the next three notes. Now
you'll notice we come down to the bass
clef which means our left hand has to
take a turn. We've got a middle C and
then it skips up to E so we'll play
3 1 in the left hand on middle
C then E above middle C and then the
right hand plays A B. So all together we
get C E A B each hand plays two notes C E A B. Now you
try.
Good, now let's look at the next four
notes ...