Spinning Song by Ellmenreich: A Section

Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman, and in this lesson we're going to be learning a piece that's been a favorite for my students over the years. "Spinning Song" by Albert Ellmenreich. Now, way back in Unit 4 you may remember learning another song called "Spinning Song", but trust me. This one is much faster and even more fun to play. Let's have a listen. Let's do our usual before we learn a song checklist. Starting off with the tempo indication, what do we have? Allegretto. Remember, allegretto is not quite as fast as allegro, but still fast kind of a medium or comfortably fast tempo. Our clefs are usual suspects of treble clef and bass clef. Now let's figure out what key we are in. Our major clues are the key signature. Also you want to check out the first note or chord and the last note or chord. So pause the video and see if you can use those clues. Print out the sheet music from our website if you haven't already. Pause and figure out what key are we in, and then press play and we'll check it out together. So, our key signature has one flat, which tells us that we're probably in the key of F major or D minor. Both D minor and F major have a B-flat in the key signature. So we've narrowed it down to F major or D minor. To go all the way, let's look at the first note we play. It's an F, and the last note we play is an F and the right hand is playing part of an F major chord. So these clues all are pointing to F major as the key that we're in. Our time signature is 2/4, which tells us we'll have two quarter note beats in every measure. So before I learn a new piece, once I know what key we're in I like to play that scale just to kind of get comfortable with any black keys I'm going to be using. So if you'd like, pause the video and you can play the F major scale one or two octaves right hand and left hand just to kind of get those notes in your ear and in your fingers. Go ahead and pause and play through the F major scale right hand and left hand, then press play to go on. Now another thing you could do, knowing that we're in the key of F major would be to go through your score and circle all of the B's to remind you to automatically flat them. That's optional. If you'd like to pause to work on that you can, otherwise let's go ahead and check out the rhythm of the right hand here in measures three and four because of these sixteenth notes it may be helpful to think in subdivided sixteenth notes for this. We'll have 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a, and then notice this tie. This curved line connecting two of the same note means we're going to hold that down going across the bar line. 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a, so putting all that together let's try clapping and counting this rhythm and don't forget to hold on that tie going across the bar line. Let's clap and count. Ready 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a, 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a And then playing that will get 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a, 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a Note the accent on the & of beat 2. 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a, and the staccato right before that. So we've got slur, staccato, accent, staccato, tenuto. Lots of markings to watch out for. Remember, this flat line is called a tenuto which gives that note a little extra emphasis. Not as much as an accent. So the accent will be the strongest staccato, and then also strong but not as strong as an accent. Pause the video to work on measures three and four. Watch the notes, watch the slurs, staccatos, accents, watch the fingerings. Lots to work on here in these two short measures. Pause to work on that measure right hand alone, then press play to go on. Okay, so that should be sounding like this: 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a, 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a The rhythms are very important, and at a slow tempo is the best way to nail this down early. Don't try to play this fast while you're learning it. You've got to earn the right to play it fast, so start slowly. 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a, 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a Now, what do you notice in measures five and six? We start off the same 1-e-&-a 2-e, but now we have a full triad. You'll note that this is a first inversion F major chord. 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a 1-e-&-a It's a little V7 chord. B-flat C E. Try playing that on your piano with fingers 1 2 4, and that's staccato, then it goes back to the F major first inversion. Try that. One more time, give it a try. Good, now put that all together. 1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a,1-e-&-a 2-e-&-a Pause to work on measures five and six, then press play to go on. Now what do you notice about measure seven through ten? I want you to look very carefully. If you notice this looks the same as measures three through six, you're correct. It's important to check every note. Sometimes a composer may change just one little thing, but if we look at every note you'll notice everything's exactly the same as before. So let's now take a look at what we're going to do with the left hand. If you look through this whole section the left hand's playing this very simple ostinato. Ostinato is a repeating pattern. That's what we want to get it to at full speed, but at first you might go super slow motion or even slower. It's okay to go that slow at first. In fact, it's better to go very, very slow the ...