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Several people have commented at various times that they are interested in analysis, but the current Sonata Analysis thread is too hard for them. Also people have occasionally asked, "what is analysis for?", and I hope this thread can persuade some people to dip a toe in and find out.

To me, analysis is studying a piece with an eye to understanding how it is put together. For people with a practical bent, it also includes finding ways to improve learning, practicing, playing (and optionally memorizing) a piece, in particular by understanding the structure and subtleties of a piece.

I would like to start this thread to re-visit analysis from the most basic level. The idea is for a thread where everyone feels they can learn something, and no prior knowledge is required, and every question is acceptable. (We tried to start the other analysis thread that way too, but clearly we didn't quite succeed.)

OK, I'm making the opening post short and sweet to get you interested. Next post will propose some details.

I'm interested, even if I don't know if I can really give a contribution.
I tried to catch up with the Sonata Analysis thread but it was... too much!

I'm trying to start out with no (or almost no) assumptions, but I'm sure I and others will inadvertently make assumptions along the way. So please, if you're interested in this topic, please raise any questions that arise. For example "I don't know how to tell the key" or "what does that note that's just a plain circle mean again" or "how do you find the meolody in this welter of notes" or "how do you read the rhythm of this piece" or etc.

In a way this is applied music theory. We will be introducing a lot of the basics of music theory as they become necessary. I anticipate a possibly leisurely pace with lots of digressions to explore these areas.

I call it applied music theory because we will be looking at specific pieces to learn how to analyze them, and to learn music theory that applies to them as we go.

Some ideas of pieces to start with are Burgmüller's Opus 100, the Anna Magdalena Bach Notebook, and/or arrangements of existing songs specially composed for the thread (I'm not an expert composer, but I could come up with arrangements of anthems and folksongs to illustrate various points. First up, Happy Birthday...). I don't play a lot of non-classical music, but if people have ideas for popular or other pieces to look at, that's fair game too, and I may start doing some research among my rock books looking for pieces to illustrate certain ideas. Ideally we would look at pieces where the score is available for free on the internet.

Alfred's method book doesn't fit the category of "free on the internet", but we might occasionally do a piece from there if people are interested, if those without the book are willing to be patient during occasional Alfred interludes. Or some of the pieces in Alfred's can be found, perhaps in a slightly different arrangement, on the internet.

For me personally, it's not so important to be able to play the pieces we analyse, but that perhaps betrays two things: I have a strong purely theoretical streak, and I know enough at the piano to be able to pick out melody and bass lines enough to give me a flavour of what a piece is like. So I would be interested to know other people's wishes in this matter. There may be a piece you are working on that you would like us to look at, or you may find that your interest and learning will be improved by using pieces that you can learn at your level.

The next post will ask for introductions. I'm breaking this up into three posts to try to avoid TL:DR, but who knows if this will work .

torquenale, welcome to the thread! Can you say anything about what was too much about the Sonata Analysis thread? Asking questions can be an excellent contribution; without questions we won't know on this thread when we're assuming too much and/or making things too hard.

For people who are interested, what do you think about the ideas in my previous post, of pieces to use? What interests you about this topic? If you have tried to follow the Sonata Analysis thread, can you say what made it too hard? What level would you say you are with piano (pieces you're playing, topics covered in lessons or on your own, affinity for reading or memorizing, whatever)? Feel free to PM me if you feel too shy to answer any of these questions in public.

(Or you can just lurk, but the more we know about people participating, the more we can shape the thread to meet people's needs.)

Hi PianoStudent, my problem with the Sonata Analysis Thread was that I started reading it when the discussion was already well developed. The first piece was, if I remember, one of Clementi's Sonatinas; I have the score and tried to read everything in one evening. I was a bit discouraged so I left the thread.
I'm sure that if I follow on a day by day basis it will be easier.

I agree that we can use mainly scores available for free on the net, and occasionally also some arrangements of existing song.

Thank you very much for your idea!

Holy smokes...I am new here but that thread was displaying as "starting out with anal" Not sure why it cut off like that but I was nervous what I got myself into. Lol

Nice way to introduce yourself, Rocket Man ^^

I'm interested in learning to play and understand classical music and theory. I started taking lessons a little over half a year ago. The pieces discussed in the sonata analysis thread are way beyond me. I don't know many of the musical terms and cannot hope to play the pieces within years. Tried plucking along the melody of the Chopin Nocturne. It's sort of doable while ignoring the trills, until you run into the fast 32nd notes in bar 16, which I can barely even read. Something a little easier would be nice.

I've played one of the menuets from Anna Magdalena Bach's notebook, so something around or a little over that level would definitely work for me.

Excellent idea! I will join!
Is a question like this acceptable for this thread? I am still wondering if this piece is originally written for 4 hands. I can see in the bass clef almost the same melody than in the treble clef, just a little bit delayed: And a little bit shortened, it is not a canon in the end. Members in the forum explained me about "voices", and I now see this. Anyway, my "4 hand" question is still not answered. Actually, having voices, and each of them is even individually a nice one, would point even more towards a 4-hand idea, or? Each player stays with a similar melodie!

The key (pun intended), will be picking pieces that people real love and want to learn. Best of luck, should be an interesting thread.

I'm in.......and yet I have no clue what it is I'm 'In'

Neil.

Welcome, Rocket Man, Allard, Marco M., Mark..., neildradford.

Rocket Man, lol, I'm going to have to start counting letters carefully before making thread titles!

Marco M., lots of specific questions about pieces will still perhaps be best on their own thread. Among other things, they might get more attention that way, if more advanced players aren't following this thread. Let's see how it goes. I have an idea for your voices/4 hands question which I'll put over on the original thread, and make a note to think about taking up voices at some point in this thread, but not right away.

Mark... it's very interesting to me that for some people learning analysis is closely linked to wanting to learn a piece, while for other people an alternate approach might be to use any pieces to learn the basic principles. I'm of the latter mind myself, but I'm aware that many people are very practical minded and want a piece to be learning, so I'm trying to reign in my inner didactic theoretician here and find pieces that will be both learnable and interesting. I hope people will be willing to join in the analysis even if a particular piece isn't their favorite, or if it's a little too hard to learn completely (but can still be plinked out in part to get the ideas), or a little too easy to be much challenge. Having people nominate the kinds of pieces, or specific pieces, that will be of interest will help us try to meet everyone's wishes at least some of the time!

Great thread, I'm in! I like music theory a lot but I don't know nothing about applying it to complex classical scores. I look for key signatures, chords, patterns, etc. in my Alfred's songs but that's it. I'll be happy to follow along!

Welcome to the thread, sinophilia! I see from your .sig that you're in Alfred 2. Where are you up to?

I'm in, too! Obviously I am starting out. I look forward to learning music theory. Thank you PianoStudent88 for this great idea.

Hi PS88,

Please include me in the group as it's obvious that I'll learn something here while hopefully increasing my focus and accelerating my learning curve. Also a beginner, I started taking lessons this past year. That being said, how does a beginner contribute to this project? Thank you for sharing your time and knowledge.

Thanks so much for starting this thread, Pianostudent88! I'm happy to see that so many other people are also interested in this topic. I'll have a look at those links for the music for possible analysis. For me, it would be ok to start with some really easy/basic examples, even if the music is easier than what I would usually play.

One of the reasons I'm interested in music analysis is because I think it would make it easier to learn and memorize pieces. Sometimes when I'm trying to memorize pieces, I have to try to remember the notes in weird and not very effective ways because i don't understand the relationships between the note changes, or between the notes in a chord or arpeggio etc.

I'm interested too.

What do you think about starting a new thread with each new piece or group of pieces? It can be intimidating for people to jump in on a thread with 87 pages of history.

Welcome scorpio, venice1, Valencia, malkin.

malkin, I'm definitely taking your idea on-board for new threads per piece or set of pieces.

venice1, lots of room to contribute at any level. This is a discussion course, not a lecture course . Answering questions, asking questions, reporting on what you see/hear in a piece, proposing pieces or areas for further investigation; sharing what you're learning in your lessons. The list goes on!

I'm working on the last ten pages

I'm certainly interested in learning more about theory and analysis, but starting from pretty much zero with very easy stuff -- to be sure to catch the gaps is my knowledge.

As a starting point, how about "Lili Marlene" -- it has a lot of the 1-2-5-1 and 1-4-1 stuff I've heard a little about. Then for examples that I think are deeper because I'm clueless at this point -- Cole Porter's "Night and Day", David Rose's "The Stripper".....

I've been using the free open source "MuseScore" notation program, could it be helpful in creating examples?