Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Adult Beginners Forum Beginning with Fur Elise, question regarding 2nd part

Hello!

I've only just recently started to play the piano. My grandma used to be a piano teacher and I asked her to teach me how to play Fur Elise, which she did. Well, a little bit. When I'm at home, I use YouTube for tutorials when I need it.

I came across 2 different versions, though, and I'm wondering which one is the correct one.

http://i.imgur.com/b4eMWgp.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Ix2nIEi.jpg

These two screenshots are from different videos. I checked out multiple videos to see which one is off, but there seems to be an equal amount of both.

If you're confused, it's from the 2nd part of Fur Elise, right before it starts to get really fast. Here are the YouTube vids if you want to check.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvWuco54FHg (picture 1 - part at 1:12)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4EBKQ81J2g (picture 2 - part at 1:02)

Of course, I want to learn the correct one. Will you help?

Thanks in advance.

Pride, do you read music? Do you have a score for Für Elise?

I don't "read" graphs like that, but from the cluster and imagining what kind of sounds they represent, I think I know what you are talking about. There is an ornament --- sort of a fancy swirl around a main note ---- which is sometimes played to make it sound prettier. You can leave it out, or put it in if you like it and can do it. It doesn't change the music so it's not a different version, but rather, it decorates one and the same note, if it's what I'm thinking of.

Oh, well deciphered, keystring. Now I see how to read the diagram.

Pride, that ornament is called a "turn". It decorates the main note by playing: a note above, the main note, a note below, the main note. Here is a score which shows what it looks like written out, in measure 31. Here they show you both the turn symbol (the symbol that looks like an S on its side) and the notes it represents. Usually you will see just the turn symbol, without having the notes written out.

Not all scores show the turn.

From the scores on IMSLP, I can't figure out when it came into the tradition of playing Für Elise -- for example, was it in Beethoven's original score, and left out by accident in the first printing? Does it represent standard performance practice of Beethoven's era, that performers would have known to do whether or not it was indicated in the score? Something else? A mystery.

You should really learn to read music, I know it's not easy but then you'll have access to all the music in the world and not only MIDI transcriptions.

I'm sorry I wasn't being more clear on how to read these. They were made with software called Synthesia, and is created for people, like me, who can't read music but still want to play the piano.

I do appreciate the help and your detailed answer, guys. It cleared up a lot! I guess I will just learn it with the turn. Thanks!

And I've learned something new, about how to read a Synthesia chart.

It's back to player piano notation. Or MIDI on its side. Although, I'm not sure how other people feel, but I don't know how you read that way. I record with MIDI and then do some editing, but I don't know if I could play from looking at a MIDI file. Sheet music seems far easier to comprehend. Anyone a master at reading a chart this way?

No, no, I don't mean read as in play music from while reading it. In this case, I meant read in the sense of "interpret well enough to be able to match it up with a standard score... with additional assistance from the video." But now I know what the blobs, positioning, and length mean.

It's actually pretty much the same, I guess. I assume that with a score, you can play while you read and do it at your own speed, while with Synthesia (which usually moves faster than you can play if you don't know the piece) you need to pause it to learn a new bit. But memorizing where to place your fingers and then doing it over and over again (making it muscle memory) applies to both methods.

But I guess a score is still superior, though, because with Synthesia, you can clearly miss stuff. Like the turn I learned about in this thread.

A score shows you exactly the pitches to play and their durations, as well as tempo, dynamics, articulations, and other exhortations from the composer. You can study it, mark it up, and look at long range patterns in the music.

It appears with Synthesia that you have to do some careful matching of notes across a gap if you're trying to look at a whole pattern instead of waiting for the notes to drop to the keys and then memorizing. This may be fine for memorizing but not so good for analysis. Also visually estimating the relative length of the notes is not as accurate as being able to see the specific assignments (both length and articulation) that can be seen on a score.

I don't memorize most of my music. I read it from the score. In any case, muscle memory is the least secure form of memory.

I initially learned to play (probably spent a few months playing around) with Synthesia also not knowing how to read music. I don't regret one minute of time I've spent learning to read music or learning about music theory, though, as competent reading skills can multiply the speed at which you can learn new music, not having to try and struggle to memorize where each pressed key is, what finger to use, how long to hold the note for, etc. that is easily notated through music sheets. Also, all of this memory (muscle memory, as PianoStudent88 stated) is easily lost. I can't remember how to play any of the pieces I learned through this approach, though, that being said, I could re-learn most, if not all, of them in less than a day through the use of music sheets (which can pretty easily be found for most anything).

Browse through some of the videos and links in this old thread as a place to get started learning to read music: http://www.pianoworld.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1948785.html

Your progress as a pianist and musician will be SEVERELY hampered as long as you are still ignorant of the musical language. You MUST learn to read music, as quickly as possible, before you attempt to go any farther with piano. Use the piano as a tool to help you learn music, not avoid it.

I agree with Polyphonist. MIDI charts are fun and useful if you want to record, edit and compose on a keyboard connected to a computer, but reading music will open up a new world for you. I don't read very well and most of the times I can't hear the music in my head when I look at a score, but it feels kind of magical when it happens. It's really not that hard, unless you want to read the orchestral score of an entire symphony

This is not that hard for me either - just practice.

I read sheet music but I've found the synthesia youtube videos useful for examples on how to realize trills.