Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Is this something?

It's pretty vague and definitely not correct. Can you discern?

http://picosong.com/XXwS/

That "something" sounds to me like three chords, a single note, followed by three more chords, all played on a piano. What else might it be?

It's such a tiny fragment, and such a common progression that it could have come from any one of hundreds of pieces, if this is the purpose of your question.

I'm sure it's something.

Joel's things are always something, I think.

At first it sounded (of course!) like a hint of Pictures at an Exhibition, but then it didn't.

Overall (and some might wonder how those few notes can have an "overall") .....overall it has an impression of Vaughan Williams, but I don't think you do Vaughan Williams.


......and on the other hand I hear it as a pretty specific kind of thing, with that exact harmony and with the particular 'flavor' which Joel conveys very well.

It's kind of folky, which I think narrows it down. Like, to Vaughan Williams (although I don't think Joel does Vaughan Williams) ......Dvorak? Grieg? Poulenc?....

Well, feel free to go hunting but I think I'll pass.

No, that's the extent of my contribution.

(Unless something pops into mind....)

It sounds familiar. I know I have heard it somewhere before.

It's a Billy Joel arrangement of "Three Blind Mice".

Beethoven's lost version of the opening to Sonata Op. 81a, but played too fast.

It's the original version of

I strongly feel like it is Debussy. I suspected it was from Children's Corner so I skipped around through that and didn't find the progression. Argh.

Aha! It's from Pour le piano - Sarabande. If I had remembered to include the F bass with the A minor chord, you would have recognized it even the though the key is wrong.

Thanks everyone.