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Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson 7
Level 1 - Ode to Joy
Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson 7 is a written tutorial and practice guide for Level 1 of the Alfred's Adult All-in-One Course. It's free, and for your personal use only.
I'm steadily working on piano tutorials for the Alfred's Adult books. You can find all the lessons currently available here.
This is the book these tutorials are written for:
Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson 7
Ode to Joy
Page 13 (second half)
OK! You've practiced finger numbers, warm-ups, and the rhythms of quarter notes and half notes.
It's time to put together everything you've learned so far and play your first right hand song!
Ode to Joy is a very famous tune and is used everywhere from TV commercials to beginning piano recitals! If you don't know the title, you'll recognize it once you hear it.
Before we start, let's read through the music visually, like we're reading a book. See if you can answer the following questions (you'll find the answers at the very bottom of the page):
- How many beats are in each measure?
- What do measures 1, 2, and 3 have in common?
- Which finger plays F?
As you read through the music, you'll discover that each line is a bit like a sentence, with a half note at the end. Music is a bit like a book. In a book, the whole story is broken into chapters, and then into paragraphs, then into sentences, and then phrases within each sentence. Music is that way too.
Part of what musicians do when they learn a song is discover the musical sentences and phrases. In Ode to Joy, one of the sentences is the first line of music, with a half note at the end. The phrases in the sentences are each 2 measures... do you see how the beginning has a pattern of repeated quarter notes on E, and then you ascend up for a couple notes, repeat the top note, and then move down?
Now look at measure 3: we have repeated quarter notes, this time on C, then we ascend up a couple notes, repeat the top note, and have a bit of a different ending. We've repeated the phrase, with few variations... we started lower, and the ending is different. But the pattern is there!
Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson
Counting and Tapping Ode to Joy
Remember what I told you about counting and tapping in the last lesson? Most people skip it, and don't think it's worth spending time on. Playing is so much more exciting, after all. But I'll tell you again to work on your counting and tapping for each and every song. Why?
Translating the rhythm from the page into a consistent, steady beat is one of the more challenging aspects of playing music. So often, students don't do the counting and tapping, and then they struggle with rhythm for years and years. Trust me, I've seen it -- high school students who start music as 5-year-olds and still have trouble all those years later. You can save yourself so much time, energy, and struggle if you just practice your rhythms by counting and tapping.
Just do it! OK?
Alfred's Adult Piano Lesson 7
Let's Play!
All right, I know you're ready to play Ode to Joy!
Make sure you're sitting nice and straight, relax your shoulders, and place your right hand on the keyboard with your thumb, finger 1, on middle C. Remember to try and curve your fingers and "play with the tiptoes of your fingers!"
First, I just want you to play through the notes, as steadily as you can. Don't be a perfectionist about the rhythm. Just let your hands get used to the pattern of the song. Do this a few times, so you hear the melody and get used to the feeling of each of your fingers and the notes they play. We'll come back to those practice instructions written in the book in just a minute.
Now, I want you to try #3 of the practice instructions: play Ode to Joy, and count out loud, just like you did with the rhythm exercise in lesson 6. You're counting beats, so with every measure you'll be counting to 4. Again, you need to do this a few times, and it might be hard at first to play and count. It gets easier -- but only if you keep doing it! Don't just stop because it's too hard at the beginning!
Next, you can work on #2 and #4 of the practice instructions: play Ode to Joy while saying your finger numbers, or while saying the note names. Put the emphasis on note names -- eventually we'll use finger numbers less and our hands will be in different places on the keyboard (your thumb won't always be playing middle C). So concentrate more on learning note names!
Have fun learning Ode to Joy!
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