A thousand pardons for my late posting this month. I have been on a long working/vacation, and wasn’t able to post my music remotely. I hope that Chopin’s Prelude No. 20 was worth your wait! It’s the perfect spooky music for Halloween, and at only 🦇13🦇 measures you’ll have time to learn it before the zombies💀 rise!
You might remember this prelude as the opening to Barry Manilow’s Could It Be Magic, and it was Rachmaninoff’s inspiration for his Variations on a Theme of Chopin. It is beautiful and dark, and fun to play!
Chopin wrote his Prelude No. 20 in the key of C minor. I transposed it to A minor and deleted some of the less influential notes to help it fit under your fingers more easily. You can print my arrangement here:
I hope you are enjoying Autumn wherever you are! I have been learning more about helping my students to overcome obstacles to joyful music making. I will be sharing more about that in future posts. For now, be sure to print the sheet music for We Gather Together on my FREE SHEET MUSIC page before it disappears on October 31st! We Gather Together is a classic Thanksgiving hymn about gratitude that you might want to play for your family celebration.
Hope your Halloween’s a scream! With love and music, Gaili
Many piano players bemoan the fact that they would love to play Beethoven’s gorgeous Moonlight Sonata, except for the fact that Beethoven wrote it in C# minor, which has 4 sharps 🤦🏽. That just seems like too much to take on for most of us. So I took up the challenge and transposed the entire first movement to E minor.
At first I tried transposing it to D minor, but then realized that if I moved it a bit higher, I could avoid moving the right hand into the bass clef here and there, which pianists find confusing. As a result, some of the notes are very low on the treble staff, so feel free to write the letter names next to (not above or below) the notes you haven’t yet learned. Note that this is not a simplified arrangement. All of the original notes are present, I just made it a bit easier to read and play.
(Click here if you would like to read about how Beethoven’s Sonata quasi una Fantasia – “Sonata in the manner of a fantasy” – became known as the Moonlight Sonata.)
You will also notice that I made the notes a bit bigger than the original; the result is that it is 6 pages instead of 4. Sorry about that! You can tape them together and fold them into a book. I like to spread out the first 4 pages on my music stand, then have only one page turn to the last 2 pages.
I have posted the first 3 pages today, and below I demonstrate the first 3 pages in a Youtube video. Remember that the fingering I wrote is just a suggestion, mostly taken from the original. If you find a fingering you like better, be sure to cross mine out and write yours in. I will post pages 4-6 (for free) next month; be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss it!
How is your summer going so far? Have you been able to get yourself to the bench to play your piano? It’s not too late to start a mid-summer challenge to play the Moonlight Sonata in E minor. Remember, playing the piano is one of the best ways to boost your brain function, and doing something creative like playing a beautiful piece has also been shown to promote good health and a sense of well-being and to lower stress. Hope you enjoy playing the first half, and be sure to subscribe so that you get an email when the second half is available in August (for free of course– every month I give away free sheet music, and never charge or spam you). Leave a comment and let us know how you’re doing with this piece, or tell us what else you are playing. Are you struggling with a piece or not understanding something in your music? We invite piano-related comments and questions any time!
Thanks for subscribing! I hope you get a lot out valuable information from my blog! Check out my old posts on the right ➡️ to find more free sheet music to print, and lots of practice tips and music theory print-outs. With love and music, Gaili
Check out some of my music books! Piano instruction books for adults over 50, seasonal songbooks, and wide-ruled manuscript books:
Well this may be the least eventful Halloween we have ever experienced, but we can still have fun watching spooky movies and playing spooky music. I think Chopin’s Marche Funèbre (Funeral March) is one of the most ominous pieces ever written, and it is super fun to play. John Williams based his Darth Vader Theme (The Imperial March) on Chopin’s piece, so it will sound very familiar to Star Wars fans! I have simplified the piece for the late beginner/early intermediate player, and I am also posting the original sheet music for the more advanced pianist:
The simplified arrangement is from my Songs of the Seasons: Autumn book (I have a sheet music songbook for each season, all available on Amazon – see below!)
What are you doing on Halloween? Halloween is such a fun neighborhood activity, and we are so sad to not be giving out candy this year. But my husband and I host a singalong every Friday night from our front porch, and this Friday we and our neighbors will all be in costume, so we will still feel social, even though we will be distanced. This year wearing a scary mask will be de rigeur! On Halloween night (Saturday) there will be a full moon (aka a “blue moon”, because it is the 2nd full moon in October!), and the end of daylight savings time in California.
I hope you are doing ok in spite of all, and that you enjoy playing the Funeral March this week. Thanks for following my blog, friends, and please leave a comment or a spooky poem if you feel like it! With 👻ghostly 👻 love and 🎃creepy 🎃 music, Gaili
PS- I just noticed that the Piano Powered manuscript book is on sale for $3.14, regularly $6.95. I have no idea how long this sale will last, Amazon does what it pleases, but it’s a pretty great deal!
Besides loving the song and the movie, I also used Runnin’ Wild in BOOK 2 because it has a simple right hand melody, which gives the piano student the opportunity to focus on the numerous left hand major and minor triads. This sheet music helps the student to really learn the notes of the chords, and to get used to intuiting the distances between each chord. While later in BOOK 2 the student learns chord inversions which reduce some of that hand movement, students still need to practice the skill of finding chords quickly, until those distances becomes more instinctual. Here’s why: if you develop a strong sense of how far to move your hands between the keys, you won’t have to look down at your hands as much. That means you can play faster and more accurately, and you won’t lose your place as often. Here is the original sheet music for Runnin’ Wild from Upper Hands Piano: BOOK 2 which you can click to print:
Another great way to practice Runnin’ Wild is to find a key amongst these seven versions that works for your voice, and sing along as you play. Singing and playing is a great way to boost your brain power, increase your focus and improve your rhythm, and it’s also great for training your ear.
