Hello and welcome back. I'm Joseph Hoffman.
Today we're learning how to play a famous melody by one of the great composers of all time: Johann Sebastian Bach.
Americans usually just say Bach for his name, but if you want to sound scholarly, you'll pronounce his name the German way.
He was German after all which is Bach.
Kind of like 'ba' and then a choking sound.
Bach.
Try it. Hours of fun.
Bach was truly one of a kind. He had 20 children yes, 20.
That alone it would seem could keep a man quite busy, but on top of keeping track of 20 kids,
Bach was responsible for the weekly sunday music at four different churches in Leipzig.
On any given week, back in the good old 1730's, you would have also seen Bach preparing the sheet music, rehearsing the church orchestra,
soloist, and choir, teaching a few music lessons along the way, performing on Sunday, and then starting the routine all over again.
Right now we're listening to Bach's Cantata "Wachet auf."
This cantata tells through singing the parable of The Ten Virgins from the New Testament.
As incredibly busy as Bach was, one thing I appreciate about him is that he still took time for his family.
He was the primary music teacher for several of his children,
many who went on to become famous composers themselves.
And for his second wife, Anna Magdalena, he prepared a special notebook of keyboard pieces for her to practice.
You see, in Bach's day there was no music store to walk to or a place online to download sheet music from.
When you did piano lessons, your teacher would usually write out your pieces for you by hand.
Now, I'm sure Anna Magdalena appreciated this act of service from her husband then,
but we really appreciate it now because the Anna Magdalena Bach notebook is a treasure of dozens of great pieces for the piano.
And the piece we're learning today is one of them, and it's what we're listening to right now. "Musette in D Major."
Let's take a look at the rhythm of "Musette," and we'll start learning it.
Alright, let's see if you can help me dictate the rhythm to the first phrase of "Musette."
I'll do the first 4 beats.
See if you can figure out what the rhythm words would be.
Can you turn that into rhythm words? Try saying it.
If you said TA TI-KI TI-KI TA TI-KI TI-KI
You're correct.
Let's try saying it together, and point to each beat, go:
tah tiki tiki tah tiki tiki
Now, let's take a look at the second line.
We have TI-KI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI
I'm not sure if we've seen a TI-KI-TI before. I know we've had TI-TI-KI
But this one is a TI-KI-TI, so you see two 16th notes. This extra beam right here makes these two notes go twice as fast.
These two are 16th notes, and they're connected to one eighth note.
TI-KI-TI Let's try to say it three times, go: TI-KI-TI, TI-KI-TI, TI-KI-TI.
Let's try saying line two together, go:
TI-KI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI
Now let's speak all of the rhythm together from the beginning. Point to each beat and say it.
TA TI-KI-TI-KI TA TI-KI-TI-KI
TI-KI-TI TI-TI TI-TI TI-TI
Great, let's come to the piano and try to learn it.
Today we're going to be learning a slightly simplified version of "Musette in D Major."
So to get started, let's take a look at the first note. Can you tell me the letter name?
if you said A you're correct.
The number 5 up above tells us we'll need to put finger 5 on A.
So we'll be in the D major pentascale.
We can know that it's D major because of this F-sharp that you see in the score just two notes later.
Now with your hand in the D major pentascale, see if you can figure out how to play the first two measures.
We already know the rhythm, and you know that the first note is A. See if you can figure out the rest.
Press pause to try it on your own, then press play when you're ready to hear me play it.
Here are the first two measures:
Now, if that's what it sounded like when you played it let's keep going.
Otherwise you can press pause, try it a few more times on your own.
Now let's look at the next two measures.
We have this TI-KI-TI here. Starts on F-sharp, and we step up.
And then you'll notice on the last note of this TI-KI-TI, we have a staccato. TI-KI-TI
and then we're stepping down: TI-TI
So let's practice that measure once. TI-KI-TI TI-TI Now you try.
Good, now looking at the next measure, what interval do you see?
That's right, it's the interval of a fourth. We go from E up to A,
and there's a slur mark, which tells us to make it legato, and then the second one's a staccato. So we have TI-TI.
Now you try.
TI-TI
One more time.
And then it skips down to F-sharp, and then D, so putting that all together, we have TI-TI TI-TI
One legato slur, and then three staccatos.
TI-TI TI-TI Now you try.
Now starting at measure three, putting measures three and four together, it sounds like this:
Now press pause, and practice that five times on your own or until you feel confident, then press play to go on.
All right, now let's try to put all of line one together.
It's going to sound like this:
Now press pause, and on your own try to put it all together on line one. Press play when you're ready to go onto line two.
All right, taking a look at line two what do you notice?
That's right, it's almost identical to line one. Can you find anywhere that's different.
If you said the ending you're correct. Let's look at the very last measure.
Instead of TI-TI TI-TI like we had on line one, this time it goes TI-TI TA.
RE SO DO. Let's practice that once.
Now you try.
Good, so all of line two together will sound like this:
Now press pause and try playing the whole thing.
Then when you're ready to try playing along with me or hear me play it, you can press play to go on.
All right, let's try playing the whole thing together. If you'd rather just listen that's fine,
or if you're ready to try playing with me that's great too
You'll notice that our tempo indication is allegro.
Since we're just learning it, we may not go all the way up to allegro, but let's give it a shot.
Also I'll be playing the left hand part too. Today you're just focusing on the right hand, and we'll learn how to add the left hand in the next lesson.
But to make it sound more interesting, I'll go ahead and do both.
Here we go. I'll count, and this one's in 2/4 time so I'll just count 1 2, and then we'll start on the next beat.
Here we go: 1 2
Repeat sign.
Nice work learning to play the right hand of "Musette" by J.S. Bach.
Practice it until you feel 100 percent confident, and then we'll learn to play it with the left hand.
Thanks for watching, and see you next time!
Hey Princess, do you know what Johan Sebastian Bach's favorite gymnastics move was?
No, what?
The bachflip!
Hahaha