("Fur Elise" playing)
- There are thousands of great classical pieces out there.
As a beginner, you might be wondering,
I want to work on a great piece
that is manageable for my level, but where do I start?
Hi, my name is Jazer, I'm a pianist.
And in this video, I want to share with you
five easy classical pieces
that you shouldn't skip as a beginner.
In each piece I will play the start
and briefly explain to you from a teacher's perspective
why these are great pieces to work on.
All five pieces I've selected in this video are fun,
beautiful, and famous.
And on top of that,
you will also learn many musical skills and concepts
that will later help you
to play even harder stuff in the future.
I will count them down from the easiest
to the hardest piece
so make sure you stick to the end
to find out what number one is.
Before we get to the countdown,
make sure you like and subscribe to this channel
so you stay in touch
with more of these free piano lessons and tutorials.
Okay, number five on the list is
("Preludio I" playing)
And so on and so forth.
So number five on the list is the Bach Prelude in C.
Now we all know that this is a beautiful piece,
but let me share with you why it's a great piece to study.
The piece is in C major,
which means there are not too many black keys.
It does change keys every now and then,
so there are a couple of sharps and flats,
but basically from the start to the end,
most of it are white keys,
so a great piece to learn for a beginner.
It's also filled with repeating patterns.
So if you looked on the score there.
("Preludio I" playing) (singing)
It's filled with this arpeggio,
it's kinda bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum,
and it's like that basically throughout the entire piece,
just with different notes.
So you learn one pattern
and you apply it to basically the entire piece.
So quite a good little piece to start for beginners.
This piece will also teach you a lot about chords.
So this piece is filled with broken chords.
So this first one here.
("Prelude No. 1" playing)
When you play it all together,
this is actually C major chord, right?
It's just broken up.
And the next one is Dm7 chord,
with seven in the bottom.
Now, if what I'm saying doesn't really make sense to you
doesn't matter, but (piano music)
it's still good to stop playing pieces
and just get a feel for chord shapes on the piano.
(piano music)
beautiful. (piano music)
So, great for learning chords.
The Bach Prelude in C.
Okay. Moving on to number four on our list.
Number four is ("Gymnopedie No. 1" playing)
So on and so forth.
So this one is the "Gymnopedie No. 1" by Erik Satie.
As you could hear
a really, really peaceful and calming piece,
I always love playing this
after coming home from a stressful day of work,
it just really calms me down and it makes me feel happy.
So aside from creating beautiful music,
what this piece will really help you to do
is also develop a sense of volume control
between your two hands.
So in piano playing most of the time,
right-hand is playing the melody
and left hands playing the harmony, right?
So right-hand generally needs to be louder
than the left-hand.
So let me show you.
Okay for most of the time,
when begin to start to play this piece,
they play something like that.
("Gymnopedie No. 1" playing)
So how did that sound to you?
Hopefully you can pick up
that the first time of playing in his video
was a bit better than the second time.
And that's because in the second time of playing,
the right hand and left-hand was playing at the same volume,
which is not effective for this piece, right?
If we play them at the same volume,
the left hand sort of covers up the right hand.
("Gymnopedie No. 1" playing)
All right, so this is not good.
The right way to do it is
let's say you're playing it out of 10.
This might be playing it at a level of seven out of 10
for the right-hand.
And left-hand you should probably play
at maybe about a level three.
So something like that. ("Gymnopedie No. 1" playing)
much softer.
Just in the background, right?
And try to really break this one out.
("Gymnopedie No. 1" playing)
Did you hear that?
So a lot nicer control there, a lot nicer balance there.
So this is what this piece is really great for.
Just trying to build a nice balance
between your different hands.
Okay. Moving on to number three on our list.
("Fur Elise" playing)
So we all know this one, this is "Fur Elise" by Beethoven.
Now, what is this piece good for?
I think that "Fur Elise" is really good for legato playing.
Now what's legato?
L-E-G-A-T-O.
Legato playing means smooth playing,
which means connecting each note to the next note.
So for example, this is legato.
("Fur Elise" playing)
This next one is not legato.
("Fur Elise" playing)
So as a beginner pianist,
one of the things that is really important to develop
is a really good legato playing, right?
So how to join. ("Fur Elise" playing)
So legato playing is not easy to master, right?
Because you're dealing with really, really fine movements.
So legato playing basically is you want to play a note
and as you struck the next note,
then do you live the first note up,
and you're dealing
with this sort of millisecond fine tuning, so.
("Fur Elise" playing)
So "Fur Elise" is really good for building a good sense
of legato playing.
so "Fur Elise" is also really good
for working on a piece that moves around the keyboard.
If you're a beginner pan is you might find
that a lot of your pieces
are sort of confined to a position.
So for example, in C position, right?
(piano music)
Something like that.
And "Fur Elise" is really good
for just basically widening your range, right?
Giving you something to work on that widens your range.
So for example, ("Fur Elise" playing)
Do you see that?
So the range of the notes you need
now start from (low piano notes) this E,
(high piano notes) up to that E over there.
So just a nice piece to start to extend your range
from these confined simple positions.
Now, moving on to number two of our list.
This one is personally my favorite one out of a five.
Number two is ("Prelude No. 4" playing)
So on and so forth.
So number two on the list
is the Chopin Prelude no. 4 in E minor.
This is a fantastic piece to work on
because it will teach you lots about chords.
So you could see here from the sheet music
that the left-hand was playing a whole bunch
of these three-note chords right?
They're just so hauntingly beautiful.
("Prelude No. 4" playing) (singing)
So it's really great
for the left-hand to learn these chord shapes.
Now, one of the challenging things about this piece is
because the left hand is playing all these three-note chords
and the right hand is playing just a single note melody,
it can be hard to balance the volume of your hands,
just like the "Gymnopedie" example
that was mentioned before in the video, right?
So most beginners might start to play something like that.
("Prelude No. 4" playing)
So, as you could hear there,
this wasn't a very polished sound
because there wasn't a nice balance between them, right?
The left and right hand were playing
pretty much at the same volume.
So what we want to do is
just to refine our touch a little bit.
So this may be playing at level seven,
this may be pulling at level three.
("Prelude No. 4" playing)
Stand out more.
("Prelude No. 4" playing) (singing)
So on and so forth.
And moving now to number one.
And number one is this piece ("Moonlight Sonata" playing)
So on and so forth.
So number one on the list is
"Moonlight Sonata movement one" by Beethoven.
Now, aside from the absolute beauty of this piece,
there are also some great educational benefits
of learning this piece.
The first one is chords.
Now in this particular piece, it's the right hand
that are playing the chords.
So if you were to,
at the start, there are these broken chords.
(piano music)
If you want to join them together.
(piano music)
It's a great piece to just (piano music)
It's a great piece to learn
to understand these chord shapes on the piano.
Another great benefit of learning the "Moonlight Sonata"
is the right hand split voicing.
Now this is not easy to do, but it can be a great challenge.
So towards bar five here,
so you have your ("Moonlight Sonata" playing)
I don't know if you can see what's happening here.
The right hand is sort of like playing two voices.
I was playing that a lot louder than this inner voice
of ("Moonlight Sonata" playing)
So just have a look again.
("Moonlight Sonata" playing)
So not easy to do,
a really great and educational challenge for beginners.
And last but not least the "Moonlight Sonata"
is in C sharp minor,
which means it has four sharps to begin with.
And even throughout the piece,
there are lots of sharps throughout.
So this piece in particular, for me,
when I was learning as a child,
it really made me more comfortable with sharps,
they used to scare me a lot.
But after working on this piece,
I got more comfortable with key signatures,
and of course in particular, C sharp minor,
and knowing what shops to play.
So knowing which a black keys and which a white keys.
Okay. And there you go, guys,
that concludes the five easy classical pieces
that I think no one should skip.
Which one of these five are your favorite?
Let me know in the comments below.
Also let me know if there are any other
beginner piano classical pieces
that you think other beginners should learn.
Comment below, please.
That's all for today, catch you in the next video guys.
(quick piano music)