5/14 Blog 7: Finally (Halfway) There!

     I finally finished learning the first half of Fur Elise! Fine, I only finished learning half of it. Specifically, up until here.

I may have slightly underestimated how difficult this is to learn. Half of this already shortened version of the song may not seem like much, but believe me, it certainly is for someone like me. I have only been practicing with very slow songs until now, and Fur Elise has a much faster tempo than those. It is around thirty more beats per minute than Sweden, a song I learned previously.

    Also, after practicing the same notes a thousand times, the music does not sound like music anymore, especially when I was practicing certain bars at a time. I was always doubting whether I was playing the right notes. Listening to the recording, I am glad it sounds somewhat good. Here is the first half of Fur Elise:

    I know, I know, the timing is off and I will continue to work on that. Hopefully, I can finish learning all the sheet music next week as well because I am now more familiar with how Fur Elise goes. 

    I also realized I never learned what scales really meant in music theory, so I decided to. With the help of this video, I learned scales really just had to do with the patterns of intervals. For example, if you play notes going up like this: W W H W W W H, where W is whole step and H is half step, then that is a major scale. If the scale is G major, you start on G, the root note. The key signature consists of all the accidentals on the scale. The key signature of G major is thus F#. The minor scale is similar but has a different pattern of intervals: W H W W H W W.

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