How to Analyze a Piano Song in C Major

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Part of the video series: How to Play Piano Melodies in C

Summary: Learn some great tips on how to analyze a piano song in the key of C major with expert instruction from a professional jazz composer in this free video clip on music theory and piano techniques.

Views: 518 | Tags: chords, theory, piano, keys, scale, notes, major, minor, melodies, musical instruments


About the Expert

Ryan Larson Ryan Larson is a young jazz composer whose teaching technique focuses on the basics of music theory in all twelve keys. When applying his twelve-key technique... read more

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Video Transcript

How to Analyze a Piano Song in C Major

So now that we have this pattern down and we know how to find our numbers, we're going to go through our first tune. So we have C right here, right? I drew a little arrow down to it, see, so we can count them. One, two, three, four, five. Okay, five. One, five, six, five, six, five, four, three, two, three, four, three, three, one, one-flat, three, two, one, seven, six, five, four, six, one, three, one, seven, one. So you have this next melodic line, and you can see how easily we already read through it. And we're going to take this and run it through some different keys to even more alliterate how easy it is and that we're just reading in a pattern. But again, I want to go over the note values. Even though a lot of the tunes you're going to be playing you've probably already heard because they're jazz tunes and you're more likely to look up the tunes you know. But just so you know the different note values, these are quarter notes, each get a beat. One, two, three, four. Eighth notes, two to a beat. One and two and. This is a triplet, one, this is three quarter notes to two beats. So you have one, two, three and a, three and a, one and a, two and a. And then you have sixteenth notes. One e and a, two e and a, three e and a. And there's rests and other things in there, but what we're mainly worrying about right now is finding the actual note values.

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