Trois Nouvelles Études: No. 1 in F minor, by Chopin
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How to learn Trois Nouvelles Études: No. 1 in F minor
- Hear it through at Slow (60 bpm). Open it in the reader, choose Slow, and follow the page with your eyes without playing. As it plays, count 2 to the bar.
- Learn the right hand of bars 1 to 8 on its own, in F minor. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: C7, Fm, E♭7 and A♭. Play each one as a block in your left hand and say its name, so you know what the harmony is before the left hand has to move.
- Learn the left hand of the same bars on its own. Keep it quiet and even: it is the floor the tune stands on.
- Put hands together at Slow, 60 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (90 bpm) once Slow feels easy three times in a row. Then learn the next 8 bars the same way: right hand, left hand, together.
- Play the whole piece (about 2 minutes) from the start, at whatever speed keeps it going. A steady run with a few slips beats a fast one that stops.
About this piece
One of three short studies Chopin wrote in 1839 for a piano method compiled by Moscheles and Fétis, quieter and more intimate than his famous Op. 10 and Op. 25 études. Its whole lesson is rhythm: the right hand sings in threes while the left hand moves in fours underneath, and the two must sound easy together.
How to play it
Practise the three against four slowly with the pattern 'pass the bread and butter', then forget the counting and let each hand keep its own steady pulse. Keep the right hand legato and singing; the left hand should be softer and smooth.
Reading it, and printing it
The score opens in Artform's reader, which shows the music as engraved notation and plays it back so you can hear the line before you try it. You can slow the tempo down, loop a passage that is not working yet, and print the page when you would rather have paper on the stand.
The file itself is MusicXML, which MuseScore, Sibelius, Finale and Dorico all open, so the notes are yours to keep whatever you read them in.
Edition: Mutopia Project #1895, in the public domain. Converted to MusicXML by Artform and checked note for note against the original.
More free Chopin sheet music
Who Chopin was
Polish-French composer and pianist who wrote almost nothing that wasn't for solo piano, a rare and total devotion. He left Warsaw at twenty, weeks before Russia crushed a Polish uprising, and never went back. Paris made him famous: intimate salons rather than concert halls suited both his fragile health and his introspective music. A decade-long relationship with the writer George Sand, and winters spent together on Majorca, produced some of his boldest preludes. He died of tuberculosis at thirty-nine, reportedly asking that his heart be carried back to Warsaw, which it was, sealed in a jar of cognac. What he left behind, nocturnes, mazurkas, ballades, remains some of the most personal music…
Learn the music behind it
Reading a piece and understanding it are different skills. If you want the harmony under this one, the chord trainer teaches chords the way songs use them, and the scale pages cover the fingering for every key, including F minor.