Rag, by Franck
Every score here is public domain, free to read, print and keep. Open it in the browser and it plays, at whatever tempo you can read it.
Get the practice plan for Rag
Here it is. Check your inbox for day 1.
- Hear it through at Slow (45 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 G major. Say the note names out loud the first time through, then play it three times without stopping.
- Find the chords under it: D7, Ddim7, G and Gmaj7. 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, 45 bpm. Bars 1 to 8 only. Stop after every wrong note and play that bar again before moving on.
- Move up to Steady (68 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.
What kind of piece this is
A rag is march form with the right hand syncopated against a left hand that keeps strict time, the sound of American parlours around 1900.
How to play it
The left hand is a metronome and must not move. Every effect in the piece comes from the right hand disagreeing with it.
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.
More free Franck sheet music
Who Franck was
Belgian-born organist who spent most of his life at the console of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris improvising for a congregation, and who wrote almost everything he is remembered for after the age of fifty. His pupils were devoted to the point of forming a school around him. The great works, the Symphony, the Violin Sonata, the Prelude, Chorale and Fugue, all come from the last decade of a life that had shown very little sign of them, which makes him the standing argument against writing anybody off.
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 G major.