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 5 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 1 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 5 on the list is... ...and so on and so forth. So Number 5 on the
list is the Bach Prelude in C. Now we all know 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... it's filled with this arpeggios pattern. 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... If you were to play it all together, this is
actually C major chord, right? It's just broken up and the next one is a D minor 7 chord on with
7 in the bottom. Now if what I'm saying doesn't really make sense to you, it doesn't matter.
But it's still good to start playing pieces and just get a feel for chord shapes on the
piano. So great for learning chords - the Bach Prelude in C. Okay moving on to
Number 4 on our list. Number 4 is... ...so on and so forth. So this one is
the Gymnopedie Number 1 by Eric 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 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 hand is 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 beginners start to
play this piece, they play something like that. So how did that sound to you? Hopefully you
can pick up that the first time of playing in this 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. All right, so this is not good. The right way to
do it is let's say you're playing out of 10 this might be playing at a level 7 out of 10 for the
right hand. And left hand, you should probably play at A maybe about a level 3 so something like
that. Much softer... just in the background, right and try to really bring this one out. 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 3 on our list so... ...so we all know this one. This is Fur Elise
by Beethoven. Now what is this piece good for, I think, the 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. This next one is not Legato. 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... 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 strike
the next note then do you lift the first note up. And you're dealing with this
sort of millisecond fine tuning so... 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 pianist, you might find that a lot of your pieces are
sort of confined to a position. So for example, in C position right,,, something like that. Um,
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, Do you see that? So the range of the notes you
need now start from this E 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 2 of our list, this one is personally
my favorite 1 out of the 5. Number 2 is ... ...so on and so forth. So Number 2 on the list
is the Chopin Prelude Number 4 in E minor. This is a fantastic piece to work on because it will teach you lots about chords. So you can
see here from the sheet music that the left hand was playing a whole bunch of these 3 note chords
right? That are just so hauntingly beautiful. 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 3 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, for
example, that was mentioned before in the video. Right, so most beginners might
start to play something like that... So as you could hear that this wasn't a
very polished sound because there wasn't a nice balance between them. 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
7, this might be playing a level 3... ...stand out more... so on and so forth. And moving now to
Number 1. And Number 1 is this piece... ...so on and so forth. So Number 1 on the list is
Moonlight Sonata Movement 1 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, that are playing the chords. So if you were
to, you know, at the start of these broken chords if you were to join them together.
It's a great piece to just... 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 some bar 5 here, so you have... I don't know if you can see what's happening
here. The right hand is sort of like playing 2 voices. I was playing that a lot louder than
this inner voice of... so just have a look again. 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 4 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 sharps to play so knowing which
are black keys and which are white keys. Okay and there you go guys, that concludes the 5 Easy
Classical Pieces that I think no one should skip. Which one of these 5 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.
