Die Forelle

How hard is it?

Hard, and not because someone remembered it that way. These five numbers come off the melody itself, the same way the app grades its lessons.

Fastest passage

250 ms

per note, at 120 bpm

Ornaments

0

nothing to decorate

Quick leaps

1

of a fourth or wider

Span

10

semitones, G4 to F5

Black keys

72%

of the notes

• its quickest passage asks for about 250 ms a note
• 72% of its notes fall on black keys
• it covers 29 notes across 4 phrases, which is how it is taught in the app, one breath at a time

What you can play it on

5 of the instruments in the workshop can teach this tune. Where the number differs from "all of them", the reason is the instrument, not the song: a diatonic kalimba has no sharps, and a pentatonic handpan or guzheng has no fourth or seventh at all.

• Piano at written pitch
• Guitar down 1 octave
• Kalimba up 4 semitones
• Violin at written pitch
• Accordion at written pitch
• Handpan not this one
• Guzheng not this one
• Drums not this one
• Xylophone not this one

Where this transcription came from

Franz Schubert, Die Forelle D 550 (1817), public domain - The Trout, the opening period of the vocal line, in the song's own D flat major (spelled in sharps, the app's one naming). From mutopiaproject.org/ftp/SchubertF/D550 - midi_read.py forelle.mid 0 29 --track 2 --scale 2 The right hand plays the rippling water figure around the voice, so the backing takes the left hand alone (track 4).

Mutopia Project

Every melody in this catalogue is public domain and was transcribed from a named source, then checked against it by a tool rather than by ear. None of them was written down from memory - which is the usual reason two versions of a folk tune on the internet disagree.