Moonlight Sonata
Loading the instrument… Pitch runs up the page and time across it. Touch a note to hear it, or play the whole melody. Sound could not load.
How hard is it?
Medium, 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
- 400 ms
- Ornaments
- 0
- Quick leaps
- 0
- Span
- 16
- Black keys
- 37%
per note, at 50 bpm
nothing to decorate
of a fourth or wider
semitones, G3 to B4
of the notes
- nothing in it moves faster than about 400 ms a note, so the hands are never rushed
- it spans 16 semitones, wider than an octave
- 37% of its notes fall on black keys
- it covers 41 notes across 6 phrases, which is how it is taught in the app, one breath at a time
What you can play it on
4 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 at written pitch
- Violin at written pitch
- Accordion at written pitch
- Kalimba not this one
- Handpan not this one
- Guzheng not this one
- Drums not this one
- Xylophone not this one
Where this transcription came from
Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 14 "Moonlight" Op. 27 No. 2 (1801), first movement, public domain. From mutopiaproject.org/ftp/BeethovenLv/O27/moonlight (moonlight-mids.zip) - midi_read.py moonlight1.mid 54 95 --track 2 --voice The first period of the famous theme: the dotted G sharp phrase and its answer, two bars where the triplets carry the music alone, then the second phrase to its cadence. This is the piece --voice exists for. Melody and triplet accompaniment share ONE staff, so plain top-line reading returns the arpeggios wherever the tune holds a long note. The separated voice gives the player the tune where it sounds and the triplets where they speak alone - one line at a time, every note still the right hand's own part; the triplets under the tune go to the backing with the bass. Triplet thirds are written 1 / 3 so three of them close a beat exactly. Its G sharps, C sharps and F sharps are the key of C sharp minor - keyboard, violin and guitar only, like Greensleeves.
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.
Learn it properly
Tapping the ribbon is not the same as playing it. In the app this melody arrives as a lesson: the notes fall in time on the instrument you picked, the board waits when you miss, and it counts the phrase again rather than moving on.