Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2

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

278 ms

per note, at 108 bpm

Ornaments

0

nothing to decorate

Quick leaps

1

of a fourth or wider

Span

16

semitones, A#4 to D6

Black keys

38%

of the notes

• its quickest passage asks for about 278 ms a note
• it spans 16 semitones, wider than an octave
• 38% 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 down 3 semitones
• Violin at written pitch
• Accordion down 1 octave
• Handpan not this one
• Guzheng not this one
• Drums not this one
• Xylophone not this one

Where this transcription came from

Frédéric Chopin, Nocturne in E flat major Op. 9 No. 2 (1832), public domain - the first phrase pair, through the bar-4 cadence and its written-out turn. From mutopiaproject.org/ftp/ChopinFF/O9 - midi_read.py chopin_nocturne_op9_n2.mid 0 29 --track 2 --scale 2 Written with the eighth as the beat; its 12/8 swings four dotted groups to a bar, so beatsPerBar is twelve. E flat major arrives spelled in sharps; this opening is diatonic in E flat, so even the seven-note boards can take it, moved into their C.

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.