Symphony No. 5
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How hard is it?
Easy, 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
- 500 ms
- Ornaments
- 0
- Quick leaps
- 2
- Span
- 15
- Black keys
- 25%
per note, at 120 bpm
nothing to decorate
of a fourth or wider
semitones, D4 to F5
of the notes
- nothing in it moves faster than about 500 ms a note, so the hands are never rushed
- it spans 15 semitones, wider than an octave
- it covers 16 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 2 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
Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 in C minor Op. 67 (1808), first movement, public domain. From mutopiaproject.org/ftp/BeethovenLv/O67/Symphony5_1 - midi_read.py Symphony5_1.mid 0 16 --track 9 Track 9 is the first violins. Four statements of the four-note figure, which is why the phrases come out four notes each: each one IS a phrase, and the lesson's breath between them is the famous pause. The only thing changed from the source is the two LONG holds: the second and third statements end on notes the reader gives 8.5 and 6.5 beats, because in the score they are a fermata followed by a rest and a rest is folded into the note before it (the rule the folk songs here already follow). Eight and a half beats of one note is dead air in a lesson, so both are cut to three and the phrase breath carries the pause. The other two holds are the source's own 2.5. Its five notes are C D E flat F G, which lands on white keys a sixth up, so the diatonic instruments can play it after all.
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.