# please someone help me with this



## MichaelTupper

I just went to the music store and bought a tchaikovsky anthology. Now, I must say i'm somewhere between beginner and intermediate on the piano. I know how to read piano sheets, and I remember most things from lessons I had when was a kid. So I got home very excited to learn swan lake, but as soon as I started playing, something sounded off. I played a little more and indeed it seemed like a bastardized version of the song written by a 5-year-old. I took a picture of the page of the book along with a recording of me playing the few first notes which I'll try to attach to this post. I don't know if i'm reading it wrong, which I might, because again, i'm far from being a musical expert, I just enjoy dabbling in piano. But it frustrates me that I spent 35 dollars on something that sounds so wrong. I went online and found someone else's sheet and that one sounded right, so I suspect my book is the culprit. Hmm ok well I managed to attach the picture of the book and mirror it but the site wont let me upload the .wma file.
I don't know if you can see it well. If you do and know whats wrong, can you help me?


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## Norse

There are no obvious mistakes/misprints in melody or harmony, although some of the accidentals are hard to see clearly. I'm not sure if that's the kind of "wrong" you were thinking about, or if you just think it sounds bad as an arrangement. It's a very basic 'beginners' arrangement, which almost necessarily means it won't sound very 'rich' or anything like that. Not every orchestral piece can be 'translated' easily to the piano, especially when it's supposed to be easy to play. In this case I think the 'accompaniment' is strings (tremolo) and harp, and I think maybe the problem you have are the dull 'on every beat' chords in the left hand, which if you don't play them very softly (and with pedal) will give the music a much more march-like quality and sound really bad. But it's hard know exactly what you think is wrong.


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## PetrB

Norse has pretty much nailed it: 
A too-simple piano arrangement of an orchestral piece which will never directly translate to 'pianistic' or 'full sounding.'

The segment is a pronounced melody over sustained chords in the orchestra. Without the ability to sustain, and orchestral color, a 'basic' chart not at all well thought out for the piano is going to sound as deadly dull as the one in your collection.

If you can return that collection for a credit to buy something else, I would do that immediately. What you have is not just simplified, but not at all any sort of decent piano arrangement. What you've shown is the most simplistic and utilitarian of possible ways to do it. That does not bode well for the other orchestral extracts in that particular collection, a formula for continued disappointment.

Orchestral reductions come in a handful of different types - you will see reductions with 'all the notes from the score' which are physically impossible for one person to negotiate on the piano. Others are 'within hand's reach' but are not at all pianistic, nor do they sound well. Rarely, you get one fairly true to reproducing the effect of the orchestra which is actually well written for both the instrument and a player.

The cliche solution for the left-hand chords in your example is usually some sort of tremolo, where you rapidly alternate the bass note with the upper thirds - which 'sustains' the sonority of the chord. The strings in the original are played, Tremolo, remember, which not only sustains the chords but gives them a feeling of atmospheric mystery and tension.

The device is as old as the hills, and has an unfortunate way of reminding us of piano player's accompaniments to silent films (But this is Tchaikovsky, so perhaps that particular Nickleodeon sort of melodrama works.) 

You might wish to try the tremolo starting with the upper two pitches vs. the bass. I would be surprised if tremolo is not exactly what is found as a notated or written directive with those chords in the piano reduction of the ballet for rehearsal purposes.

There are other tried, true, standard configurations which can be learned to 'fluff out' or fill out such a skeletal example as you've shown. Another is an arpeggiation, say the bass note and then a series of inversions of the chord (in this piece, eighth notes, no less, no more.) Those other standard configurations are 'picked up' by playing numbers of orchestral reductions, or other piano arrangements. Many are truly cliche, which is not in itself a negative: they are 'coins of the realm' which have passed through many composers and arrangers hands, musical currency which works.

The well-used cliche is a thing widely recognized and understood, and can be a very direct way to get the sound you want -- it is which you use, and how well-placed and suited to the piece they are, which makes all the difference.


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## Nariette

As Norse and PetrB explained, this is a transcription/arrangement from an orchestra piece, meant to accompany ballet. Being a player myself, I've never tried to play an arrangement myself. They only sound okay (in my opinion) when the player has great skills, or they sound horrid. 
People say "the piano is an orchestra by itself" but the piano cannot capture the way the orchestra sounds, just play the notes. I think orchestra pieces are beautiful, because all the different instrument are combined so well with eachother.


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## Jaws

MichaelTupper said:


> I just went to the music store and bought a tchaikovsky anthology. Now, I must say i'm somewhere between beginner and intermediate on the piano. I know how to read piano sheets, and I remember most things from lessons I had when was a kid. So I got home very excited to learn swan lake, but as soon as I started playing, something sounded off. I played a little more and indeed it seemed like a bastardized version of the song written by a 5-year-old. I took a picture of the page of the book along with a recording of me playing the few first notes which I'll try to attach to this post. I don't know if i'm reading it wrong, which I might, because again, i'm far from being a musical expert, I just enjoy dabbling in piano. But it frustrates me that I spent 35 dollars on something that sounds so wrong. I went online and found someone else's sheet and that one sounded right, so I suspect my book is the culprit. Hmm ok well I managed to attach the picture of the book and mirror it but the site wont let me upload the .wma file.
> I don't know if you can see it well. If you do and know whats wrong, can you help me?


I am assuming that you are an adult who knows how this piece should sound? What you have bought was probably produced for a child to play so that they could either play a tune that they recognised or learn how the tune from this section of Swan Lake goes. This kind of music is not suitable for musically educated adults, (adults who have listened to a lot of different classical music.) This is one of the examples of why some music and music education systems originally designed for children don't work for adult music education. One music education system which I am very suspicious of when used with adults is the Kodaly system,this was originally designed to educate children and it seems to me to be extremely unsuitable for work with adults.


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