Comptine – Yann Tiersen

LESSON TWO

This is Lesson Two of the Musicarta.com Comptine mini-series. Please do Lesson One first – the Comptine tab in the navbar will take you there or you can click through here.If you are continuing the Lessons, warm up by recapping Lesson One anyway.

Note: The following material is for personal study use only. Respect artist’s copyright and always conform to the copyright legislation of the country you live in.

About the Comptine

The Comptine is from his soundtrack for the film Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001) directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and starring Audrey Tautou.

The piece’s full title is: 'Comptine d’un autre été: L'après-midi', translated (by the author) as ‘Nursery rhymes of summers past: The afternoon.’

Buy the digital sheet music (published by Music Sales) from www.musicroom.com via this link, or buy it in a book - Yann Tiersen: Six Pieces Pour Piano - Volume 2, Editions Bourgès - also from http://www.musicroom.com Buy the soundtrack (released by Virgin Records) from www.amazon.com, or from your favourite online store.

• YouTube video 1;

• YouTube video 2

• YouTube video 3

Using MIDI files to help you learn

To benefit, you need to download the files and have an application that can play them. Musicarta recommends MidiPiano, a small, free, reliable application that's easy to download and use. Learn how via the left hand link in the table below. Download the MIDI files for this module via the right hand link below.

Take the time to download MidiPiano and the module MIDI files. You only have to do it once, and it will prove a valuable addition to your learning resources. If you need help ‘unpacking’ your zipped MIDI file folder, there are full instructions on the Musicarta MidiPiano page (link, above left).

Note: All Musicarta MIDI files are also available via the Musicarta MIDI file download page . Bookmark and visit regularly to see what’s on offer!

More right hand figures

Find the right place in one of the YouTube videos listed above or in your CD track or mp3.

Here are the notes used in this section:

For the actual performance, the right hand plays pairs of notes – the top one first, then the bottom one. (These notes are chord tones of the E minor, G, B minor and D chords. Chord tones are always ‘first choice’ for right hand notes.)

If you listen to this section in the recorded performance, what you notice is that the second right hand note in each pair comes “off the beat”. It is ‘anticipated’ – played a quaver beat earlier than you expect.

Your shorthand sketch for working out how to play it might look like this::

Using the keyboards and the shorthand sketch, copy the audio file and play the section. Here's the audio file again:

Making variation

The right hand in the section you’ve just learned plays pairs of chord tones of the four chords – Em, G, Bm, D, You can easily make a variation on this section by following the rhythmic pattern but using different chord tones.

Here are the keyboards again, but this time with all the possible chord tones shaded.

Note that you're not expected to hold down all those notes at once - except with the sustain pedal on your piano/keyboard. You just want to 'see' the notes as available Em, G, Bm, D chord tones.

Try out any pairs of right hand chord tones (the shaded notes), playing them on the first and fourth notes of your left hand B T M T B T M T pattern. The original pairs all play highest first them lowest, but you could change that.

For ear training, try copying this audio example (before you watch the MIDI clip):

Next section: Double notes in the right hand

The audio/MIDI clips are just about ‘finding the notes’, not the performance itself.

You will want to learn the four-note right hand chords on their own, using the voice movement diagrams. Use two hands and any fingers you like, and play through the four chords over and over until you know them.

ONE THING AT A TIME!! The finger work in the right hand in this section is difficult – especially if you’re not 100% sure of the four chords. Follow the method: Learn the notes, learn the fingering, 'prepare the hand’.

Here’s the performance of this section:

The keyboards above show the pairs of notes and the fingering to use.

Broken chord practice

Here are some sample broken chord patterns for the first (E minor) chord.

There is no audio clip. See-and-hear the MIDI clip YTC_M21 for guidance.

Reading the practice patterns

To start seeing the patterns, read the following analysis carefully.

Four-note chords have a top (T) and a bottom note (B), and two middle notes – an upper middle note (U) and a lower middle note (L):

If you train yourself to see the chords in this way, you don’t have to read every single note of music, and you can much more easily apply the patterns to Comptine's other three chords. For example, here’s pattern 7 in E minor, then played using the B minor chord tones

The download sheet has all four chords marked up to help you practise.

This section performance

If you can’t stretch the two pairs, here’s an alternative you might like to try.

Here’s a reminder of the four-note BLUT shorthand:

Preparing the next patte

Here again, it’s essential to rehearse the hand positions, learn the fingering and practise jumping between the hand positions at tempo before you try to play it.

Here are the notes used shown on the keyboards. The right hand thumb uses two notes.

Prepare like this:

This exercise is purely about finding the notes and hopping between positions. Rhythm is immaterial. Right hand on its own first, then with plain chords in the left hand. Next, add the left hand broken chord pattern (at practice tempo), to see if you can keep up. When it comes to changing chords at the end of the bar, you have to know which notes you’re aiming at and which fingers will play them, but in practice you throw your right hand at the next chord position position and hope for the best. Practice makes perfect!

You can use any of these simplified ‘build-up’ versions in your interim performance. Much better to play a simplified version well than mess up the 'proper' version - or not play at all.

The full performance pattern

We just add a double-time 'waggle' to those two notes, using the middle note M.

Here’s an MS sketch of that:

You have to jump very quickly to the new chord at the end of the bar, because next, we are going to fill up the bar by breaking up the chord into bottom, middle, top notes (repeating) at the same speed as the last four notes. Next, see if you can repeat some of the right hand B, M, T notes without losing the left hand rhythm.

There are two patterns in the audio clips – both will make satisfactory interim performances. Here’s a shorthand sketch of one of them:

Because there are only three notes to repeat (B, M and T) but the rhythm groups the notes in fours (as you can see), each of our three B, M, T notes gets stressed in turn (shown in bold).

You will most probably need to practise the right hand on its own. Exaggerate the stress and say out loud as you play just the right hand

Saying out loud what you are wanting to do may feel a little unreal, but it’s a powerful technique – it calls on other parts of your brain which are already expert at what they do to help you.

Do the same measured one-handed performance as you look carefully at the way the notes are beamed (joined) together here.

Now back to the full two-handed version:

On to the end

When you get to the end of the most complicated section (the last one you learned, above, but an octave higher) finish by slowing down a lot and playing a simple, final E minor chord – E and G in the right hand and B and E in the left, reading down from the top.

Ear training - sample variations

Playing from memory is a large part of this. Printed music tends to monopolise your attention, when it should really only be a reminder.

Playing simple variations obviously places the initiative with you, the performer, and repeating sections with simple variations offers one opportunity to ‘get into’ the music as well as making your performance longer.

Musicarta believes that you should get maximum enjoyment out of your abilities, whatever they are, but you can’t dance to a CD that jumps and sticks, and you can’t get carried away if your performance stops and starts.

Work at it ‘both ends towards the middle’. Use the simplified ‘build-up’ versions for ‘keeping-going-at-all-costs’, and while you do detailed work on the things you find difficult.

The following table contains six sample variations on the Comptine chord sequence. Listen to them carefully and try to play them by ear (there is no manuscript).

There are lots more free online piano lessons at Musicarta.com. The Musicarta home page has an overview of the site's offerings, and the tabs in the left-hand navigation bar will take you through to the main section pages.

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