Learning to play Ballade Pour Adeline

Hi, I'm new here!
First of all, I'm 21 of age and I have always want to learn how to play piano, there is an old piano sitting downstair in my living room but no one in my family knows how to play it(Sister quitted learning at grade 2)!It became sorta like a holding table with books, magazine, decoration all piled onto it.

I am on a personal quest, I wish to learn the piece Ballade Pour Adeline in 6 months and play it for the girl of my dream! In your opinion, is it possible? I can read abit of notes given time, I can write them all down on the sheet music and I even used markers(non-permanent) to write down the notes on the piano keys!

Ofcourse It's possible, given the time. However, if you are going to learn it by writing down the notes however I recommend you to listen to the parts of the song always while you play the notes in that part, to make sure your timing isn't off That's just my suggestion!

Hey there! welcome to the community!

ahhh a lovely song! I'm not sure what your finger technique is like, I won't lie to you, learning that piece in 6 months when you're a beginner isn't going to be easy, you'd probably need to spend about an hour a day or more working at the piano to be able to play it. The first thing you need to do is play some scales, learn how to read the sheet music, and get started learning the piece as quickly as possible.

I wish you good luck!

I hope to see future posts from you in the future!

You can do alot in 6 months, it depends on how often you play, how much experience you got with the piano, and how hard a piece is.

Ballade Pour Adeline doesnt look too difficult, what you can do is go through the sheet, and split it so you learn 2 bars a day,
that will be 60 memorized bars in 1 month, and 360 bars memorized after 6 months.

My midi shows 44 bars, so you should be able to have the whole song memorized in a month if you memorize 2 bars every day.

But make sure you have some time to practice the fully memorized piece before you play it, in my opinion a piece can never be done.

No problem, I have a piano right at home. I'm so fuelled to learn this piece! Gona get the scores and start writing those notes down.

However I have a question, what do you mean by learn some scales?
What are scales? I been through the video but I still do not get the theory behind scales =/. And yeah, finger technique sucks. I tried playing a simple pop piece, a chinese song and sometimes i go "oh &$^#, which finger to that note?"

Meric wrote:No problem, I have a piano right at home. I'm so fuelled to learn this piece! Gona get the scores and start writing those notes down.

However I have a question, what do you mean by learn some scales?
What are scales? I been through the video but I still do not get the theory behind scales =/. And yeah, finger technique sucks. I tried playing a simple pop piece, a chinese song and sometimes i go "oh &$^#, which finger to that note?"

Welcome in our little musiclover community

Here are the links for the sheet music and the midi file if you would not have it by chance.
http://fortepiano.szm.com/BALLADEPOURADELINE.pdf 43 measures in this version
http://fortepiano.szm.com/balladepouradeline2.mid

I am only a beginner like you but I have a chance to meet a teacher in the college every week, she taught me a good approach to learn the music.
She always makes me start with the last bar and then go backward... add one more previous to what you already learnt to play.
I resisted for a long time to use this method but now Im learning a little challanging piece for me and I realized it is worth to learn it that way. Every new bar you study you can keep continue playing what your fingers already know.

Plus I know fingering is something private but for a beginner it help if someone who already knows how to play would hint you with finger to use. I like that because it is a big help on my level... so maybe you could ask someone to do that for you.
( Although Im sure you could find video posted on Youtube maybe that can help too )

Good luck on learning it, dont give it up ok?

Hello thank you for replying.

Im abit confuse when you say study from the last bar and go backward ? I don't get what you mean haha.

I can try to explane what is meant by that.

In a song there are several bars. Often many many bars!
Lets say you have learned 7 bars, right?!
Then you start at the beginning on the 7th bar, and play that!
Then you start at the beginning of the 6th bar, and play that... So the 5th , 4th, 3rd, 2end and 1st...

So you dont play it backvards, but play all bars the right way(but in the wrong direction)

Hope that was understandable

Meric wrote:Hello thank you for replying.

Im abit confuse when you say study from the last bar and go backward ? I don't get what you mean haha.

Of course you dont go backward... although maybe you should try and we will see how the music sounds like that

Lets say the piece is 10 bars long.
So first you learn bar 10 very well
next your learn bar 9 very well and add bar 10
next you learn bar 8 very well and add the known 9 and 10
and so on ....
Hope thats better now.

maggiekedves wrote:Lets say the piece is 10 bars long.
So first you learn bar 10 very well
next your learn bar 9 very well and add bar 10
next you learn bar 8 very well and add the known 9 and 10
and so on ....
Hope thats better now.

Ah... Missed that detailj =)
So its like:

10
9-10
8-9-10
7-8-9-10
6-7-8-9-10
5-6-7-8-9-10
4-5-6-7-8-9-10
3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10
2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10

Then suddanly yo know a song Hehe

thomandy wrote:

maggiekedves wrote:Lets say the piece is 10 bars long.
So first you learn bar 10 very well
next your learn bar 9 very well and add bar 10
next you learn bar 8 very well and add the known 9 and 10
and so on ....
Hope thats better now.

Ah... Missed that detailj =)
So its like:

10
9-10
8-9-10
7-8-9-10
6-7-8-9-10
5-6-7-8-9-10
4-5-6-7-8-9-10
3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10
2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10
1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10

Then suddanly yo know a song Hehe

Thanks for cheering me up you are funny But that right... this is how I meant.

yup! sometimes i actually get my students to play the song backwards as in the notes actually in their reverse order, it works surprisingly well for some things!

I wouldn't recommend it for every day use though, only if you've got a VERY VERY stubborn pattern of notes you can't memorize.

But yes, the backwards way of learning bars is useful.

Sometimes for bigger pieces I learn the last page first and then the first page next, and I add pages and pages together until I crash in the middle.

sort of like

(5 page song)

learn page 5

learn page 1

learn page 4

learn page 2

learn page 3 CRASH! boom!

new song is learned