Ode to Joy

Ode to Joy is a piece by Beethoven, first published in 1824. In Freano it is rated “Medium” and is one of the app's 48 free public-domain pieces.

The app plays it at 96 beats per minute. The melody has 62 notes and takes about 40 seconds at full speed, so you can play it through several times in one short practice session.

It uses 6 different keys, from G3 to G4 — a span of 12 semitones.

Everything is on the white keys, which makes it a good choice in your first weeks.

The fastest notes are eighth notes.

It comes with a left-hand part in a broken chords pattern that we wrote ourselves. Learn the right hand first, then the left, then put them together — the piece waits until you press both keys.

It also appears in the course as a lesson in “4. Play a piece”, where you play it one note at a time with the key lit up on the screen.

In “5. Both hands” you also play it with both hands, one step at a time.

This melody was published in 1824, more than a hundred years ago, and is in the public domain. Freano only includes music that is at least a century old, enters the melody itself rather than copying anyone's arrangement, and writes its own left-hand parts.