Gnossienne No. 1

Erik Satie

  • One of the most important things you can do as you learn piano to avoid injury and increase your quality of play is to make a special effort to keep your wrists relaxed and free to strain. The bridge of the hand should be firm and gently rounded but the wrist should be relaxed and supple.

    You will notice that your fifth and fourth fingers are weaker and less reliable than the rest of the hand. They will take more time to train, and if you are a beginner, they will be especially frustrating to work with. Don't strain or push - be patient and work with them diligently and tactfully, and they will catch up.

    The two most important tools you can use to improve the efficiency of your practice is the speed at which you practice a section, and in the manner in which you divide up the piece you are working on. You must work with the piece in fragments before you stitch the fragments up to make a whole. The sections of the piece as fragments to work on has to be strategically and intelligently chosen. Once you have selected a fragment to practice, you should be flexible with your tempo. If it is a difficult section, begin practicing it at a slow tempo to allow your brain to make accurate and definitive connections. As you progress with the piece, begin to work at increasingly faster tempos. If you are interested in understanding more deeply these systems of practice, I made a series called 'Blueprint for Perfect Technique' which dives deeper into these principles.

Sheet Music

  • 00:00:14 - 00:01:20

    today we're going to be looking at gsan number one in F minor by Mr Eric Sati the Parisian uh he's actually a lot more famous for another piece this one is less known one that one Diddy that sounds a little like this h sound familiar right really beautiful work and that's probably his most famous composition um and you can feel free to find that in our Channel and our website as well because we covered this tutorial as well but today we're going to be doing the gsen which is a lesser known

    00:00:49 - 00:01:58

    but still just as interesting and beautiful piece a little bit more introspective I would say actually Eric Sati is famous also for being an eccentric he's a super weird guy he was famous in Paris for that too for example he collected he collected umbrellas so you that's that's he was a very Avid collector of various umbrellas if you have any other interesting tidbits about this guy and there are many feel free to put them in the in the uh comments below so here we go let's get ready I'm going to go and

    00:01:23 - 00:03:07

    play this piece now for you so you get a sense of what it'll be like when it's all said and done I [Music] as you might have noticed the left hand is pretty repetitive which is an advantage clearly so why don't we start with the left hand let's set the foundation for this piece this piece is an F minor so you'll be using these notes quite a lot in different octaves clearly one thing I do want to make sure that you understand is this is our middle C the way that the camera is set up in

    00:03:00 - 00:05:03

    might not be that clear that this is Middle C but rest assured this is Middle C the first note is going to be this one so we have C below middle C and the F below that so fifth finger here this is your bass note and this is your first chord so we have F fourth finger second finger first finger practice that jump to and fro a few times and you'll feel comfortable with that jump when you play piece the next thing to do is understand the um the Rhythm so here we go 1 2 3 4 1 okay so the first chord that you

    00:04:02 - 00:06:01

    play uh is two beats long 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 okay it's a little bit of a syncopation here right yes okay uh once you have this figured out three 4 1 2 three four and uh fo the same Rhythm upon the next chord which is going to be on C above the previous note that you played C fourth finger second finger first finger get that hand in place and play 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 in your mind's eye or in your brain this needs to be a chord this needs to be together nothing to it and then just break it up 1 2 3 4 1 2 3

    00:05:07 - 00:06:41

    4 a nice thing about this is that it's in one octave range so you don't have to do any jumping here practice these jumps um pretty pretty consistently you need that jump to be very comfortable so make sure that you feel really comfortable with this before you include the right hand good next right hand the first beat is empty one two the right hand starts on beat two with your first finger so it's fast fast slow slow I'm not going to talk about about uh quarter notes half notes um eighth notes I'm

    00:06:04 - 00:07:36

    just going to sort of uh talk in a in layman's terms I suppose I don't want to over complicate things this is indeed uh geared towards beginners and amateurs who just want to learn how to play certain pieces that they really like so fast fast slow slow so it's one two 3 4 One sorry one 2 3 4 once you get to the end of that first bar uh lift up your hand and use your second and third fingers so it's 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 I know it sounds a little weird but this is exactly what you're going for 1

    00:06:50 - 00:08:04

    2 3 4 1 2 3 4 okay um what I played I clearly it sounds a little different uh when people learn this section they do it incorrectly um because they try to play this super quickly but in their brain and in their muscle memory it's still two individual notes the way that they approach it 1 2 it can't be this way or else you'll always be struggling to get it fast enough p p then you're going to get tense in your fingers and in your wrist you don't want that what you want is to teach your

    00:07:38 - 00:10:06

    muscle memory that this is a grouping so that's what you do first wail on those [Music] notes so fourth and third finger [Music] super weird right so second third second third 43 4 three second third second third second third second third second third second third so you have is this this this this is [Music] this the reason we're doing this is so that once you feel comfortable with the bang it's a lot easier to control how fast you do this okay now stop this video and learn this [Music]

    00:09:08 - 00:11:10

    okay I'm assuming now that you learned it next now when you play these two together lift up the third [Music] finger lift up the third finger okay same thing lift up the third finger good now here let's lift up the second finger lift up the second lift up the third lift up the third so you can kind of now it's starting to resemble the um the melody isn't [Music] it f up the thirs Ft up the thirs up the third third for these two it's going to be the seconds that come up okay two of them and then third

    00:10:15 - 00:11:44

    third thirds go up everywhere except for the first time you play f and g it's the opposite it's the seconds that come up once you feel comfortable with this well then you can adjust the spacing to your uh to your heart's desire because your muscle learned it as a grouping so instead of playing it together you can break it [Music] up and you have this entire this sort of gradient of how closely spaced those two notes are okay um so let's move along then I'm assuming you did all

    00:11:04 - 00:12:39

    [Music] this okay um the second section here I'm going to call it a second section because uh the harmony changes to four down here on the B flat it's pretty straightforward uh you can choose what fingers you want here whatever is comfortable for you I don't remember what do I do yes I do this third and fourth these two notes again learn them like this okay that's how you learn it so 4 3 3 2 4 3 3 2 3 2 and you can actually do two and one I just happen to prefer 32 when I'm doing this Stu but it's a it's up to you

    00:12:05 - 00:13:18

    because all your fingers are here and you have everything ready to go if you so desire um okay so when you put it together that's sort of the idea don't really worry about I'm only playing the left hand to illustrate what you're sort of going for eventually and then when you feel comfortable with this lift up the third then lift up the third lift up the third lift up the third lift up the third lift up the third so for this if you do use my fingering which is this this this moving

    00:12:48 - 00:14:04

    to second and third on f and g you're always going to be lifting thirds which is convenient and pretty pretty comfortable okay once you have this lifted now it's just a matter of breaking up again that little uh the spacing just enough until you feel like yes this is what it this is what the music calls for the nice thing about this piece is there is I feel a lot of freedom in the way that you approach these little Grace notes they're very care characterful and and and colorful so you can uh you can

    00:13:34 - 00:14:38

    experiment and see what you like right now we covered the first section in this video in the next video we're going to be looking at this little lick which is uh pretty uh pretty straightforward there's really not much to do here so please I'm I wanted to say feel free but I'm not going to say that a 10th time so please do this please have a look at this the next videos that show how uh how this progresses forward all right I hope you guys learned something and let me know if I went too

    00:14:25 - 00:14:44

    quickly too slowly what you'd like me to change or what music you'd like me to do next and I'll see you guys next time take care