Disney Song Marathon

I have always loved the lovely melodies of classic Disney songs, so this week, I looked into some more Disney songs for potential final product pieces. One of the songs that I stumbled upon was “When You Wish Upon A Star” from Disney’s Pinocchio.

Image by Benny Chu strings via musescore

I have always wanted to play this song, but I was too afraid to play it because it is a very difficult piece. However, I am glad to have found a much simpler version to play. This version is written in the key of C major, which means that there are no sharps or flats! However, there are some accidentals, which means that some notes will be flat or sharp as indicated by the sign next to the individual note. Additionally, the tempo is only “quarter note = 80,” which means that this song is played very slowly. Although I am glad that this version is very slow, the actual music composition for this piece is extremely fast, so constantly practicing a much slower version of the piece will not prepare me for the real music score if I ever wanted to actually perform this song. The rhythm is also fairly easy to play, except for measure 22 because there is an eighth note rest right before three eighth notes. As a result, it was difficult to play the measure without playing beat “three-and” too early.

This week, I learned that accidentals tend to be out of tune because those notes are written in and are not part of the intended key. For example, this song is written in the key of C major, which means that there are no sharps or flats, but some of the notes have a sharp sign in front of them, which means that when you get to those notes, you will have to play a note that is outside the key of the piece. As a result, the accidentals tend to be out of tune because sometimes in the song, you play the natural version of the note, and other times, you play the sharp version of the note.

For myself, I learned that I tend to play notes too early because I do not wait and count all the way through the rests. For example, in measure 22, I would play beat “three-and” too early because I would underestimate the length of the rest right before the beat. Additionally, when there was a dotted half note, I would end them too early because I would not count all the way through. This happened in measures 8, 16, 24, and 32. Next week, I will give slower pop songs a chance because those tend to be easier to play due to the fact that those pieces are more well known. However, it also means that the audience will be more likely to detect mistakes in my playing. I also want to start playing with a metronome to make sure that my rhythm is improving since the rhythm is the most important part of the song.