The sonatina, Baroque dances and character pieces: compound time, syncopation, the dominant seventh, Alberti bass and ternary form.
Level 3 closes with a Level check. It asks for:
Study Schumann’s Little Study, Op. 68 No. 14, in 6/8. Feel two dotted-quarter beats in each bar while the broken chords pass from hand to hand, and keep each group of three even and light. At the keyboard: play a two-beat compound rhythm.
Study a Swedish folk dance in D minor from Olof Åhlström’s keyboard collection of 1814 (Traditioner af Swenska Folk-Dansar, part 1 No. 17), in 3/4. In bars 1 and 2 the left hand plays a chord on beat 1, strikes it again on the half beat after it and holds it across beat 2: keep counting the beat while those chords land between the beats, and let them lean a little without rushing. The sforzando card shows the printed sign for such a sudden stress; this edition prints none, so place the weight by ear. Its three trill signs are ornaments the Method teaches at Level 4, so they are optional for now. At the keyboard: clap the pulse under a syncopation.
Study Burgmüller’s Innocence, Op. 100 No. 5, in F. Its left-hand chords stack thirds of two colours: F–A, a major third, and A–C, a minor third, in bar 1; in bar 3, E–B flat is a tritone, the restless interval that leads back to F. Hear each colour before you play it. At the keyboard: play major and minor thirds.
Study bars 5–8 of Vanhal’s Rondo in C, Op. 42 No. 1. Find the dominant-seventh harmony and hear it resolve to the tonic: the leading note rises, the seventh falls, resolving the tritone inside the chord. At the keyboard: resolve V7 to I.
Study Petzold’s Minuet in G minor (BWV Anh. 115, from the Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach). Going up, the melodic minor raises its sixth and seventh: in bar 29 the right hand climbs D–E natural–F sharp–G. Coming down, it lowers them again: in bars 5–6 the right hand falls E flat–D–C, then D–C–B flat, with F natural, not F sharp. Sing both shapes before playing them; its ornament signs, mordents, stay optional until Level 4. At the keyboard: play ascending and descending melodic minor.
Study bars 15–16 of Burgmüller’s La gracieuse, Op. 100 No. 8, in F. Prepare the right-hand upper part, then hear the left hand's C–B–B-flat–A descent before the whole step A–G; combine the hands without changing the written eighth-note rhythm or extracting a voice. This is a short chromatic fragment, not the opening's thirty-second-note turns. Keep that vocabulary in its separate theory example. At the keyboard: play the complete chromatic scale in the existing technique task.
Study Tchaikovsky’s March of the Wooden Soldiers, Op. 39 No. 5, in D. Its march (bars 1–16) gives way to a contrasting middle (bars 17–32), and the march returns in bar 33: A–B–A. At the keyboard: improvise an A–B–A phrase.
Study the first movement of Clementi’s Sonatina in C, Op. 36 No. 1. Find the first theme, the second theme in G (from bar 8), the short development (from bar 16) and the return of the opening (bar 24). In bars 9 and 11 the left hand plays an Alberti bass, low–high–middle–high: keep it softer than the melody. Reinecke’s Sonatina Op. 136 No. 1 is the alternative; its accompaniment is broken chords rather than Alberti figures. At the keyboard: keep Alberti bass softer than the melody.
Study Purcell’s A New Irish Tune (Lilliburlero), Z. 646. Hear how each phrase answers the one before and how the bass takes up the tune’s rhythm. The ornament signs stay optional until Level 4. At the keyboard: improvise a question and answer.
Study Strutting Rag March, an original rag march in G. Its chord symbols, printed above the tune, change once a bar (G, G, C, D, G, G) and twice in bar 7 (C, then D): name each chord from its symbol and play the left-hand root–fifth pattern under the tune. At the keyboard: play block chords from a lead sheet.
10 Musicianship units, one beside each lesson and in the same order. A unit is done when its theory questions are answered right and its ear, rhythm and keyboard tasks have passed; the reading test and unseen pieces are Reading.
Echo five-note melodies in keys up to two sharps or flats, read 6/8 and 3/8, and play a tune by ear.
Tap back rhythms with off-beat entries, read syncopation, and clap the pulse under it.
Hear major and minor seconds and thirds from any note, read eighth rests, and play major and minor thirds.
Play the bass of cadences with a dominant seventh, read syncopation over a steady beat, and play I–IV–V7–I.
Hear whether each triad of a key is major or minor, read ties in 3/4 and 6/8, and play the melodic minor.
Hear intervals from the semitone to the octave, read sixteenths and dotted eighths, and transpose a melody.
Echo six-note melodies with eighths, read mixed rhythms in three metres, and improvise an A–B–A phrase.
Play the bass of progressions with I, IV, V and vi, read a melody over running eighths, and play an Alberti bass.
Echo a phrase up to the octave in its exact rhythm, read call and response between the hands, and improvise a question and answer.
Hear major, minor and dominant-seventh chords, read a syncopated melody over held chords, and play block chords from a lead sheet.
Every strand level by level: pieces, technique, reading and musicianship; and the glossary.
In Musalea each lesson runs step by step, and after every run the app tells you what to fix: the bar, the hand and how to practise it.
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