Clair De Lune (Simplified) (Piano)

This simplified Clair de Lune sheet music is Debussy's melody in C major and 9/8, 58 bars, marked 108, with the fast runs taken out. The original is in D♭ major with five flats; this version has no key signature.

The right hand plays two notes at a time, in thirds, and the top note of each pair is the tune. The left hand holds one interval per half bar. Clair de Lune has no lyrics; it is a piano piece, the third movement of Debussy's Suite bergamasque, named after a Verlaine poem.

Click the sheet music to play it in your browser with each note checked as you go; no account is needed.

This simplified score is in C major and 9/8, 58 bars, with the fast runs taken out. That is the shape you need before you play a note.

Read the key first so you know which black keys are in play. Count the meter out loud. Then look at how many bars you actually have to learn.

Work through this tutorial in the order below. Fifteen minutes a day for a week is enough to get Clair de Lune under your hands if each chunk is actually learned.

Play it with the notes graded as you go, no account.

The key is C major: no sharps and no flats. The notes are C D E F G A B. Anything outside that list in the score is an accidental. Mark it.

The time signature is 9/8: 9 beats in every bar, and an eighth note gets one beat. Count that out loud before you play, and keep counting.

The score is 58 measures long. Number them in pencil. Starting at bar 9, when you need to, is the point of the numbers.

Set a tempo you can play the hardest bar at. The easy bars will feel slow. That is correct.

Split Clair de Lune into chunks of 8 bars and learn one chunk per session. A chunk you can play three times without a mistake is learned. A chunk you can nearly play is not.

Practice the last bar of one chunk and the first bar of the next as a chunk of their own. The joins are where it breaks.

Clair de Lune sits in C major. These are the chords that key is built from. Knowing them makes a slip easier to recover from, because you can hear where you are.

Play the melody in your right hand and just these chords in your left. The written left hand can wait. Hearing the harmony is the useful part.

Two hands on Clair de Lune are two problems. Solve them one at a time.

1. Right hand alone, slowly, until the chunk is clean three times.
2. Left hand alone, slowly. Give the left-hand arpeggios that fill the 9/8 bars more time than it feels like it needs.
3. Hands together at half the speed you managed separately. If it falls apart, go back to the weaker hand.
4. Speed up in small steps, only from a tempo where nothing goes wrong.

If a bar still will not lock, play the right hand and tap the left-hand rhythm on the piano lid. The problem is usually the rhythm.

Fifteen minutes a day for a week:

1. Day 1: the key and bars 1-8, the opening melody, hands separately.
2. Day 2: chunk 1 hands together, chunk 2 hands separately.
3. Day 3: join chunks 1 and 2, then learn chunk 3.
4. Day 4: the second half, same routine.
5. Day 5: the joins, and only the joins.
6. Day 6: the whole piece, slowly, once. Mark the two bars that went worst.
7. Day 7: those two bars, then the whole piece at tempo.

Play Clair de Lune in Chordzy and it will mark which notes and timings were off.

Bar 1 is four notes at a walking pace: E with G, then C with E, each pair a beat long. Nothing in the first four bars is faster than an eighth note, and the left hand changes twice a bar at most.

That pace is why the piece works for a beginner. There is time to hear each pair of notes before the next, and time to decide how loud the next one should be. "Clair de lune" is French for moonlight. The simplified version keeps the pace and the floating sound; what it removes is the density.

The tune is the top note of each third: G, E in bar 1; D, E, D in bar 2; C, D, C, E, C in bar 3. Play the top notes alone first, with finger 5 or 4, so you hear the line the thirds are carrying. Then add the lower note of each pair.

The two questions to ask in every bar: how softly can bar 1 be played with both notes of each third still sounding, and does bar 3 want to be a little warmer than bar 2. The notes are easy enough that you can afford to ask them.

The score is 58 bars of 9/8: three groups of three eighth notes to a bar, counted "1 and a, 2 and a, 3 and a". No flats to read, where the original has five. The right hand is two notes at a time and the left hand one interval or one chord per half bar. From bar 5 the left hand thickens to three-note chords (C D F, then B D F) and from bar 9 it spreads them, a low C then E and G above it.

In Chordzy the notes highlight as you play, which is the easiest way to learn where the three beats fall without counting to nine.

The left hand in bars 1 to 4 is one interval a half bar: E and G, then F and A♭, then E and G, then D and F. It never has to be fast, which makes it a first exercise in hand independence you can pass.

Keep the left hand quieter than the right. Two layers at two volumes is the skill every expressive piece after this one will ask for, and here the layers are slow enough to hear separately.

Debussy's music runs on shading. Grow the volume through bars 1 to 3 as the thirds climb to C and E, let the held B and D in bar 2 bloom, and let bar 4 settle before bar 5 begins. Playing every bar at the same volume is the one way to make this piece dull.

The melody leans forward as it climbs, and settles on the held thirds at the end of each bar. Those two habits are what turn the notes into the piece people recognize.

Click the sheet music to open the simplified Clair de Lune in Chordzy. It follows you note by note, so the melody, the 9/8 pacing and the two-hand balance can be learned with feedback rather than by hope.

Let it be the quiet part of a practice session, five minutes at the end, and it will carry you towards the full Debussy later on.