This piece is my goal piece, honestly the most beautiful thing I've heard on piano.

“I don’t play the guitar” Then plays the guitar. Lol.

Excellent video as always! Seriously, your service is very much appreciated.

Paul, I am getting addicted to these tutorials! They are GREAT!

this is the type of teacher everyone learning an instrument needs

Beautiful as always, Paul! LOVE these tutorials!

I have been playing this for years and always find room for improvement. Your videos are pure gold not only for those learning a piece for the first time but also for those who want a deeper understanding of something they already know. (It cannot be said often enough - LEARN IT CORRECTLY THE FIRST TIME!!) I've heard this played with the stress on the first note of the second triplet and it was beautiful. Thanks again.

Paul! After a year of on and off practice, I can finally play it. Your video was a reference to me and I used it often. I'm now finalizing my performance and using your melody ideas to practice all possible phrasing. Thanks a million!

I hadnt realised I had been playing this song quite incorrectly until coming across this tutorial. Thank you very much as always.

BEAUTIFUL

This was incredibly useful, not just for this piece but for the techniques that he uses in many others. Thank you SO much!

Always a joy to watch you teach! You are an excellent teacher!!!

A very good video. I like how much you emphasize an understanding of the context of the music/composer.

Thank you. Excellent tutorial, and great example of building from the simple frame of the prelude to the full performance.

incredibly clear tutorial, well done!

Excellent interpretation of the piece at the end!

Thank you - such a generous contribution to music! Much appreciated

As someone new to Chopin, and tackling this Prelude without the benefit of an instructor, this was immensely useful. I came hunting on youtube for help with the rhythm that occurs in m18-20, but got so much more. Thank you!

Congrats and thanks for this tutorial, Paul... What would we become without you and your so useful clear and interesting explainations... Beautiful helpful video. Cheers ! Cyrille.

Thanks Paul . great lessons 🌿

fantastico.....obrigado, Paul....

Thank you for this lesson. i am starting to study this prelude on my own.

Ah, that was great to listen to! You are such an enthousiastic teacher who is really able to be clear! I love to listen to you, Paul! Ofcourse the pianoplay, but also these kind of tutorials are wonderful. Roeleke

Simply amazing..., have learned so much from this tutorial. Thank you.

Really excellent job, and good performance at the end of it too. Top marks.

Just amazing Paul. Thank you. Just starting to learn this.

Wow the sound of that piano... and thank you for the video.

you are amazing, Paul, thank you!!

Brilliant. Thanks helps a lot.

thank you paul for your tips.... it's very welcome...

You are a great pianist and musician. I'm impressed .

I really value your teaching.

Thank you! Just beginning to learn this. Your insights are extremely valuable.

I love all of your videos. Thank you!

SO good, Paul!

Lovely, informative, too. Thank you.

GREAT. Thanks for the help

Thank you. You are as good a teacher as you are a player.

thanks for your tutorials

I always love your tutorials, they are very well made. Sometimes i am not interested in learning a piece, but i'll watch your tutorial anyway because you explain the backstory of the piece, and some other interesting things that may add up to my studies. Nice job!

Thank you. Cortot's performance of this prelude always impressed me, but, simply looking at the score, i was missing what's really going on in it. Now it's really clear. Thank you again.

Thanks for this tutorial!!!

You're an awesome dude, thanks for the upload.

Thank you very much!

Thank you very much 🙏💝

Very interesting. Thank you!!

Me parece magnífico!!!

Thank you so much so much

Watching you play the guitar, is like watching myself play the piano :D

great stuff

@StarWarseu good idea, i agree! Ballades Nos. 1 and 4 are some my favorite Chopin pieces!

this would sound absolutely incredible on classical guitar, my goodness

3:39 another example is in Chopin's Etude Op. 25 no 5 in the middle section (Bar 58-60), where the melody is also on the second note of each triplet.

excellent!

Thanks you

Very helpful

Thanks for addressing my question, Paul. Great tutorial. I just need to work on stressing the thumb notes in the right hand and softening the other notes. Nice guitar playing too. :-)

Greate!! :D Thank you, gracias

Thank you sir.

I would love to see you do a tutorial on Scherzo Op 31, Chopin.

Thank you for your tutorial. What is strange is the accentuation on the second beat of the first triplet which is not the strongest of the three beats. Really difficult to play especially with small hands.

Thank you so much for this! I was fine on the rhythm, but I needed the melody part. It sounds MUCH better now. Also, you mentioned Fantasie - Impromptu in there. I played that before this piece (which is why I didn't have trouble with the rhythm, as the rhythm in the impromptu is quite difficult), and I can play it through pretty well, but it could still use a little work. It would be AWESOME if you could do something like this for that song. Please get back to me and thank you!

Anyone else have 0 clue how to play this without listening to it or watching a tutorial😹😹 the rhythm is like wtf

May I ask you if your piano is electronic of traditional piano with strings, because it sounds terrific..Thanks in advance.

Could you please do a tutorial on Mad Rush by Philip Glass? I have trouble keeping the opposing rhythms in sync and seeing it visualized would really help me.

@ilwmb They're among my favourites too, hopefully it will be done as a viewer request, albeit the tutorial would be pretty long due to the length of the 4th ballade, but one would be very helpful indeed for such a challenging piece.

Nice :)

fuckin sick

A most interesting and useful tutorial, Paul. This piece is actually quite difficult to bring off successfully.

Hmm. I’ve always emphasized the higher G->A in each bar (and so on) instead of the lower G->A. Clearly I was completely wrong. Will shift the emphasis as suggested here.

Great video, very helpful, please can you do a Chopin Ballade no 4 tutorial next?

Great tutorial, thank you, Paul! I was only wondering whether or not you are playing bars 27 and 28 in a way that differs from my score. At 5:42 you seem to play the melody on the beat. At the end of the video (~ 7:49) it sounds similar to me. My Henle Urtext edition has a rhythmical change between bars 25/26 (on the beat, quintuplets) and 27/28 (after the beat, two triplets).

Wow! Love it. This prelude is so difficult at first. Now, I got the tips! Thanks Anyway, I’m in thailand. Where do you live?

Hi nice! So where it stars having the "5" across treble notes is that simple 2 over 3 like nice cupa tea?

Hi Paul, I really like your tutorials. right know I have a question, do you know what model/reference is that Yamaha?

How to play the music as it is written is still a bit puzzling. Now both the upper and tenor voices have the low G melody note. If we were to write the parts separately, the G would appear as a repeated note. To communicate that the G is not to be played twice the composer would have to tie both notes together (making it a bit messy!). In the upper part it would be written as a 16th note (2nd note of the triplet). The tenor part with the dotted 8th note and a 16th note give a quarter note, or "crochet", in each measure. So it seems that to avoid writing two low G notes, Chopin wrote one. And he positioned it on the second note of the triplet hoping that the reader would naturally infer since the dotted 8th note and a 16th note make a full measure, then the G in the tenor, ought to be played as the first beat of the measure, and held on the second note of the triplet rather than being struck again.

I can see Nintendo got some inspo from Chopin for Zelda 5:50

Thank you Sir for your tutorial. I have one question to ask. In the first bar, the 3rd voice is not triplets but a dotted quaver(G) plus a semi-quaver(A), and the semi-quaver rest is for the top voice, not for this voice. So this voice should begin with the bottom voice at the same time. Then should the G be played twice?

Bonsoir Monsieur Paul Barton, Pourriez vous refaire, éventuellement, cette vidéo en langue française, je vous en serai très reconnaissante :pour tous les conseils utiles que vous donnez et montrez. D'avance merci. Christine

there is simply a mistake in your edition (first bar). Cortot is right

Given that the sustain pedal is pressed across each bar, is it ok to lift the thumb early from the first melody note in each bar, for easier technique?

As a chamber instrumentalist (ie not a solo pianist) I atually find these pieces of music really difficult (unpleasant, even?) since the sort of rhythms going on here don't occur in standard chamber music (I don't think it would work in a group of 4 people for instance). I'm not saying anything bad of either composer or perfomer - Just that I'm used to something different. If you just let it wash over you then it's fine - but the the thing is, when you've spent your life playing music with others, you can't help trying to sync to some of sort of inner rhythm - which is virtually impossible to grasp with this piece unless you're intimatly familiar with the music... Ah, well!

Its funny how the British and French (kind of) use crotchets, quavers, semiquavers, demisemiquavers, hemidemisemiquavers, etc., whereas the Americans and Germans use quarters, eighths, sixteenths, sixty-fourths, etc. One would think that the divide would be along an Anglo-American versus Continental divide.

Look at the Paderewski edition.

10 years ago 🤣 paul u still watch comments over here?

The fingering presents the worst problem.

That rhythm is wrong! When he plays guitar (and then the piano), he does a pause of 1/16, not a 1/16 OF TRIPLET. The outcome is really different.

You are the only person on You Tube that plays this piece like an extremely beautiful piece of music. Far to many of the other's play it like a mini Chopin Etude are a fancy Hanon Exercise.