Tetris Theme: bars 13–16

Lesson 12 · about 15 minutes · add the next four-bar phrase

Today's win: play bars 13–16 with both hands, three clean runs in a row, without speeding up the left-hand pulse.

1 · Warm-up: bars 1–12, cold

Play the first twelve bars once from memory, with the score and note-name hints hidden. Keep the left-hand pulse even; if a bar is fuzzy, restart just that bar instead of stopping the whole passage.

2 · Reset the left hand

Keep the bass moving in steady eighth notes and stay loose through the bar lines. The right hand is the star of this phrase, so give the left hand a small, even pulse underneath it.

3 · Read bars 13–16

Keep Octave 0 and Transpose 0. The left hand holds one bass note per bar: A3 (bar 13), B3 (bar 14), C3 (bar 15, the low C), B3 (bar 16). The right hand starts like bar 9 (E5, C5), then in bar 15 climbs C5, E5, A5, A5 and lands on G♯5 in bar 16. Count each bar “1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &”.These are rows 13–16 of Virtual Piano's Tetris Theme (Alternative). Bass notes below C3 are raised one octave so they fit your keyboard.

4 · Right hand alone

Bars 13–14 repeat the shape of bars 9–10 (E5 C5, then D5 B4). Bar 15 is new: four notes with a jump up to A5, so look ahead to A5 before you play C5.

5 · Left hand alone

Play one bass note on each eighth-note step: A3, then B3, then C3, then B3. Keep each note light, and move the hand by a smooth pulse rather than squeezing the fingers together.

6 · Bars 13–16, both hands

Start slower than the source and keep the left hand even. If the hand changes feel crowded, practise the bar by itself, then rejoin the next bar with the pulse still steady.

7 · Connect bars 9–16

Join the two phrases before the whole song: bars 9–12 (E5 C5 … G♯4), then straight into bars 13–16. Keep the left-hand pulse even across the bar-12 to bar-13 join. If the join is rough, replay just bars 12–13.

8 · Connect bars 1–16

Play the whole sixteen bars once without stopping. The new phrase starts right after the G♯4 of bar 12, so treat it as one continuous line.

9 · Check yourself

10 · The next three days

  1. Tomorrow: play bars 1–12 cold, then bars 13–16 with note names hidden.
  2. Day after: practise the left hand alone on the bass pulse, then play bars 13–16 hands together at a relaxed tempo.
  3. Day 3: play bars 1–16 without stopping. Keep the left-hand pulse even through the phrase change.
Primary source: Virtual Piano's “Tetris Theme (Alternative)” sheet Virtual Piano · note labels, 120 bpm. Rows 13–16 of the sheet; the bass below C3 is raised one octave to fit the PSS-A50. Full sheet and parsed notes: songs/tetris-theme-alternative/.
Which bar in the new phrase still feels crowded? Tell me how many clean runs you got and what your left hand was doing at the bar line.

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