Gran Vals
Francisco Tárrega (1852–1909) · sheet music
- Key A major
- Time 3/4
- Levels 9
- Passages 4
Your turn · both hands
Preparing your passage…
Francisco Tárrega, Spanish romantic (1852–1909). The reading release has 4 passages from this piece at level 9; the reader above opens on the easiest, bars 21–28 for both hands together.
The hardest stretch is bars 21–24 at level 9.
Your practice path
Learn it the way teachers do: each hand on its own, then together, then the hard bars. Each step is a real graded passage of Gran Vals.
- Hands together · bars 21–24 level 9
How to play Gran Vals
- Tempo:Play it as a graceful waltz, not a rapid one. Feel one big beat per bar with the other two beats as light support.
- Left hand:The left hand jumps from a low bass note to two lighter chords in each bar. Practice the jump alone, moving early and keeping the second and third beats softer than the first.
- Right hand:The right hand sings the tune in long notes. Hold each one for its full value and connect it smoothly to the next so the line does not sag.
- Hands together:Combine the hands slowly, keeping the left hand soft. If the tune gets lost under the chords, play the right hand alone again before adding the left.
- Reading:The left hand moves between deep bass notes and chords near the middle of the keyboard, so expect ledger lines and possibly a clef change; read the bass note first in each bar.
- Pedal:Use a light pedal from the bass note of each bar and change it at the next bar line. Overpedaling makes the waltz bass sound muddy.
- Dynamics:Give each phrase a gentle swell toward its high point and let it relax at the end, so the waltz sounds sung rather than ticked off.
- Practice:Practice the famous phrase on its own until it sounds natural, then connect it to the phrases before and after it.
Common mistakes
- Accenting the second and third beats of the bar. Fix: Practice the left hand alone, with the bass note clearly louder than the chords.
- Arriving late on the bass note after the left-hand jump. Fix: Move the hand as soon as the chord is played and look at the bass note before you get there.
- Playing the famous phrase mechanically, like a ringtone. Fix: Phrase it as a sung line, with a slight lean on its high note.
- Using too much pedal in the left-hand waltz pattern. Fix: Change pedal on each bass note and listen for clean chord changes.
Structure: waltz
Gran Vals is a Romantic waltz for guitar, a melody carried over a three-beat accompaniment. The ringtone comes from a single four-bar phrase early in the piece; the rest of the waltz goes on to new material.
- Opening · Waltz theme (A major)
- The waltz sets up its tune over a bass note on the first beat and lighter chords after it, which in this piano version means wide left-hand jumps from bass to chord.
- Nokia phrase · The ringtone phrase
- The four-bar phrase Nokia trimmed into its ringtone. Listen for how Tárrega ends it on E, leaving it open, where the ringtone closes on A.
- Later strains · Continuation
- The waltz moves on to further phrases with longer held melody notes and new accidentals, so read ahead instead of expecting the ringtone to repeat.
About Gran Vals
Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909) was a Spanish guitarist and composer who wrote in a late Romantic style, often flavored with Spanish folk elements, and is credited with laying the foundations of 20th-century classical guitar. He wrote Gran Vals, a waltz for solo guitar, in 1902.
Most people know one four-bar phrase of it without knowing the piece. In 1992 Nokia used a 1989 recording of Gran Vals by the Czech guitarist Lubomír Brabec in a commercial for the Nokia 1011, and in 1993 two Nokia staffers picked the excerpt that became the ringtone. It first shipped on the Nokia 2110 in 1994, was named Grande valse on the Nokia 6110 in 1997, and became the Nokia tune in 1998.
By one 2009 estimate the tune was heard about 1.8 billion times a day, roughly 20,000 times a second. The full waltz is longer and more varied than the ringtone suggests, which is why playing it is a small surprise.
- In Tárrega's original, the famous phrase ends on an E rather than the A heard in the ringtone.
- Nokia has registered the tune as a sound trademark in some countries.
- Pianist Marc-André Hamelin wrote a short piano piece on the ringtone called Valse Irritation d'après Nokia.
- Ryuichi Sakamoto made a slow piano version of the tune for the Nokia 8800, and Brian Eno a slow guitar version for its Sirocco Edition.
Why the first passage is level 9
That passage is level 9 rather than 8 because a hand covers more than one position, it leaps a octave plus an octave, the clef changes partway through.
This is a piano arrangement of a guitar waltz: the left hand keeps the waltz pattern with wide jumps while the right hand sings. Expect three sharps in the key signature.
Questions about Gran Vals
- How hard is Gran Vals to play?
- Its passages grade from level 9 on Real Sight Reader's ten-level reading scale, so the full piece is intermediate to advanced reading. The hardest stretch is bars 21–24 at level 9.
- Is there an easy part of Gran Vals for beginners?
- Its easiest passage is level 9, so it suits a reader past the beginner stage. Start with bars 21–28 for both hands together, the level-9 passage in the reader at the top of this page; it is level 9 because a hand covers more than one position and it leaps a octave plus an octave.
- What key and time signature is Gran Vals in?
- Gran Vals is in A major, 3 sharps. The engraving on this page is in 3/4 time.
- Who composed Gran Vals?
- Francisco Tárrega, Spanish romantic (1852–1909). Francisco Tárrega (1852-1909) was a Spanish guitarist and composer who wrote in a late Romantic style, often flavored with Spanish folk elements, and is credited with laying the foundations of 20th-century classical guitar.
- Can I practice Gran Vals online for free?
- Yes. The reader on this page plays any of the 4 graded passages from Gran Vals in your browser, with an on-screen keyboard or a MIDI keyboard, and marks every note as you play. No signup.
- Is the Nokia tune from Gran Vals?
- Yes. The Nokia ringtone is a four-bar excerpt from Francisco Tárrega's Gran Vals, a solo guitar waltz written in 1902.
- When did the Nokia tune start being used?
- A Nokia commercial used a recording of Gran Vals in 1992. The excerpt became a ringtone on the Nokia 2110 in 1994 and was named the Nokia tune in 1998.
- Is Gran Vals in the public domain?
- Tárrega died in 1909, so the composition itself is in the public domain. Particular recordings and arrangements can still be protected, and Nokia holds sound trademarks on its ringtone in some countries.
Every passage, easiest first
The reading release grades 4 distinct passages of this piece. Open any of them in the reader:
- Level 9
- bars 21–24 both hands · bars 21–28 both hands · bars 25–28 both hands · bars 31–34 both hands
More pieces to sight-read
Score: public-domain engraving from the corpus (pdmx), graded by the piano-reading-v2-20261023-identity-audit reading release.