Every note in this version is a white key. Each drill shows both hands on one grid, so you can read exactly which strikes land together and which land between — with the count written on every attack. Learn hands separately first, in the order the sections are numbered, then use the grid to put them back together.
Read the counts down the column: 1 is the downbeat of a bar, 2 3 4 are the other beats, and e & a are the sixteenths in between. A dot means a thirty-second, falling between two sixteenths. Any two cells sharing a column are struck at the same instant.
Root, fifth, octave — fingers 5 2 1. A–E–A, F–C–F, G–D–G, E–B–E, C–G–C, D–A–D. That single hand-shape covers roughly 90% of the piece. Learn the shape once, then you only ever move it.
The push (bars 1–8): a 16th on the beat, then a second attack immediately after that holds. The gallop (bars 22–37): dotted-8th, 16th tied over, 8th. Clap each one out loud before you touch a key — the rhythms, not the notes, are what this piece is made of.
With no black keys to reach over, let the hand sit low and the fingers lie long. Play near the front edge of the keys where the leverage is easiest. The curled, arched hand you need for the original key will only make this version harder.
Spread the chords that ring — bar 8, the four held bass chords in bars 17–20, the last chord of the piece. Never spread the ones that pulse: the push in bars 1–7, the gallop in bars 22–37, the repeating inner notes in bar 20. Those are the motor. A rolled chord arrives late by design, and a motor that arrives late is a motor that has stopped.
Hear the whole thing before you learn any of it. The drills further down teach the sections in printed order; what you play is a separate decision. Move the blocks below and the whole piece plays back in that sequence — every bar kept, nothing dropped, just resequenced. Sections A–D are the Journey to the West theme; E and F are where the arrangement leaves it.
Playback follows the tempo at the top of the page. Switch between as printed and with rolls to hear the difference the spread chords make: bar 8 becomes a single roll instead of seven hits, the four held bass chords in bars 17–20 spread bottom to top, and the last chord of the piece opens out slowly. Everything else is identical, so the comparison is clean. Both settings play the voices no pair of hands can reach in bars 5–7 and 39–40 — a synthesiser has no hands.
A minor is the only minor key with no black keys, so a white-key version has to make choices. Thirty-five of the forty-three bars transpose exactly — same intervals, same shapes, nothing lost. These eight do not. Each one is flagged again on the drill it belongs to.
Do not run the piece top to bottom until week three. Sections D and A are the two that need physical conditioning, so they go first and get the most days.
| Week | Work on | Hands | Tempo | You're done when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | D-gallop (bars 22–25), A-engine (bars 1–4) | Separate | ♩=40–48 | LH plays 8 bars of gallop without looking down |
| 2 | B (9–12), C (13–20), add hands together on A and D | Together | ♩=48–58 | C's arpeggio sweeps are even, not rushed at the top |
| 3 | E (38–43), joins: 8→9, 12→13, 21→22, 37→38 | Together | ♩=58–66 | You can start from any of the four joins cold |
| 4 | Full run, dynamics, pedal | Together | ♩=66–70 | Three clean runs in a row at ♩=70 |
One rule: the pedal changes when the left-hand chord changes, never when the melody changes. In bars 1–8 that is twice per bar. In bars 22–33 it's on beats 1 and 3. In bars 14 and 16 you hold one pedal for the entire bar — that's what lets the two-octave sweep sound like a harp instead of a scale.
The arrangement is written without dynamic marks, so shape it yourself: bars 1–8 start mp and grow; bars 9–12 drop back to p — it's the solo flute line; bars 13–20 build steadily; bars 22–37 are f and never let up; bar 38 drops suddenly to mf so the last five bars can climb again to the end.