Moonlight sonata was hard for me, still is… because I only ever became fluent up to three sharps and three flats key signatures. And moonlight is in a key that is 4 sharps. Makes it very hard to fumble through
That's interesting. I suppose I was lucky, because I started as a kid with traditional piano lessons but lost interest around age 12, but my interest in piano was rekindled when I discovered the guitar and was introduced to the idea of playing by ear. I got back into piano by playing along with a lot of pop and rock songs, so E major has been a very comfortable key signature for me since it's such a great guitar key signature.
True. I never found it difficult to play aside from sight reading the key signature
A lot of classical music is this way to be honest, there is a lot of formulaic composition (I don’t mean that derogatory at all) and once you get the patterns it’s easy to extend, maybe even play it like a fake book.
I recall a lot of what we know was originally something closer to figured bass in the first place and later fully arranged by someone who wasn’t the original composer. Or, take a look at Mozart Requiem for example, only a small percent of which was actually manuscribed by the man himself.
One thing to think about, if you're in common practice music, most of the accidentals will be there for a specific reason (e.g. chromatic grace notes, applied dominants, harmonic or melodic minor, parallel key borrowing, augmented sixth chord). Music theory classes can help understand these if you're not familiar. But the thing to know is whether the particular reason involves raising or lowering the natural note in the scale.
One thing that frustrates me about music notation is that when you have a key signature with lots of flats or sharps, it's hard for me to tell at a glance what the accidental is doing relative to the key signature. I've gotta look back and remember what was the unmodified note.
For me, my brain kind of locks in to the key signature eventually. It might be worth practicing scales and simple chord progressions in each key to try to imprint it in your brain. I found keys with lots of sharps and flats intimidating for a long time, too.
