Green notes: right hand, blue notes: left hand. Preview played right in your browser with the app's real piano (lightweight version). Inside Pianovera: full multi-layer sound, fingering display and Wait mode.
Bach wrote the fifteen Inventions as a method for his own children and stated the goal in the preface: learn to play cleanly in two voices and develop a singing style. Three centuries on, nobody has designed anything better, and the MIDI of the first of the set is still the rite of passage.
The principle fits in one line: a seven-note motif hops endlessly from hand to hand, inverted, transposed, stretched. Both your hands become equal singers, which feels wrong at first if you come from melody-plus-accompaniment music. Push through. It's the highest-yield investment in piano playing we know.
Invention No. 1 BWV 772: the first notes
Right hand, in letter names (C4 = middle C): C4 D4 E4 F4 D4 E4 C4 G4 C5 B4 C5 D5 G4 A4 B4 C5 A4 B4 G4 D5 G5 F5 G5 E5… The rest scrolls in the preview above, with the fingering, and the sheet music PDF has the whole piece.
Play Invention No. 1 BWV 772 on the virtual piano
Here are the Invention No. 1 BWV 772 virtual piano notes, in computer keyboard letters: the first 2 bars of the melody. One key per note, read left to right; dark keys are the sharps, and a thin line marks each bar.
Letters for a QWERTY keyboardYour keyboard: 23 notes
QWERWEQTIUI
OTYUIYUTO][]
▶ Play on the virtual pianoThe piano opens with this piece loaded: the key to play lights up and waits for you.
What you'll be working on
Two strictly equal voices (no hand gets to "accompany")
Recognizing the motif in all its disguises, even upside down
Baroque articulation: detached, danced, no pedal
Hands separate first, singing the other voice out loud
Playing Invention No. 1 BWV 772 on piano with Pianovera
Pianovera's two hand colors turn the Invention into a visible dialogue: you literally watch the motif jump from the blue hand to the green one. Wait mode hands-separate, then together at 60%. That's the method, and it works.
Open Invention No. 1 BWV 772 in Pianovera: the notes fall toward an 88-key virtual piano keyboard, each hand gets its color, and Wait mode is there if you're starting out. On a PC, it's falling notes piano software for Windows, with video export up to 4K.
Free, with no time limit and no ads: 30 pieces (10 in full, 20 in a simplified version), the first 10 lessons and 10 minutes of 3D hands (then 15 seconds per piece). Premium opens all 651 pieces.
Download the Invention No. 1 BWV 772 MIDI and sheet music
The work itself is in the public domain. This MIDI engraving comes from the Mutopia Project, typeset by Jeff Covey, under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license (free reuse with attribution, commercial included).
About this piece
Is Invention No. 1 BWV 772 hard to play on piano?
We rate it intermediate: 458 notes over 1:06, spanning C2 to C6. The first thing to work on: two strictly equal voices (no hand gets to "accompany").
Where can I get the sheet music for Invention No. 1 BWV 772?
Right on this page: the "View the sheet music" button opens the PDF (65 KB), engraved by the Mutopia Project from the same source as the MIDI file, CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. View it, print it, keep it.
Is the Invention No. 1 BWV 772 MIDI file really free?
Yes. Johann Sebastian Bach died more than 70 years ago, so the work (1723) is public domain. This MIDI engraving is under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license: free to use, commercially included, with credit to Jeff Covey.
