‘Ragtime It’ is performed by saxophone, drums and double bass. Listen for lots of arpeggios within the melody. Notice the drums and double bass playing a vamp on the beat whilst the saxophone plays the melody in a syncopated rhythm.

The defining characteristic of ragtime music is a specific type of syncopation in which melodic accents occur between metrical beats.

Ragtime — A genre of musical composition for the piano, generally in duple meter and containing a highly syncopated treble lead over a rhythmically steady bass. A ragtime composition is usually composed three or four contrasting sections or strains, each one being 16 or 32 measures in length.

It’s not a terribly hard song to learn. It’s pretty straightforward, repetitive enough (there’s not a whole lot of new stuff you need to keep remembering), and the jumps on the left hand aren’t too major (especially given that it’s not a very fast song).

The author died in 1917, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer.

C major

The Entertainer is a classic ragtime piano piece written by Scott Joplin in 1902. The defining characteristic of ragtime is the syncopated (or “ragged”) rhythm of the right hand in relation to the regular left hand.

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One of his first pieces, the “Maple Leaf Rag” (1899), has been recognized as the archetypal rag and influenced subsequent rag composers for at least 12 years thanks to its rhythmic patterns, melody lines, and harmony.