The 2001 French film Amelie, which is the highest-grossing French-language film to be released in the US, has one of my favorite soundtracks ever. It ranges from soft beautiful piano ballads to jumpy accordion and strings. It has a playful quality throughout, and it's made me a big Yann Tiersen fan. Here's my version; it's faster than the original. This is how I tend to like it at the moment.

Here's the sheet music.

What to listen for...

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1. Notice that, besides speed and dynamics (intensity), the left hand part never changes. Yann Tiersen manages to keep things interesting despite an ever repeating harmony. This isn't necessarily surprising; lots of music these days is completely groove based, meaning they build patterns off of a repeated set of notes that sinks into the listener's mental background and allows them to focus on other musical changes. Most Hip-Hop, EDM, and jam music is this way.

2. The song has three distinctive melodies in a row that have different characteristics: The first one is catchy and has some mild dissonance, the second has fewer notes and leaves more space, and the third is a flurry of repeated triplets. Halfway through the song, the right hand jumps up an octave (the same notes, but higher) and plays the exact same thing as it did in the first half. Though the melodies are just being repeated, the change in octave is enough to keep things interesting. We hear this sort of thing often in orchestral music, where different sets of instruments will share the same melody in different octaves. Check out the ever famous Ode to Joy in Beethoven's 9th Symphony.

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Have any questions about this piece? Want a more detailed breakdown? Just ask in the comments.