Piano and Music Videos

As a bonus tip, we will discuss the use of the una corda, or soft pedal on a grand piano which is the
pedal on the left. Una corda means, “one string” because in early pianos, there were 2 strings on each
note. Depressing the pedal shifted the hammers so that the hammers only struck one string on each
note. Modern pianos have 3 strings on each note in most registers. The hammers still hit all the strings,
but not directly. This results in a softer initial attack. Yet the sustain is just as rich because of sympathetic
vibrations. By combining this pedal technique with the use of the arm, as well as the other techniques I
described earlier, you can overcome the inherent limitation of the piano’s sonic characteristics.
In conclusion, the single greatest challenge in piano playing is the envelope of the sound produced by
the piano. However, by mastering the art of illusion, and combining techniques such as using the weight
of the arm and using your fingers to hold notes (phantom pedal), you can overcome this limitation and
create a beautiful, sustained sound. This is the secret of artistry in piano playing.
I hope this has been helpful for you! Leave your comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube!
Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon
channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons or want more information about pianos. I have many
resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to play with rubato. When you hear great pianists and other instrumentalists, they bring you on an emotional journey with their music. This is in no small part by the use of rubato. Rubato is an expressive playing technique, used primarily in Romantic era, 19th century music, of speeding up and slowing down, never gaining or losing time, but having a little bit of motion in the tempo.

Rubato pulls the listener in and adds emotion to your playing. 

An example of a piece you would play with rubato is the B minor Prelude of Chopin. Play it absolutely straight with no rubato whatsoever and it doesn’t really grab you and pull you in. It’s a beautiful melody, but it doesn’t feel right without rubato. If you tap along, you’ll notice you can just tap out the eighth notes along with the music. 

One of the secrets is thinking of the larger pulse. 

Instead of feeling the eighth note rhythm, feel the quarter note as the beat. The ebb and flow never gains or loses time, but just floats around the beat. It pulls you in. It’s very emotion inducing music when you play with rubato. Experiment and remember to feel the longer note value. You can’t play rubato very effectively if you’re thinking every single eighth note, or worse every sixteenth note! Feeling the pulse of the quarter note gives you a lot of room to play around with the beat. And remember to never gain or lose time.

That’s the secret to rubato!

Try it in your music! Let me know how it works for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. What are good pieces of music for people with small hands? Many of you know that I have rather small hands. Fortunately I have a good, solid octave. I can even reach most 9ths. Although, I can’t quite reach a 9th from above the keys. I can only reach a 10th if I grab one key and stretch to grab the other. But that’s not very practical. I can’t quite reach it with my right hand. As many of you know, your right hand is a little bit smaller than your left hand, if you’re like most pianists, from all the years of stretching. The left hand generally has more outstretched reaches than the right hand.

You can play music beyond your reach, as many great pianists have in the past.

Josef Hofmann had such small hands that Steinway actually built a piano for him with a smaller keyboard! This is a technology that some companies are even working on today. I have videos on this subject for you as well. You can see one here.

What repertoire is ideal for people with small hands?

Early period music is perfect! During the romantic era, the pedal was utilized extensively. The reach was greater, generally. However, the key to being able to play music beyond your reach is capturing notes you can’t reach on the pedal and breaking the chords very quickly. You can hardly tell they are broken the way they’re caught on the pedal. That is a technique that many pianists use in order to play music beyond their reach. It’s very effective. It does not in any way hinder the music.

If you have really small hands, and you don’t want to struggle, the music of Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, or Haydn is great.

The instrument wasn’t as highly developed yet during the time these composers lived. It didn’t have the sustain pedal that we enjoy today. The music doesn’t demand a lot of big reaches. Think about Bach two part inventions. There’s never more than one note in each hand at a time anyway! That’s going to be splendid for anyone with a smaller reach. But even Mozart is really accessible for people with small hands.

There is a wealth of music that will fall right in your hands, even if an octave is all you can reach.

Now, if you don’t have a solid octave, it is more of a challenge. You might want to look into some of those smaller keyboards. It would be wonderful if this became a standard. It’s possible that if this became a standard, a pianist could choose among different sized keys. Why is this size the standard? It doesn’t have to be this way! It’s just what evolved. If you can’t reach an octave, a smaller keyboard could be just the thing for you. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to sight-read on the piano. Sight-reading is one of the most difficult things you can do on the piano. Sometimes it seems absolutely mind boggling that it’s even possible! An accomplished player can take a piece of music they’ve never seen before and play it up to speed almost perfectly. How can they possibly see everything on the page? It doesn’t seem possible.

When I was young, I was a miserable sight-reader.

Even in high school, when I was a fairly advanced player, I wasn’t good at sight-reading. I was playing Chopin ballades and Liszt Hungarian rhapsodies and Beethoven sonatas, but my reading level was almost that of a beginner. I couldn’t seem to crack it. I have a video about my personal story of learning how to sight-read. You can see that video here. I had a revelatory moment when suddenly I realized I could read anything! Of course, I couldn’t get all the notes. I worked for years to get more and more of the notes in my sight-reading.

Keep your eyes on the music.

You can’t look down when you sight-read. You can’t read what you’re not looking at! You have to depend upon feel to a great extent. You must make the connection between what you hear and what you feel. But what I’m talking about today is something even more fundamental.

When you’re sight-reading, you’re not seeing absolutely everything.

It’s virtually impossible to see everything. There’s so much in a score. All the notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing andexpression, you can’t see it all. Even that person you think is reading everything perfectly, and maybe it sounds perfect, are they really seeing everything?

Hvae yeu eevr sein tohse wurd jmubles lkie tihs? Evon touhgh i’ts wrtiten inocrerctly, as lnog as tne frist and lsat ltteers are in the coerrct palecs, yeu can sitll reed it.

There are almost no words there at all! How is it possible to read that? Well, You’re not actually looking at every single letter. You’re looking at key letters that form the words, and you’re surmising what the words have to be in the context of the sentences. That’s exactly what you do in sight-reading! You actually look at what you can digest. You get a grasp of the sense of the harmonies. You surmise what the other notes must be based upon the ones you can see. You get an idea of where the music is going and you make many, many instantaneous decisions about what you can’t see. You flesh out all the notes based upon the skeletal image of what you capture reading quickly. Much like reading those jumbled words, you can make sense and you can even realize the music as it’s written without necessarily seeing every single thing in the score. It’s just like you were able to do a few moments ago, if you were able to read those jumbled words. It’s the same principle. So don’t feel like you can never read because there’s too much to see. There is too much to see, but you see what you need to see. Get the melody, of course. Get the bass and some of the inner lines. Get as many notes as you can, and make intelligent assumptions about what those inner voices must be.

Always look at chunks of music.

As I’ve talked about before, you don’t look from note to note. Just like when you’re reading text, you’re not looking at every single letter. It’s impossible to read that way. You look at words. You guess what the words are when reading text and you guess what the chords are when sight-reading music. You can get incredibly good at guessing if you’re experienced, particularly with composers you’ve played before, or styles you’re familiar with. There’s a certain formulaic type of notation that you can get your head around, and you can get pretty good at reading certain styles. There will always be some music where this breaks down, where you can’t even begin to decipher what the composer means. Maybe you’ve never even heard that composer before and you’re lost. But for a great deal of music, the more you do it, the more you’ll be able to assimilate into your fingers and be able to digest what you’re looking at and make musical sense. The key to sight-reading is deciphering the symbols you can grasp on the fly and fleshing out a performance on the spot. That’s what sight-reading is really all about.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with sight-reading. Share them in the comments at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

This is LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about the importance of rotation when playing arpeggios. What makes arpeggios so difficult? Even compared to scales, which have third and fourth finger crossings, as well as thumb crossings, arpeggios can be even more difficult. This is because your thumb and your third finger have to cross so far over, it makes it difficult. The way to practice this is to have the metronome set at a slow speed. Practice preparing your thumb as early as possible, which means right when the second finger plays, the thumb tucks under.

Instead of waiting until the thumb needs to play, prepare the thumb when your second finger plays.

Right after the thumb releases, it tucks under. Train your hand to prepare the thumb early. The left hand does exactly the same thing coming down. That is an essential technique. Practice without moving your arms up and down. Work with the metronome slowly, then increase the speed. Get it to two notes, and eventually four notes to the beat. You might have to work with progressively faster metronome speeds to get it that fast.

There are countless ways to practice arpeggios, but today I’m going to show you an essential technique, which is:
The rotation of the hand.

You don’t want to have an abrupt crossing of the thumb or your fingers at the point at which they cross over. Naturally, preparing the thumb early is a great way to avoid this. But there’s more to it. No matter how much you tuck your thumb under, it’s not all the way to where it needs to be. In a C major arpeggios, the right hand thumb crossing going up from a G to C is really far! So you should rotate your hand slightly to put your thumb over the next key. It’s important that it be a smooth motion, not a jerky one. This allows for playing fluid, faster arpeggios. Practice slowly, preparing the thumb in advance. Eventually you get to the point where you’re rotating the hand slightly, in a smooth manner. That is the rotation of the hands in arpeggios.

You’ll find in scales that this technique is not necessary, because you don’t have nearly as far a reach. But there are many places in music, with broken chords of different sorts, where this rotation of the hand is really important. It is also useful in being able to delegate the weight of the hand for balance, which is a subject for another video.

If there is a subject you would like for me to cover, let me know! I have a whole list of subjects from my students and other people who contact me on a daily basis. I appreciate the support! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin, and this is LivingPianos.com! Today’s subject is about how to achieve smoothly connected chords on the piano. This can be extremely difficult, particularly when you’re playing repeated chords. The whole mechanical nature of the piano is such that for a note to replay, the damper comes in contact with the strings. So it’s virtually impossible to completely connect a repeated note on the piano. You can use the pedal, but even then, because of the percussive nature of the piano’s tone, it never really sounds connected.

The more connected you can play with your hands, the smoother the sound will come out of the instrument.

This is true regardless of whether you’re using the pedal or not. Practicing without the pedal while trying to get repeated chords connected is essential. I’ll explain why in a minute. But first, how do you achieve such a thing? The secret is to keep your fingers in contact with the keys the entire time. Keep your fingers right on the keys. And be sure the keys come all the way up before they go back down again. If the key is down even a fraction of an inch before you play it, it may or may not play. A piano is not meant to have keys play when they don’t return all the way to the top. It’s not a technique you can always rely upon. So keep your fingers right on the surface of the keys, but be sure to let the keys fully return.

The first chord of each group has to be captured on the pedal, but you don’t want to capture the previous harmonies.

If you pedal too early, you’ll capture extra notes. You have a very brief amount of time to capture the chord on the pedal. It has to be after it is played, but also after the previous notes are gone. So by playing chords as long as possible, it gives you the maximum amount of time to grab the chord on the pedal. You want to work to have all the chords played while staying very close to the keys.

In places where you have repeated notes, you can change fingers.

When you change fingers on repeated notes, it’s much easier to make them sound smoothly connected. As one finger is going down, another finger is coming up. Whereas if you use the same finger, it doesn’t sound as smooth. It’s really hard to play with one finger and make the notes sound connected. When you change fingers on repeated notes, you get a smooth sound. You don’t have that luxury when you’re playing chords. You only have so many fingers on your hand! If you’re playing three notes, you have to use the same fingers.

So remember the secret to playing repeated chords is to keep your fingers in contact with the keys. But be sure to come up completely before depressing the chords down again. That should help you achieve smoothness in your repeated chords in any music you’re playing! Thanks again for joining me. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com