Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s topic is about the power of musical snippets in your practice. What you’re going to learn today is one of the most valuable techniques you could ever use in your piano practice. The amazing thing about it is that you can use this technique with almost all of your music! It’s incredibly valuable, especially for something fast. I’m going to play the beginning of the B minor Scherzo of Chopin. It’s a little rusty, so I can practice it in front of you. You can see for yourself how this technique works in the accompanying video.

The technique of fast playing is sometimes dramatically different from the technique of slow playing.

When you’re working on a fast section like this, you could do the obvious thing and put the metronome on a slow speed and do metronome speeds to work it up. But the problem with that approach is that you might hit a wall where you can’t get any faster. Why is that? Because the technique of fast playing is sometimes dramatically different from the technique of slow playing. This is particularly obvious on a wind instrument because the breaths come in different places. It’s a whole different experience. Even on the piano, fast playing feels different from slow playing. You try to get faster and faster with the metronome, but sometimes you just can’t get any faster.

I’m going to show you a completely different technique using musical snippets.

Just play the smallest possible unit that makes sense to you. Take a tiny number of notes. You can just take the first two notes, then take the next two, and then put them together. Now you might not want to go note by note. You might instead consider note groups that fall under your hands. Some snippets are basically broken chords. You want to get over the next note group as soon as you hit the new hand position; otherwise, you’ll never gain speed. So as you finish one note group, you get your hand in position over the next note group.

You can work through your music this way, gaining confidence and playing with the technique you’re going to eventually use when you play the whole piece.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how playing a second instrument can enhance your piano playing. I grew up studying the piano with my father, Morton Estrin, starting when I was seven and a half years old. He was such a great teacher! Shortly after, our school offered band, orchestra, and chorus. I joined all of them in the fourth grade. I played the French horn. So I had the benefit of playing two instruments. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to only play one instrument.

Once you play a wind instrument, it’s a revelatory moment.

I can tell you from my personal experience that it had a profound effect on me from the very beginning. Of course, the piano helped the French horn because I had a keen understanding of music theory, harmony, counterpoint, and all the things that are hard to imagine on a single-line instrument. But what about the horn and the effect that has had on my piano playing? On the piano, it can be difficult to evoke a sense of a singing line in your playing. Even just singing can help you with that. The piano is a percussion instrument, with all the notes fading out. Playing a wind instrument, you can get a true legato, slurs, and all of that.

When you play an orchestral instrument, you’re playing with other instruments almost all the time.

Whereas on the piano, many of you probably play by yourself predominantly. You don’t get the enriching experience of playing with other musicians. Also, when you’re playing to a conductor, you learn how the pulse of the music can be communicated and how to follow other musicians. You learn how to make a cohesive whole with other people. The entire experience is enriching, and it might encourage you to play chamber music or accompany on the piano with other instruments. There are so many benefits to playing other instruments. Every other instrument you play brings a different level and depth of understanding of music to what you’re able to achieve on the piano.

So if you play another instrument or sing, consider that a benefit to your piano playing!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m asking: Are you killing the goose that lays the golden eggs in your practice? Boy, it’s horrible to think that this could be possible. What am I talking about here, anyway? Well, it’s important to cover the most vital subjects in your practice and to work out exercises and technique. Some things are fun to work on, and some things are drudgery. You must strike a balance, or you risk the possibility of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs!

The goose that lays the golden eggs is your passion for the instrument.

If you force yourself to do things that you know you need to do in your practice, but you feel like it’s drudgery to sit down at the piano because the stuff you need to do is so distasteful, then what do you have left? If you don’t love the instrument, then you’re not going to want to practice it anyway. In your practice, of course, you must do certain vital things. And there are some things that maybe you’d rather not do. Maybe you don’t want to work on scales or memorization.

Find time for the important things and balance it out with things that bring you great joy on the instrument.

You have to have some enjoyment, so it’s not all work and no play. You should do some things just because you love to do them instead of falling into a routine that you think you have to do because it’s important. Find the balance between what is productive and what is enriching! That will take you much further than beating yourself up and driving something into the ground until you don’t even want to do it anymore. Make time for what’s important. And if you make the time for playing and enjoying your instrument, then you’ll be able to balance the time spent on important things that may be very challenging. The challenging aspects of your practice can give you a bit of a sickness in the pit of your stomach if you do them too much. Let me know in the comments how many of you have faced this issue! I know it’s a tough thing, particularly for younger students.

Most kids hate to practice.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we’ll be discussing two methods of piano practice, and one is clearly better. I’m wondering which one you do. What are these two macro-methods of piano practice? One is the shotgun approach, and the other is the band-aid approach. I want to explain what each of these methods entails and why one is clearly better than the other.

What is the shotgun approach?

Some of you probably like to sit down at the piano to practice your music and go through the whole piece. Then you start over, and you go through it again. You try to work through the whole piece because you want to cover everything. I would describe this as a shotgun approach. You’re kind of covering everything because you know everything is important.

What is the band-aid approach?

You start your piece, but instead of going through the whole thing, you zero in on where you know the weaknesses are and focus on what needs work. Then, after you’ve gotten that section nailed down, you can go back and try to connect it with the previous section. After that, you can go back further. As soon as you come to a section where something doesn’t feel secure or doesn’t sound quite right, once again, you’ll focus your attention on that. The band-aid approach is strategic practice.

You don’t need to practice everything equally!

You will get so much more done using the band-aid approach. I know it’s gratifying to play the music and try to cover all your pieces because it makes you feel like you’ve really accomplished something. But it’s definitely not the most efficient way to get things done when your time is limited, which is the case for most people. I know that when I sit down to practice, I want to get as much done as I can for every minute I’m practicing. So I go right for what I know needs work. I spend the vast majority of my time that way. It’s the 80-20 rule: spend 80% of your practice on 20% of the material. Perhaps it’s more like the 90-10 rule. You could spend 90% of your time on 10% of the material. It makes a world of difference to gain security where you really need it.

Remember: avoid the shotgun approach!

The shotgun approach is not in your best interest most of the time. Occasionally, you will want to go through all your music as a check to see where to focus your next practice session. Then you can use the band-aid approach, as I described. What practice method works for you? Let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! We have thousands of videos and articles about almost every subject you can imagine! You can also consider joining our Patreon, where we make videos just for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.