Tag Archives: how to play piano

The Secret of Rounded Fingers

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you the secret of rounded fingers. If you studied piano, you probably had teachers who said you must round your fingers and make them into a ball. But that can be painful! So why am I telling you to use rounded fingers? Well, there are different ways of approaching rounded fingers. I’m going to show you the correct way, which takes zero effort, and I’m going to explain why it’s so important in your piano playing. And I’m going to give you examples of it. The first example I’m going to give is the famous Mozart K 545 C Major Sonata. I’m going to explain where the rounded fingers really come into play and why it’s so important for you.

Using rounded fingers is particularly helpful when playing trills.

Why are rounded fingers necessary to be able to execute trills? Think about this. You have three different finger joints. If you only use one joint, that’s a lot of work for that one joint. But you have two other joints. If you use all your joints, you divide the load among many more joints. It’s much easier than moving a whole finger from just your knuckle. That’s the main reason. But how do you do this without stressing? The idea of holding a ball is a terrible analogy.

You never want to be in a position that takes any effort to maintain.

I’m going to repeat that. Don’t go into a hand position that takes effort to maintain. You might think, well, how can you possibly be in a position that’s rounded like that without any effort? You just drop your limp hands straight down toward the keyboard, and let your hands completely relax on the keys. Your hands will naturally be in a rounded position. And it takes absolutely no effort to maintain because your hands naturally go into that position. Try it on your piano. Without any effort at all, just go down, and you’ll be in that rounded position. Isn’t that remarkable? What are the key places where this is really handy? Well, there are several actually, and I’m going to show you. For one thing, you have a short trill right at the beginning of this Mozart sonata. If you were to try to do that with flat fingers, it would be cumbersome. Your fingers are too big and heavy. It’s much easier with rounded fingers. With flat fingers, it’s all but impossible. By the way, three and one are your strongest trill fingers. I know a lot of you like to use three and two. Those are good too. But three and one are even stronger.

You always must know exactly how many notes you’re playing in a trill.

If you don’t know how many notes you are playing in a trill, you might end on the wrong note. You need to know exactly how many notes you’re playing, and the way to do that is to practice slowly. I play triplets in the long trill before the repeat sign which is also found just before the end of the movement. Now, some of you might be tempted to play sixteenth notes there. But when you play up to speed, that’s a lot of notes to play. So, you may find triplets work much better. Find a number of notes in your trills that works for you. You don’t have to play a lot of notes in trills, but you must have trills you can execute faithfully and repeat cleanly. So remember this technique of using rounded fingers for ornamentation. Try it in your playing any time you have any kind of ornamentation or any quick playing at all, for that matter. Your rounded fingers can really come in handy to execute ornamentation. 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

The Power of Musical Snippets in Your Practice

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.

This technique is great for fast music because you’re playing up to tempo, but you’re just playing a few notes at a time. The number of notes that fit under your hand at a time is usually the right number. Or, you could take even less. Let’s say you’re playing four notes, and it’s not even. Try just playing two or three notes. Try this in your practice, particularly with fast music. It could be almost any piece of music. Just practice little snippets, little groups of notes that fit under your hand at a time, and get over the next position of the next notes that are under your fingers. Work through pieces this way, and you won’t believe the progress you can make when you hit a brick wall practicing with progressively faster metronome speeds. But it’s important to go back and forth. Sometimes metronome speeds are the way to go, and other times using musical snippets can give you an epiphany that takes you to that next level. If one doesn’t work, try the other. You can go back and forth. 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

How to Practice Bach: C Minor Prelude Well Tempered Clavier BK I

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to show you how to practice Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Minor from book one of his Well-Tempered Clavier. First, I’m going to play it for you. Then I want to zero in on the fast section. The whole thing is 16th notes, and then just towards the end it gets fast. It’s a great prelude. I want you to hear it first, and then I’m going to show you a bunch of ways you can practice this prelude. Stay until the end, because the last technique I’m going to show you is the ultimate technique!

Some people spend countless hours learning exercises.

Instead of learning tedious exercises, you might as well use music to develop your playing. That’s exactly what I’m going to show you how to do here. I’m going to show you a whole bunch of ways you can practice this prelude. These methods are really valuable. It kind of turns this prelude into different exercises that have great value, not just for playing this piece but for developing your technique.

First, let’s talk about the obvious things you can do.

Turn the metronome on. Find a comfortable speed where you can play it accurately. At first, when you’re playing slowly, articulate each note with gently rounded, raised fingers. This way, you get precise release of notes so the notes don’t blur together. Take the tempo up one notch at a time. As you get faster, make the fingers more gently rounded, and stay close to the keys. Of course, you don’t raise your fingers when playing fast. It’s only a way to help you practice the release of notes when playing slowly. When you get faster, lighten up and stay close to the keys.

Another handy way of working on this is with different articulations.

For example, try playing with staccato fingers. Or you could play one hand staccato and the other hand legato. There are also different accents that you could use. You could do four-note groups. You can play with different rhythms. You can play with different dynamics in the two hands. Naturally, there are other things you can do—other rhythms or accents. Some people might even want to accent the offbeats. See the video for examples of each of these techniques!

You could just spend hours, days, weeks, months, or even years with this one prelude, turning it into hundreds of different exercises!

You can use these different practice techniques with your music instead of learning hundreds of different exercises, and you get the same value. Plus, you get the added benefit of learning a piece inside and out as a reward for your hard work.

As I promised, here is the ultimate practice technique.

I love this practice method because it really trains your hand and your brain to be able to play this piece by practicing different note groups. First, play through the section broken up into four-note groups. Then, when you get comfortable going through the whole section that way, you can practice playing groups of eight notes. And then you can play groups of 16 notes at a time. You can focus on sections that need work, and identify the precise group of notes that need to be solidified.

Zero in on the parts that need work.

You don’t necessarily have to go through the entire section with all these different methods I’m showing you. Maybe you can play a good deal of it cleanly, but you keep missing one part. Try the various practice techniques on that part. Zero in where you need it. You shouldn’t just do an equal amount of practice on all of it because you might not need equal amounts on all of it. Now, at the beginning, you may very well need to work on all of it. That’s why a great starting point is playing it with the metronome with raised fingers, articulating everything, and making sure you get it all clean. Do some metronome speeds just to get it under your fingers, then strategically use these practice methods. That way, you can take the parts that are weak and make them strong. Build note groups upon note groups, and strategically use all these different techniques to help you master not just this Bach prelude but any piece of music! It will help you develop your technique on the piano. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For the sheet music for all the exercises mentioned and demonstrated, please visit: https://a2f360.myshopify.com/products/bach

How to Play 3 Against 4 Rhythms

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to explain how to play 3 against 4 rhythms. Have you ever tried to play three against four rhythms? You have a triplet in one hand and four 16th notes in the other hand. How can you possibly play those two rhythms? Some teachers just say to play the four with one hand, and play the three with the other hand, and then put them together. Well, what if that doesn’t work? What can you possibly do? By the end of this, you’re going to be able to play three against four!

First, I’m going to explain the mathematical relationship so you understand what is happening when you play 3 against 4.

Let’s simplify things for a moment and start with 3 against 2. 3 against 2 is not all that hard because it has basically six divisions. Two goes into six three times, and three goes into six two times. So your hands play together, right, left, right, left if the left hand is playing the triplet and the right hand is playing two notes. And indeed, that produces the correct rhythm.

Rhythm Chart 1

So the question is, can’t you do the same thing with 3 against 4? Technically, you can. But I’ll explain the problem with that in just a minute. You could figure out the mathematical relationship of 3 against 4 by counting to 12. Because, after all, three goes into twelve four times, and four goes into twelve three times. Mathematically, that works.

Chart 2

But the problem with that is getting it up to speed. Suppose you’re playing something like Debussy’s The Snow is Dancing from Children’s Corner Suite. At the fast tempo that goes, how could you possibly ever count that fast? You couldn’t. It’s impossible. A 3 against 4 is usually going to be at a faster tempo than you can count in this manner.

So here is the method for playing 3 against 4.

First, I’m going to show you how to rough it out where it’s not correct, but it is close to what three against four is. Basically, the rough version (which is not rhythmically even) is to play your hands together, left, right, left, right, left. If you just listen to the three, you’ll hear that the rhythm is distorted. It’s not quite right. So why am I telling you to do this if it’s wrong? Because you can at least start to understand which notes play first in each hand. Then you can adjust the rhythm to make it correct. And I’ll show you exactly how to do that. It’s the third triplet that has to come in later, so the last one in the right hand is going to come in later (if the triplet is in your right hand). The problem is, if you do that, the whole thing bogs down. So the last note in the right hand has to come in later, and then the last note in the left hand comes in right after that, much sooner than you might think.

To check if you’re doing it correctly, tap one hand on the top of the piano and play the other hand on the piano so you can hear clearly.

This is incredibly valuable. For example, with 3 against 2, the 3 is easy. So you tap the 3 on the top of the piano (or in your lap) while you play the 2 on the piano so you can hear the 2 clearly. When you play 3 against 2, you’ll be tempted to accent the second note of the 2. But that is not the way rhythm generally works. Usually, the first notes on the beat are louder or have more rhythmic emphasis than the off-beats in a group of two notes (unless it’s a syncopated rhythm). So you want to purposely underplay the second note of the tuplet (the two). You can do the same thing with your music. By playing one hand on top of the piano, you can hear what the other hand is doing. Because when you play the hands together, it can be all but impossible to identify the distortion of the rhythm. But when you play one hand silently in your lap or on top of the piano, you can clearly hear the evenness of the slower note on the piano (the two in 3 against 2, or the three in 4 against 3).

This is a hack that really works!

So remember, when you play 4 against 3, the third note of the triplet is going to be later than you think it is. And then the fourth note in the other hand is going to be right after the late triplet. That is the secret to playing 3 against 4! That’s the lesson for today. Try it out! If you’ve ever struggled playing 4 against 3, see if this helps. 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

27 Pianos in an 1100-Square-Foot House

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you the story of how we had 27 pianos in an 1100-square-foot house. It’s actually the story of how I got into selling pianos. It all begins with how I started teaching piano.

I started teaching piano when I was still in high school.

I assisted my father, Morton Estrin, with his teaching, as my sister did before me. It was my part-time job throughout my conservatory years. Teaching has always been a mainstay. People would call me for lessons, and the first question I would always ask was, Do you have a piano? If they didn’t, I would tell them, honestly, you’re better off with a piano and no lessons than lessons and no piano. So I was turning away students right and left, and I couldn’t really afford to do that. We were kind of struggling financially. I was driving my Pinto all over the county and beyond! This was in southern Indiana since I graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington.

Eventually, I bought a big old upright and moved it myself.

I ended up moving hundreds of those big, tall uprights. Thank goodness I lifted correctly and fortunately, never hurt my back. So the next time somebody called for lessons, I asked if they had a piano, and they said no. I said that I had one they could try out. And sure enough, they bought the piano! I got another student, and everything was good. So I was bold and bought two more. But my piano technician came in and told me that the bass bridges on both pianos were cracked. I always checked out the pianos. I would look at the hammers and the soundboards, but I never thought of taking out the kickboard. Sure enough, the bass bridges were cracked on both pianos! My technician said he didn’t do that kind of work, but he recommended another tuner. So I called them up, and they came over. I didn’t really have the money to fix it. So I asked if there was any way he could do the work, and then when I sold the pianos, I could pay him and split the profit. And he was nice enough to agree to that. So we did that. Sure enough, both pianos sold, and they both made a profit. So I realized that this was something we could scale (pun intended!).

Before we knew it, we had five pianos, then seven pianos, and we topped out at 27 pianos!

We had a walk-out basement. I also had my recording studio down there. I’ve always been into music technology. We had a lot of the pianos upstairs because, among those pianos, six of them were grand pianos! We had two young children at the time. Eventually, we topped out at 27 pianos in an 1100-square-foot house! That’s right. This is real. It’s not just clickbait. We actually did that. Since that time, we’ve always had pianos in our home. And we still do right here in the Waterloo Arts District. This beautiful historical building was originally built in the 1860s, if you can believe it. We have two showrooms down here, and we live on the two levels above. Down in the basement, we have our ping-pong table. We play almost every night! The other half of our pianos are up the street at Treelawn Music Hall, where they have a phenomenal jazz program in a small venue and a large music hall where they have a 9-foot concert grand Steinway we sold them. We have our pianos there in what used to be a bowling alley. So we literally live with these pianos, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now my teaching is all online, and it’s a joy. Teaching and pianos, along with performing and recording technology, have been the mainstays since my high school days. 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

The Greatest Challenge of Moving to Cleveland


Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to tell you what the greatest challenge has been with moving to Cleveland. Believe it or not, it’s finding enough great piano technicians! We started LivingPianos.com as the world’s First Online Piano Store in Orange County, California, in 2006, doing over 80% of our business out of the area. We were in one of the most expensive places in the country. And we lamented that we had to spend so much money to do business there when we were selling most of our business out of the area.

My sister, Coren Estrin Mino, is also a pianist.

She graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music years ago, and she settled here. She’s a pianist and a teacher. So I’m no stranger to Cleveland. But think of the arduous task of moving our store with dozens of pianos. We had a recording studio. We even had an Airbnb we rented out. Not to mention our home. Moving was a huge undertaking, but it has been incredibly worthwhile!

We loved Southern California.

We were 20 minutes away from Laguna Beach. We have friends there who we loved to visit. But coming home, if it was after 2:00 pm, we would be stuck in rush hour traffic. We had to plan our whole day around the traffic. I don’t miss that. Of course, the weather in Cleveland cannot compare to Southern California. But there are a lot of great things about Cleveland.

Cleveland is a great place to live!

We’ve got the second-largest playhouse district in the country! The real blessing is having the Cleveland Orchestra 10 minutes away. There’s a necklace of metroparks around the city, and we are 10 minutes from the lake. So spread the word! If there’s anybody you know who works on pianos who would like a new life in a place that has a rich cultural history, Cleveland is the place. And it’s very affordable to live here. Come join our team of great technicians! 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