All posts by Robert Estrin

The Best Piano Exercises (Part 4) – Octaves

Welcome back to our continuing series of piano exercises. Today we will be focusing on developing your octave technique.

I remember growing up as a kid and watching my father Morton Estrin mortonestrin.com and being enthralled by the way he played octaves – I wanted to develop my technique to play like him and my other inspiration, Vladimir Horowitz. At the time my hands were simply too small to achieve the results I wanted but I kept practicing.

My hands even as a full grown adult never became very large. I’ve struggled my whole life developing strength in order to play octaves and large chords well. Today I’m going to share a few tips for how to improve your strength and octave technique.

If you can’t reach an octave I’m afraid this lesson wont be much help to you. You might grow into it over time. The good news is that if you can reach an octave at all, this lesson will help you develop stronger, faster octaves!

The secret to this technique, and octaves in general, is the hand position. The key is to develop an arch between your pinky and thumb equalizing the strength of your weaker pinky to your stronger thumb. Your other fingers should be up and out of the way. If you have time to watch the video included with this article it shows an excellent visual representation of this technique. The goal of this position is to generate an equal amount of force between the thumb and pinky finger – which will help greatly in developing strength to play octaves.

For octave technique you will want to rely on the arms to place the hands over the keys, not for any up-down motion. All up-down motion should come from the wrist. I have explained this technique a number of times before and it’s explained in detail in the video included with this article.

To perform the exercise, set your metronome to 60 and then play a C major scale at one note to the beat in octaves and play the notes only from your wrist using the arms to guide your hands over the correct keys. This might seem like an easy exercise but it must be done correctly in order to be effective.

As you progress through the exercise and feel more confident you can play two times on each note for each beat. As you become comfortable, add one extra note each to each beat until you reach your limit. As you play faster, be sure to keep your hands closer to the keys and lighten up to help increase your speed.

Play through this exercise every day and you will develop brilliant octaves!

Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729

The Best Piano Exercises (Part 3) – Broken Seventh Chords

Welcome back to our ongoing series of piano exercises. These are meant to be quick techniques you can practice with just a few minutes each day to help develop your strength. The first part in the series dealt with a Broken Triad Exercise and the second was Practicing Major Scales with C Major Fingering. This week we will be covering Broken Seventh Chords.

As long as you know all your seventh chords, you can play them in all keys as arpeggios. Why would you just play major and minor triads as arpeggios? Not only is this is a wonderful way to develop your technique but when you come across broken seventh chords in your music you will already know how to approach them.

The order I play them is:

– Major seventh chord
– Dominant seventh chord
– Minor seventh chord
– Half diminished seventh chord
– Diminished seventh chord

Why this particular order? If you play them this way, there is only one note that has to change between chords. Simply keep playing the chords one by one and go through all twelve of the keys. The video included with this article will show you a great example of this.

Here is the key on how to transition from chord to chord:

– Major seventh chord: Lower the 7th a half-step
– Dominant seventh chord: Lower the 3rd a half-step
– Minor seventh chord: Lower the 5th a half-step
– Half diminished seventh chord: Lower the 7th a half-step
– Diminished seventh chord: That’s it!

Thanks for joining me, Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to approach Octave-Tremolos on the piano

If you play the piano you have probably heard octave tremolos and were taken with how they sound. Today we are going to talk about how to approach these with the “Alla Turca” movement of the Mozart K331 Piano Sonata in A Major.

The secret to playing broken octaves – or octave tremolos – is first learning how to play octaves properly. One of the biggest secrets is using the correct fingering. You’ll want to use the first finger (thumb) and the fifth finger on all white key octaves – and thumb and fourth finger on black key octaves. This might seem like a small thing but it’s incredibly important to developing your octave playing by dividing the load between the fourth and fifth fingers which makes it much easier to play them quickly.

When you play octaves you will notice that the first finger (thumb) is much heavier than your fifth and fourth fingers. This is because your thumb is much stronger than your other fingers and you will have to learn to balance the weight of your hands. A great way to practice this technique is to play the top notes (fourth and fifth fingers) legato while playing your first finger (thumb) staccato. This might be tricky at first but keep practicing it because you will produce much more power on the top notes and your thumb will do it’s job with minimal weight.

The other thing that is essential is avoiding tension. One way to alleviate that problem is to practice in note groups. In this particular piece you can practice the first three notes of the broken octaves and relax your wrist and arm. If you feel yourself getting fatigued you should rest your hands and come back to it a bit later in your practice. Never put unnecessary strain on yourself and make sure you are keeping your hands, arms and body relaxed. As you develop more strength in your hands you will be able to practice for much longer periods of time. Your best bet is practicing octave tremolos for short periods of time throughout the day. That way you will develop strength and avoid injury.

Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com

Should You Major in Piano if You Want to Play in an Orchestra?

The question today is whether you should major in piano if you want to play in an orchestra. This is an interesting question because while you might see piano in an orchestra every now and then, it’s actually not that common. So would studying piano help your chances to play in an orchestra?

Most of the time when you see a pianist performing with an orchestra they are actually not part of the orchestra. They are typically a guest artist who is touring through and soloing with the orchestra. Very rarely does orchestral repertoire call for a piano part. There is typically one keyboard position – and it’s not always full-time – where they might cover piano, harpsichord, synthesizer, organ and even celeste. Many orchestras without full time seasons will often times utilize subs for these parts.

If it is your absolute passion to play in an orchestra, piano might not be the best choice for you. The great thing about the piano is that its solo repertoire is unmatched. It is larger than all other instruments combined! More than that, nearly all the solo pieces for other instruments such as violin, flute, clarinet, or nearly any other instrument have accompanying piano parts; so the piano is an intrinsic part of playing with other instruments. From piano trio to piano quintet, the piano is an important part of many types of music and it has an immense repertoire.

If you want to play in an orchestra what is the best instrument to study? Orchestras are mostly composed of string players, so that is a great choice. However, with any instrument, the work involved in becoming an accomplished player, much less a professional, is so formidable that you should really choose an instrument you genuinely prefer. You want to play something you love and if you have a passion for it you will be driven to practice more and as such you will be more successful and fulfilled.

Getting a position in an orchestra is incredibly difficult and picking an instrument with more potential job openings is never a safe bet. Landing a position with any orchestra will require massive amounts of practice and some luck.. You are best off finding an instrument that makes you happy and something you love playing.

Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com

The Best Piano Exercises (Part 2) – Playing Major Scales with C Major Fingering

Welcome to the second part in our series on Piano Exercises. Last week we discussed The Broken Triad Exercise. This week we will cover a very unique practice exercise that might sound a little crazy but is highly effective in developing your skills as a pianist.

If you’ve ever played complex counterpoint like Bach fugues or other selections you will find yourself having to use complex fingering that’s not very intuitive. Normally you will want to find fingering that would be easy to achieve – like avoiding using your thumbs on black keys (unless on octaves and chords) – and most of the time you will have the luxury of breaking down fingering to make it as simple as possible. This is not always the case and you must prepare yourself for having to deal with more difficult passages.

One great way to practice this type of non-standard fingering is by playing all major scales using the fingering for the C major scale. In the video provided with this article I demonstrate this technique using the D-flat major scale using the fingering of the C major scale!

While this might look and feel silly it will really help you develop strength and flexibility in your hands and fingers.

Thanks again for joining me and stay tuned for the next piano exercise. Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com

The Best Piano Exercises (Part 1) – Broken Triads

Welcome to my multi-part series of piano exercises. This is a great exercise I learned in conservatory that provides a wonderful way to build strength in your technique.

Sometimes you don’t have a lot of time to practice but you want to get the maximum amount of production out of your time – this is great exercise for this exact situation. It’s something you can easily do with just a few minutes every day.

Rather than playing an entire series of scales or arpeggios and without having to learn an entire etude, you can perform this exercise – which is based on a pattern of chords – relatively easily and frequently as a great way to improve your strength.

The exercise goes from a major triad, to a minor triad, to a diminished triad, to an augmented triad. If you’re unsure of what these mean we will have a series of videos explaining them in the near future.

The best way to learn this exercise is to watch the video included with this article, if you can’t watch I’ve included a link to download the exercise right here.

When you start with the C-major triad, you simply play the top two notes in the right hand and the bottom two notes in the left hand. From here you simply go back and forth through the scale notes. You’ll want to use all five fingers – this is a crucial step for the exercise as it’s all about building strength.

After you play the major, you simply move on to the minor, the diminished, and finally the augmented. When you actually perform the exercise you will want to go in a seamless line between each form of the triads and you will do this is every single key moving up chromatically.

This whole exercise takes only a few minutes and it’s an incredible workout for your fingers. There is no phrasing or dynamics to worry about; it’s simply a way to improve your strength. Over the years I’ve found this to be an incredibly helpful exercise and something I can do when I simply don’t have the time to sit down and practice for an extended amount of time.

Thanks again for joining me, there will be a couple more exercises for you in the next coming weeks, so stay tuned! Robert@LivingPianos.com