Mozart was known to improvise music at gatherings. This was a common practice at the time. Sometimes there would be events with several keyboardists dueling it out trying to outdo each other! Naturally, Mozart astounded audiences with these displays of instant composition.
Mozart Fantasies offer a glimpse as to what his improvisations were like.
Mozart composed very few fantasies. He also composed only a few pieces in minor keys, although most of them are among his finest compositions. Unlike most of Mozart’s works which have very well defined Classical form, in his fantasies, he explores flights of fancy that drift seamlessly from one idea to another. The D Minor Fantasy is captivating from beginning to end keeping you wondering what is coming next!
This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. Today we have a musical test for you! You can test your musical ear with the accompanying video. You have an opportunity to see if you can hear the difference between different types of triads.
What is a Triad?
Triads can also be inverted. So the bottom note can be on the top, or the top note can be on the bottom:
The major triad has a happier sound compared to the minor chord which has a sad quality for most people. The diminished triad has a diminished 5th. So you can listen for a smaller outer interval. Whereas the augmented triad has an augmented 5th, so the outer interval is larger. The augmented triad is also every other note of a whole tone scale, a scale of all whole steps.
So now that you have an intellectual background of triads, try the listening test and see how you do! You can leave your impressions or results here at LivingPianos.com or 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
Bach lived in Leipzig, Germany and did very little travelling. However, whenever musicians came through town, he would make a point of hearing them. So he wrote a vast array of music of different cultures including English Suites, French Suites, Italian Concerto, as well as a wealth of other music. He wrote weekly masses at the church where he worked. At one point, he was composing music for 3 different churches!
One of Bach’s most substantial bodies of work are his 48 Preludes & Fugues known as, The Well Tempered Clavier. He celebrated the advancement of tuning technology, which finally afforded the possibility of playing in all 12 keys without the necessity of re-tuning the instrument, by composing Preludes and Fugues in each of the major and minor keys. As if that wasn’t enough, he composed 2 books of them!
The Toccatas are pieces in which Bach explores free-form writing.
This gives insights as to what it might have been like to hear Bach improvise music at the keyboard. The E minor Toccata starts with a short movement, then goes right into a fugue. Then there is a very free movement which is like a fantasy. Finally, an incredible fugue with a subject that only Bach could utilize with his brilliance with counterpoint. It is a long, fast subject, and the fugue ends with a flourish of notes for a rousing ending to this fantastic piece!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is about whether you should you follow pedal markings in your scores. All too often, you don’t even have pedal markings! So where should you pedal? In a nutshell, it’s where harmonies change. You don’t want to blur harmonies from one chord to another because you get a mess of dissonance. So whenever harmonies change, that’s the appropriate place to change the pedal. But what about when you do have pedal indications in the score? Well, this comes down to two factors. Are they the composer’s markings or the editor’s markings?
Very few composers wrote pedal markings in their scores.
Most of the pedal markings you’re going to find are editors’ markings. You can try them, but I would, for the most part, ignore them unless you find them helpful. Now, what about when composers write pedal markings? There are some places where Beethoven wrote pedal markings, for example. Even then, with Beethoven as a good example, the piano was a very different instrument during Beethoven’s lifetime. As a matter of fact, the piano was a very different instrument early in Beethoven’s life compared to later in his life! The piano was evolving. The pedaling that worked for Beethoven’s piano doesn’t necessarily work well for the modern piano. Well, what about later composers? If you have composers from the late 19th or 20th century who wrote pedal markings, should you follow them? You may want to in some instances.
Sometimes you’ll have markings for the una corda pedal, the soft pedal. Should you follow them?
In regards to the una corda pedal, on some pianos, the soft pedal does almost nothing. On a new piano, for example, where the hammers aren’t grooved, the change in position of the hammers makes very little difference. On other pianos, it can make a dramatic difference in tone. If the hammers are very heavily grooved, the una corda pedal will make a significant tonal change. You’ve probably noticed how, on a grand piano, the action and the hammers move when you depress the una corda pedal. That puts the soft felt striking the strings. So did the composer make these una corda pedal markings for a piano with a dramatic change or a subtle change? You have to weigh that in deciding whether you follow the markings. Ultimately, your ears are your guide.
What about sustain pedal markings?
In regards to the sustain pedal, different pianos have different levels of sustain. Different rooms have different qualities of reverberation. Also, the composer may or may not have been a great interpreter of their own music! So I would say pedal markings are suggestions. Try them, by all means, when the composer wrote them, certainly, and even if editors wrote them. But if they don’t work for you, don’t feel compelled to follow pedal markings in your scores. They may or may not work on your piano, in your room, or in the style you’re trying to achieve in your playing. I hope this is helpful 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. With over 1500 videos on LivingPianos.com, it’s amazing when I think of a topic that I’ve never covered before that’s so fundamental! Today I’m going to talk about how to practice reading pieces. First of all, let me explain what I’m talking about. I have obviously described the process of practicing pieces to memorize: the painstaking process of taking one hand at a time, very small phrases, mastering all elements of the score, the notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression of each hand separately, memorizing them, putting them together one phrase at a time, and then connecting them. But sometimes your pieces are not solo pieces, and it wouldn’t make much sense to memorize them.
You may have pieces you aren’t going to memorize but still want to play at a high level.
For example, let’s say you’re playing in an orchestra that has a piano part in it. You’re not going to memorize such a score. Or if you’re accompanying a singer, if the piece is at your reading level, you can just read through it. But suppose it’s harder than that, and you want to play it with them. You’re not going to memorize this piece; so how do you approach such a thing? I’m going to tell you about that. Read to the end because I’m going to tell you an additional benefit to this that’s essential for your piano practice.
You can’t learn a piece by simply reading through it.
I describe the process of how to learn a piece of music that you’re memorizing as opposed to just reading it through again and again until you kind of get it. The danger with that type of practice is that unless you’re playing it perfectly, you are likely doing more harm than good. If the piece is of sufficient difficulty for you, it’s probably not something you cqn just read through perfectly. Otherwise, why study that piece if you can already play it? So usually, you’re taking a piece of music that has more challenges than something you can just read through perfectly. If you read through something you’re missing again and again, you’re going to reinforce those mistakes. In a piece, each note has a rhythm, a fingering, a dynamic level, and other expression markings. So if you count up the number of notes in a piece and multiply by four or five with all the elements that it has, you come up with thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of details! There’s no way that you can just assimilate that kind of information without an organized approach.
What do you do to learn a piece of music you’re not memorizing?
Interestingly, you can use much of the same type of practice method with a piece you are not going to memorize! First, read through the piece just to get acquainted. If there are large sections you can already play just reading, that’s good. You may not need to practice those parts further. But for any sections that you can’t just read through adequately, practice them the same way you practice memorizing. However, because you’re not memorizing, you can take a bigger chunk of music at a time. So if normally you take two measure phrases, hands separately, maybe you take four measure phrases or even eight measure phrases.
Get one hand really fluent, study the score carefully for all details, get the dynamics right from the get-go, and work out good fingering. Learn all the details of the score. If there are expression marks that provide additional indications of how the music should be played, incorporate them right from the beginning. Get one hand as fluent as possible, and then do the same thing with the other hand. You’re not memorizing, but just getting it totally fluid. Then put your hands together. Slow down at first so you can get it accurate the first time, then play it many times and speed the phrase up. Work through the whole piece in this manner connecting sections as you go. You might not be able to get everything up to tempo right at the beginning, but get each section as fast as you can, knowing that you’re going to revisit it tomorrow to work on all the sections again. Then you can get it a little bit faster and get more fluid connections between sections, always working to the point of diminishing returns on all sections. You’ll know which sections still need work because you won’t be able to play those sections adequately up to tempo yet.
You can revisit pieces you’ve already memorized and solidify your work by reading them.
You can go through pieces you’ve already memorized, and any sections you can’t read, you can practice in this manner. It’s absolutely essential that you are able to read through pieces you have memorized. Otherwise, over time, they will degrade. You won’t possibly be able to keep all the integrity of your memory over a long period of time through sheer repetition of playing without referencing the score. You must go back and reinforce the memory by reading through the score. This is a great way to develop your reading abilities in pieces that you want to be able to play that are not to be memorized, as well as reinforcing the memory of pieces you’ve already learned. I hope this is helpful 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. Today I’m going to give you two reasons why you must change fingers when you have repeated notes on the piano. Oftentimes, you’ll see fingering telling you to use different fingers on the same note. Why would you need to do that? Can’t you just play the same note with the same finger? The answer is yes, but there are two times when this is not true. Today I’m going to show you two times when you absolutely must change fingers on repeated notes.
Changing fingers is crucial on fast, repeated notes.
Very fast, repeated notes are virtually impossible to play with one finger. You couldn’t possibly play fast enough with one finger instead of using multiple fingers. Different fingers can absolutely go faster. So that’s an obvious place where you must change fingers on repeated notes. But there’s another time when you must change fingers on repeated notes as well.
If you want to achieve a true legato on repeated notes, you must change fingers.
By lifting up previously played finger while the next finger is coming down, you can achieve a far smoother sound when repeating the same note. You can achieve a far greater legato.. Now, you might think that you can make it work by using the pedal, and the pedal will indeed help; but even without using the pedal, you can achieve a legato sound by changing fingers on a repeated note. It’s remarkable how much legato can be achieved even without the pedal!
By adding the pedal with the repeated notes and changing fingers, you get the ultimate smooth legato.
You don’t need to use the pedal all that much. The changing of fingers makes for such a better legato. To recap, when you play quickly, you must change fingers in order to facilitate rapid, repeated notes. And when you have slow repeated notes that are to be played smoothly, you also must change fingers in order to achieve a true legato. However, if you have instances with repeated notes that don’t require an extreme legato, or aren’t so fast, you can use the same finger and get good results. But these are two instances where you must change fingers on repeated notes. I hope this is helpful 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
