All posts by Robert Estrin

Is Playing the Piano Hard?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Is playing the piano hard? You see some people playing and they make it look effortless. For example, I have played the Chopin Ballade in G minor hundreds if not thousands of times. Is that hard to do? Well, I’ve done that so many times, I wouldn’t say it’s particularly hard. It does take concentration. But for the average person, is playing the piano hard?

Playing the piano is a very complex task.

There was an article in The New York Times Magazine years ago. It was an article not about the piano. It was about the human brain. In this article, they cited piano playing as the single most complex activity of the human brain. It involves motor coordination with the fingers. You have to coordinate the sound with the visual, and it encompasses long term and short term memory. It really is complex! So in a nutshell, yes, piano playing has a lot of elements that make it difficult. However, it really depends upon what you’re after in your piano playing.

Not all piano playing is equal.

Somebody who hasn’t ever even touched a piano, if they have some degree of exposure and an appreciation of music, and a modicum of talent, they might be able to sit down the first time and just play different black keys and make it sound reasonably good. So depending on what you want to achieve at the piano, it may not be that hard. Now, having said that, playing classical compositions, learning them and being able to play them faithfully and accurately with security, is very difficult. I won’t kid you.

Practicing is a very difficult process if you’re doing it right.

If practicing is easy, you’re probably not accomplishing that much. I always feel that practicing should be hard so performing is easy! Make your practicing intense. Every minute you should be absorbing some little detail. Keep your concentration by not overwhelming yourself with too much at a time. By doing this you can sustain a long, productive practice. It takes immense concentration and focus to do that. The harder practicing is, assuming it’s productive, the easier performing is. So is piano hard? Yeah, it’s hard! But if you practice well, you can make playing enjoyable and much easier than your practice. I think that should be the goal, don’t you?

I want to hear from you!

Do you think piano playing is hard? Do you think practicing is hard? What kind of enjoyment do you get out of the instrument? Let me know in the comments here at Living Pianos.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

Do You Have to Be Able to Read Music to Play the Piano?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the importance of reading music. Do you have to be able to read music to play the piano? Many of you know that I have a deep background in classical music. I am a second generation concert pianist. My father, Morton Estrin, taught me and my sister piano from a very young age. We were taught how to read notation, music theory, and all the rest of it. So you would think my answer would be yes, you must read music to play the piano. But I’m going to surprise many of you by telling you that, no, you do not have to read music in order to play the piano!

There are many pianists who can’t read music.

There are many accomplished players of country, folk, jazz, rock, blues, new age, and other styles, who can’t read music. Maybe they just read a lead sheet, which I’ll talk about in a moment. You’ll never be able to play the blues convincingly reading note for note. First of all, the rhythms are really hard to read with syncopated music like jazz, rock, blues, country and other styles like that. Secondly, the way that kind of music is created in the first place is with an improvised form. You are coming up with your own arrangements and playing by ear.

What about classical music?

I would never have wanted to believe this, but I have encountered quite a number of people who have become quite accomplished at playing sophisticated repertoire, learning note for note, following somebody else on the keyboard. They go on the Internet and watch videos of notes coming down on the keys like a video game. Does that really work? Well, it works to an extent. To get through a piece? Sure. Naturally, that technology doesn’t offer all the nuance of the notation, exactly how long notes last, the phrasing, how they’re connected and detached, and a myriad of other things. But talented musicians who don’t want to learn how to read music sometimes have good ears. They can watch the video, figure out where the hands go, and do a reasonably good job at recreating those pieces of music.

For anybody who wants to play classical music at a really high level, notation is a must.

For anyone looking to play classical music at a concert level, you will need to be able to read scores. But for those of you just wanting to play music and not be encumbered by the complexity of reading scores, particularly those of you who are interested in other styles of music, you can embrace it! I’ll go so far as to say that this is something that’s sadly neglected in conservatory training.

There are so many concert pianists who can’t improvise the simplest tunes by ear, because they’re never expected to.

As soon as they graduate, they discover that most of the gigs out there are not playing Beethoven sonatas and Chopin etudes. It’s really hard to find venues that are going to pay you to play that kind of music. So even if you are a classically trained musician, you owe it to yourself to explore improvised types of music. It’s good to be able to play music without necessarily reading it. A lead sheet is what most musicians utilize and most gigs expect you to be able to read. A lead sheet is just the melody line and the chord symbols. You come up with the arrangement. That’s the way so much music is created in this world! I’ll talk more about that in the future. Express your interest so I know how much of these videos you want to see! 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 SLOW DOWN Your Playing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to establish a slower tempo on the piano. It’s the funniest thing. I have students, and sometimes they have difficulty playing something. So I tell them to play more slowly. More often than not, they play exactly the same tempo! You might wonder, how do you establish a slower tempo?

The simplest way to establish a slower tempo is to figure out the tempo you’re playing and then slow it down.

This may not be the easiest thing in the world to achieve. Let’s say you’re playing a piece, like the Mozart Sonata in C major k 545. If you have insecurity, you may want to play it slower. The first thing you do is figure out the speed you were playing, then just slow that down. You may need to tap the beat along with your playing with your foot to find the speed you are playing first. Then slow down the tapping, and start playing at the new tempo. Now you can play at that slower tempo! That’s one way to achieve a slower tempo.

Another way to slow your tempo is to simply play the first note, wait a moment, and continue at that slower rate.

Play the first note, but linger a little longer. Then just continue playing at that slower tempo. You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to play slower. But unless you establish a slower tempo intentionally, you may think you’re playing slower, but you probably aren’t. You can check this with a metronome.

You can use a metronome to find a slower tempo.

Find the speed at which you’re playing on the metronome. Many metronome applications on your phone have a tap tempo feature. If you have that feature, you can tap to establish the tempo, then slow it down. To slow it down, just turn the metronome to a slower speed. There are many metronome applications that give this feature. It can be really helpful. Sometimes just being able to find the speed at which you’re playing on the metronome can be difficult. The tap feature can be a real help. Traditional physical metronomes have their benefits. They have the notches that don’t contain every single number. Changing tempo by every number is too small a change for working with progressively faster metronome speeds. But for the purpose of finding the tempo you are playing, a metronome app with the tap feature is invaluable.

www.metronomerous.de

Those are the tips on how to establish a slower tempo!

One of the most important aspects of practicing the piano effectively, is slowing things down! Even pieces you can play comfortably at a fast speed will degrade over time if you don’t play them slower from time to time, intentionally looking at the music, playing with a metronome, without the pedal. That’s the way to gain security and to keep your pieces fresh and at a good performance level. 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

How to Play with Rubato

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about rubato. How do you know if you’re playing too much rubato? Rubato is a practice of expressive playing in romantic music. It involves speeding up to the top of the phrase, and slowing down coming away from it. This adds to the emotionalism. When it’s done well, it can have a very profound effect upon the feeling of the music.

When rubato is done correctly, you should be able to tap along to the beat.

You might feel the music pulling you along and holding back. But you should be able to tap to it. How do you know when you’re doing too much rubato? If you try to tap along with the music, but you just can’t quite stay with it, the rubato is excessive. This is how you can check rubato to make sure it isn’t excessive.

Record yourself playing a piece, then go back and see if you can tap your foot to it.

If you can tap along with it, it might not be excessive. As long as you can feel where the beat is, you pull your listener along with you. But if you can’t tap to the music that you play, or somebody else plays, then it might be self-indulgent. Going too far with rubato loses the whole pulse of the music. So that’s the way you can check rubato in your playing. Record yourself and tap along! I hope this little tip is helpful for you. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Why an Okay Hand Position is Ideal

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to talk about why an okay hand position is ideal at the piano. Now what do I mean by this? Wouldn’t you want a great hand position at the piano?

I don’t mean an okay hand position, I mean the okay hand position.

You probably know this gesture. Your thumb and index finger are touching, forming a circle, while your other three fingers are gently outstretched. This hand position, believe it or not, is the ideal hand position on the piano!

Why would you want your second finger curved like this?

By having the second finger curved more than other fingers, you actually are in an ideal position for octaves and chords. If you just take your hands and drop them on the piano without using any muscles at all, you’ll find they naturally will go into this position. So this is the position you want to be in on the piano. An okay position is the ideal position on the piano! You can use that as a little reminder as to how your hands should be placed on the keyboard.

It’s not a tight position.

You’re not trying to keep your hands in that position with force. In fact, your hands will automatically stay in that position if you just let them come down naturally on the keyboard. With no force at all, your hands will fall into that position. Because it takes no effort to maintain, it is the best position on the piano. What’s great about this is by rounding your second finger more than the others, you can accommodate chords and octaves with much greater ease. I hope this little tip 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

What is a Chord?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. What is a chord? That’s the question for today. Is a chord just any notes played together at the same time? Well, yes and no. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s have a little primer.

Chords are typically built in intervals of 3rds.

Simply put, chords are built upon every other note of a scale. For example, a C major scale has all the white keys from C to C! If you play every other note of the scale, playing C, skip D, play E, skip F and play G, you have a C major chord, C – E – G! (It consists of a root, a 3rd, and a 5th.) You can keep going adding B, D, F and A. to form a 13 chord (adding the 7th, 9th, 11th, and 13th). Once you get to A, if you went up one more 3rd, you get back to C, your original note. So, that’s the total number of notes you can have in a chord. Now, here’s the interesting thing. There are 7 different notes in that chord C – E – G – B – D – F and A. And how many different white keys are there? Also 7. When you play a 13 chord, you’re playing all the notes of a scale! But if you just play all the white keys at the same time, it doesn’t sound like a chord? It sounds more like a cluster of notes. You may wonder why this is. Well, this has to do with voicing.

Voicing is everything in chords.

Voicing is how the notes are arranged. It was Rameau in the 1700s who theorized that by putting the bottom note of a chord on top, it’s just an inversion of the same chord. So even though it has a 4th in that arrangement, it’s still a chord. It’s just an inversion of a chord. Now, when you get to 7th chords, it gets more complicated. When you get to 9th, 11th, and 13th chords, you’re generally not going to play all the notes.

How would you voice a 13 chord?

If you voiced it with 4 notes, you would have to have the root and the 13, because otherwise it’s not a 13 chord. The important notes are the 7th and the 3rd. For nice voicing, you want to have the notes closer together on top and more distance between the bass note and the rest of them. So you can take the 3rd and put it up an octave. Now you have a nice voicing of a 13 chord. C – B – E – A. (If it was a more typical dominant 13 chord, the B would be B-flat.)

There are some exceptions to the idea of 3rds being used in chords.

First of all, 3rds can be augmented or diminished. (They can be raised or lowered.) So, for example, in a dominant chord, you could have a lowered 5th. That’s still a chord, even though you have a diminished 3rd instead of a minor 3rd. You could have other types of chords built on different intervals, like quartal chords. Quartal chords are built on fourths! So there are other possibilities. But generally, chords are built on intervals of 3rds, and voicing is what makes them work. Otherwise you would have tonal chaos! We should be thankful that composers craft such beautiful music, utilizing chords primarily arranged in 3rds so creatively. I hope this is interesting 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