Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

If you’ve played Beethoven you might be familiar with this term. It permeates throughout his music and it’s a very important but sometimes misunderstood term. Many people might overlook its importance but we are going to discuss this today and I will offer some insights to help you achieve a true subito piano to great effect!

Subito Piano means “suddenly soft”: Subato means “suddenly” and piano means “soft”. This is a big trademark of Beethoven’s writing. A lot of times you will see a crescendo going to piano (which might seem counterintuitive) but Beethoven employs this method in a lot of his music. He builds up the music with a crescendo only to suddenly bring it down. If employed properly the effect is wonderful!

You might be familiar with The Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach. It really is an amazing body of work. These works are definitely worth exploring.

To understand The Well-Tempered Clavier we must understand what Bach means by “Well-Tempered”. A long time ago keyboard instruments were actually tuned to sound pure in different keys depending upon the key of the piece you played. If you were playing a piece in G major, the instrument would be tuned to sound in tune in G major. The piece would sound great but if you tried to play in some other keys it could sound horrendous! As time went on tuning became more flexible so that it was possible to play in a great variety of keys with the same tuning. While the system of tuning available at Bach’s time favored some keys more than others, it was a vast improvement in offering the flexibility to play in all keys without the need for returning.

Welcome to Part 1 in our ongoing series of the Psychology of Musical Performance. This is a very important and in-depth subject so today we are only going to scratch the surface. Today we’re going to discuss the mental stability necessary for performing and how to create a balanced state of mind for yourself.

Performing music is something that utilizes both sides of your brain. Before a performance you spend so much time practicing and making sure you’re playing technically correct. At the same time, you must let yourself go and be able to be creative with each performance. The trick is finding the right balance so that your performance is not too dry yet not self indulgent in your expression.

Sometimes emotions can completely control your performance in unexpected ways. Allowing yourself to delve into free expression can make you lose sight of where you’re going. For example, if you’re not careful you might take a tempo to a speed you can’t possibly handle! You have to be able to control your performance and reign yourself in.

While you definitely have to control your expressive side, you can’t let the technical side of you overwhelm your performance either. The last thing you want to present is a sterile performance. Musical expression is a completely different form of art from painting or photography in that it involves performance and there is a random element to that. No matter how hard you try, you can never replicate a performance again; each one is inherently unique.

We all have these conflicting aspects of our personalities and they collide with each other when it comes to musical performances. Finding this balance isn’t something you can teach easily; it’s something you must find within yourself through the experience of many performances finding the balance of emotion and reason.

You’ve probably seen this in a lot of Chopin and Liszt compositions. Instead of having measured notes, there are a ton of very tiny notes that on the surface might not make much sense at first. You’ll have ridiculous combinations like 11 notes against 6 – which simply can’t be divisible in any precise way. So how do you play these passages and what do they mean?

In the video example above I use the beginning of the B-flat minor Nocturne of Chopin. Right at the start of the piece (the second statement of the theme) has a section just like I’ve described above. There are a whole bunch of notes (11 against 6) that are not divisible. So how do you play these passages?

The best way to practice these sections is to try to find the closest measured way you can play it. The first thing you should do is divide it out as close as it mathematically can work. If you play it as measured as possible – trying to find places where you can put in the extra notes – you will start to get a better feel for the passage. You might notice that playing these passages measured will result in a passable sound but it’s not exactly accurate and it may not sound very fluid. When played correctly, these unmeasured cadenzas are almost like improvisations and that’s the feel and sound you want to achieve.

The next step after you’ve broken these passages into a measured approach is to loosen it up a bit. Get used to playing these cadenzas measured and from there you can start to break them up and make the sound a bit more fluid. The final product doesn’t have to be mathematically perfect; the goal is to create a musical feel. The left hand should maintain the pulse and the right hand should be able to play with freedom – like an improvisation. Keep working on this until you get a result that sounds natural.

This is an incredibly involved and complex subject that we will continue to reflect upon. The short answer to this question is no, you can’t buy new pianos with ivory keys anymore. They have been outlawed on new pianos since the 1970s in the United States although some European manufacturers continued to offer ivory keys on select pianos into the 1980’s.

Now if you have a piano with ivory keys manufactured before the ban of ivory there are still issues. Selling a piano within the same country will most likely not be a problem for you yet (depending on your local laws). However, if you decide to move out of the country and you want to bring your piano with you it’s a risky proposition. If customs officials find that you are trying to ship a piano out of the country with ivory keys, they can impound the piano and you may have great difficulty rectifying the situation. Generally, you can’t ship a piano to another country with ivory keys unless you can prove the piano to be over 100 years.

Now in the United States, we are facing some legislation that may further limit the selling of ivory. The department of fish and wildlife is proposing new laws that would ban the transporting of ivory from state to state on pianos or anything else! So, if you own a piano with ivory keys, or a guitar with ivory inlays, a violin bow containing some ivory or anything else containing ivory, it will become illegal to transport it across state lines. There have actually been cases of orchestras going overseas where their bows have been confiscated by customs officials for containing ivory (and these can be some extremely expensive bows).

If this law comes to fruition it would mean that you won’t even be able to move your piano to a different state if it contains ivory keys. This is a huge problem for a lot of people and it can be a very expensive proposition to have to replace your piano keys simply because they contain ivory. There have been raids of antique auctions and stores where officials have taken massive quantities of old jewelry, artwork, and other objects that contain old ivory. In China, they have even destroyed a large number of irreplaceable pieces of art in their quest to stop the trade of ivory. This is a case of good intentions gone awry. The illegal trade of ivory is a booming industry and the attempt to stop this is by confiscating all ivory and making it illegal to transport at all. The slaying of elephants for new ivory is barbaric and it really is a problem – specifically in the domestic Chinese market. The American market is not as big in illegal ivory but it has not stopped officials from creating new laws to tightly enforce the trade and transport of ivory – no matter how old it is.

The sentiment of these proposed laws is in the right place but the practice is illogical. To ban the sale or transport of a piano with ivory keys – where the elephant died almost 100 years ago – seems pointless. If you feel strongly about this the only way to stop it is to write to your local officials and voice your concerns. There are many people who deal in vintage instruments, art and jewelry containing ivory watching the progress of legislation very closely.

Is it possible to remove the ivory from pianos and replace them with plastic? Yes; but not without some significant work. Ivory keys are typically thinner than plastic so the wood on the keys might need to be filed down in order to fit properly and you may be forced to do some key leveling and other work as well. Beyond that, the ivory keys are irreplaceable and it would be a shame to have to remove them long after the elephants died. Hopefully, there is an effective way to stop the slaughter of elephants without impacting the sale, trade, and transport of old objects containing ivory.

Welcome back to our multi part series on the art of pedaling on the piano. Last time in part one we talked about the damper pedal and clearing the pedal on the downbeat of new harmonies. This week we are going to be covering some nuances of pedaling.

For this example, I use the Beethoven Pathetique Sonata. In the example, I demonstrate playing the piece without the pedal. When it comes to performing the piece you will want to use the pedal, but you should learn all your music without the use of the pedal first so you can hear the connection of notes that good fingering provides. This helps you to understand where to apply the pedal in your music as well as avoiding the bad habit of using the pedal as a crutch to connect notes in difficult passages.

Another way to enhance your music with the pedal is like what we talked about in the first video. This is achieved by putting the pedal down as soon as the harmonies change. Sometimes you might want the clarity of the notes to shine through in certain passages,. In these instances it’s a good idea to not hold down the pedal for the entire beat like we did in the first video. Instead, we will be using touches on the melody and for the passages that you can’t connect with my fingers alone.

This might give you an idea as to why pedal markings are not written into the score most of the time. If you tried to write down everything I was doing in the example video above it would create chaos on the page! Many other factors from the acoustics of the room, to the quality of the piano, to the size of pianist’s hands all factor into when to use the pedal.

The best thing you can do is to practice without the pedal and learn your music completely that way. After you feel confident playing the piece without the pedal, slowly go through and add the pedal where you think you need it – either to connect difficult passages or to enhance the harmonies or melodies of your music.

Welcome to an ongoing series about how to use the pedals on the piano. Today we are going to be covering the right pedal, commonly referred to as the damper or sustain pedal. This is the pedal you will be using most of the time while playing the piano and it’s a great place to start.

The question I get asked the most is when to use the pedal. While there are no absolutes, there are some general guidelines that you can follow. A basic rule that applies to nearly any type of music is that when the harmonies change, you must clear the pedal. If you don’t do this you will get clashing dissonance.

While the pedal shouldn’t be overused, it is a great way to enhance the tone of your music. We know that you should clear the pedal when there are new harmonies, but there is a wrong way and a right way to do this. When the harmonies change, you should release the pedal upwards – don’t push it down. This is very counterintuitive because you are probably used to tapping your foot and tapping down on the downbeat. The opposite is true for the damper pedal, you will want to bring your foot up and clear the pedal on the downbeats when harmonies change and put it right back down.

Another technique you should practice is to not push the pedal down before you begin. Pushing the pedal down before playing a note will result in an echoing sound. You should push the pedal down right after you play the note, but before your fingers are released. If you push the pedal down after you release your fingers it will not hold the notes.

These are the basic principles of pedaling and how you should be using the damper pedal. Practice these techniques and make sure that you are releasing the pedal on the downbeat of changing harmonies and push it down immediately after but before you release your fingers.