Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to show you how to recharge your piano playing. Have you ever gotten a piece to a really high level and played it on a regular basis, but somehow it goes stale? It’s just not quite there. It’s not like there are trouble spots you can practice. The whole thing just doesn’t have the spark that it once had. How can you get it back into shape? I’m going to show you today. There are some very basic techniques that are going to do the job for you.

Slow practice is one of the most important aspects of piano playing.

I have had the opportunity to study with some absolutely stupendous piano teachers, including my father, Morton Estrin, Ruth Slenczynska, Constance Keene, and John Ogden. They all practiced slowly. Every fine pianist I have ever met practices slowly. Even when you can play something up to tempo, going back and practicing slowly is absolutely essential on the piano. You should also take your foot off the pedal. Listen to what your fingers are doing. The pedal covers so much. I can tell you that these two tips I have just given you are so fundamental that every great classical pianist uses them.

Use the score.

Even if you have a piece memorized, it’s not good enough. You have to reinforce your memory. Do you think you can remember every single detail, like where a slur ends, where a crescendo begins, or the exact voicing of every chord? You must constantly reinforce your memory!

Use the metronome.

Practice with a metronome to keep yourself honest. Put the metronome on a nice, slow speed. Play with no pedal and keep your eyes on the score. The amazing thing is that just going through it slowly like that a few times will already clean up your playing enormously. But if you really want to develop a stellar technique, you can do all the speeds in between, where necessary. You might not have to do all the speeds everywhere. But any place that doesn’t come out consistently or feel comfortable, do progressively faster metronome speeds on those sections.

I remember watching my father practice when he was preparing to record his Brahms album. I used to watch my father practice all the time. I loved it! It was really enriching. I remember he got to a point where he was playing through everything just slightly under tempo without the pedal. It was totally relaxed and clean. That’s what you want. You want to get to the point where you get it up to tempo and it’s all comfortable. The notes are just there. You don’t have to work to make it come out. And because you study the score again and again, slowly seeing every detail, you really perfect your performance.

This is a great way to get any piece back into shape!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you need a practicing checklist. What’s this all about? A lot of my students want to have a routine in their practice to do a certain number of things in a certain order on a daily basis. And while this is commendable in one sense, a routine can sometimes work against you because you want to take advantage of the discoveries in your practice. You might go off on a tangent and think you’re spending too much time on something because you need to get to other things. So you might not take advantage of an exploration that could lead to an epiphany in your playing.

Instead of a routine, a checklist offers something really valuable for you.

When you practice, you might get to a point where you’re thinking, “What am I supposed to do now?” If you don’t have a routine, you’re kind of lost. But if you have a checklist, you know you want to do certain things every day. I offered this idea to one of my students, Jancarlos, in the Dominican Republic. I asked him to come up with a practice checklist for himself. I said, “You should come up with a checklist that has things you really want to do on a daily basis and then things you do on a weekly basis, maybe not every single day, but something that you don’t want to go too long without visiting in your practice.” So this is what Jancarlos came up with. See how many of these things resonate with you! I’d love to get suggestions here in the comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube.

Jancarlos starts his checklist with memorization of new material.

I stress this all the time. Why is it so important to memorize new material on a daily basis? Because cramming memorization doesn’t work! Let’s say you’ve gone four or five days without doing any memorization. You think you can just make up for it in a few hours, but it’s not so easy. When you first learn a phrase, it’s not that hard. You learn the second phrase, and it comes along okay. But by the third or fourth phrase, it starts to get really taxing. How much can you cram into your head in one sitting? It’s tough. So take advantage every day when your mind is fresh to learn something, even if it’s just one phrase. You’ll be rewarded! Take a look at the score of whatever music you’re working on and figure out the smallest phrase that you could learn; maybe it’s four measures, and then multiply that by seven and then deduct any measures that are the same. You’ll discover that you might get a page or a page and a half of music learned just by doing a phrase a day. So make that a priority in your practice. What else should be done every day?

Reinforce material from the previous day.

Obviously, you need to solidify what you learned the previous day. You might have to relearn it. The good news is that you’ll be able to learn it much faster. Not only that, but if you learned four measure phrases the previous day, you might be able to learn eight measure phrases when you relearn it because it’s already there.

Another thing you really should be doing on a regular basis is playing scales and arpeggios.

If you’re not up to scales and arpeggios, you should at least do simple Hanon exercises to strengthen your fingers. If you learn one new scale a week or one new arpeggio a week, you’ll have them all learned in a year. That is a good foundation for your playing. And if you already know them all, solidify them. Take them to the next level in speed, different articulations, or doing them in contrary motion or in intervals. You can keep working on scales and arpeggios your whole life. There’s always value in doing so!

Another thing you should do is review your old pieces.

Go through slowly solidifying pieces you can already play. This is a great way to keep them in shape and to check your work so things don’t degrade over time. By doing this, you always have music you can play on a high level. Also, make time for free playing. Play old repertoire or improvise, just to keep your fingers moving. You can keep pieces in shape just by playing them, and improvising develops your ear and your connection to the keyboard.

Another thing that you can do on a regular basis is sight-read.

Sight-reading is a vital aspect of strengthening your reading because you might learn more and more music and still have a beginning reading level. So make reading something you do on a regular basis. Finding sight-reading material on the right level for you is the most important part. If it’s something you struggle just to get through a line or two, it’s not going to be that valuable. It’ll be painstaking for you, and you’re not going to want to do it. And you’re not going to get the fluidity and sense of reading and maintaining a tempo. Finding easy enough music for sight-reading is a challenge for many people because many people do become somewhat accomplished, yet they still have the reading level of a beginner. I was in that category when I was a pretty advanced player in high school because I didn’t do enough sight-reading. So make that a part of your regular study.

Go through theory on a regular basis.

It can be something as simple as just going through your sharps and your flats. You don’t want to just memorize by rote. That’s not that valuable. Frankly, it’s better than nothing. But you’re better off figuring out the intervals you’re playing. Why is this so important? Imagine trying to solve quadratic equations in algebra while not being fluent with your multiplication tables. That’s not going to work very well. You have to be pretty fluent with all your tables before you can approach higher mathematics. The same thing is true with music theory. You better be really solid with your key signatures and all your major scales before doing chords, intervals, and all of that. So spend some time with that on a regular basis.

Explore other styles of music.

It can be incredibly valuable to explore other genres, whether it’s jazz, salsa, pop, blues, etc. You’ll make discoveries, and you’ll understand the structure of music better. It ties in with music theory. All of these skill sets relate to each other. That’s why the more of them you do on a regular basis, the more productive your practice is.

Make a checklist for yourself!

Make a checklist so you never get stuck in your practice. If you’re not getting anywhere, change it up and do something different. You can come back to what you were doing the next day, and maybe it will resonate more genuinely with you at that time. Have your checklist on hand, either on your phone or on a piece of paper, so you can make sure you practice all these fundamental skill sets on a regular basis. Thank you, Jancarlos, for sharing this with everybody! Share your musical checklist 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.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must know your primary chords. What are primary chords? Well, I’m going to break it down for you today. I’m going to show you something called diatonic chords first, because that’s how you can discover what your primary chords are.

Diatonic chords, simply put, are chords built on every note of the scale.

The simplest chords are triads—three notes arranged in thirds. What are thirds? Thirds are every other note of a scale. If you play every other note of a C major scale, you have a C major chord. If you go up the scale, you can play all your diatonic chords. So D-F-A is also a diatonic triad. E-G-B, and on up the scale forming all the diatonic triads. This is essential to understand, and it can help you immensely in digesting a score if you’re reading or learning it. It’s also valuable just for listening to music.

I’m going to show you what are referred to as primary chords.

If you are vaguely aware of this now, this is going to be a revelatory moment for you. So let’s go through. We start with the one chord, and you notice that you have four half-steps on the bottom between the C and the E. That’s called a major third. Now on the top, there are three half-steps between the E and G. That’s a minor third. When you have a major third on the bottom and a minor third on the top, that is a major triad. This is really fundamental to music. We’re going to go up and discover where the major triads occur in Diatonic Chords. So far, we’ve established that the one chord is indeed major. That is the first primary chord. Where is the next one? If you go to the two chord, on the bottom, you have three half-steps between the D and F, which is a minor third, and you have four half-steps on the top between the F and A, which is a major third. So that’s a minor triad. So the two chord is not a primary chord; it’s a secondary chord because it’s not major. What about the three chord? I bet you can figure this out now that I’ve shown you the secret. You have three half-steps on the bottom and four on the top, so that is a minor triad again. The three chord is also a secondary triad. The four chord has four half-steps on the bottom and three on the top, so it is a major triad. So the one chord and the four chord are both major triads; therefore, they’re primary chords. Are there any other primary chords? The five chord has four half-steps on the bottom and three on top. So that’s another major chord.

The one chord, the four chord, and the five chord are your primary chords.

The six chord has three half-steps on the bottom and four on top; therefore, it’s a minor triad, another secondary chord. We have one more left. The seven chord has three half-steps on the bottom and also three on top. What the heck is going on here? That’s not a major or minor triad. Two minor thirds forms a diminished triad. It’s the only place where a diminished triad occurs in a diatonic chord. To recap, you have your major triads, which are your primary chords, the one, four, and five; you have your secondary chords, which are the two, three, and six, which are all minor; and you have your leading tone, the seventh chord, which is diminished.

Why is this so important?

Those basic one, four, and five chords are intrinsic to Western harmony. It’s a classic, authentic cadence and a great way to establish the key. You can go through all your keys this way. It’s a great way to gain comfort in all the major and minor keys. It’s a terrific way to have your primary chords literally at your fingertips! It makes reading music, understanding the harmonic underpinnings of your music, and learning music much easier.

You should know your primary chords in all keys.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about playing pianissimo. How many different levels of soft playing are there on the piano? By the end of this video, I’m going to reveal the answer to you!

There are different levels of quiet.

So many times, pieces of music are written to be played softly or even very softly. For example, Clair de Lune is written pianissimo at the beginning and stays pianissimo for a long time. Does that mean you should play that entire section as quietly as possible? I’m going to give you a little analogy. Just imagine you’re with someone who’s very dear to you, and you’re having a tender conversation. Maybe it’s late at night when other people are sleeping and you’re whispering. As you’re whispering, you’re saying very important, personal things about yourself. There’s some animation, and there’s tenderness. It’s all quiet, but there are different levels of quiet, aren’t there?

There must be nuanced expression in your pianissimo playing.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about the five things piano and ping-pong have in common. There are so many things they have in common! One thing, and this isn’t one of the five, is that they are both things that I particularly love and have been doing almost my whole life! I remember getting a ping-pong table when I was a kid. There’s a crazy story about that. It was during the holidays, and I went with my good friend Marty to Sears, which was over a mile away. I thought I would surprise my family with a ping-pong table. We bought it, and then we tried to carry it home. I had to call my dad to pick us up, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. But we grew up with a ping-pong table. And of course, we had lots of pianos in the house. These are two things that have been very close to me. To this day, I still play ping-pong on a very regular basis. And of course, piano is my life! So let’s come up with the five things that these two activities have in common.

1. They both involve motor skills.

With piano, you have the finger coordination, the arms, and you have to coordinate with the sounds and the visuals of the keys, as well as the sheet music. There are so many aspects of motor skills involved in piano playing. With ping-pong, you have to judge the trajectory of the ball and be in exactly the right place to hit it. There’s obviously a tremendous amount of motor skill involved in both of these activities. What else is there?

2. They both involve aerobic exercise.

Obviously, ping-pong provides aerobic exercise. In professional ping-pong matches, the players are ten feet from the table, and they’re running all around. It’s mildly aerobic, even if you’re playing casually. But it’s not so exhausting that you can’t play for an extended amount of time. That’s what’s great about ping-pong. Now, what about the piano? Is piano aerobic? Well, there are some things on piano that are certainly aerobic, like, for example, the coda of the Chopin G minor Ballade. Whenever you have leaps like that, it’s mildly aerobic. It’s definitely more exercise than sitting and reading a book! So they both provide some level of aerobic exercise. What else?

3. They both keep your brain sharp.

There was a study years ago in a New York Times Magazine article years ago. It was an in-depth article about the human brain. In that article, they cited piano playing as being the single most complex activity of the human brain. Think about all the things involved in piano playing: I mentioned earlier the coordination of your fingers, but the sound, the sights, short-term memory, and long-term memory—it’s an incredibly complex activity for the brain! But in ping-pong, you also have to make split-second calculations from moment to moment. There’s strategy involved: trying to get your opponent off kilter by where you place the ball, spinning the ball to try to throw them off, hitting corners so you have the greatest distance, trajectories, the arc of the ball, and where you’re standing. These are all great activities for the brain. As a matter of fact, both of these activities can help prevent cognitive decline because you’re exercising your brain, which is terrific!

4. They both provide stress relief.

When you play the piano, your mind can completely let go of everything and just focus on the beauty of the music. Your brain is occupied 100% with something other than your relationships, work, chores, or whatever is causing you stress. It’s much the same thing with ping-pong. When you’re playing ping-pong, you let go of everything and get into a state of flow. You’re just enjoying the game, and you let go of all your worries. These activities allow you to disengage from the worries and stress in your life.

5. Piano and ping-pong are both immensely popular in China.

In China, there are about 50 million piano students! 100 years ago, in the United States, there were hundreds of piano companies. That’s what China has today. There are hundreds of piano manufacturers in China that you don’t even know about because they only serve the domestic market. Only a handful of companies export because there’s such a huge market there. During our trip to China, we saw all kinds of piano brands with some of the oddest names you could ever imagine. These are companies that probably wouldn’t be able to export their products because they’re not up to international standards. They produce low-priced pianos for the massive number of people who play piano in China.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must peak later in your phrases. What am I talking about? In most lyrical music, that is, music with melody, you have a line that has a rise and a fall. You may have noticed that oftentimes, when you are trying to make those decrescendos to have beautiful phrase endings, it’s difficult to control.

Find musical solutions to your technical problems.

Taking the crescendo of the phrase almost to the end and then tapering off sounds much more musical than peaking in the middle of the phrase. And it’s technically so much easier to execute! I often talk about musical solutions to technical problems, and that’s exactly what this is. The music and the technical execution are in perfect alignment. This is what you must look for, not only in this aspect, which is fundamental to melodic music, but in all your technical challenges in music.

By having the peak of the phrase later in the phrase, you’ll get a more intense expression.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to solidify rhythms. I did a video a while back called What Is the Most Important Aspect of Music? I identified rhythm as the most important part. Of course, it’s hard to say one aspect of music is the most important, but rhythm is an intrinsic part of music. What can you do to solidify rhythms in your music? There are many things you can do! I’m going to outline them for you today to help solidify your music.

The essential way to figure out and solidify any written score is to count the rhythms.

Count them out loud. First, you can simply clap the rhythms before you even play them, so you can solidify the rhythm without being encumbered by fingering, phrasing, expression, and notes. The important thing about counting is to count consistently. In other words, if you’re counting a piece in 4/4 time that has eighth notes, you want to count with the “ands” even if you don’t have eighth notes on those “ands.” So you want to count, “one – and – two – and – three – and – four – and.” Count all the beats and just fit in the notes where they land, even when you aren’t playing eighth notes. If you don’t count all the “ands,” the rhythm can go haywire.

Your counting must have the same divisions throughout.

This is also true if you have a piece that just has occasional 16th notes. It can be really cumbersome to count, “one – uh – and – uh – two – uh – and – uh – three – uh – and – uh – four – uh – and – uh.” It’s hard to get up to speed counting that way. Initially, you might want to do that, but then soon you might just want to count with the “ands.” But again, you want to be consistent. Keep your counting style consistent throughout a piece, or at least a section of the piece, for it to really have value for you. What else is there other than counting?

The metronome is invaluable for solidifying rhythms.

You can use the metronome to solidify rhythms as well as tempo. You might have the rhythm solidified, but then your tempo fluctuates in different sections of the piece. For example, a piece that has mostly slow notes in one section and then faster notes in another section. How can you possibly have the same pulse unless you use the metronome? For example, in Farewell by Burgmüller, you have eighth notes at the beginning, then it goes to triplets. You even have a ritard thrown in there in the transition. Take out the trusty metronome so you know how to justify the beat when you’re going from two divisions of the beat to three divisions of the beat. This is a great way to solidify your tempo and rhythm. The metronome is an invaluable tool, as I’ve talked about before. Is there anything else you can do?

Believe it or not, there’s something you can do away from the piano!

You have a piece of music, and you’re having trouble really feeling the pulse of the beat. The metronome isn’t working for you, so what do you do instead? You can go marching! Take a walk and play in your mind, or sing the part that is giving you trouble to the beat of your stride. That’s something you can do to literally feel the beat.

Dancing is a tremendous way to feel the beat.

Just feel the music and make motions to it. There’s a whole field of study about this called Eurythmics. It enables people to get a sense of rhythm by clapping, moving, and improvising, all of which utilize the body as part of the process of learning and becoming comfortable with rhythms. Move parts of your body, particularly when you’re away from the piano. You don’t want to get into the habit of moving around when you’re playing the piano because it’s distracting to the audience and can become a habit. If you need to tap your foot, a little trick you can use is to tap your left heel. If you tap the toe, it can make noise. You can even tap your heel while you’re using the soft pedal, and it won’t really get in the way of the music or the audience.

So those are some tips for you! Once again, counting out loud is important; using the metronome is a vital part of any serious classical player’s practice; you can master music while singing or thinking it in your head; and you can dance to your music. These are all ways you can solidify your rhythm on the piano or other instruments! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we are going to discuss whether or not you should follow metronome markings in your scores. I’ve had students say to me, “I’m really trying to get this piece up to speed, and the tempo marked in the score is 160. I just can’t get anywhere close to that!” They’re beating themselves up, wondering how they can get it up to that speed. There’s a lot to this subject. I’m going to enlighten you about these metronome markings in scores. But first, I want to show you something that will shed some light on this whole subject.

How fast is Allegro?

I have my metronome here, and there’s a whole range of tempos marked “Allegro”. The very slowest Allegro is 126. That seems fine, but there’s a whole range of Allegro. 126 is the lowest setting that’s marked as Allegro on the metronome. 144 is right in the middle of what that’s marked as Allegro. At this speed, I think some pieces lose their elegance. But here’s what’s really crazy: according to this metronome, 168 is at the top range of Allegro. That is a much faster tempo than what you would generally consider to be Allegro. So that’s not much help, is it?

Are metronome markings in the score written by the composer?

You have a piece of music with a tempo marking. Did the composer put that in there? No. Composers almost never put metronome indications in scores. These are the editor’s suggestions that are put in the score. If you look at different editions, there can be drastically different metronome markings in the scores. So you really can’t go by metronome markings. I say ignore them! They are not of any value. They may or may not have anything to do with musical sensibilities.

If you really want to get a sense of what tempo is appropriate for a piece of music, listen to recordings.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. In today’s video, I have a really interesting listening test for you! Can you hear the difference between Mozart and Beethoven? Many of you might think you can easily tell the difference between Mozart and Beethoven. Well, can you? Well, if you are already familiar with the works that I’ve chosen, you’ll understand the significance of this question and the interesting listening test that I’m presenting for you.

To make the test fair, I’m going to play two excerpts from sonata movements that are both in the key of C minor.

I’m going to play these excerpts for you in a moment. I will give you a chance to decide which one is Mozart and which one is Beethoven before I reveal the answer. And in the comments below, if you are not familiar with either of these pieces, I’d like for you all to comment and see if you chose correctly or not. This will be a very interesting test! So leave your comments here at LivingPianos.com as well as on YouTube.

Watch the video to take the test!

They’re both very dramatic pieces of music, aren’t they? I hope all of you have decided which one you think is Mozart and which one you think is Beethoven. If you haven’t decided yet, stop reading now so you can make the decision before I reveal it. Be honest in the comments about which one you chose. I’m very interested in this. First of all, I’m going to tell you why I chose these two works. They are both in the minor key. Mozart in the minor key has a lot of fire, which is typical of what you might think of as Beethoven. If I had chosen one of Mozart’s sonatas in the major key, it might have been easier to tell the difference, for example, his C major K 330. That would not be mistaken for Beethoven! Of course, Beethoven wrote many sonatas that are very dramatic and would not be confused with Mozart. So many of them are so famous, though, like the Appassionata or the Pathetique. Those are very robust emotional works.

Now I will reveal the answer!

The Mozart sonata I played is K. 457 in C minor. And by the way, it has a companion fantasy that is really a gorgeous piece. It’s very experimental with its harmonies and such. That is a companion to this sonata in the same opus. The Beethoven sonata I played is Op. 10 no. 1 in C minor. I chose these excerpts to try to trick you as much as I possibly could!

The first excerpt was Mozart, and the second was Beethoven!