Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is: How do you get back in shape on the piano? If you have ever gone on vacation and returned to find your fingers out of shape, you may have wondered how to get them back into shape without hurting yourself. I personally have experienced pain in the joint of my right thumb when I play big chords and octaves after taking a break from playing the piano. However, I have found that building up the muscles in my hand helps me overcome this issue.
If you take a break from playing the piano, it is important to be cautious when getting back into it.
The most taxing pieces to play on the piano are those that involve big chords and octaves. Music like this puts a lot of stress on your fingers. Pieces that are right under your fingers and do not require reaching far are much less taxing on your hands. The ideal music for getting back into shape on the piano are Bach’s two-part Inventions. These pieces have clarity, musical lines, and rarely have more than one note at a time in each hand. This makes them perfect for gradually building up your finger strength. I will demonstrate this with the very first Bach invention in C Major in the accompanying video. It is ergonomic and falls right under the fingers.
Bach’s music is great for getting back into shape because it rarely involves massive chords.
Even the Italian concerto, which does have a number of chords, never exceeds an octave. By playing pieces that have no more than one note in each hand, you can gradually build up your finger strength so that you can handle more taxing music. Playing slow movements of Mozart Sonatas is another great option since the music lies under the hands very nicely. This is the best way I have found to get back into shape on the piano! Share your ideas on how to build back strength here on LivingPianos.com and 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
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s question is: How do you get back in shape on the piano? If you have ever gone on vacation and returned to find your fingers out of shape, you may have wondered how to get them back i
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to be in the moment in your playing. It’s so important! If you have performed for friends or your teacher, you know that sometimes it’s easy to become distracted. You want to be present in your playing; but it can be so incredibly difficult. I’m going to give you some ways of thinking about this, and approaching it, that hopefully will be helpful for you!
The first thing I want to talk about is a little bit philosophical.
We sometimes assume that words are thought. The whole idea of thinking in your head is that you’re stringing words together. But words were invented for communication, to be able to express ideas to one another. You don’t actually need words to think about something. Have you ever had a revelation that just came to you? Did you have to string words together in order to have that thought? Of course not! The words express the thought, but they aren’t the thought themselves. This is why there are those who master the art of meditation. They clear their minds from the internal dialog to be able to have pure thought, not hampered by words. If you’ve ever been in a state of flow while doing anything, whether it’s experiencing a beautiful sunset, looking at a beautiful painting, or just enjoying a moment of life without quantifying it and defining it with words, you understand that this is one of the most beautiful things there is in life! You don’t need to label every single thought.
How does this relate to music?
When you’re playing music, the thing that will distract you more than anything else is using words in your head, and thinking about what you’re doing instead of just doing it. You want to be present in your performance. You don’t want to be analytical and judgmental, thinking about what note comes next. You can’t think that way, it’ll drive you crazy and destroy your performance. You have to be right in the moment with a sense of where you’re going. Just like in life itself, you want to be living in the moment with a sense of continuity. You want to know where you are and where you’re heading.
The way to achieve this in music is simply by listening!
Listen to the sounds. Become absorbed in the beauty of the music you’re creating at that moment, rather than getting distracted with the mechanics of your playing. Of course, there has to be a certain amount that you keep present, in the analytical sense, so you don’t take a wrong turn in the score. There has to be a certain amount of intelligence. But moment to moment, you should not be bogged down with these intellectual ideas. Instead, enjoy the sound and explore where it’s going next. The most satisfying musical performance you can ever have is one where the music is unfolding, and you yourself are listening in anticipation of where it’s going to go next. You may have experienced this before if you have ever played on a different piano. It sounds different, and as a result, you’re playing with fresh ears. That’s the secret of what you want to achieve in your musical performance.
You want to be listening to, and engaged in your own music.
That’s what draws the listener in! It’s what keeps you on track in your musical performance. So remember, don’t get hung up with intellectualizing what you’re doing more than necessary. Just keep your wits about you to avoid taking wrong turns, knowing where repeats are, and knowing where you are in the score. If there are leaps that you have to quantify, you need to have your intellect alive. But don’t get bogged down with it. Enjoy your musical performance! Listen to it and everybody else will too. I hope you’ve enjoyed this! 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. The subject today is about how to be in the moment in your playing. It’s so important! If you have performed for friends or your teacher, you know that sometimes it’s easy to become di
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. How soft is piano? That’s the question for today! You see piano written in your music, or maybe pianissimo. How soft should you play it? How soft is soft, and how do you even achieve it on t
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you how to get a singing sound on the piano. Piano is actually a percussion instrument, yet there are such beautiful melodies that evoke the quality of the human voice, as well as other instruments. In fact, the piano is almost like a whole orchestra, with accompaniment, melody, and many other elements all right under your fingertips!
How can you evoke the quality of the human voice in your melodies?
When playing melodies on the piano, you want to mimic the human voice, or at least a wind instrument, or a string instrument with the continuity of the breath or the bow. On the piano, the notes, as I have stated so many times before, are fading away. We’re battling it all the time as pianists! But you want to get a beautiful, singing sound. So, I’m going to show you one technique today that is incredibly important. I’ve shown you in the past how to use the weight of the arm, transferring the weight smoothly from finger to finger in order to achieve smoothness. The weight of the arm is the analog to the breath, which gives your melodies continuity. Instead of calculating from note to note, you just let the weight of the arm transfer smoothly from note to note. What I want to show today is a technique related to that, which you can use in conjunction with the weight of the arm. But instead of just a rise and fall of each phrase, I’m going to provide a tip for you that works so incredibly well that you will not even believe it!
As notes get higher, you play them louder, and as they get lower, you play them more softly.
When you are singing, naturally, you’re going to get louder as you reach higher notes, and softer as you sing lower notes. It’s very difficult not to achieve this when you’re singing or playing a wind instrument. It comes out that way naturally. So if you want to evoke that sound on the piano, you have to play louder on the high notes and softer on the low notes.
Watch the video to see this technique demonstrated!
To demonstrate this, I will play the complete Burgmüller Pastorale. It’s a rather simple piece, so you can get the concept of this. Listen to how I ignore every aspect other than getting louder when going higher, and softer when playing lower, with very few exceptions. Listen to how splendidly it works to bring out a singing tone! If it works on this simple Burgmüller etude, imagine how splendidly it’ll work on other music. Try it on your Chopin nocturnes and your slow movements of Beethoven sonatas. Let me know what you think about this technique. See how it works for you! I’m really interested, so let me know in the comments at LivingPianos.com and 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
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you how to get a singing sound on the piano. Piano is actually a percussion instrument, yet there are such beautiful melodies that evoke the quality of the human voic
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to become comfortable playing the piano for people. It’s imperative that you practice performing, but how can you do such a thing? You probably know if you’ve ever tried to play for someone, that things can go haywire. Why does that happen? You practice a piece, you can play it over and over again perfectly, but when you try to play it for someone, a friend or maybe for your teacher, everything goes wrong! What can you do to keep this from happening?
Preparation is key.
You can’t expect to play something in front of people that you can’t even play consistently on your own. So prepare like crazy! Practicing slowly is a great way to reinforce your memory and secure your performance. You are analyzing everything that’s happening when you play slowly, which is a little bit akin to what happens when you’re performing. Suddenly you’re hyper focused and you notice every little thing that maybe you didn’t really notice before. Have you ever felt that? When you play slowly, it’s more deliberate. That is a terrific way to solidify your playing so you feel more in control when you’re performing.
You can practice performing by recording yourself.
Set up your phone, computer, or any other recording device, audio or video, and record yourself playing. Get yourself psyched up like it’s a performance. The most important thing is that once you start, for better or worse, go through to the end. Make it feel like a real performance! You can always do it again later if you’re not happy with the way it came out. But don’t stop halfway through and start again, because that is not an option when you’re playing for people. Nobody wants to hear you start over. It’s kind of like someone telling a story and in the middle they stumble over a few words and start over from the beginning. You’re going to be really bored with them. So it’s really important to learn how to keep going. It’s one of the most important aspects of performing.
Play for friends and family.
Once you’ve gotten comfortable playing for a machine that records you, it’s time to play for people! Hopefully you have a good friend who likes music enough that they’ll sit and listen to you play something. And once again, even though they’re good friends, and they’ll forgive you if you stop and start again, don’t do that! Take advantage of the fact that you have this performance opportunity and play through for them. Plus they’ll enjoy it more if you don’t stop. Even if you’re not happy with the performance, they will enjoy it more if there’s continuity. Be in the service of your listener – the performance isn’t about you. It’s about your audience when you’re performing. When you practice, you can stop any time and make those repairs that are necessary. When you’re playing for people, it’s all about them. Make the experience enriching for them, which means don’t start over. They don’t want to hear that.
Challenge yourself by playing for more people.
Perhaps when you have company over say, “Would anybody like to hear some music?” Be bold! Give yourself an opportunity to play for more than just one person. In other words, you want to build up. So at first, you start just with the lowest pressure possible, just playing by yourself. Then you record yourself. Then play for a single person who doesn’t make you feel nervous. Then play for larger numbers of people. Then finally, if you’re ever in a place with a piano, particularly if it’s a better piano than what you regularly play on, that is a great opportunity to play through your music and learn how to adjust to another instrument. This is a tremendous challenge. You may discover things about the piece that you never even thought of before, just from hearing it on a different piano. Plus, with all the eyes on you, you’re hyper focused, and that attention you’re giving can really aid in discovering new things in the music. Of course, the downside of that is you might become distracted and things could fall apart. But that can help you to strengthen your performance, because you’ll know what to practice.
Building up from smaller to larger audiences is a great way to strengthen your performance.
Do it as many times as it takes to become comfortable. You’ll find that when you have a new piece, you may need to repeat this process. If you’ve never performed a piece, you want to break it in. My father, who performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center and in Europe, would always have tryout recitals before he played in public. He would invite people over and play through his program. He tried to do this a number of times before the actual event. He would often record himself, and that way he’d know what state the performance was in. It would help him to focus his practice where it was needed.
This is a great idea for anybody on any level!
So remember, practice performing and you will be richly rewarded. It will take your piano playing to the next level. If you never perform your music for anyone, you’ll never have the opportunity to really understand what it’s all about. So go for it – you have nothing to lose! People will appreciate the opportunity to hear you play. You can’t imagine how much people really do appreciate live music. So give it a try! 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 how to become comfortable playing the piano for people. It’s imperative that you practice performing, but how can you do such a thing? You probably know if youR
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the relationship between keyboards and the singularity. This should get a lively discussion going, and the central figure in our discussion is a man by the name of Ray Kurzweil. How many of you have heard of Kurzweil keyboards?
This is a subject very close to me.
In the 1980s, I had in my recording studio, a cutting edge digital audio workstation, the Kurzweil K 250. This was a keyboard with 88 wooden keys that could sound like a grand piano or a whole orchestra. It was one of a breed of digital audio workstations. Some of them were ultra expensive, like Fairlight, which was well into five figures, or New England Digital’s Synclavier Synthesizer System, which cost over $100,000! What made these so expensive? Well, before MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) if you wanted to have a computer hooked to music, you had to have a whole integrated system. So, digital sampling, multitrack recording, and music printing, all of these fantastic features came at a very steep price. Kurzweil was one of the leaders in this technology. How did this ever come to be?
Ray Kurzweil was a great inventor and still is on the cutting edge.
In 1975, he came up with a reader for the blind. It was a text recognition program that could take written text and read it aloud to people with visual impairment. One of the people who appreciated this was a man by the name of Stevie Wonder! He said to Ray, “You should come up with a keyboard that can sound like any instrument, including the piano.” And wouldn’t you know it, Ray did it! That’s when the Kurzweil keyboard was invented. Ray is a director of engineering at Google. Ray has been known as a futurist. If anyone else made the kind of predictions that he has made, I would scoff at them.
What is the singularity?
There are different definitions of the singularity. One of them is where machines become more intelligent than humans. Once that happens, all bets are off. No one really knows what will happen. Some people think it may create a utopia, while other people think it may be a dystopia. There’s no way to really know what will happen, but there are a lot of fears about it. Now, a lot of people are talking about this because of artificial intelligence. Right now we have things like ChatGPT, which can pass the bar exam, write papers, analyze spreadsheets, and can even write computer code. There are other programs like Stable Diffusion and Dall-E that can output works of art and even photorealistic pictures from text prompts. It’s pretty remarkable what’s happening. Believe it or not, there’s even A.I. that can compose music!
All of this is in its infancy and it’s very exciting, but the type of A.I. I’m talking about is artificial general intelligence (AGI).
With artificial general intelligence, instead of just being able to complete a specific task, it’s really more like what humans are able to do. What does this have to do with Ray Kurzweil? Well, he has been predicting thE singularity will occur sooner rather than later. His vision of singularity goes even one step beyond, where man and machine merge. It seems like a scary concept. There are hints of this out there with things like Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company. This technology could have great ramifications for people who have lost limbs, being able to use their thoughts to control prosthetic devices. Already there has been some progress made in this direction. But imagine your mind being hooked to the Internet. Instead of picking up your phone to have all this information, the electrical impulses from your brain are directly connected to everything. This is a frightening concept and an exciting one all at the same time.
Ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity will occur by 2030.
He believes this singularity will occur such that there will be nanobots going through your body repairing cells. So for every year that you age there will be a year of repair, eventually reaching a state of immortality where you’re aging at the same rate at which your body is being repaired by these nanobots. This sounds like science fiction, and we all hope that Ray is right! He’s been correct so many times before, but this is a wild assertion, naturally. I just thought I’d get this discussion going about AI in general, how it’s impacting music, and whether you feel that it will replace musicians. It is perhaps more likely that A.I. will provide tools that musicians can use as bouncing off points for inspiration, much like ChatGPT is doing for writers.
Do you think Ray Kurzweil is a nut, or do you think there’s some validity to what he’s saying?
Let me know how you feel about Ray Kurzweil’s prediction about the singularity in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. And in general, how do you feel about A.I. and music and the whole direction things are going in the creative fields? Who would have thought that artificial intelligence would be taking over in creative fields before anything else? It’s pretty wild stuff, isn’t it? 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. The subject today is about the relationship between keyboards and the singularity. This should get a lively discussion going, and the central figure in our discussion is a man by the name of Ray K
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about finding musical solutions to technical problems. My teacher, John Ogden, tied for first prize in the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition with Vladimir Ashkenazy, two legendary pianists. I remember John Ogden talking about how he really was taken with Ashkenazy’s performance of the famous first Chopin Etude in C major Op. 10, No. 1, and how he had a lightness to it that he thought was really an interesting way of approaching the piece, because so many people play it really strong. Then I remember hearing an interview with Ashkenazy, who had rather small hands, saying his approach to that etude is because of the nature of his hands. It just falls under his hands better playing more lightly. John Ogden didn’t realize that this was a technical consideration. Ashkenazy came up with a beautiful, musical solution to a technical challenge. This is what it’s all about in piano playing!
Find what works for you with your physiology, your psyche, and your makeup, and find something that is musical.
There is no absolute when it comes to how something should be played. You want to find a way that you can accommodate the music. It’s the same with everything in life. Everybody has a different gait. The way you walk is not the same as the way I walk. Everybody has a unique way of approaching a myriad things in life, and piano playing is certainly no exception. Let’s use the Beethoven Sonatina in G Major as an example. Sometimes students have difficulty with the end of the first phrase because there’s a crescendo, and maybe they don’t have enough strength to be able to pull it off. But there is a great musical solution to this problem! Come way down right at the start of the crescendo so that you can easily achieve it. I think it actually sounds better that way. The crescendo can unfold naturally without having to force anything or struggle at all. This technique applies to a wide range of music.
There are ways you can give your performance more power without expending more energy.
For example, Chopin’s powerful Military Polonaise. Playing that piece in a very loud, strong manner takes a lot of energy. If you take all the repeats, it is a true tour de force, because it goes on and on with very few places where it comes down that much. By coming down wherever you possibly can, it gives you a reserve of energy. You can make it sound more powerful, not less powerful. Having a reserve is the secret to a powerful performance. If you’re at the limit of what you can produce, it sounds weak, no matter how much energy you’re putting into it. But when you have that reserve and you let it go here and there, just little flares of excitement, it leaves the listener wondering how much power is undulating under the surface that could fire up at any time!
Use selective energy in your playing.
For example, by playing the fast chords of the Military Polonaise very delicately, when you land on the strong chords, it gives you a lot of power. By doing this, you have tons of energy reserves. You can play through the whole piece without even breaking a sweat! Trying to play everything strong takes a tremendous amount of energy and bogs you down. Instead, play everything you possibly can lightly. You want to use selective energy, another musical solution to a technical problem.
Discover what works for you and make a convincing case for it.
You can discover countless ways of negotiating scores that are intrinsic to your physiology, instead of struggling for some preconceived notion of the absolute way a piece should be played. That’s what a great performance is ultimately all about. Try this in your playing! Maybe you don’t have a lot of power, or a big reach, or maybe your fingers are so big and clumsy that you can’t play lightly, but there are tons of ways to accommodate your physiology.
We all have our strengths and weaknesses.
My father, for example, had massive hands. Rachmaninoff just came naturally to him. He played all the preludes in a public performance at Lincoln Center! Can you imagine such a thing? It was like nothing for him. But playing a delicate Schubert impromptu was another story, with his big, fat powerful fingers. His secret was to delineate the notes by playing them separated. They weren’t actually as light as you might have thought, but he created the illusion of light fast playing by separating them with staccato fingers. So he found a solution that worked beautifully for fast light pieces that didn’t come naturally to him. Find your strengths in your music and bring them to your interpretation. That’s ultimately what great performing is all about! 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. The subject today is about finding musical solutions to technical problems. My teacher, John Ogden, tied for first prize in the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition with Vladimir Ashkenazy,
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to create tonal shadings on the piano. The piano is such a great instrument, but it has some inherent limitations that I’m sure you’re all aware of. One such limitation is the fact that the notes fade out relatively quickly. What can you do about such a thing? Well, one of the things you can do is to take advantage of that in your music, and I’m going to show you how to do it!
Here’s a technique that will add continuity to your musical lines.
I’ve talked before about how to create the illusion of the breath on the piano using the weight of the arm. Utilizing this technique gives a rise and fall to the line like you hear from a singer or wind player using the breath. Today I’m going to show you a different technique, and I’m going to use the Chopin A-flat Waltz to demonstrate. In this piece, you have fast notes, then long notes going to shorter notes. As the long notes fade out, you want to catch the next notes at exactly the level the long notes have diminished in volume. By doing this, you can make the long note flow into the following note, creating a very interesting tonal color. The long notes seem to melt into the shorter notes by catching the natural decrescendo of the acoustics of the piano. The quarter note that follows the half note is at the exact volume the half note has reached at that point.
Vladimir Horowitz utilizes this technique a tremendous amount in his recordings.
You can hear how he takes the characteristic of the piano, which for some people is the biggest weakness, and turns it into an amazing strength! He creates tonal colors and shadings that somehow magically work, even though when you try to analyze them they don’t seem to make sense. The point isn’t to play an overarching rise and fall as much as to take advantage of the nuance of the natural tonal properties of the envelope of the sound of the piano. I want you to try experimenting with your music! Let me know how this works for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. What pieces do you think lend themselves to this sort of tonal shading? We can all experiment together to see what’s possible on the piano by taking its biggest shortcoming and turning it into the sparks of creativity in the tonal shadings in your playing. 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. The subject today is about how to create tonal shadings on the piano. The piano is such a great instrument, but it has some inherent limitations that I’m sure you’re all aware of. One
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you four ways to develop speed in your piano playing. You hear people who play dazzlingly fast, but maybe you’re just struggling to get a piece up to speed. Is there anything that you can do to develop more speed? Absolutely! There are a number of things you can do. Of course, working generally on different repertoire, scales, and arpeggios is helpful. These are essential building blocks of technique on the piano. But what I’m going to show you today are specific things you can incorporate in your practice to help develop speed.
I’m going to use Ballade of Burgmüller as an example. The part I’m going to focus on is the end, where you have a fast pattern of notes in both hands. What better place than this to demonstrate the myriad ways you can practice? Today I’m just going to cover four specific ways of developing speed, to not overwhelm you.
1. METRONOME SPEEDS
One of the most fundamental ways of working with the metronome is to do progressively faster metronome speeds. You find the speed at which you can play the passage absolutely faithfully, and then work up the speed one notch at a time. Why one notch? Because you won’t even notice the difference in speed! You find the speed at which you can play it perfectly, comfortably and securely, repeatedly. Then you put it up a notch and do it again. I would never suggest trying to get a whole piece up to speed by going one notch at a time, but when you have just a few measures like this, it’s an ideal opportunity to do metronome speeds.
The key is to make sure you don’t raise the metronome at all until you have absolute security.
That’s the important thing. Now, you may think it’s going to take you forever, because it takes you so long to really get it solid. But spend the time at the front end to get it absolutely secure! You may have to go hands separately at first and pick a much slower speed than you think is necessary. But don’t even think about raising the metronome speed until you can play it ten times in a row, not only where it’s perfect, but where it feels comfortable. You want to play every note with absolute security and definition. Once you get that, then raise it up a notch. Then once again, keep playing it until it not only sounds perfect, but it feels comfortable.
As you get faster, remember to lighten up and stay close to the keys with rounded fingers.
When you play with flat fingers, you don’t get the benefit of all the joints of your fingers like you do when you’re playing with rounded fingers. Your fingers will naturally go into this position if you just allow them to. And that position gives you much more ease because you have the benefit of all the joints of the fingers. Plus, the thumb is in alignment with the rest of the fingers.
2. NOTE GROUPS
Practice small groups of notes, repeatedly. You can work on a few select notes at a time, even just two note groups! And the secret is to play up to speed. Take different groups of notes and find the ones that allow you to land on notes that are insecure. Ultimately this is training your fingers where the hands play together. Listen strategically to where the hands are playing together and when they aren’t. You can get a lot done just by finding the right notes to land on. When you land on notes, avoid tension. You want to land on them with total relaxation. Practice relaxation in your playing, even if you have to play just two notes! Find groups of notes that help you land securely with hands precisely together, and you can accomplish a tremendous amount.
3. ACCENTED NOTES
Playing with accented notes can be really valuable. You can accent different notes within a phrase. This can be done in innumerable ways. You can do different numbers of notes or any type of accents that help you feel relaxed. You don’t want to be pushing with the arms, just use your fingers. By doing this, you train yourself where the fingers play together and where the hands play together. You’ll discover tremendous things. You might come upon certains accents and realize you don’t know where your hands play together! Those are the places to focus on.
4. RHYTHMS
Rhythms are another great tool. Depending upon the passage, there are many different rhythms that can aid in developing speed. You want to find whatever rhythms solve your issue. Try playing passages of even eighth notes as dotted rhythms, dotted eighths followed by sixteenth notes. Then you can reverse the rhythm playing sixteenths followed by dotted eighth notes. You want to discover where the hands need to be together. If you don’t know where the hands play together, you might be able to play your right hand fast or your left hand fast, but you really don’t know where they land together. So this is what trains your hands to play precisely together.
These are four techniques that can help you develop speed in your playing!
Remember, working on scales and arpeggios is incredibly valuable. That gives you an opportunity to just focus on your fingerwork. You can work on pure technique, devoid of music. It’s a great thing to have all your major and minor scales and arpeggios under your fingers. That will be incredibly valuable for you. Remember, the faster you play, the lighter and closer to the keys you must be in order to facilitate speed, because it takes a lot of work to raise fingers when practicing slowly. Raising the fingers can be valuable, so you can feel which fingers are down and which fingers are up initially. As you get faster, lighten up and stay closer to the keys with rounded fingers. Remember these four methods of developing speed: metronome speeds, note groups, accents, and rhythms. Let me know how this works for you! For those of you who have other techniques, share them 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.
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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you four ways to develop speed in your piano playing. You hear people who play dazzlingly fast, but maybe you’re just struggling to get a piece up to speed. Is
