Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic today is about why some pieces are harder to memorize than others. Some composers are really hard to memorize compared to others. For example, Mozart may not be easy to play, but his pieces tend to be easier to memorize than a composer like Bach. Why is this?

The music of Mozart generally has melody and accompaniment.

Memorizing music that has melody with accompaniment is far easier than other types of music. You have a melody that you can remember because it’s something you can hum. And then you just have broken chords in the left hand. With something like a Bach fugue, where you have counterpoint, memorization is much more difficult. You don’t have a clear melody and accompaniment. It’s melody and melody! More than that, in a fugue with 3 or more voices, melodies are divided between the hands. So practicing hands separately sometimes doesn’t make sense. This is why counterpoint can be challenging to memorize. However, there’s a reason why even this may not be the hardest thing to memorize.

There’s a certain amount of tactile memory in counterpoint.

Even though there are a lot of interweaving parts, it all falls under your hands very nicely. Your fingers have a memory all their own! It’s sometimes referred to as muscle memory. Have you ever noticed yourself playing the piano and in the middle of it, you realize that you were spaced out? Your mind was thinking about something else entirely, but your fingers kept going! I made a video years ago about how playing scales is kind of like learning how to walk. At first, a toddler has to think of each step with great concentration. But soon they can walk and not even be thinking about it. Well, you can also play scales without thinking about it. The fingers just know where to go, as long as you practice.

There are times when muscle memory won’t help you.

When there are leaps in your music, you can’t rely upon the memory of the fingers because you have to know where you’re leaping. I remember when I first learned the Scriabin Etude in D sharp minor, Op. 8, No. 12, how difficult it was to memorize all of the jumps. You have to be aware of what notes you’re jumping to. Your fingers don’t remember that, do they? Even if something isn’t as complex as a Scriabin etude, any time you have to jump from one register of the piano to another, you have to be intellectually aware of where you’re going.

With leaps, you have to know exactly what notes you’re landing on.

It’s difficult when you’re going from one section of the keyboard to another, particularly if you have a piece that leaps from one place to another in one section, then that same section leaps somewhere else later. In a sonata, for example, the exposition is different from the recapitulation, because the keys are different. You might take a wrong turn if you don’t know intellectually where you are in the music and where to go next. You need to just lock it in so when you get there, you know where you are. You can’t guess because you won’t know where to jump.

Those are the two things that make music more difficult to memorize.

Something with a lot of counterpoint, as in Baroque music and fugues in general, are more difficult to memorize than music with just melody and accompaniment, like in Mozart, Haydn, or even Chopin, depending upon the piece. Sometimes his harmonic sophistication in Chopin can be rather challenging as well. The other thing that makes music more difficult to memorize is leaps. Leaps can be difficult to remember even if you have memorized the music. You need to keep track of your jumps. You have to be keenly aware and have a good intellectual grasp of where you’re going in your score. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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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 topic for today is about how to play at your piano lessons. You prepare all week and you’re ready for your lesson, but when the moment comes to play for your teacher, everything goes wrong! Why does that happen? Is there anything you can do about that? Yes! I’m going to give you some tips today to help you play for your teacher.

Preparation is key.

First I’m going to talk about the basics of how to play for your teacher. This applies to any performance, even just playing for friends. You practice and practice and everything is going fine. You can play your piece over and over again, no problem. But as soon as you play for somebody, everything goes wrong. What’s going on? There are a number of things you can do. You want to be prepared so that you can play the piece through without stopping. You want to be able to do it successfully a number of times.

It’s important to realize that performing is nothing like playing by yourself.

When you’re playing at home for yourself, there’s no self-awareness. You’re just thinking about the music, which is exactly as it should be! But when you’re playing for other people, suddenly you’re thinking about yourself. That self awareness distracts you from the music. You always want to stay focused on the music. How can you do this? Number one, realize that when you’re playing for your teacher, or playing for anyone, you naturally get a little bit excited. Your adrenaline is pumping, you’re going to be breathing faster, your heart’s going to be beating a little bit faster, even if it’s only slightly. Everything is elevated. So you have to combat this with relaxation. Take a deep breath before you start playing.

Take a moment to establish a tempo in your head.

Think of the tempo you’re going to play, not only the beginning of the piece, but think through a couple of other places in the piece. Think about the hardest part. Establish a speed not just for the beginning, but think through a couple of key sections. When you go to a concert, the performer gets to the piano and then they stop, they adjust how they sit, they put their hands on the keys and they take a few moments before starting to play. They’re doing all the things I’m telling you. They’re thinking through the music! They’re not going to start without thinking about it because they may take the wrong tempo. Once you start at the wrong tempo, you are sunk. You’re stuck with that tempo. You can’t just slow down in the middle of a performance. Take your time establishing a speed. And because your body is heightened, take it a notch slower then you just established and you might be spot on your usual tempo.

What I want to talk about today is how to approach playing at a lesson.

Let’s say you have a piece you’ve been working on for a couple of weeks. Maybe it’s a long piece and it’s taking you a while to learn it. You have the beginning section in great shape, you can play it up to speed and everything is in good shape. But then the next section, you sort of have it, but if you take it up to speed, you’re going to have problems. Then you get to the later section that you just learned in the last couple of days, and you have to take it much slower. So what tempo do you take? Should you take the whole thing really slowly from the beginning so you can accommodate the part you just learned? Or should you take it at the speed you are comfortable with on the second section so at least you can get through the first two sections at the same speed?

I’ll tell you what I do with my students.

If I know they have been working on a piece, I tell them right out of the gate not to just start from the beginning and gradually slow down. That would not be in anybody’s best interest. But if they have a chunk of the music up to tempo, I’ll have them play that part up to tempo. Then when they have to slow down in another section, they let me know. When they get to the part they just learned, they may have to take a much slower tempo. By playing for your teacher that way, they can understand the level you have the different sections of the piece on, then they can help you appropriately. Maybe the first section you’re playing up to speed, but there are problems with how you are approaching it that wouldn’t be revealed if you played it under tempo. Ask your teacher if that is what they want you to do, or if they want you to take everything at that much slower tempo so that you don’t have to change speeds along the way. Naturally, in performance, you never want to change tempo! But for the sake of the lesson, for your teacher to understand the work you’ve done, and the level you have different sections of a piece, I think it’s a great way to approach your performance at a lesson.

I’m interested in your opinion! What does your teacher have you do at lessons?

Does your teacher have you play the entire piece at a consistent tempo, or do they have you play each section at the tempo you have mastered? You can let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com or on YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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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 topic for today is about the most important aspect of music. What is the most important aspect of music? There are so many things, such as texture, melody, instrumentation, orchestration, and pitch. But what is the most important thing?

Rhythm is by far the most important aspect of music.

I’m going to prove this to you in several ways that give you some historical context. If you heard the notes of a very familiar piece without a rhythmic context, it would be difficult to decipher what it was. It wouldn’t sound like much of anything because rhythm is a vitally important part of music. So let’s break this down a little bit. Think about the trajectory of music, starting with the Classical era of Mozart, Haydn, and later, Beethoven. There was a structure and a firm grasp of harmony that actually grew from Bach and earlier composers, with Bach chorales and all the rules of harmony, and basically major and minor chords. Harmony grew into the Romantic period, with composers such as Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky. And later, Romantic music got even more chromatic with Wagner, Richard Strauss, and Rachmaninoff. Eventually, tonality got to the point where keys were shifting constantly until it broke down to the 12 tone system, originally developed by Arnold Schoenberg, which used all 12 tones arranged in a random order called a tone row.

There are only 12 different notes in music!

How many different possible arrangements are there of 12 tones? Well, 144. Think about the vast majority of all Western music from before the Baroque era through to contemporary times, it’s all based upon just those 12 notes. This makes you realize how derivative melodies would be without the advent of rhythm. Rhythmic variety is what really separates melodies. So with the 12 tone system, you take those 12 tones and arrange them in some order called a tone row. Imagine building a piece out of that! Well, that’s exactly what Schoenberg did. Not only that, in trying to randomize music, not only were pitches randomized to avoid repeated patterns, but even rhythms were randomized trying to serialize the repetition of all elements. Now, this music is brilliant in its composition, but extraordinarily difficult to hear because atonal music is harder to digest than intervals that are more closely related. You can hear octaves, which are a 2 to 1 relationship, or fifths, a 3 to 1 relationship, very easily. But more distantly related intervals can be very hard to hear. Atonal music, by its very nature, is difficult to decipher. When you start randomizing other elements, like rhythm, textures, and dynamics, the music is even harder to grasp because of its random elements. This is why rhythm comes to the rescue in most music.

The revolution away from serialized music, like I just described, was the advent of minimalism.

Minimalism has a return of rhythmic elements in a new way. The brilliance of minimalism with composers like Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and John Adams, was the nested combination of different patterns, overlapping with one another, creating beautiful kaleidoscopes of sound. Once again, we see the intrinsic element of rhythm. Whereas you had Baroque music using subjects in fugues that were intertwined with countersubject, in Classical period music, there were formal structures such as sonata allegro form, but with rhythmic elements firmly in place. That broke down in atonal music in the 20th century. Then finally, minimalism to the rescue! With minimalism you could once again decipher and grasp what you were listening to.

What about microtonal music?

The reason we have the 12 tones is because the overtone series is built upon these essential 12 notes. If you were to listen to any vibrating pitched object, you’re always going to get the same series of notes. The overtone series has your basic diatonic notes. They’re not arranged as a scale, but they’re the same notes. Now, on a tempered tuned piano, all the pitches are slightly off. So much music, whether it’s Persian music or Native American music or Indian music, has notes between the notes. But they still are largely pure tones found in the overtone series. These are mathematical relationships that are part of nature, which we can discern with our ears quite easily. So when you have arbitrary divisions of pitches, for example, quarter steps, notes between the notes, this isn’t something that has any real validity in the nature of sound.

So this is the argument that rhythm is the most intrinsically important element that makes music have meaning.

Without rhythm, and with only 12 tones, everything is derivative of everything else. But rhythm, by its very nature, has almost an infinite variety of possibilities because of all the divisions of time that are possible. That adds so many elements to composition! Let me know how you feel about this 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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ADVANCED MEMORIZATION TECHNIQUES FOR PIANO

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic for today is about why you must strike from above in your piano playing. However, this is not always the case. I’m referring to a very specific technique. In fact, striking from above can create a harsh, unpleasant sound in some circumstances.

When playing large chords, striking from above can sound brash.

When you strike from above using the arms, you have no control and end up with a crass sound. Instead, what you want to do is strike from the surface of the keys and drop the weight of your arms all at once. By doing so, you will achieve a gorgeous sound that will not be harsh no matter how hard you play.

Should you strike from above when doing finger work?

For slow practice, raised fingers can be a good way to delineate which fingers are up and down, so you get clean releases of notes. This is useful when practicing scales and arpeggios. However, when playing more quickly, you must stay right on top of the keys without raised fingers or you’ll never gain the speed. But to practice the release of notes, practicing with delineated fingers down with other fingers up and out of the way is a terrific exercise, akin to stretching before working out, as I’ve discussed before.

The real place where striking from above is vitally important is with staccato!

When practicing slowly, you might be tempted to play with your fingers close to the keys. The problem with this is that you won’t get the crisp staccato you’re aiming for. Playing faster using that technique will produce a muddy sound. Striking from above gives you a crisp staccato sound. So, you must strike from above in your slow practice to prepare yourself to play quickly and achieve precision and power in your staccatos.

It’s the wrist that is doing all the work.

Make sure you don’t let your fingers go down to notes before you play them. You want to strike from above in one smooth motion using your wrist. That way, you get the clarity of the staccato and the power from the wrist. Another thing to avoid is using the arms for the up and down motion. The arms are too big and heavy, which will result in a clumsy sound. You won’t get the crisp sound you desire. The arms are too slow, and it just bogs down. You should move the arms side to side to get over the right keys, but there should be no up and down motion.

You can achieve a light staccato with the wrist as well.

By utilizing the wrist staying closer to the keys, you can get a light, fast staccato as well. So remember: for more power, use more motion, and for light, crisp staccato, use smaller wrist motion. But always use the wrists when trying to achieve a short, crisp sound.

So that’s the tip for the day!

Remember to strike from above in your staccato, and you will be rewarded with a crisp sound. Doing this, you can achieve speed, fluency, power, and lightness. I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how faster isn’t always louder. It may seem obvious that playing faster does not mean playing louder. But you would be surprised at how much of the time when you see a crescendo, you naturally speed up! This can be detrimental to your playing for so many reasons. Let me give you an example from Clementi’s Sonatina in C major Opus 36 no 1. In the second line of the piece, there’s a crescendo. Many pianists struggle with this passage because they tend to speed up during the crescendo, making it even more challenging to play. So, how can you mitigate this problem?

Always trust the metronome.

Work with a metronome to ensure that you maintain a steady tempo throughout the piece. You may find that as soon as you get to the crescendo, the metronome seems to be dragging. Well, drag along with it! The metronome is king. By following the metronome, you will be able to play with more security. When performing the piece, it’s natural to feel a bit excited, which can cause you to speed up during crescendos. To counteract this, you can intentionally slow down slightly when you find yourself playing faster. However, you must also check your work with a metronome to make sure you’re not overcompensating and slowing down too much.

Sometimes, getting faster during crescendos can be called for.

This is especially true in 19th-century music where rubato is used to create a sense of ebb and flow. Sometimes it can actually work, so long as then the pendulum swings the other way as it gets softer. Rubato can be effective in that respect. However, you must be careful not to lose or gain time on the beat. Practicing with a metronome is essential for ensuring that you stay on track.

Fingering is of vital importance.

Good fingering is fundamental. One of the best ways to discover good fingering is by playing in chords. By playing in chords, your fingers naturally fall on the right keys. You will know what fingering is going to be most effective by working in groups of notes played together in chords whenever possible in your music. It also gives you an opportunity to understand the harmonic underpinnings of your music. You can practice in different rhythms, accents, or in groups of notes. Each of these techniques will help you to assimilate your music. I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s topic is about how to take your musical phrases further. One of the biggest challenges when playing lyrical music is controlling the ends of phrases to achieve a nice diminuendo, such as in the second movement of Clementi’s Sonatina in C major Opus 36, no. 1.

I like to play simple, effective trills that can be negotiated easily.

You don’t have to be distracted by highly ornamented trills. It’s not necessary to get the beauty of this music. Trills are left up to you. If you want to play more notes, go ahead. But don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on playing fast trills. Instead, concentrate on the beauty of the music and creating a singing line. Of course, the challenge of this movement, like so much other music, is twofold. You want to have melody above accompaniment throughout, and you also want to have the rise and fall of each phrase.

The secret to being able to control phrase endings to make them quiet is to peak later in your music.

Remember to start softly so you can grow in the middle of the phrase. You can keep growing further than the middle of the phrase. If you peak in the middle, instead of later in the phrase, it is very difficult to end the phrase quietly. Not only is it hard to control, but it also loses intensity and support. It sounds like a singer who doesn’t have enough air at the end of a phrase. Once again, it’s all about utilizing arm weight. You can look at some of my previous videos to understand what I’m talking about.

You can give the music more life by supporting the phrase further than the middle.

When you do this, the phrase endings have a nice taper. You won’t struggle to end the phrase without notes dropping out. Peak your phrases later so that the phrase endings can be beautifully controlled. You can make life so much easier for yourself while creating a longer musical line that projects all the way to the end of the phrase. You won’t have to worry about notes dropping out. So that’s the tip for today! I hope this has been helpful for you! 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 living in the comfort zone in your piano playing. Have you ever had a fast piece that you’re struggling to play fast? You have tension, but you want a beautiful, relaxed quality to your playing. You want to play with fluidity. You might wonder how to achieve this. If you keep struggling to play just a little bit faster than you are able to play with comfort and relaxation, you’ll never be able to achieve that kind of relaxed fluidity in your playing.

The secret is slow practice.

Find the speed at which you can play completely relaxed. It might surprise you how slowly you have to go in order to achieve that. The metronome is such an invaluable tool! Finding the speed at which you can play in a relaxed manner is the first step. You should have the score in front of you when you’re doing this kind of work. You may find that when you slow things down, you will realize you don’t know it as well as you thought you did. That’s why having the score in front of you and setting a metronome at a speed you can play your piece with absolute solidity is a great way to live in that comfort zone. Once you can play it at a slow tempo with total relaxation and accuracy, then you finally have the capability of speeding up your performance.

Slow practice is invaluable, but sometimes it’s hard to translate that slow playing to performance speed.

Another thing you can do is take small note groups and use extreme repetition to solidify the small section. You can take even just one or two notes! Keep playing them until you can play with complete relaxation. Then add other tiny note groups in the same relaxed manner. You can continue working this way through a passage or section of music.

These are two ways of approaching relaxation. Remember to go slowly enough that you can play with complete relaxation. Have the score in front of you so you can check your work. You’ll be surprised to learn what you know, and more importantly, what needs clarification in your playing. You can either play very slowly or you can take very small groups of notes and piece them together.

You’re working on two fronts!

One is to get a feel for what it’s going to be like when it’s up to tempo, even if you’re just playing small groups of notes that you string together. And the other one is to play at a slow tempo with complete security and relaxation. You live at that slow tempo! Live in the slow zone, in the comfort zone, and you’ll be rewarded with relaxation in your playing when you finally get things up to speed. I hope this has been 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