Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. What are good pieces of music for people with small hands? Many of you know that I have rather small hands. Fortunately I have a good, solid octave. I can even reach most 9ths. Although, I can’t quite reach a 9th from above the keys. I can only reach a 10th if I grab one key and stretch to grab the other. But that’s not very practical. I can’t quite reach it with my right hand. As many of you know, your right hand is a little bit smaller than your left hand, if you’re like most pianists, from all the years of stretching. The left hand generally has more outstretched reaches than the right hand.

You can play music beyond your reach, as many great pianists have in the past.

Josef Hofmann had such small hands that Steinway actually built a piano for him with a smaller keyboard! This is a technology that some companies are even working on today. I have videos on this subject for you as well. You can see one here.

What repertoire is ideal for people with small hands?

Early period music is perfect! During the romantic era, the pedal was utilized extensively. The reach was greater, generally. However, the key to being able to play music beyond your reach is capturing notes you can’t reach on the pedal and breaking the chords very quickly. You can hardly tell they are broken the way they’re caught on the pedal. That is a technique that many pianists use in order to play music beyond their reach. It’s very effective. It does not in any way hinder the music.

If you have really small hands, and you don’t want to struggle, the music of Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, or Haydn is great.

The instrument wasn’t as highly developed yet during the time these composers lived. It didn’t have the sustain pedal that we enjoy today. The music doesn’t demand a lot of big reaches. Think about Bach two part inventions. There’s never more than one note in each hand at a time anyway! That’s going to be splendid for anyone with a smaller reach. But even Mozart is really accessible for people with small hands.

There is a wealth of music that will fall right in your hands, even if an octave is all you can reach.

Now, if you don’t have a solid octave, it is more of a challenge. You might want to look into some of those smaller keyboards. It would be wonderful if this became a standard. It’s possible that if this became a standard, a pianist could choose among different sized keys. Why is this size the standard? It doesn’t have to be this way! It’s just what evolved. If you can’t reach an octave, a smaller keyboard could be just the thing for you. 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. Today I’m going to tell you the two instruments all music majors at conservatories must study. You may be surprised to learn what these instruments are. One of them is the piano, which probably isn’t surprising. After all, the piano offers you the possibility of seeing the structure of music. On a piano you can play chords. If you’re a clarinetist, you can only play one note at a time. It’s hard to conceive of intervals, chords, and key signatures. So the piano is a natural choice. What is the other instrument that all music majors have to study? Aside from piano, the answer is voice!

The human voice is the most intrinsic instrument there is.

It’s the instrument we all have! We’ve all tried it out. We grew up with it from the time we were born and we have it with us all the time. Now, why is it so important to sing your music? Well, singing and sight-singing are so valuable for developing your ear. The piano is great because you can play such complex music. But you know what? You don’t really have to hear the pitches before you play them! You push the keys, and the notes comes out. It’s simple, right? Well, suppose you want to actually hear what you’re doing. If you want to sing that note, you have to know the pitch.

The best way to train your ear is by singing.

However, singers are at a great loss when actually conceptualizing or intellectualizing what they’re doing because it’s so intuitive. It’s literally coming out of them! But when you have to quantify the pitch on a piano, you have to make a decision which key to push and when to push it. You need to understand the relationship of the intervals. You can clearly see the half steps. It’s all very visual. So those are the two instruments everyone should study.

If you are a pianist, you might want to consider singing your music.

Do it when no one is around if you’re embarrassed. You will learn a lot. The other thing you can do is test yourself at the piano. For example, if you play a C, could you sing an E? Could you sing a G? Could you sing the different notes just from thinking of them? If you can’t, don’t despair. There is a secret! Think diatonically. If you want to think from the C to the E, you can think through the scale in your head. That is the secret to being able to hear intervals and hear chords. If you can think the notes between the notes, you’ll know where you are. So, if you want to sing E after hearing C, try singing C – D – E. That’s exactly what sight-singing accomplishes.

I was so fortunate to study with my father, Morton Estrin.

I not only took private piano lessons with my father, as my sister did, and countless other people over the years of his teaching career, but I also got to study in his weekly classes. In these classes he taught sight-singing, ear training, theory, harmony, dictation, harmony, all of it! Because of this, I can hear all music in solfeggio, do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. Everything goes into those syllables for me. So I can determine all the notes hear once I have one reference note.

I encourage you to sing your music!

If you are not a pianist, go ahead and study a little bit of piano. Whatever instrument you play, it will help you in the study of your instrument to have both piano and voice. So that’s the lesson for today! 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 why 99% is bad in piano playing. You might think I’m a very strict teacher or something like that. How can 99% be bad? Valedictorians would be very pleased to have a 99% average! Usually somebody is lauded if they’re at even 90%. How can 99% be bad in piano?

The incredible complexity of piano music requires more than 99%.

If you were to play even a relatively simple piece of music like Minuet in G of Bach, just the first section has well over 100 notes. But consider that each note has a rhythm. So that’s over 200 details. Each note has a fingering. So now we’re up to 300. Each note has a phrasing, either slurred or staccato. That’s 400. How about dynamics? So there are over 500 details just in that first section of this short piece! So if you are at 99%, you’re missing a handful of details just in that small section of this short piece. That’s why 99% is not a good average for playing classical music.

There are almost an infinite number of details that have to be present for the music to sound right.

There are more aspects of the music than I mentioned above, the elegance of the balance between the hands, the rise and the fall of the phrases dynamically, and more. That’s why you have to strive for something much greater than 99%. How do you do that? By being organized in your practice! That’s why you can’t just simply read through music over and over again and expect to assimilate the thousands of details, even in a short piece like this. You must be very meticulous in putting together small chunks of music, studying the score carefully, looking at tiny phrases at a time, and amassing this information into your head and into your hands. Put things together little by little. And beyond that, go back and check your work constantly! Nobody can remember that many details without constant review. When you think about what you’re accomplishing when you play a piece of music on the piano, if you’re playing it accurately, you’re not missing notes and rhythms, phrasing and fingering and expression all over the place, it is a remarkable feat!

You are playing at a level much higher than 99% accuracy if you’re getting through something without any obvious glitches.

You have a lot to be proud of in the work you’re doing! If you’re not breaking up all over the place, you are well above 99% in your playing. That is what it takes to be able to play a piece of music on the piano. So remember to be organized in your practice so you can achieve something that is astounding. You are learning thousands of details that you can perform just like that. What a pleasure! When you put the practice in and you learn it correctly, then playing can be such a joy. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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

Playing the piano is a very complex task.

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

Not all piano playing is equal.

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

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

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

I want to hear from you!

Do you think piano playing is hard? Do you think practicing is hard? What kind of enjoyment do you get out of the instrument? Let me know in the comments here at Living Pianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

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

There are many pianists who can’t read music.

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

What about classical music?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can use a metronome to find a slower tempo.

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

www.metronomerous.de

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

One of the most important aspects of practicing the piano effectively, is slowing things down! Even pieces you can play comfortably at a fast speed will degrade over time if you don’t play them slower from time to time, intentionally looking at the music, playing with a metronome, without the pedal. That’s the way to gain security and to keep your pieces fresh and at a good performance level. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why would you want your second finger curved like this?

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

It’s not a tight position.

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

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

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

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

Chords are typically built in intervals of 3rds.

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

Voicing is everything in chords.

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

How would you voice a 13 chord?

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

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

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

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

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