Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to know when to move on in your piano practice. This is one of the most important aspects of working at the piano productively. After all, you don’t want to shortchange yourself and give up before you solve problems. Yet, you don’t want to bang your head against the wall and spend hours on something that isn’t progressing. This will leave you frustrated. You won’t even want to touch the piano anymore! So, what is the balance? Well, in a nutshell, it’s:

Realizing where you have reached the point of diminishing returns.

What do I mean when I say, “the point of diminishing returns”? I remember the first time I ever heard that phrase, I had no idea what it meant. I was a young child. I asked my father and he described it this way, which I think is a really good description. Imagine there’s a building going up in Manhattan on a very valuable piece of real estate. Building a house on that property would never make sense, because the land is worth millions of dollars. There’s no way a house is ever going to be worth that much. Not even a 10-story building will be worth enough no matter how elaborate. So you have to have enough stories to lease or sell in order to make the building profitable. But at a certain point, it gets more expensive to build higher and higher. You have a certain amount of costs involved per story, but anything above 50 stories starts to get extremely expensive. Eventually, you get to a height where it’s absolutely the point of diminishing returns. There’s no way you could possibly lease space or sell condos on that many floors to overcome the tremendous costs of building a structure so tall. That’s an example of the point of diminishing returns.

Understanding how this relates to your piano practice is essential.

What makes it tough is knowing when you should give up and when you should keep plowing ahead. I think you want to give things a good shot. For example, if you’re working on a difficult passage and it just isn’t coming, you try playing hands separately, you put them back together, and it doesn’t quite do it. Is it time to give up? Not necessarily. You might try going very slowly with the metronome and doing progressive metronome speeds. If you get to a certain point when you can’t get any faster, do you give up? Well, maybe not. Maybe you try to squeeze out a few more notches. Sometimes, you get to a point where you think you’ve taken the metronome as far as you can, then you lighten up your touch or something else, and boom, you get a few more metronome notches! But, then you get to a point where you’re spending so much time getting one more notch, maybe that’s the time to leave it for another day.

Oftentimes, when you are learning a new phrase or phrases you are assimilating into your memory, it becomes really difficult to get things beyond a certain point of refinement.

You might get the music really refined once or twice. Maybe you get it three times in a row way under tempo, and that’s all you can do with it. Well, try to squeeze a little bit more out of that. If you got it perfectly at least a few times in a row, even if it’s way under tempo, it’s very likely the next day, when you refresh your memory on it, you’ll be able to play it faster right from the get-go just from sleeping on it. So, you must know when to move on. The key is to not give up right away. Try a couple of different techniques. Try slowing down. Try hands separately. Try using the metronome. Try stopping at strategic points. You can also try playing very strong or very light. You can try accenting different notes in a passage, or you could even alter the rhythm. If you have straight eighths, you could make them into a dotted rhythm, then reverse the dotted rhythm.

There are many, many different techniques to try before abandoning something altogether. However, you don’t want to get stuck and spend so much time on so little music that at the end of a week, you have very little to show for your work. Sometimes just plowing through something, getting it perfectly two or three times in a row under tempo allows you to learn more music. Because the next day you can take all of that music up to a higher level and push forward in the score. So, you have one part from the day before that’s starting to come along, the part from two days ago is getting quite secure, and the part from before that is already at performance level. You’re working on all these different sections simultaneously.

Try to push to the point of diminishing returns in your practice!

Try many different techniques before giving up, but don’t feel that giving up is necessarily a bad thing. It allows you to move forward and amass more music in your daily practice. I’m wondering how this all works for you. Try it out and let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me. I’m 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

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is, are pickups measures? Let’s say a piece is in 3/4 time, and it starts with a quarter note. Is that a measure? For example, in the Beethoven Sonata Opus 49 No. 2, the famous G major Sonata, the second movement starts with a dotted 8th and 16th. Then there’s a bar line right after that. Are those first two notes, the dotted 8th and 16th, a measure? They’re in a box. Well, the movement is in 3/4 time. 3/4 time tells you there are three beats in each measure and the quarter note gets one beat. Since you only have one beat total with a dotted 8th and 16th, this can’t possibly be a measure. This is a pickup, sometimes called an anacrusis.

A pickup is simply a beat (or beats) before the first measure (or other measures).

After the first bar line comes the first measure. The pickup notes are not a measure. When learning a piece in 3/4 time that starts with pickups, each phrase starts on the third beat and ends on the second beat. The whole piece is kind of juxtaposed starting with the third beat. An interesting thing that you may have noticed in most pieces that have pickups is that they almost always end on beat that make up the time from the beginning. So indeed, if you look at the end of the movement of this Beethoven Sonata, it only has only two beats in the last measure !And yes, that is considered a measure even though it only has two beats. This is because it starts with a pickup on the third beat and ends on the second beat. You could actually loop it back to the beginning. Now this doesn’t repeat. Although sometimes, you will have repeated sections with da capos or repeat signs that will repeat with pickup. You’ll have a partial measure at the end and the pickup at the beginning. It all works seamlessly! So that’s the way pickups work.

Remember, pickups are not measures.

The first measure comes after the bar line. If you don’t have a complete measure, even if it’s two beats out of four, those would be two beat pickups. If you don’t have a complete measure at the very beginning of a piece after the time signature, that is considered a pickup. Take a look at the last measure of a piece that starts off without enough beats, and nine times out of 10, it’s made up for in the last measure. That’s an interesting little fact for you! You count that note at the beginning backwards from the first measure. That’s why the first note of this movement would be counted as three, not one. You never have two first beats in a row. You know that after the bar line is the first beat. So the beat before the first beat of the measure must be the third beat.

That’s everything you need to know about pickups!

I hope that’s cleared things up for you! I’m sure a lot of you are already well aware of this, but I thought I’d make this video in case there’s any confusion for anybody. Thanks so much for joining me. I’m 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 grace notes that aren’t grace notes. Sometimes students think that they’re looking at grace notes and they’re not grace notes. What am I talking about? Well, first of all, what are grace notes? Grace notes are the little tiny notes with diagonal lines going through them just before other notes. You typically play them very quickly. They can be played either on the beat or before the beat. It depends upon what works well. Sometimes it’s easier to play them on the beat. Sometimes it’s easier to play them slightly before the beat. The key is to play them quickly.

When are grace notes not grace notes? How do you know?

Sometimes you will see these little notes that look like grace notes, but they aren’t grace notes. For example, the beginning of Mozart’s Alla Turka movement from his famous Sonata k331. Those are not grace notes! Believe it or not. Look in your edition. They may be written as grace notes. But if you have an authoritative urtext edition, they’re written as appoggiaturas. Appoggiaturas look almost exactly like grace notes, but there’s one key difference. Grace notes always have little lines through them. They’re crossed out. Whereas, appoggiaturas are little tiny notes, but there are no lines through them. They are different in the way you play them. You don’t play them like grace notes. I mentioned two ways to play grace notes, either before the beat or on the beat playing very quickly. Both are wrong in this context, because these are appoggiaturas. Look in your edition. There should not be a line through them. If there are lines through them, this is not accurate.

What are appoggiaturas?

Appoggiaturas are long expressive non chord tones that resolve. They’re played on the beat with some time attached to them. In this case you play them as 16th notes followed by dotted 8th notes instead of grace notes, which are not appropriate for Mozart. It’s not what Mozart wrote! There are some editions out there that are just wrong in this regard. Listen to the beauty when you play them long, the way they’re supposed to be played. Look at all your music now for any places you think you have grace notes. Make sure they are grace notes. They might be appoggiaturas!

There are times when grace notes are not grace notes at all, but they are appoggiaturas to be played long and on the beat. That’s the lesson for today! I’m sure all of you are going to check your scores now. Let me know what you discover! Tell me in the comments here at LivingPianos.com, as well as YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me. I’m 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

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin and this is LivingPianos.com. Today I’m going to show you fingering tips for the piano. Fingering on the piano is as much art as it is science. It is a complex subject. There isn’t one right fingering for everyone. But there are a lot of fingerings that are definitely better than other fingerings. I’m going to give you some general guidelines. Keep in mind that this is a deep subject. These are guidelines that you can take to heart, but finding fingering solutions is something that involves a lifetime of discovery.

To find appropriate fingering, try to cover as many notes in a passage as possible.

Avoid unnecessary finger crossings. If you can be over a whole chord and have your fingers play those notes, it is far easier than having to cross over unnecessarily. There are some exceptions to this. Sometimes you might find that by playing over a chord, it’s hard to get enough power and speed. You might find you want to do finger crossings. But generally you can just get over as many notes as possible in a hand position because it’s easy to play once you’re over the notes. Thumb crossings and third and fourth finger crossings can be difficult to achieve. So get over as many notes as possible.

Unless you’re playing octaves or chords, generally you avoid the thumb on black keys.

Every single rule I’m going to tell you has exceptions. If you’re playing a Bach fugue for example, where counterpoint is very complex, you’ll have the craziest fingering you could ever imagine that breaks every single rule I’m going to tell you here today. So these are only guidelines that you try first. If you can accomplish fingering without using the thumb on black keys, do so. Now of course, if they’re in chords or octaves, that rule does not apply.

On repeated notes you must change fingers.

Obviously, for fast repeated notes it’s essential to change fingers. There’s no way anybody could play fast repeated notes with one finger. But what about repeated notes that are slow? In order to get a true legato out of repeated notes you must change fingers, so one finger is going down while the other finger is going up. For example, the beginning of the second movement of the K 330 C Major Sonata of Mozart. It starts off with three C’s. Without changing fingers, you end up with breaks between the notes. Changing the fingers on those notes makes it possible to achieve a smooth legato sound. You can add the pedal to enhance it. But you can achieve that beautiful legato just with your fingers by changing fingers for each note.

There isn’t just one fingering for all players.

People’s hands are built differently. Not just the size, but the angle of the thumb, as well as the length of different fingers. For some people, the thumb is at a greater angle offering a wider reach. The thickness of fingers can also determine what fingering works best. So every player has to discover what fingerings work for them.

Find the fingerings that work for you!

You must experiment with different fingerings in order to find what works for you. In fact, I will go so far as to say that whenever you have a technical problem, you should search for a fingering solution.

Reference different scores that are edited with different fingering suggestions.

You’ll find if you have more than one edition of a piece, the fingerings are not the same. Different editors have different ideas about what fingerings are going to work best. Sometimes you’re tearing your hair out, not able to play a passage, and then you find another book that has a different fingering and it instantly solves the problem for you!

Those are some tips for fingering for you!

I’m sure there are other valuable tips out there. If anybody has any more tips, leave them in the comments here at LivingPianos.com or on YouTube. I’m 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 discuss a musical stress test. What am I talking about? You practice, and practice, and practice, but you wonder if you really know the score. How do you know if you have security with the music? Are you ready for a performance? Are you ready for a lesson? Are you ready to accompany someone? How do you know when you’re ready? You don’t want to wait until the moment of truth comes to find out you weren’t prepared! How can you know? Because as you well know, you can play something by yourself in your home perfectly, and then when you try to play it for somebody else, it goes haywire. What can you do to test things out?

Try playing faster.

There are a lot of things you can do to test yourself. You can try playing things faster to see if you can still hold it together. Because when you get nervous, one of the first things that happens is your physiology speeds up a little bit. Your heart rate, your breathing, all of that speeds up. So guess what happens to your playing? You go faster! You don’t even think you’re going faster. I’ll never forget many, many, years ago, listening to recordings of myself as a child, playing in my dad’s student recitals. I couldn’t believe how fast I was going! I was playing faster than I ever played those pieces! It could be a disaster if you’ve never tried your pieces faster, and the first time it happens is during a performance. I’ve had times where I would keep my fingers crossed hearing my students perform in recitals taking outrageously fast tempos they had never tried before, hoping they had some reserve in their playing.

Another great thing you can do is record yourself.

Psych yourself up like it’s an actual performance. Set up a device, and go through your music and make yourself a little bit nervous. Make yourself feel like you are performing. The key is not to stop! Even if you mess up right at the beginning, keep going. Because that can happen in a performance, and you don’t want to start over. Nobody wants to hear you start over. First of all, it’s as much as announcing to everybody that you’ve messed up. But more than that, it destroys the continuity of the performance for the audience. Speaking of which, there’s no better way to create stress than to play for an audience. If you regularly play for people, play for more people. The more people you play for, the more nervous you’re likely to get. That’s the ultimate stress test. And if you c witanhstand that, then you’re ready for anything.

What I recommend is ratcheting up little by little.

Start with recording for a device. Then play for a family member or a trusted friend. Then play for larger and larger numbers of people until you’re ready for an audience. If you can withstand that and you can withstand playing faster than you usually play, you should be ready for a performance. You can also try playing on different pianos as a musical stress test. Play on a piano you’ve never played and see what happens! Right from the get go, without even trying the piano first, just jump right in. Play on as many pianos as you can. It’s a great way to improve your preparedness, because you can’t take your piano with you. Usually, you have to play whatever piano is wherever you are performing. So playing on as many different instruments as possible is another great way to get ready for your performance. Make sure you’re in the best shape possible to withstand anything in your playing. I hope this is interesting for you! I’m 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 question today is, does staccato mean short? You know the dots over or under notes? When you see them, you think you’re supposed to play those notes short, right? For example, in Clementi Sonatina Opus 36, Number One, the famous sonatina. I know not all additions have staccatos, but they should because it sounds really good playing crisp, short staccatos. So does staccato mean short? Staccato does not mean short! So why are staccatos played short then? Well, they aren’t always played short.

Staccato actually means detached.

Staccato is the opposite of a slur. Slurs are played smoothly and connected. Staccato tells you to detach the notes. Now, in a fast tempo like the Clementi Sonatina Opus 36, Number One, they’re going to be short. But have you ever had a slow piece with a staccatos? What does that mean? Well, oftentimes composers will write notes with rests between them if they want really short staccatos in a slow tempo. So if you had 4/4 time and half notes with staccatos, instead of writing half notes with staccatos, they might write a quarter note with a staccato followed by a quarter rest, then another staccato quarter note followed by a quarter rest, and so on. So you have quarter note, quarter rest, quarter note, quarter rest, which already gives you some separation. And if they’re staccato, you would play them even shorter, ostensibly.

In some instances you detach notes without playing them short.

I’m going to give you an example where there are half notes in a fast tempo, something in 2/2 time, the famous Pathetique Sonata of Beethoven. After the opening slow section, it goes to an Allegro. It’s really fast, and you have staccato quarter notes followed by staccato half notes. Should it be played with all the notes equally short? Well, half notes shouldn’t really be short. Should they be detached? Absolutely! The way I interpret this is to play those half notes like quarter notes followed by quarter rests. This way they have some length, but there’s space between them. You play the quarter notes short, because at a fast tempo,it’s very difficult to detach the quarter notes without playing them short. But you can detach the half notes without playing them short. That is what Beethoven intended, I believe. But this is only one aspect and one place.

Generally, slow movement staccatos are longer notes that are detached, and fast movement staccatos are played short and crisp.

When you have staccatos in a slow movement, they are not generally to be played short. It’s out of character. The staccatos simply mean to detach the notes. Now, there are always exceptions. Context is everything! I showed you an exception right here where Beethoven writes staccatos on half notes. So take this with a grain of salt. Look at what makes sense in the score. Why would a composer write staccatos on half notes? It doesn’t make much sense for them to be as short as the staccato quarter notes, does it?

I’m interested in hearing from all of you about this! I’m happy to answer any questions you have about staccatos in any context! I’m 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