Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have a special treat for you! Today’s video is about how you can solidify your musical performance. Sometimes you practice a piece and learn the whole thing, but when you perform it, you just can’t count on it coming out the way you want. Maybe sometimes it comes through in practice, but you’re afraid to play for anyone because it’s not dependable. Sometimes your performance comes out well, sometimes it doesn’t. What can you do about that? In this video I’m going to show you how to overcome those insecurities!

How do you approach a new piece of music?

A few years ago I made a video about how to practice a new piece on the piano. I chose a piece randomly. The first thing I did was to read through it. Then I started learning it from the beginning. I practiced in front of you, showing you exactly how I approach a new piece. You can reference that video here. In that video, and in my general practice, I start from the beginning of a piece. I start with a very small phrase, just a couple of measures. I look at just the right hand and figure out the notes, then the rhythm, the fingering, the phrasing, and finally the expression. In other words, looking at all the details to get that one little phrase memorized. Then I do the same thing with the left-hand. I learn that same little phrase, notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression with the left hand. Once I get that memorized, I then put the hands together and get that memorized. Then I go on to the next section in the same way, connecting as I go.

What can you do after you’ve learned a piece of music and you have it memorized, but it’s still not really solid?

Let’s say you learn a piece of music, but you don’t feel 100% confident in your performance. Maybe it was solid at one point, but it’s kind of deteriorated over time. What can you do about that? Well, I have an answer for you! Today, once again, I’m going to show you how I practice. I’m going to practice the Liszt Sonata in B minor which I’ve been working on. We just moved here to the Waterloo Arts District in Cleveland. We finally have air conditioning here! It’s been tough making videos because it’s been very hot. So I decided that I would relearn this piece. I couldn’t find my scores, so I have my father’s old score. It’s tattered, but it has all the notes in it!

When you’re practicing, have the music handy, and of course your trusty metronome. Start from the beginning. In this case, I won’t start from the very beginning because the beginning is slow and there’s nothing technically oriented. I’m going to go ahead and start from where the fun begins! I will check with the metronome when necessary. I won’t necessarily use the metronome throughout, but any time there’s any insecurity with tempo or if I need to do metronome speeds, I want to have a metronome handy. This is a great way to practice. I’m going to play slowly and securely with no pedal. I’ll have the score handy. If anything isn’t right in the pocket, I will stop and reference the score.

You may notice how I don’t just work to the point of getting trouble spots to sound O.K., but to be able to play in a relaxed manner. Try stopping just before a place you miss to give yourself a moment to relax. Then, incorporate the memory of the relaxation right at that point, so when you’re playing up to speed:

It’s like having an infinite amount of relaxation in a speck of time.

Another essential technique is to practice in chords wherever possible to reveal the harmonies and discover the best fingering. Also:

Divide difficult passages into manageable chunks of music.

Then you can put the small sections of music together. But you can feel like you are starting over at each new chunk of music, again fostering playing in a relaxed manner. My father used to say:

Through strength comes relaxation.

There’s a lot of truth to that. Years ago when I first studied the Liszt B Minor Sonata, I didn’t have the strength I have now. I had to sometimes contort my body in order to negotiate some of the most difficult sections of the piece. But over the years, the combination of increased strength, along with practicing relaxing at strategic points has made playing the piano a much more fluid experience. I hope this demonstration of how I work will help you in your practicing!

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Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Is piano hard for everyone? I know there are some of you out there who are frustrated. You find that you want to play well, and yet it seems so hard. Why is it so hard for you? You see other people play and it seems effortless. So is it really just hard for you? Or is it hard for everyone? I’ve got news for you. Piano is hard for everyone!

There are many different aspects of playing the piano.

Somebody who has very large hands can reach chords you could only dream about reaching. You think, “Oh, it must be great for them.” My father had enormous hands. He could reach some incredible chords in Rachmaninoff. But he had to work extra hard to be able to play delicately. For somebody with really massive hands, playing fast and light is a huge challenge. That’s just one example. Piano playing encompasses so many aspects of the brain, ears, emotions, and memory. For example, some people might have a great deal of emotion in their playing. But maybe it’s a tremendous challenge for them to keep straight where they are in a piece of music. Intellectually, the demands of being able to memorize music and keep track of where they are in an extended work could be really tough. The opposite could also be true.

When you see young kids playing really well, you might think it comes naturally to them. That’s not true.

Those kids practice a lot. I can guarantee it. Nobody comes out of the womb able to play the piano. Sometimes it seems that way. Sometimes it’s sold that way. For example, I went to the Manhattan School of Music. A lot of musicians in the orchestra would say, “I don’t need to take my music home.” They would pretend they didn’t even have to practice, they were just naturally that good. But that is bunk! They would get the parts somewhere else. They were probably actually practicing more than other people. But they wanted to give the illusion of effortlessness.

It takes hard work to be accomplished on the piano or any other instrument.

That is the honest truth. If you spend the time, you will develop. So don’t be discouraged if you find that piano is hard for you. It’s hard for everyone! The things that are hard for you might be easy for someone else, but the opposite is also true. You might think nothing of the fact that rhythms come pretty naturally to you. But somebody else might struggle with them. You have some things in your playing that are much harder for somebody else. So don’t fret. If you find something hard, just spend time with it. Anybody who’s really accomplished on the piano has spent a lot of hours with the instrument over a long period of time. That’s simply what it takes. I hope this is inspiring for you and not discouraging. I’d like to hear from you! Let me know, is piano easy for you? Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the importance of engagement in musical performance. At a concert, sometimes you’re riveted by the performance. You’re on the edge of your seat waiting to hear what’s going to come next. It’s palpable through the whole audience. You can feel it! Everybody is breathing together. It’s the oneness of a crowd. The energy of the room is just spellbinding. Sadly, sometimes you experience the opposite of that.

What makes us engaged in some performances but not others?

Oftentimes, you’re at a concert listening to an accomplished performer playing hard music, and playing it well, but you find yourself zoning out. You can’t concentrate on anything! You look around and people are fidgeting. You wonder what’s wrong with everybody. You wonder what’s the matter with yourself! “Why can’t I concentrate on this, is there something wrong with me?” I’ve found that in those moments, that’s when the performer will have a little glitch of memory or some other error. This is incredibly insightful as to why you are sometimes engaged in a performance and why sometimes you’re not. Of course, part of it could just be your mood. But I think a bigger factor is the engagement of the performer.

An engaged performer draws the audience in.

Sometimes you’re playing a piece of music and you’re kind of zoned out. You’re on auto-pilot. Your fingers are moving, but you’re not really engaged on an intellectual or emotional level. When you are engaged and you’re feeling the music, you’ll find your audience is equally impressed. They will be focused on everything you’re doing because you are focused. Now, how do you achieve such a thing? In practice, if you let yourself go all the time, you get to the performance and it feels stale. You’ve done it so many times. How do you bring something fresh to your performance where you’re actually engaged as if you’re hearing it or playing it for the first time?

In your practice, have a reserve of emotion.

Play strictly what’s written, follow the score without the luxury of the pedal, and listen critically to every note in an intellectual manner. I’m not saying you should never try things out and let yourself go in practice. You should sometimes do that so you know what your inclinations are and you know what to practice in order to achieve them. On the other hand, the predominant time you spend at the piano should be spent in a very mechanical fashion, cementing the music you’re playing. If you’re playing Brahms and you’re always playing it expressively, maybe that’s the way you want to play it, but in practice, get rid of the pedal. Put on a metronome and play strictly and accurately. This should be done with the score so you cement the performance. You’re focused on every note, every rest, every nuance of expression and phrasing. You play exacting with your fingers, metronomically, so when you finally get to the performance, and you put the pedal in to give a little bit of rubato and shadings, it feels great!

You don’t want to be indulgent in your performance.

If you practice playing with a lot of nuance of expression and you let yourself go, then in the heat of the moment of a performance you might actually let yourself go too far. It could be a little bit gross and self-aggrandizing. You don’t want to be so overly expressive that you lose the sense of the music. The expression should be in service of the music so there are nuances of expression rather than something that takes away from the overall structure of the piece.

This is the way to stay engaged!

In your practice, be precise. Take your foot off the pedal, play with the metronome, and play with the score so when you finally have your performance, it’s fresh. You can let yourself go while still having a solid foundation to build an expressive performance upon. I hope this helps you to stay focused and engaged in your performances! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you should practice the piano every day. Why is it so important? There are a number of reasons. Now, other instruments have their reasons. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m also a French hornist. With the French horn, like many wind instruments, there’s a physiology to the lips which produce the tone. It’s so hard to get back into shape if you miss too many days, because the lips are such tender muscles. The piano doesn’t really have that issue so much. If you miss a day, you’re not going to feel drastically different in your hands. Why is it so important to practice every day, then? Well, there are two reasons, fundamentally.

First, certain aspects of piano practice are extraordinarily difficult and taxing.

Things like memorization can’t easily be crammed into less days. When you’re memorizing music, there’s a certain amount that you can absorb fairly easily. Then it’s an uphill struggle to keep putting more music into your head. You have to really be committed and work extra hard to memorize the third and fourth phrase if you’ve already learned a couple of phrases. It can be done, but it’s harder. So why not take advantage of your fresh mind? Each day, learn something! Even if it’s just a short practice session, it can really help you in the long run if you at least take on some of your score each day.

Second, a lot of times you’ll feel like you’ve made two steps forward and four steps backwards.

When you practice something, then leave it for a day or two, when you come back to it, you might feel like you didn’t even learn anything. It’s so demoralizing! You can’t get that continuity, so you’re just learning the same thing again. Not only is it not as productive, but it kind of drains your soul. You don’t feel excited about practicing when you come back to the same problems over and over again. But if you come back to it the next day, you’ll forget some from the previous day, but it’ll come back pretty quickly. Then you can get right to work learning more music. It’s encouraging. You can keep the momentum going.

Use your mind when it’s fresh, even if it’s for a short practice session.

Keep the continuity of your learning day by day. This is not only a good technique for memorization, but also refinement. You might have an epiphany into your technique with arpeggios, but then you’ll skip a day or two and you come back to it and the same issues persist. So practice every day, even if it’s only a little bit. You might not have much time, but by using any little time you do have each day, you can maintain productive practice. Dinner’s in the oven, you’ve got 10 minutes. Practice! Even those short amounts of time make a big difference if you do it on a regular basis. I do the same thing with exercise, by the way. When I’m waiting for something I’ll do some simple exercises and stretching. Take advantage of every moment with the things that are important in your life. Over time it makes a dramatic difference! That’s the message for today. I hope it works for you! Let me know in the comments on LivingPianos.com and on YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about achieving fast, smooth arpeggios by preparing your thumbs way in advance. You know what arpeggios are. But how do you play them fluently? Scales are hard enough with thumb and finger crossings. But with arpeggios, there is a secret to achieving smooth thumb crossings. In the left-hand you have fourth and third finger crossings. But going down in the left-hand or going up in the right hand, you have thumb crossings. I see so many students moving their whole arms for thumb crossings. They move their elbows in and out which disrupts the sound. It doesn’t allow for playing fast. Many people find it helpful to reach with their thumbs. But by the time they do that, it’s already too late!

The secret is to tuck your thumb under when you play the second finger.

That’s right. When the second finger plays, the thumb tucks under. That way, it’s already ready for the next note. The left-hand coming down does the same thing. You don’t want to wait! If you wait to move your thumb until the moment of the crossing, it’s already too late. So tuck the thumb right when you play the second finger. Then you don’t have to move your arm with your elbow going in and out. You are prepared way in advance.

Slow practice of stretching your thumb under right when you play the second finger is the secret for getting smooth thumb crossings in your arpeggios.

If you’ve never tried this before, try it! Work slowly at first. I suggest 60 beats per minute at one note to the beat because you have to train your hand to do this. It’s not going to do it automatically. But once it does become automatic, you’re going to get smoothness and speed out of your arpeggios like you’ve never had before! This is a really important tip. Let me know how it works for you in the comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share a tip with you for making corrections in your playing. I’ve discussed so many different techniques, from taking things slowly, referencing the score, playing with the metronome, and playing hands separately. So what could I possibly be bringing to this video that I haven’t shared before? Today I have a tip for you that really helps to make corrections stick. Because that’s the hardest problem, isn’t it? You correct something, but then you make the same mistake again.

The answer is to articulate out loud what the correction is.

Say you’re playing through a piece and you miss something. Well, you have the score handy. You have the patience to find where you are in the score. You realize your mistake and find exactly what the correction is. Then you say the correction out loud, “It’s a fourth finger on F in the right hand. The first time it goes up. The second time, it goes down to the fourth finger on F.” Boom! You verbalized it. Now it’s not abstract. You don’t just say, “I’m going to get that right next time.” You really make the correction omnipresent in your mind. So when you get there, you go, “What was it? Oh, fourth figure F.” Boom! You have that extra bit of information floating in your head just when you need it.

If you’re not 100% sure of what you’re trying to achieve, you’re very unlikely to achieve it.

If you can’t put it into words, you might not really fully grasp what it is you want to do next time. It’s too abstract. You can’t just say, “I want to get that right.” It’s not black and white. It has to be quantifiable and precise. It’s not just the notes. You have to remember every articulation. For example, if you need to remember to play staccato on the repeat of the second section. You say, “Second section, make sure it’s staccato in the right hand.” So you think about where that second section is before you play. You see as you’re coming into it, “Oh yeah. When I get there, I’m going to play staccato in my right hand.”

Articulate it in words!

That’s the tip for today! Among all the other ways of solving problems, make sure you articulate with words specifically what you want to be different in your playing each time you repeat a phrase that you want to correct. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the similarities between the preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier and Bach chorales. If you know the Well-Tempered Clavier you know that these are monumental works. Bach decided to write these preludes and fugues to celebrate the fact that it was finally possible for keyboard instruments to be tuned in such a way as to be able to play in all the keys. Before that, instruments had to be tuned for specific keys. So he decided to write preludes and fugues in every single major and minor key. But there are 48 preludes and fugues, because he did it twice! There are two books of preludes and fugues. The fugues are masters of counterpoint. The preludes are beautiful little gems in their own right.

The four-part writing in Bach chorales is really the basis for the writing of all of Western music, one could argue.

I had the good fortune of studying four-part harmony with my father when I was a child. I really mastered the art of voice leadings, doublings, and all of that. It stays with me to this day to understand the structure of the music I’m studying, as well as for composing, arranging and improvising. You can see the relationship between the Bach chorales, which are the pure four voice writing containing soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, parts, and what he did in the preludes and fugues. Naturally, none of the preludes are based upon strict four-voice writing, but they’re still based upon the same structure of harmony, voice leadings, doublings, and all of that. For example, if you take the famous C Major Prelude from Book 1, what would happen if it were played more like a four voice chorale? If I were to play it with some passing tones and other non-chord tones, it really wouldn’t be so different from a Bach chorale. But what about another prelude that maybe is not as obvious, like the C Minor Prelude, also from Book 1. Well, it really has the fundamental structure of a chorale as well.

Looking at the music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich, and other composers, you’ll see the same foundation of the essential elements of a Bach chorale.

It’s all just embellishment of one sort or another. Did you ever realize that? Everything back then has just grown like a forest of music from the original seeds of inspiration going back centuries! It’s really remarkable how the language of music has grown. And you can hear how the Bach chorale transcends into more complex music. We could go further, whether it’s Beethoven, the second movement of one of his sonatas, like the Opus 10 Number 1, for example. It’s essentially a chorale. It’s broken up, but it’s the same basic structure. It’s remarkable, isn’t it?

I want you to think about your music, whatever music you’re playing. Whether it’s 21st century or 15th century, even. Notice how these same elements have been in music all along, exemplified beautifully in Bach chorales. I hope this has been interesting for you! Thanks so much 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 want to tell you about what I learned watching my father, Morton Estrin, practice the piano. It brings back such memories. We grew up in a house in the suburbs on Long Island, about an hour from Manhattan. When we first moved into that house, I was five years old. It was a very exciting time. My father had a studio built. We had a pretty big house to begin with, but the studio was enormous! We had a lot of concerts there, and a lot of fun.

Although my father taught music at Hofstra University, he did most of his teaching right in the back of our house.

He did an immense amount of teaching! But whenever my father had any time free from teaching, he would be practicing piano. I would often go down there to sit and listen to him. I always found it interesting. I want to share with you an extremely personal story about what I learned watching him practice. This was really an epiphany. And I’m going to share something that was kind of a sad mishap that I’ve never really shared with anybody.

My father had an illustrious recording career.

My father started making records in the 1950s. His first recording was the complete Chopin Ballades and the F Minor Fantasie, for Fantasy Records by coincidence. Then he did some recordings of the music of Meyer Kupferman. These were pieces written specifically for him. They were extremely difficult 12 tone pieces that he played all from memory! Then he started making a series of recordings for Connoisseur Society Records. Alan Silver, who was the producer and the owner of the company, was truly an artist. What he was able to achieve both sonically and musically in his recordings was truly astounding! I love those recordings to this day.

My father’s first record for Connoisseur Society was the Scriabin Opus 8 Etudes, which won record of the year.

It was the first LP of these magnificent works. Wonderful performances! Then he recorded the Rachmaninoff Opus 32 Preludes. He performed the complete Rachmaninoff preludes on several occasions, including in Lincoln Center. It’s a mind boggling task!

There was a time when he was preparing a Liszt record. I remember attending the sessions. Somehow things just didn’t gel. And even though everything was set up and the piano was chosen and the technician was there, they had to abandon the session. It was a really tenuous moment, but that’s what happened. So some time went by and then the next recording my father decided to do with Connoisseur Society Records was a Brahms album. They also had a plan for a series of albums entitled, Great Hits You Played When You Were Young, which sounds kind of corny. But these ended up being really popular. The performances were so magnificent and the recording quality was exquisite. Radio stations just loved these records! They were played constantly all over the world!

In preparation for those sessions, he worked so hard that he ended up recording three records in one series of sessions! It was just a few days. They thought it was going to be the Brahms and maybe one of these discs. He just had so much repertoire at such a high level that he slammed through three complete albums in the one session!

I’m going to reveal to you what I learned from listening to his preparation for those recording sessions.

I remember listening to him practice. He got to a point where he would just be going through everything with no pedal, taking everything a little bit under tempo. Every single finger just fell in place. It was exciting for me to hear him play like that because there was such unbelievable refinement and security in his playing. He prepared so unbelievably for those sessions. It was astounding! There were so many of those recordings that were just the first take. He was that well-prepared. He just went through all of this music. And by the way, you must listen! I’ll have links below for these discs.

You want to get to the point where you have ultimate security in your playing.

I knew from listening to my father practice that the recordings were going to be great. He was so completely prepared, he could play everything accurately in a completely relaxed manner. Most classical recordings have a lot of editing because it saves time. If you have a work that’s 20 minutes long, to get one perfect performance is very difficult. On recordings, if you have just a little cracked note that you might not notice in a live performance, it’s really annoying when you listen over and over again. But he was so well prepared for this that a minimum amount of editing was necessary.

So that’s my personal story for today. I hope you’ve enjoyed this! Thanks so much 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

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Supplemental Links:

Rachmaninoff Opus 32 Preludes
Scriabin Opus 8 Etudes
Chopin Ballades and the F Minor Fantasie
The Music of Meyer Kupferman: II
Great Hits You Played When You Were Young

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you about the 3 most important practice techniques. There are hundreds of practice techniques. But the things I’m going to tell you today are quintessentially important. They’re points that I keep making again and again. They need to be cemented in your mind if you want to be productive in your practice. So listen to all three, because they’re all vitally important for taking your piano playing to the next level.

1. When something goes wrong, resist the temptation to go back and start again.

When you’re practicing, sometimes you don’t even have the score. You’re just practicing without the music. But you really should have the score in front of you for reference when you’re practicing. Not that you should play all the time with music. You might want to test your memory to see how things are coming along. But here’s the critical thing: when something does go wrong, resist the temptation to just go back and start again. Maybe it will come out well the next time around, but take the opportunity to check the score! Find your place no matter how painstaking it is.

You may think you could just start back four measures, because it’ll take longer to even find where you are in the music. It will take you longer, but it’s important. Whatever needs to be clarified, you’re not going to be able to understand from just playing the section again. Maybe you will get it, maybe you won’t, but you haven’t really figured out what the issue is. You need to find the solution to that weakness. So when there’s a mistake, study the score! Don’t just try again and hope for the best. By using this technique, whatever confusion you had can be clarified once and for all!

2. Practice slowly.

Any accomplished pianist knows about the importance of slowing down. You must practice slowly, incessantly! Eventually you can get the same level of comfort and security playing at a faster tempo. Playing over and over again just a little bit past your comfort zone only breeds insecurity in your playing. You still want to try things faster to see what they sound like and to isolate the weak parts. It’s very valuable to zero in on the parts that need work. But fundamentally, a great deal of practice is slow playing with the score, reinforcing the memory, and always looking at the score carefully in any place you have insecurities. So read slowly with the music, with the metronome, and without the pedal to cement the performance. This will give you clarity of thought and physiology about what you’re doing at the keyboard.

3. Expand your repertoire!

This is vital! No matter how long you play, if you are just going through review pieces, eventually you’re going to plateau in your playing. There is a vast amount of piano music. Some of the greatest pianists of all time, who learned more music than anyone else, still only scratched the surface. The amount of music that people like Alfred Brendel and Claudio Arrau have amassed is mind-boggling. And yet, it’s only a small fraction of what’s out there. There’s so much great music written for the piano, by composers you’ve heard of and composers you haven’t heard of. So expand your repertoire! You really need to be learning something new every day. You may be bogged down with trying to perfect what you’ve already learned, and that is certainly an essential part of your practice. But take at least a few minutes just to learn something new each day, because you’ll have so much more to show for it.

Why is it so important to learn new music everyday?

Let’s say you want to learn a new piece. But you wait until your current repertoire is perfected before you start, even if it takes weeks. And then all you’re doing is studying a new piece. Do you know how hard it is to learn and memorize something new? There’s only so much you can do at a time before it gets really hard. You get to that point of diminishing returns in how much you can learn in a 10 or 20 minute period. But if you were to do some work each day, when your mind is fresh, you take advantage of that time. Even if it’s only 10 or 20 minutes a day, it’s time that your mind is fresh. You can learn something relatively easily if you’re only learning a phrase or two at a time.

These are the 3 things to remember!

Always have your score handy. When something falters, reference the score. Don’t just try to play it again, study it. Figure out what’s going on. Clarify in your mind and your hands what the correction is.

Slow down. You should be practicing slowly, even with pieces you can play up to speed. From time to time, you must go back and recement the notes, rhythm, fingerings, phrasing, and expression by referencing the score, playing slowly without the pedal, and using the metronome as much as possible.

Be sure to expand your repertoire on a daily basis. You’ll have so much more to show for your work over time if you use these three techniques! I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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