Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. This is Robert Estrin. Today the subject is, how to approach a new piece of music on the piano. I randomly opened this big fat book of Chopin Mazurkas to the Mazurka in A-flat Opus 24 No. 3. I do not know this piece. I literally flipped through the book, and we’re going to see what happens.

The first thing you want to do when you’re approaching a new piece of music is to sight read it through to get acquainted with it. There’s a fundamental difference in the way you’d sight read a piece when you’re playing it for someone, or certainly when you’re accompanying someone where you have to keep everything moving. If you’re playing with someone else, you must stay together. When sight reading a piece for someone, you do the best you can even though you may have to flesh some of it out leaving out some inner notes. You must surmise what it should sound like and do the best you can. But in this case, when you’re reading to get acquainted (not playing for or with someone), you want to make sure you’re playing everything accurately, even if you have to play slower.

So, I want to start off and sight read this piece. I’m going to do it the way I would if I was playing it for someone and when it starts, maybe I’ll know if I’ve heard this Mazurka before! You can listen on the accompanying video.

That went pretty well. But at this point you will notice, it wasn’t entirely accurate. I was sort of getting the chord changes. Since there is a repeated section, I’m going to stop. If I was playing it for somebody, I’d make my way through it, perhaps not using the best fingering and not quite getting all the notes. However, if I was reading this to get acquainted with it, I wouldn’t do that. Instead, I would take it slowly figuring out the exact notes. I would figure out how to negotiate the music properly. I wouldn’t get too hung up because I wouldn’t want to start practicing yet. I just want to get acquainted. So, you have to draw the line of how far to go with your reading in order to get a sense of the music, yet not start pounding out wrong notes and cementing mistakes. So let’s see how to approach learning a new piece.

I am going to use no pedal so I can hear everything clearly. This will give a sense of the harmony. I had it mostly right! I did spot a double flat that I had missed.

The first time I went through it, it wasn’t perfect, but it was like a performance at least. So if somebody wanted to hear the piece, it could be satisfying for them because I wasn’t stopping and starting all the time. However, when you’re approaching a new piece of music, you want to take a moment to make sure you’re playing the correct notes, the correct harmonies. Double check your accidentals and things of that nature.

Now, the next step, after you’ve read through the whole piece in the matter I’ve described, you really don’t want to read the piece ever again, if you want to read pieces, pick another Marzuka or another piece of music entirely. Why is this? If you continue to sight read the piece, unless you played it perfectly, the first time through, you’re going to continue to miss things. And even though I played fairly accurately most of the piece the first time, there are all kinds of details on the score that are essential for the piece that are important such as, the exact place where slurs end, where dynamic start and end, and other fine details. Composers aren’t haphazard with these details. These are intrinsic to the composition and must be learned meticulously.

The very next thing to do after the precursory reading, is to go to the very beginning and break it down to the smallest possible elements checking everything. I could probably start from the beginning and read it through five or six times and sort of know it and then I could go back and keep reconstructing the score trying to fill in the details I didn’t quite get. But that’s not very effective practice.

Every day, the first thing I do when I get up is to go to the piano and play music – often times before I’ve even gotten dressed! After an entire night, there is always fresh music percolating in my head. Sometimes I play music in my dreams. It can be something from my classical repertoire. Other times it is music that comes to me while I am sleeping!

Is it good to play the piano first thing in the morning? I believe there are great benefits to playing when you first arise. Before you have to deal with the myriad tasks that are demanded of you, taking a moment to enjoy the beauty of music starts your day with fresh creativity that stays with you! It also gives you an opportunity to limber up your hands for further play and practice.

In the accompanying video, you will hear an improvisation that I played first thing in the morning. Hope you enjoy it!

Let’s get some historical context to this question. When I was growing up, if we saw a piano tuner come into a home carrying a strobe tuner, and that’s all that was available at that time, well, you knew right away that you had basically an incompetent tuner. Why is this? Because the technology at the time wasn’t accurate enough to take into account so many aspects of tuning a piano, like stretch-tuning.

What is stretch-tuning?

If a piano is mathematically, perfectly in tune, it’s actually out of tune because your ears hear pitches in the high register flat. They have to be stretched. And the strobe tuner just does simple math, so it’s not going to sound right.

The technology has come a long way. Any really experienced tuner knows that you can’t tune a baby grand the same way you would tune a concert grand. In fact, each piano requires a different method of tuning. You may wonder, “Why is that?”

There’s something called overtones. The fundamental pitch, that is the pitch you hear when you strike a note, is only part of the sound, and there are overtones coloring the sound.

And those must also balance and mesh with other notes, so a small piano, for example, may have very strong overtones at a certain register, and those overtones have to sound good with fundamental pitches of higher notes. It’s very complicated.

How can machines possibly take that into account? By having virtual tunings of hundreds of first-class piano technicians, their models are loaded in the software. It’s possible to tune a piano with software like CyberTuner or TuneLab is another one. What they do is, first you punch in the size of the piano. The next thing is really interesting. It has you play all the octaves of the piano, one by one, so it hears where the piano is in pitch.

This is incredibly helpful because it can save vast amounts of time. Normally, if a piano is low in pitch, it takes a couple of passes, of pitch raises, because once you raise the pitch in one section, the other section goes out of tune, so it takes several tunings.

By playing all the notes of the piano, and it knows what size piano, it knows how much to stretch the tuning in different registers of the piano, so that by the time you’re done, it’s decently in tune. It’s pretty incredible technology.

Here’s the thing, though. Many tuners today use technology, but there are also tuners who tune completely by ear, and increasingly, I find that tuners utilize both because ultimately, there are decisions that can be made by a fine tuner, but checking the work and getting suggestions with the technology, nobody can complain about that, right?

If you think that maybe you can just take one of these software programs and be able to tune your piano, realize that not only is an arduous task, tuning a piano, but just setting the tuning pins and the strings so they’re going to hold, you’ve got to tune a lot of pianos in order to get to that point.

So you should have a healthy respect for your piano technician.

Living in Southern California, we are used to almost perfect weather. I remember when first moving to California, the weather broadcast seemed like a joke because every single day it was the same, perfect, “Disneyland” sky! So, the question is how weather affects your music.

There is an element of physiology involved. Naturally, if you suffer from joint problems, cold or wet weather may exacerbate your condition. More than that:

There are studies showing how sunlight can affect your mood through your body’s natural circadian rhythms.

What is so special today is that it is the first day in months that it hasn’t been rainy or at least cloudy here in “sunny” California! So, we are going to hear the impact this has on my music for you in the accompanying video. Hope you enjoy!

Today’s show is intrinsically important for a wide range of people and careers, and it’s applicable to almost everything! The subject is, letting go of the ego in your music. You may wonder what I mean by that? In order to play a public performance, you have to have a great deal of confidence. I’m not talking about preparing a great deal to have the ability to go out in front of people and do your best. That’s important as long as it’s reality-based. Obviously, if you aren’t prepared, and you expect wonderful things to magically happen in performance, then you are somewhat delusional! But having confidence and going out with the right attitude, realizing that no one’s going to get hurt no matter what happens is necessary. Here is where the ego may enter into things.

You must understand that it’s not all about you.

Ultimately, when you perform, you want to be able to let go of how people are thinking and feeling about you, which seems kind of contradictory. You’re in front of people, you’re performing, but this doesn’t apply just for performing.

This relates to composing as well.

You may try composing music you think people want to hear. For example, you hear music that’s popular, that’s getting on a lot of playlists and you’re thinking, “Well maybe I should compose something like that.” This is really not an honest approach. You want to have personal conviction for what you do, and if you let go of the id and just be one with the music you can reach a much deeper level. of expression.

Where this is perhaps most challenging is not in composing where you have time to go over the score again and again and decide to burn it if it’s not an honest expression, or even performing where at least you get a chance to refine the music again and again and have a pretty good idea of what’s going to come out at your performance. But in improvisation where you really let go – that is a time that I find personally is the most intrinsically challenging in order to be honest in expression, because it’s so hard not to have that part looking down on you thinking, “Hey is that cool. Are people going to like that?”

It is necessary to have kind of two brains, the brain that’s doing and the brain that’s watching.

One example of that is at a live performance when you make sure you’re not getting too excited. You’re in front of an audience and things are going great and you’re taking a really fast tempo, possibly faster than you’ve ever taken before. You have to have that other part of yourself looking down in kind of a motherly or a fatherly way saying, “Be careful Bob, don’t get carried away!” keeping things under control even though it’s exciting. There is always that duality. But what I’m talking about is something not about watching over yourself in a caring way, but in an egotistical way, in a way that smacks of, “Am I showing how cool I am? Are those changes sophisticated enough to impress people? I hope people are blown away with my technique. Maybe I should take this section faster so people think I’m great.”

That is dangerous because it alienates the audience.

Audiences don’t care how good you are.

They just want to feel what you’re feeling and if you’re just feeling it’s all about you, then they’re not going to get the sense that you care about them.

On the accompanying video, I’m going to play an improvisation off the cuff with no preconceived notions – totally raw.

I have no idea what it’s going to be, and it is a little scary. It is like being emotionally naked, and I hope I can keep the internal chatter at bay and just give you an honest expression of what I’m feeling wherever it takes me. I don’t know where that will be until I play and get into it. So here we go, and this is all about getting rid of the ego in your music. Let’s see if I can achieve some sense of that here right now for you.

Well you know it’s a funny thing. I play freeform improvisations all the time and it’s so much easier to do them when not being put on the spot. I think I got some nice things there. I wish that everything I played was recorded because I’d love to share them with you! I’ll do more of these for you, because you never know what will come out.

The message today is to let go of the ego, and play from your heart without worrying about how you’re being judged. This goes for everything you do whether it’s writing, painting even talking to people in conversation. It’s not about showing off and showing how great you are – it’s about listening to people and trying to reach people because that’s all we have in this world ultimately, isn’t it? I hope this has been inspiring for you.

The organ and piano share a similar keyboard layout. So, you may wonder how easy it is for an organist to play the piano and for pianists to approach the organ. One of the first challenges pianists face playing the organ is being able to play melodies with their feet on the pedals of an organ!

Hi, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with a viewer question. Does installing a player system on your piano affect the touch? This is actually a really good question. I’ve never addressed this exact question, even though I have other videos on player systems on pianos.

Well, first some historical context. Going back to the early 20th century when player pianos were really popular, pianos had different accommodations for them. As a matter of fact, many of them had shorter keys and they weren’t exactly the same type of touch on many of the player pianos.

Well, today, the way player pianos are worked is that a slot is cut in the key bed. I know that sounds really scary, and indeed, if somebody doesn’t know what they’re doing, they can destroy a piano. But if it’s an experienced installer, it has absolutely zero effect upon the piano, the way it functions, or the way it plays because here’s the thing, the player mechanism doesn’t actually come in contact with the keys or the action in any way. So, it can’t possibly have any effect whatsoever on the function of the piano or the way it plays, or even the way it sounds when you play it without the player playing.

That’s the good news. So, if you want to be able to hear your piano playing, here’s something else that’s really remarkable, there’s a tremendous library of the original player pianos, the expressive players from over 100 years ago. The great pianists, some of whom made piano rolls even before audio recording was developed. Like do you know there’s Debussy, there’s some horrifically sounding piano recordings made on 78 RPM records of Debussy. But you can listen to Debussy and Gershwin, Rachmaninoff, Paderewski, all on piano rolls, which had been converted digitally.

It seems amazing that you can pick up your iPad or your smartphone and listen to Rachmaninoff play on your piano, his performance. But this is all possible with player technology. The good news is, no, it doesn’t affect how when you play your piano, the piano feels or sounds.

The subject today is the truth about piano competitions. Piano competitions are a whole industry and the level of players in competitions is astounding. Consider this: some of the big international competitions, like the Tchaikovsky for example or the Cliburn, just the amount of music you have to learn in order to enter these competitions is so formidable that you have to already be an extremely accomplished pianist to even go for it. Typically there are two programs of music.

You might have to have two, two and a half hours of music under your belt, all from memory.

I’m talking about some of the most difficult, challenging music with a wide variety of period styles from the Baroque all the way through to 20th Century and beyond.
Not only that, many competitions also have a component where you might have to have a concerto or two ready to go. And chamber music, maybe a piano quartet, that is a piano with strings. And oftentimes they’ll throw a piece of music at you that you just have a little bit of time to get together and be able to perform. Your abilities at learning music quickly also comes into play in these competitions. How do people even approach international competitions? Well, it’s really tough for most people. If students have nothing but time on their hands and great training where they can just hone their skills and practice endlessly, many hours a day, and be able to play for juries and to be able to play in master classes, honing in everything about their playing.

But that’s not enough. They also must be able to go from competition to competition, again and again, because at any competition there will be literally hundreds of supremely qualified people. That is people who come in knowing all the music and playing it on a really high level. You’d think that only a few people could even achieve this because what it takes to enter one of these international competitions is beyond belief. How does somebody actually get anywhere in these competitions? Aside from everything I’ve told you, the preparation, and having benefactors to fly you around the world whenever there are competitions,

people who tend to win the major competitions have done so by taking enough of them and getting used to the whole process.

And maybe they’ll place in this competition, make the finals in another, finally land in the third or fourth place, and eventually maybe they’ll be lucky enough to land a first prize or second prize. A first prize might actually get you a career in one of these major competitions. Sustaining a career is a story for another video, but let’s just talk about who are they looking for? How do you choose among so many supremely talented, accomplished pianists? Well, one aspect that has become kind of apparent is that one thing is that the jury of pianists, of concert pianists, who are judging these competitions, and many times it’s not necessarily the pianist who has the most individual voice, because they might really turn on one or two of the judges and some of the other judges might think oh, that’s not the way I’m used to hearing it.

A lot of times competition winners can be great players who don’t offend anybody.

They play in such a way that everything is unarguably first class. A good example of this is the great concert pianist, Ivo Pogorelich. Back in 1980, he was a youngster entering the Chopin International Piano Competition. Well, interestingly, Martha Argerich, another great concert pianist, was one of the judges of that competition. And when Pogorelich did not make it to the finals, she was so incensed that she walked out, she stormed out of the competition. Well, this was so news worthy that it actually carved out a career for Ivo Pogorelich, who didn’t win the competition. Now that’s a really interesting story, isn’t it?

But this is actually emblematic of what piano competitions and other music competitions are like. Oftentimes our players who are first class and who don’t take those crazy chances of individualistic interpretations, that were much more popular early in the 20th Century before recording became so prevalent. Today, everybody hears everybody, and you can hear it instantly. Just go into your phone, you can hear half a dozen performances of any piece you want. And so

everybody tries to sound like everybody else to a great extent

or if they’re not, they know they’re going out on a limb playing a different tempo or different expression.

If you’ve taken piano lessons and listened to your teacher, they undoubtedly told you to play with rounded fingers – having your hand shaped like you’re holding a ball. If this is true, then why did one of the greatest pianists of all time play with flat fingers? Did Vladimir Horowitz play with flat fingers? The answer is yes; there is some truth to this!

Difference Between Round Fingers and Flat Fingers

You may wonder why you’re supposed to play the piano with rounded fingers? It’s very simple: if you play with your fingers outstretched you don’t get the benefit of using all of your finger joints. First of all, some fingers are longer than others. So thumbs and pinkies don’t reach all the keys! When rounding the fingers, they all form a straight line so your fingers are all over keys. Also, when playing fast passage work, it is necessary to play with curved fingers in order to play with speed. However, in slow passages, you’ll see Horowitz and other pianists such as Glenn Gould sometimes playing with flat fingers. This technique can allow for different tonal gradations which are difficult to achieve with rounded fingers. On the accompanying video, you will hear two versions of the beginning of Chopin’s Prelude in E minor, one with rounded fingers and the other playing with outstretched fingers.

Can You Hear the Difference?