Piano and Music Videos

All performers experience a certain degree of stage fright. Standing in front of a room full of people is bound to intimidate anyone! Your pulse will rise and your hands may sweat, but there is nothing to worry about; it’s all natural behavior. This article (and video) will provide some tips on how to deal with this common problem that nearly every performer faces.

Stage fright is merely a normal physiological response dating back to the fight or flight response during prehistoric times. While these metabolic and stressful reactions aren’t necessary for a modern society, they aren’t going away anytime soon. In other words, you have to deal with them. You may learn to harness this energy in positive ways – but how is this possible?

There is a recurring dream I have where I am playing piano in front of a large audience. I am performing for memory when I realize that I haven’t finished learning the rest of the piece! It’s more of a nightmare, really.

This brings us to the first step in overcoming stage fright, being prepared.

Prepare like crazy! You never want to be in front of an audience unprepared; it’s suicide. Preparation enables you to relax and enjoy the performance which makes the experience rewarding for the audience.

Another vital aspect of overcoming nerves is to practice performing.

Practicing by yourself is great but in order to prepare effectively, you will need to play for an audience. This is something that many musicians overlook, but it is absolutely essential. You can start out with low-pressure situations playing for friends and family. Play for anyone who will listen. Treat it like a public performance. Start with smaller groups – even one person can be enough at first. Gradually build your way up to larger audiences. This also enhances the effectiveness of your practice. You will spot problem areas to focus on in practice. Also, you will get a feel for the pacing of your program.

You must prepare for a performance both physically and mentally.

There are a number of things you can do physically to prepare yourself. Being well rested is certainly important. However, you may not want to deviate from your normal routine too much. It’s a good idea to stay away from caffeine and sugar right before your perform since both can make you jittery which can have an adverse effect on your playing. It’s best to eat a balanced meal before the performance. Foods like bananas and rice are easy to digest. Make sure you time your meal so you aren’t too full or hungry during the performance.

Mental preparation is incredibly important for successful performing.

I’ve had times where I was running around all day before a performance – making calls, answering emails, making videos – and without a moment to spare I have to plop myself down and perform. How do I deal with that? The short answer is I think about my performance a great deal before the actual day of the concert. I spend a lot of time running through the performance in my mind, thinking not only about the music, but sensing the audience as well. Some people suggest blocking out the audience to avoid getting nervous; This can be a great mistake! In fact, a great exercise is to lie down with your eyes closed and imagine being on stage. Think about sitting down at the bench of the piano, looking at the logo on the front of the fallboard. Take a deep breath imagining that moment while sensing the audience around you! On the day of the actual performance, you will be prepared by taking a deep breath, looking at the fallboard, and rekindling the comfortable acceptance of the audience as you had earlier.

If you look at a piece of music one of the very first things you will see are two numbers – it almost looks like a fraction. Some common time signatures you have undoubtedly seen before are 4/4 or 3/8 , these are not just arbitrary numbers, and they have a very important role in the timing of the piece.

But what do these numbers mean? Well the top number is easy; it tells you how many beats are in each measure – so in 3/8 time it you would have 3 beats per measure.

But what does the bottom number mean? When teaching, I sometimes refer to it as the mystery number because it surprises me how many students don’t know what it actually means! So in the example of 3/8 time, the bottom number 8 represents the kind of note getting ONE beat. So let’s break this down so it’s easier to understand. Here is the guide for what the bottom note stands for:

1 = Whole Note
2 = Half Note
4 = Quarter Note
8 = Eighth Note
16 = Sixteenth Note
32 = Thirty-second Note
64 = Sixty-fourth Note
128 = One-hundred-twenty-eighth Note

How many beats in each measure
Kind of note getting ONE beat

3 – There are 3 beats in a measure
8 – An eighth Note Gets ONE beat

Now one thing you would never see is something like 4/3 or 4/7 time because there is no 3rd or 7th note that exists in music – the bottom number will always represent the kind of note getting one beat.

A very crucial moment in the development of an instrumentalist or singer is the selection of their next musical piece. As a teacher, knowing what repertoire to give students in order to aid their development is incredibly important in furthering their progress. So what is the best piece to add to your repertoire? How do you know?

It is best to progress methodically while learning and mastering an instrument. It is a good idea to select a piece that will not take an inordinate amount of time to learn, as it could hinder progress. When a student progresses to an advanced level in their playing, musical selections can take weeks or even months to master. On an elementary level, however, you will not want to spend more than a couple of weeks on a particular piece before it’s learned. Of course, the student may live with the piece longer refining it further as they tackle additional repertoire.

Some teachers might give their students a piece that takes nearly half a year to learn. In that same amount of time, another teacher could give their student a dozen different pieces to learn which can each be mastered much more quickly. By the time the one student masters his only piece; the other student will have mastered twelve and may be on a more advanced level than the other student and will have a much larger repertoire!

Another important aspect of becoming a musician is having a repertoire of music to play. You wouldn’t want to know only 2 or 3 pieces of music. So, it’s better to learn many different pieces. If you take a progressive approach to learning music you will always be expanding your repertoire and your level of playing will gradually improve over time. It also offers the benefit of covering a wider range of composers and styles of composition.

One challenge with a progressive approach to repertoire is that one size doesn’t fit all! There is no guide to tell you what piece to pick next for everyone and there are plenty of occasions where students desperately want to learn a piece above their skill level. If they decide to tackle a such a piece, they will need to dramatically increase their level of practice; they will need to dedicate more time and energy then they ever have before into learning the piece. I have had students rise to the occasion and achieve their goal and become a higher level musician in the process. However, it is a rare student who is capable of this kind of quantum leap of development.

For the most part, gradual progression is the best practice for becoming a better musician and mastering your instrument. It seems that some teachers will want to glorify their own image based on what their students are studying and force them to progress too rapidly rather than letting them develop refinement in their playing. It is much more important to master your music than simply being able to get through pieces.

Some musical scores can be extremely complex. Sometimes there are situations when someone needs a pianist desperately and there simply isn’t enough time to completely digest the score. People will be grateful for you to be able to accommodate them. This is when simplifying a score can sometimes be a lifesaver!

One example might be attending a Christmas party and a singer hands you some music and asks if you could perform a few Christmas carols for the group. You pick up the book and take a look and realize the pieces are embellished arrangements which contain a lot more notes than you would be able to play instantly. Don’t worry; there is a solution to this. I’m going to provide a few tips to help you achieve this.

Piano scores are much more complex than most instruments because you have two hands playing in multiple staffs. In the case I just described, removing some notes can still leave the integrity of the song; but which ones should you play? Usually, the top note is the melody and the bottom note, the bass provides the structure; these are essential to play. As long as you have the bass and melody you can work on fleshing out what’s in the middle. Generally, you would want to avoid doing this sort of thing with serious musical compositions unless it’s a desperate situation with no alternatives for the soloist or group you are accompanying. But arrangements are a great place to use this technique since they are arrangements anyway. In fact, sometimes you may encounter simplified arrangements you may want to embellish!

Overall, simplification can be useful to familiarize yourself with an accompaniment with a tight deadline or to enjoy playing musical arrangements for fun. And remember, the easy way to simplify is to offer the structure which consists of the bass, the melody and whatever other notes you can add to make a pleasing musical performance.

Placing a piano in an optimal spot in a room is vital for the overall sound of the instrument in your home. With the right placement, you can make a smaller piano sound much richer and fuller.

When it comes to upright pianos, the obvious selection would be to put it against the wall; after all, the back is flat – and it’s not very attractive to look at. If you were to put an upright piano in the middle of a room it might look odd.

Even though the placement of an upright piano might seem limited, there are some things you can try to make the sound much better. The best thing to do is place the piano a few inches away from the wall – don’t place it directly on the wall. This will allow the sound of the piano to reverberate off the wall and fill the room with music. If the upright is flush against the wall, a lot of the sound will be muffled. This is because most of the sound from an upright piano comes out the back because that is where the soundboard is.

Another thing you can do to improve the sound is to place the upright in a position where it would divide the room – so it would not be against the wall, but essentially in the middle of the room. To get away from having the back of the piano exposed, you can install attractive fabric on the back of the piano to match the decor of your room.

Generally, you will have an upright piano against a wall, but it is worth experimenting to see what sounds best. The sound of your piano is dependent not only on the condition of the piano but the room it’s in.

This question is simple to answer; yet very complicated when explored.

The quick answer is that a composition is a piece of music written for a specific instrument or group of instruments.

An arrangement is a piece of music originally written for one instrument or group of instruments and then re-written for a different instrument or group of instruments.

Why is this important?

When approaching a composition or an arrangement, there is a big difference in how you learn and play the music.

Generally speaking, when it comes to compositions you will probably want to learn what’s written and play the piece exactly as written; because every note matters.

When it comes to an arrangement, the approach is much different. Many times there are going to be multiple different arrangements of the same piece of music. One is not necessarily better than another, but there could be significant differences between them.

Usually, when it comes to arrangements, you are free to experiment a bit with the music. Now that’s not to say that you will want to alter what’s written drastically, but there are many times where an arrangement is written and is pretty much impossible to play. Especially when it comes to the piano, many times pieces of music created on other instruments and arranged for piano will include too many notes making it next to impossible to perform as written. In cases like this, it is up to you play what notes you feel represent the piece best.

When it comes to an arrangement, I believe you have a certain level of freedom to simplify it or even embellish it. There isn’t one way to adapt a piece of music – especially a whole symphony. I like to think of arrangements as more of a guide or a starting point.

Now some arrangements are intended to be played exactly as written – they are called transcriptions.

This question pops up all the time when it comes to performing. I’ve been asked many times if I could play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. I kindly respond by telling them that it’s a piece of music written for an entire orchestra and proceed to play Beethoven’s 5th Symphony by ear! Liszt wrote four hand arrangements of all the Beethoven Symphonies.

For beginning students I find it’s much better to have them practice compositions – there are even compositions from Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schumann that are great for a beginning level. It’s much more beneficial to have them learning and playing something as written rather than playing a watered down version of an entire orchestral work.