Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic today is about the magic of the five finger position on the piano. This is particularly important for beginning students. First I’m going to explain what I mean. Put your five fingers over five keys, for example right now I’m over C, D, E, F, G in both hands. Interestingly, when young students are playing, you’ll notice that they will constantly be looking down, even if they are in a five finger position. But the keys aren’t going to go anywhere! If you just leave your hands in this position you should be able to have your eyes closed and play whatever key you want. This is a great way to develop reading skills, because you know which fingers go down in each hand in order to play those five notes.

Of course, it can be shifted to other keys.

You might rest your fingers over G, A, B, C, D. Whatever the position, once you are comfortable in that position you should be able to play without looking down at your hands at all. This is invaluable, because as music gets more complex you can do things like reach one note beyond. It’s not a far reach to be able to play one key beyond in one hand or the other. Getting that sense of the keyboard, of where the notes are and where your hands are on them without having to look down is so important. And if you don’t do it in the five finger position when you first start, you’ll likely never do it. So it’s really important to get comfortable playing in that position without having to look down at your hands, to develop your connection between your fingers and the keyboard, irrespective of looking at them.

That is the secret of the five finger position!

There’s amazing things you can do just with five keys on the piano! So test yourself. Close your eyes and play, and see if you can hit the keys you intend to hit. Naturally, if you’re at a more advanced level, go back to some easier music. If you find your reading skills are really lacking, try to find books that are in that five finger position and sight read without looking down at your hands at all. Get comfortable with that, and build up from there. This could be a tremendous help for you to develop your sight reading skills with that connection to the keyboard just from the feel of the keys. I hope this is helpful for you! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is very thought-provoking. Can you learn to play the piano while you sleep? This might sound absurd, but there’s actually scientific evidence supporting the idea that there is a possibility of learning music while you sleep!

There was a study where researchers taught a group of people to play piano melodies using a technique borrowed from the video game Guitar Hero. Afterwards, all the volunteers slept. When they woke up, they were all asked to play the music again. Unbeknownst to the sleeping participants, one group heard the melody they had just learned as they slept, while the other group did not. The volunteers who heard the music while they slept, even though they had no memory of it, played the melody far better than those who didn’t hear it. So indeed, you can absorb some information while sleeping.

Things you think about just before bedtime can seep into your subconscious.

There have been other studies showing how what you think about just before going to bed affects you. Now you probably are already somewhat aware of this phenomenon. Did you ever think of scary things before going to bed? Maybe you watched a horror movie before bed and then had nightmares. So, you can actually leverage your practice time by doing some practicing, or at least mentally refreshing the music you learned during the day, just before going to bed. That way it’s percolating in your head and will get reinforced.

Sometimes I will have music going on in my head all night long!

Every time I wake up, I’ll still be at that same place in the music. The same themes keep playing mentally. Indeed, your subconscious is affected by your consciousness just before bedtime, and even while you’re sleeping. I’m not sure if there’s any way of leveraging the time you’re asleep by playing recordings of pieces you are learning. But certainly refreshing the music you played throughout the day just before bedtime is going to help you reinforce things by cementing it in your subconscious.

I bet you didn’t expect this, but there are scientific studies proving this phenomena. I do it all the time! Sometimes I actually come up with music in the middle of the night. Surprisingly, I’ll play it through a few times in my head and in the morning I still remember it! So, you can cement things through your sleep, by just refreshing before bedtime. Try it out and see how it works for you! Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about whether you have to analyze a piece of music in order to memorize it. It’s interesting, because in some ways I think that you have to memorize a piece to analyze it! But do you have to analyze a piece at all to memorize it? There are aspects of the composition you certainly need to understand such as the time signature, the key signature, things of that nature. The truth of the matter is, when you’re learning a piece of music you’re absorbing the sound, and you’re absorbing the tactile feel of it. You’re developing a deep understanding of the composition. You should know whether you’re in a transition to a second subject or recapitulation, or a stretto in a fugue. These are all interesting things to observe. But it’s not essential that you understand the inner workings of a composition before learning it.

I think it’s somewhat impossible to delve into a piece and have a deep understanding of what makes it tick without committing it to memory.

If you’re learning a sonata movement you certainly want to understand where the exposition ends and where your themes are. And once you’ve memorized it you can go back and figure things out so you don’t take a wrong turn. You might find that you go to the exposition when you should be in the recapitulation or vice versa. So, some analysis is really important for memorization. But to a large extent, just like you can learn to sing a song without necessarily thinking about the pitches or the rhythms, you just sing it because you can hear it. A lot of music can be approached that way.

Having the intellect to back it up is really important.

As I said, you can take a wrong turn. You might not quite understand something, and once you delve into the score it will make more sense to you and make it easier to remember. So analyze important aspects of the piece you’re working on, but then get to work memorizing the way I’ve described, small chunk by small chunk, connecting as you go. Starting with hands separately, one phrase at a time. I have videos on this subject which you can explore at LivingPianos.com/blog. Analyzing is to your benefit, certainly, but you’re going to understand a piece much better after you learn it! And you will be able to analyze it on a much deeper level after you memorize it. I hope this is helpful for you!

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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This is LivingPianos.com and I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to know when to move on in your practice. Sometimes it’s hard to know when to stay with things to solve a problem and when to say, “Enough is enough. I will revisit this later on.” The crux of productive practice is knowing the point of diminishing returns. It can be very easy to give up on learning a difficult passage and say, “Oh, this is just too hard. I’m going to try this again tomorrow.” But, there are many things you can do first before coming to that point. If you can’t get something, slow it down. If you still can’t get it, try hands separately, and revisit the score. There are so many options! Try breaking things down into chords. Take smaller sections and piece the sections together. There are a myriad of things you can try.

You don’t have to stop memorizing just because you can’t get everything together.

The method I use and teach for memorizing music is to take small sections at a time memorizing each hand separately first. Then put your hands together and get a small section memorized. Then go back and connect the sections going back to the beginning. But, sometimes you can’t go back to the beginning. Sometimes you can just go back to the previous phrase and piece together every other phrase. So, you have the first four measures, then you connect them to the next four measures. Then when you connect the next four measures, maybe you can’t go all the way back to the beginning, but you at least connect to the previous four measures. That is one thing you can do to plow through. That’s an example of working past the point of diminishing returns. The next day you can get fluid on the longer sections, and get everything put together. So the general rule is: try to simplify and break things down to digestible chunks.

Eventually, you’re going to come to a point where you’re not making progress.

When you get to a point where you’re not making progress on a technical or musical challenge, and you’ve already tried metronome speeds, you’ve tried taking little sections at a time, you’ve tried different articulations, different phrasing, you’ve tried hands playing separately, you’ve tried everything, and you’ve made some improvement. But it’s not nearly where you want it to be. That might be a good time to work on something else. Then tomorrow, when you’re fresh, you start a notch under the tempo you were playing the day before. Sometimes just sleeping on it will foster growth in your music! You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that the thing you’d been struggling with the day before now comes much more easily to you. Because when you first learn something, it’s never secure immediately.

Music grows naturally with time as you reinforce your memory and refine your playing.

That’s the lesson for today. I hope this is helpful for you. It is absolutely essential to have productive practice so you know when to move on and when to keep plowing through. And generally speaking, when you run into problems, first, try to simplify by either slowing down, sectionalizing, or playing hands separately, so you’re still making progress. But when you’ve built things to a point and you can’t get any further, move on and don’t feel badly about it. Tomorrow’s another practice day!

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!

Robert@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is. about focusing on corrections instead of your mistakes. This may seem counterintuitive. Don’t you have to find your mistakes in order to find the corrections? It’s true that you need to find where your problems are. But beyond that, you don’t want to hunt for what you did wrong. I know a lot of students desperately want to find their mistakes. What’s worse is when they not only want to find the mistakes, but they want to replay them to see exactly what they did wrong. This reinforces the mistakes! You want to learn and cement the corrections right from the get go. This might seem like an arbitrary distinction. But think about when you play a concert, you obviously want to put on a good performance. You want to have the performance securely memorized. You don’t want to go out there thinking, “I hope I remember everything. Am I going to remember the third movement?” If you start thinking that way, it’s a downward spiral, because whatever you think about tends to manifest itself.

Visualization can be extremely valuable in a concert situation.

Conceptualize and see things the way you want them to be in your performance. Imagine yourself on stage in front of an audience. Imagine your performance going well and you’re much more likely for that to happen. But, if in preparation for your concert you’re thinking about the mistakes you might make, it can be crippling. Those thoughts keep percolating in the back of your mind. Then when you get out on stage, it’s going to undermine your performance. It’s the same thing with searching for your mistakes. You don’t want to concentrate on your mistakes. You want to concentrate on the corrections! And that is what is going to assure a good performance for you.

So instead of asking, “What did I do wrong there?” Find out, “What do I need to do right there?”

This is an important distinction that will help the productivity of your practice tremendously. And it’s a lesson for life as well. Remember, you believe what you tell yourself. This is an important fact. So take this to heart, in everything you do and everything you think, because it has a profound effect upon what happens to you in life, and in your music.

I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!

Robert@LivingPianos.com
949-244-3729