Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s topic is “Why You Should Practice Scales Two Octaves Apart.” Two octaves apart? You might wonder what value this has. Typically, you play scales an octave apart, right? So what about this idea of practicing scales two octaves apart?
You can hear the hands independently from one another when you play scales two octaves apart.
When you’re playing two octaves apart, it’s much easier to hear sloppiness. I’ve talked about playing in contrary motion also. These are all techniques to help you hear the clarity and evenness of your playing. This is a quick tip for you. If you have never done it before, try playing your scales two octaves apart. At first it’s going to feel a little unnerving. First of all, you can’t look at both hands. But truth be known, you don’t really have to look at your hands very much with scales. The notes are all right next to each other! But you can hear better playing two octaves apart.
You should always practice your scales in four octaves.
This is another good tip! It’s very important to cover the entire range of the piano. You might not think there is a difference playing in the high register versus playing in the low register, but there is! Even though it’s the same notes and the same fingering, your body is at a different angle. It feels different. Get comfortable playing the whole keyboard. The good news is once you learn one octave, it’s all the same! So, go for the full four octaves. In Hanon: 60 Selected Studies for the Virtuoso Pianist, you can find all the scales and arpeggios with the correct fingering. I’d love to hear from any of you who have never tried playing scales two octaves apart before. Tell me how it goes! Let me know if you find improvement in your scales from practicing this way.
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
Please feel free to contact us with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s topic is “Why You Should Practice Scales Two Octaves Apart.” Two octaves apart? You might wonder what value this has. Typically, you play scales an octave apart, right? S
This is Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com with a question, “What Is the Right Fingering on the Piano?” Fingering is such a deep subject on the piano that I could give courses on it and have guest artists to share their ideas because, truth be known, fingering is not a one size fits all proposition.
Are there any fundamental fingerings that all pianists follow?
There are some essential fingerings that all pianists must learn. For example, unlike the violin and other string instruments which do not have standard fingering for scales and arpeggios, on the piano there is standard fingering. I should mention a little aside here. There is another school of thought for a tiny percentage of pianists called, “mirror fingering” in which the thumbs always play the same notes in both hands in scales and arpeggios. But that is a subject for another video.
Most pianists learn proper fingering for scales from “Hanon 60 Selected Studies for the Virtuoso Pianist.”
You can get the Hanon book on Amazon or most sheet music stores. It is the Bible of fingering for scales and arpeggios on the piano. All pianists must learn the correct fingering for scales and arpeggios, but what about in your music? If you’ve ever had sheet music that has fingering in it, and then you see another edition of the same piece, you might be shocked to discover that the fingerings are different! In fact, fingerings are different in various editions! So how do you know what’s right?
Fingering is as much art as it is science.
My father, Morton Estrin, was a concert pianist with enormous hands. I have relatively small hands. Just think of that alone. Something that might lie right under the fingers of somebody with big hands would be impossible for somebody with smaller hands to reach. We must accommodate our hand size. Even the thickness of the fingers and the stretch between the thumb and the other fingers, all of these things affects us. Here’s the key: You must practice to find the fingering that works for you. Does that mean that anything goes with fingering? Far from it!
It takes many years to learn how to find the right fingering.
There is no substitute for a good teacher, as well as having authoritative, well-edited, fingered editions. I use that in the plural because there’s nothing better than having multiple resources of fingering suggestions. When you’re running through a problem with a passage, one of the first things to look for are new fingering solutions. Sometimes the fingering, even though it seems like it should be perfectly good, might not work for you. You have to discover what fingerings work for you.
There are some hard and fast rules in fingering.
I mentioned scales and arpeggios, but there are other fingerings you must follow. For example, rapid repeated notes with one hand. If you try to do that with one finger, you’re never going to be able to get it up to speed. But, by using three fingers you can go much faster. So, there is one thing that is certainly a rule. You must change fingers when playing rapid repeated notes with one hand. In fact, I like changing fingers on repeated notes even when they’re slow because of the legato quality you can get. When you play a repeated note without changing fingers, it is difficult to get a smooth sound. But by changing fingers, one finger is going down while the next finger comes up, so you achieve smoother, more connected repeated notes.
If you have technical problems in a passage and you’ve worked and worked but you never can get it, try experimenting with new fingering. Get another edition with fingerings and try them out. You will be rewarded! It is one of the things that will come to you after you’ve studied piano for a long time. You’ll start to understand fingering in a way that allows for solutions to technical and musical challenges on the piano.
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos.
This is Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com with a question, “What Is the Right Fingering on the Piano?” Fingering is such a deep subject on the piano that I could give courses on it and have guest artists to share their ideas because,
Hi, I’m Robert Estrin, and this is LivingPianos.com. Today’s topic is, “Can You Bring Out Notes on a Keyboard with No Dynamics?” How could you possibly bring out notes in a chord on a harpsichord or an organ? You might think it’s impossible, but there is a way!
There are a lot of keyboard instruments that don’t have loud and soft like the piano does.
I’ve had the good fortune of not only performing on piano but also on harpsichord and other early keyboard instruments. I’ve also had vast experience with music synthesizers and samplers and other types of keyboards, some of which don’t respond to touch. So how could you possibly bring out notes in a chord on an instrument that doesn’t respond to touch?
The secret is holding some notes longer than others!
When you hold the top notes longer than the bottom notes in a chord, it creates the illusion of those notes being louder. It draws your attention to those notes, even though they’re all the same volume. You can bring out the bottom line the same way by playing the upper notes in a detached manner. The piano is capable of dynamics. You can play the top notes or the bottom notes louder. So, why would you ever have to do that as a pianist? If you’re playing Baroque music written for the harpsichord, like Scarlatti for example, they didn’t have the capability of playing dynamics. The only way to achieve dynamics on a harpsichord is with a two manual harpsichord where one keyboard is louder than the other. So it’s a valuable technique in Baroque music.
You can utilize this technique in your playing to bring out notes, not just with volume.
By practicing this way, you will develop the ability of bringing out notes in volume because you’ve practiced bringing them out by playing some notes longer than others. This is an extremely valuable practice technique, particularly if you’re playing counterpoint. But it’s also incredibly valuable to develop the balance in your playing when playing chords. For example, in the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, you want to bring out the top line in the second movement. A great way to practice this is to play those inner notes gently with finger staccato so you delineate them in your hand and in your head. You can control them. If you can play with different articulations, with different lines in your music, you will easily be able to control them in volume. This is a great technique that is essential on the harpsichord and the organ. But it is also a tremendous practice technique to gain control of all the notes you’re playing within a chord on the piano.
I hope this lesson is valuable for you! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. There are lots of videos to come! We welcome your suggestions for future videos. See you next time!
Hi, I’m Robert Estrin, and this is LivingPianos.com. Today’s topic is, “Can You Bring Out Notes on a Keyboard with No Dynamics?” How could you possibly bring out notes in a chord on a harpsichord or an organ? You might think i
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. I’m Robert Estrin and today’s topic is, “What is the Meaning of a Musical Life?” It’s interesting that the parallels of what makes a meaningful musical life also transcend to life in general. So what is life about? Boy, that’s a big topic for today!
We need each other.
We are, by our very nature, social creatures. And in today’s world nearly everything we use was brought to us from past masters. For example, I play piano. I know a lot about pianos. Could I build a piano? Absolutely not. I don’t have the knowledge of how to build a piano. Just casting the plate alone would be a lifetime achievement for me, not to mention all the other intricacies of pianos. We depend upon computers and smartphones and televisions and cars, and most of us don’t even know the basics about many of these technologies. So in this way, we depend upon each other. What about in primitive societies? Well, they too are social creatures. Think of hunters and gatherers. People were specialized and dependent upon one another to keep watch when there was danger at night so people could sleep. We are an interdependent species. The only way we survive is by working together.
The meaning of a musical life is being able to reach people.
How do you do that? Obviously, in a musical performance, you are reaching people on a very deep personal level, and that is richly rewarding to be able to share feelings that are important to you with other people. But is that the only way to reach people? Certainly not. Teaching is another way to share with others. Obviously you can share a great deal with people, but it goes much deeper. Composing music, writing about music, recording music, even managing musicians, all of this is enriching to people. And the sharing is what brings meaning, not just to a musical life, but life in general. There’s a satisfaction that we get from giving to others in order to receive what we need to survive, because none of us can survive on our own. We depend upon each other.
It’s not a competition.
The meaning of a musical life isn’t to be better than everybody else. That’s a dead end really. First of all, you’re never going to do it all. There’s always going to be somebody better than you, at least in some aspects of the piano or any other instrument. Find your unique voice. What’s most important is having a passion for sharing and reaching people in the first place. That’s really what gives the joy and the meaning to your musical life!
I’d love to hear from you and how you have been able to incorporate music in your life in a meaningful way. This is a great discussion for us to have! You can figure out how to carve a path in your musical life that gives you great joy and meaning to yourself as well as others.
Thanks so much for joining me. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. See you next time!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. I’m Robert Estrin and today’s topic is, “What is the Meaning of a Musical Life?” It’s interesting that the parallels of what makes a meaningful musical life also tran
Hi, I’m Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. Today, I’m going to talk a bit about how you can develop a huge range of tone on your musical instrument. This isn’t just about the piano. This is about all instruments.
I want to start with the original instrument of all time, which is the human voice.
We all have this instrument with us. For millennia it was the only instrument, until people started banging on things and blowing through things. Eventually we invented a whole range of instruments. But it’s really important to remember that it all came from the human voice, and that’s how we express things.
With a wind instrument, or the human voice, how can you develop control?
My wife, Florence Estrin, is a concert flutist. www.florenceflutist.com She has remarkable control in her playing, from the very softest to the loudest, with purity of sound on all notes in all registers. How is such a thing possible? Well, I’ll tell you her secret. Every day, with very few exceptions, she goes through what are called long tones. What are long tones? It’s going through every single note on the flute, one by one, starting as soft as possible with a slow swell to very loud – then a slow swell to very soft, creating a long tone of expression, keeping the pitch the same, which is very difficult on wind instruments. She does this in octaves, making sure the pitch is coherent from octave to octave. She even has a flute that she can take on vacation that’s not so expensive. She can take it out at the hotel at some point, she’ll go through at least a few minutes. Now, why would she go through the pains of long tones on vacation? It’s because with a wind instrument like the flute, the tone production of the lips is so intrinsic to the instrument, that even taking one day off you lose a little bit of that muscle tone. So, it’s not worth taking several days off, because then it takes several days to get back on that high level.
How do you do such a thing on a piano?
On the piano, what we have is the arm weight. How do you utilize the arm weight to get a good tone? Well, if you were to play something on the piano and not use your arm weight, there’s no way to really control your playing. It becomes very calculated. I’ve talked about this before. Sometimes, you have to use the entire arm when you’re playing big chords. For example, the beginning of the Tchaikovsky, B Flat Minor Piano Concerto. If you play those big chords without the arms, you get a harsh sound, compared to playing utilizing the arm weight. What do I mean by the arm weight? By putting your fingers right on the surface of the keys, and then releasing the whole weight of the arms all at once to the bottom of the keybed you can achieve a beautiful sound.
Use arm weight as the analog of the breath.
Now when playing melodic lines, the entire arm doesn’t have to impact each chord or each note. Instead, you lean into the entire line, leaning heavier with more arm weight in the middle of the phrase, creating the line. Just like in speech, it goes up in the middle of the sentence and comes down at the end. Your music has to do that too. You will get a beautiful sound because you have the analog of the breath with the weight of the arm transferring from key to key, rather than playing each note with no weight of the arm, which creates a calculated performance. This is how you develop a huge range of tone on the piano where you don’t get that ugly harshness. You have the support of the arms, much like the support of the breath for a singer or a wind player. It creates that beautiful sound and control.
Thanks so much for joining me. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. See you next time!
Hi, I’m Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. Today, I’m going to talk a bit about how you can develop a huge range of tone on your musical instrument. This isn’t just about the piano. This is about all instruments. I want to start wit
Hi, I’m Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com and today’s subject is, “Why Crying is Essential for Your Musicianship.” You might think I’ve gone off the deep end with this subject. Crying and music? What does crying ha
