Piano and Music Videos

I’m Robert Estrin, and this is LivingPianos.com. Today’s subject is about how you can improve your sight reading by looking at chunks of music. When you first start out it’s really tough just being able to identify notes on the page! Eventually you get to the point where you start to make the relationship between lines and spaces and keys on the piano. So when you see line to line, you skip the space, and when you see space to space, you skip the line, which means you skip a key when you’re going from line to line or space to space. Chords usually are all on lines or all on spaces because they’re built on the interval of a third which is every other note of a scale. Or if you’re going from line to space to line to space, they’re probably going to be consecutive notes on the keyboard. Now, of course, there are black keys. That’s a whole other issue, but this is one way that you can improve your reading, by identifying distances between notes.

When you have really high or low ledger lines, way above or below the staff, sometimes it’s hard to know what the notes are.

There are some little cheats you can use. For example, when you have really high notes, if the bottom note is on a space and the top note is on a space, that’s not an octave. Because octaves are always space to line or line to space. That’s a little tip for you. If you have never really thought about this before, you can sometimes guess the right note if it looks like around an octave. But it better be line to space or space to line, or it’s not an octave. But what I’m talking about today is something quite different.

The secret of sight reading is to look at groups of notes!

At first, when you’re reading, it’s an arduous task. It took me many years to become a good sight reader. The secret is instead of looking note to note, look at groups of notes. Depending upon the piece, sometimes you’ll look at half measures at a time, taking in the entire thing as a digestible chunk you can comprehend. For example, the famous Bach Prelude for The Well-Tempered Clavier Book One in C major is a great example of this because the whole prelude is just broken chords. So if you’re playing the beginning of this piece, there’s no need to look at every note. Once you see the first chord, you can shoot your eyes to the next measure even before you’re there, because you’re already over the chord that you’re playing. This is an ideal piece to check out this technique for yourself if you’ve never done it before, because the entire piece is broken chords. And the whole measure is the same chord repeated twice, broken. You always want to be looking at the next group of notes, getting ahead of where you are. This is an incredibly valuable technique!

You’re never going to be able to read and keep time if you’re looking at each individual note.

This is one of the most important lessons for learning how to read in a fluid manner. Sometimes you have to surmise what the harmonies are and what the composer’s intentions were. There are some scores that are just so dense with notes and articulations! If you’re sight reading, you can’t always take the time to figure out every little detail. Particularly if you are accompanying other musicians.

Nobody wants you to take the time at rehearsal much less performance!

They’d rather you just flesh it out and get a sense of the music. A lot of times, you can kind of guess what the composer intended by seeing enough of the chord structure that you can play what’s written without necessarily seeing every single note. Now, that’s not an ideal situation. But if you’re reading something for the very first time, particularly if you’re playing with other musicians, sometimes that’s necessary.

Try this in your reading!

I’m very interested in how this works for you! Take a piece like Debussy’s 1st Arabesque or Bach’s Prelude in C Major to start, but you can do this with virtually any music! Some music is going to be a lot more difficult to do this technique with. That’s why a Bach fugue is really hard to sight read, because it doesn’t break itself down this way. You have too many separate lines. So this is not 100% foolproof. But in some pieces of music, it’s a godsend! So try it out for yourself and let me know how it works 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’s subject is about the most important element of music: rhythm. Is rhythm really the most important aspect of music? What about the notes? Well, think of it this way: Let’s say there’s a party and you know where the party is. You know it’s a birthday party for your friend. You know whether you’re supposed to bring presents or not, and what the activities are going to be. But if you don’t know when the party is, guess what? No party!

You need to know the when!

Imagine hearing a piece of music with no rhythm, all the notes played equally. Would you even be able to identify the piece? it would sound drastically different without the rhythmic component. But hearing the same exact notes with a rhythmic context sounds completely different. Rhythm is so intrinsically important! Of course there are many elements that are important, but without rhythm, what do you have? You really have nothing unless you put it in some context of time. It’s human nature because our entire experience is based upon the element of time. We go through life in a linear fashion, after all. It’s the way we relate to everything! You could play all the notes of a piece, but it’s meaningless if you don’t have a rhythmic context. That’s why it’s so vitally important in your practice to count out your rhythm.

Composers weren’t haphazard about rhythmic notation.

Things were written precisely for a reason. Because without the rhythm, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony doesn’t sound like much of anything. This is true of all music. I encourage all of you to count in your practice, to measure your rhythm with a metronome, and double and triple check note values as well as rests. That’s what brings music alive and gives it meaning. This is such an important topic. I’m curious how all of you feel about this! Let me know in the comments. 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. The subject today is about the difference between performing and practicing. These are two entirely different experiences and all too often students will confuse which one they’re doing! You want to know whether you are performing or practicing. There is a drastic difference! They are polar opposites in regards to approaches. So what is the fundamental difference between performing and practicing?

If you’re practicing, don’t you want to play through your music?

Well, sure you do. But when you’re practicing you want to fix any mistakes. So if you’re playing through a piece and something goes wrong or it just feels insecure, that’s a signal to stop, take out the score, figure out what’s wrong and spend time securing the music in your head and your hands. So the lesson for practicing is, whenever there’s a problem, you must stop and take the time to fix it. It’s vitally important to do that. You don’t want to gloss over mistakes.

With performing it’s exactly the opposite!

It doesn’t matter how devastating a mistake you make during a performance, the show must go on! You have to just keep moving forward. Nobody wants to hear you practice during a performance. You might think that you want to show the audience that you know you made a mistake. So you want to go back and correct it to show them you can play it accurately. They don’t want to hear it! Believe me. They’d rather you let mistakes go by the wayside. They’re already anticipating the next part of the piece. They don’t want to hear a repeat of what they just heard. Losing the continuity of the performance is actually the worst thing you can do. Keep moving forward no matter what. That’s the lesson. Do not stop. Do not correct mistakes in performance. Why is it so difficult to continue a performance after a mistake?
In your practice, you must always stop when you have a problem and correct it. So how do you alleviate that tendency in your performance?

You must practice performing!

You can practice performing in a number of ways. In the earliest stages before you’re comfortable playing for anyone, you can just sit down at the piano and say, “Okay, this is a practice performance and I’m not going to stop no matter what.” You just want to see what level you’re at and if you can get through the piece without stopping. No matter what happens, go through it without stopping, and you’ll learn a lot from the experience. First of all, you’re going to know where to zero in on your practice. It will be very obvious the parts that need work. It’s better to discover that in your practice than when you’re in an actual performance. Secondly, you’ll get in the habit of moving forward no matter what, even if things do inevitably go wrong, which they do for everyone at some point or another no matter what level you’re on. Later, you can practice performing by setting up a device and recording yourself. Then go through your performance and even if the beginning is a disaster, just keep going. This gives you an opportunity to try out recovering when you don’t have an audience in front of you. Then you can always record a second time to have the gratification of doing a better performance.

You can also play for friends or family.

Playing for friends or family is a great way to practice performing. And even though they’re going to be a forgiving audience, don’t start over! Even if you start off and something messes up right away, just keep going. Use them as guinea pigs and explain to them what you’re doing. They’ll forgive your mistakes! Explain that you are going to play through the entire performance for better or worse, and then stick to it. Don’t miss the opportunity to utilize them as a resource to practice your performing. Eventually, you can play for other groups of people. If you’re at a party and there’s a piano there, you can ask if anyone wants to hear the music you’ve been working on. And a lot of times people will be more than happy to hear you play! Once again, even though they might be a supportive, wonderful crowd, keep going so you get comfortable playing from the beginning to the end of a piece without stopping. So eventually when you’re playing a public performance, you will feel more comfortable. You’ll know you can get through it for better or for worse and have a performance, not just somebody watching you practice.

Generally in your piano practice you stop when there’s something that is not accurate or something that doesn’t feel comfortable. You check the score and you work things out using innumerable practice techniques until you can pass that point with assurance. But in performance, you keep going no matter what. And that is the answer. They require completely different approaches! Make sure you’re clear as to which one you’re doing in your practice so you don’t fall into the trap of doing something that’s kind of in between performing and practicing, sort of a performance, sort of practicing. When you do that, you’re actually not developing good performance habits or practice habits. So you want to eliminate that ambiguity entirely. 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’ll be addressing a question from a viewer. Raymond asks, “On an 88 key piano, the lowest note is A and the highest is C. Why aren’t keyboards divided into an even number of octaves starting and ending on C or A?” This is actually a very good question because it seems so logical. In fact, if you ever look at five octave synthesizers and other portable keyboards, they almost always have an even number of octaves. From C to C, typically four or five octaves. So why aren’t pianos built that way?

Before the piano was invented, there were harpsichords.

Harpsichords had different numbers of keys and even different starting and ending points on the two keyboards, which is a whole story unto itself. The earliest pianos had a limited range of keys, typically around five octaves. You might wonder why. Well, it’s because those are the sounds those early instruments were capable of producing.

If you look at all the works of Mozart and Haydn, for example, they never really exceed that approximate range. It’s remarkable to think that all of the music they wrote was confined to this number of keys, because the piano just didn’t have more keys than that!

Beethoven worked closely with instrument builders expanding the range of the piano.

Expanding the range of the piano was no easy task! As you get higher, the tension of the strings becomes cumulatively enormous. So they started reinforcing the frame of the piano with metal, which eventually led to the full cast iron plate like we have today. Beethoven never reached the full 88 keys in his lifetime. But it’s interesting to see how the evolution of his music was affected by the capabilities of the instruments. Early Beethoven compositions had a much narrower range of keys than later Beethoven works.

How did the piano end up with 88 keys?

Late in the 19th century, most pianos ended at the highest A, and yet they went down to the lowest A. So there was a symmetrical keyboard in terms of the number of octaves! Eventually the high C became more and more common until it became the standard. So why doesn’t it go higher or lower? Well, to answer that question, there are a couple of instruments out there that do explore lower notes. The famous Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand, for example, goes all the way to C below the low A! It’s hard to discern pitch there, which is one of the reasons most pianos don’t venture below that low A. The lowest notes on the Bosendorfer Imperial Concert Grand sound a bit unearthly because the vibrations are so slow. You start hearing the separate vibrations instead of the pitch. Our brains almost don’t perceive it as pitch anymore! There is another instrument that also goes down to that low C and that is the Stuart and Sons from Australia.

Those instruments have those low notes, not just for those rare times when you want to take advantage of a lower octave. I know there are a couple of places in the literature where it would be really nice at least to have that low G or F. But it’s also because whenever you depress the sustain pedal all the dampers are released allowing those strings to sympathetically vibrate, giving more richness to the overtones of the sound.

What about the other end of the spectrum, going higher than the highest note of the piano?

Well, Stuart and Sons actually has a piano that goes higher than the high C. It goes all the way up to the high B, almost an octave above the highest C! Naturally the big hindrance with those really high notes, even the highest notes on any piano, is that they just don’t last that long. The notes die out in a matter of a second or two. Even the second to highest C on a piano doesn’t last very long. That’s why pianos don’t even have dampers for all those high notes. Dampers end on pianos somewhere in the D sharp to G range. Yamaha’s have dampers up to G. On Baldwins and Steinways, typically the last note that has a damper is D sharp. Do you need dampers on those high notes? Well, it does ring quite a bit. And you’ll find on different pianos, the dampers end in different places. But those extremely high notes have limited value because they don’t last long enough to use them melodically. They’re really just percussive little pecks of sound.

You can hear for yourself why they’ve settled in on A to C.

It’s a musically useful range of tones for the technology brought to bear. That’s the simple answer to your question, Raymond! Thanks for that very insightful question, I hope you’ve enjoyed this! 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. The subject today is about the most important musical form, the sonata form. You would not believe how much music is based upon this form. You might wonder why the sonata is so important. What’s the deal about this?

I’ll start with a little bit of background on the sonata.

The sonata form has been around since the Baroque era. But it really came into its own during the Classical era. During the Baroque, composers like Scarlatti wrote sonatas. These were one movement works that had two sections, each of which repeated. But that’s not what we’re talking about today. We’re talking about the classical sonata form, which has endured to this day. Not only are sonatas prevalent from composers from Mozart to Prokofiev and beyond, but concertos, string quartets, symphonies, every kind of musical form you could imagine contains the sonata form within them!

What is a sonata?

I have a video on this which will be in the description below. But briefly, a sonata is a multi-movement work generally, except for those Baroque sonatas that I referenced earlier. Sonatas usually have at least two movements, typically three and oftentimes four movements. These are separate sections that are almost like separate pieces all unto their own. When a performer plays a piece and it seems like it’s over, then they start something that sounds like a whole other piece. Well, that’s a sonata! You’ll see the same thing in trios, quartets, duos, multi-movement works. Almost all multi-movement works contain at least one movement in what’s referenced as the Sonata Allegro form. Allegro means fast. Typically the first movement of a sonata is fast, so it became known as the Sonata Allegro form because the first movement is usually in that form, although other movements can be also.

What is so special about the sonata form that has inspired so many composers to use it over hundreds of years?

I could simplify it first and say, it’s kind of like an ABA. You have a statement, you have something different, and then you have the statement again. It’s a little bit more complex than that. So what I want to do is first of all, is to outline the form for you. And what I’m going to do is make it easy and digestible by picking not a sonata, but a sonatina, which is essentially a short sonata. I’m going to use the famous Clementi Opus 36 number 1 in C Major. I’m going to show you what the form is intrinsically. Then I’m going to talk about how composers have used this form and why it’s so effective and pervasive in all of music.

Sonatas and sonatinas start with a theme called the exposition.

The exposition exposes two themes. This sonatina is in C major. So the first theme, of course, is in C major. It starts off with a catchy little theme. Since it’s a sonatina, it’s short, so it makes it very easy to digest. From there, a second contrasting theme is introduced. There’s a little transition using a G major scale there. That is the introduction into theme two, which always goes to another key. This is a trademark of the sonata form. It generally goes into the theme of the dominant, that is the five. Since this was in C major, it goes into G major. And from that point on, you’re going to see a lot of F sharps since it’s in G major. That is the exposition of this sonatina. You’ll notice when you get to the end of the exposition, there is a repeat sign. The exposition always repeats. Why does it repeat? The idea is to cement these two themes into your head, because after the exposition comes the development section. This is where the music gets really interesting. Composers will take these two themes and go wild with them!

The development section is really interesting.

Mozart and Haydn had development sections that were very compelling. Beethoven exploded the development section making them much longer and going much further afield. Now before I explain the reason why this works so well, I’ve got to tell you the last section. You started with the exposition exposing two themes, the theme in the tonic, and then the theme in the dominant. Then that whole section repeats. Then you have the development section. So what’s next? The recapitulation!

The recapitulation brings back both themes.

At the end of the development section, it comes back like the beginning. Now there are always little deviations that composers make in their writing, because there wasn’t a guide of how to write a sonata. This is just something that happens to work. In the case of the Clementi Opus 36 no.1 in C Major, the recapitulation comes back an octave lower. So we get the theme once again in the tonic, just like it was at the beginning, except an octave lower. But now instead of going to G major, the dominant, it stays in the tonic key of C major starting with the C major scale. So that is basically the form of a sonata. You have two themes in the exposition, tonic and dominant, repeat, development section, then a recapitulation in which the two themes are both in the tonic key of the piece. So, it ends in the key it began.

Why does this form work so well?

The sonata form works because the first themes are so strong in your head. You’ve heard the whole exposition twice through. Look at all the sonatas of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Schuman, and Chopin. And it isn’t just the Classical era. It goes through the 20th century with Poulenc, Prokofiev, and Shostakovich. And it’s not just sonatas, it’s also in their chamber music. Symphonies almost all use this form too, because it is so effective! After going far afield in the development, it’s so refreshing to have those themes back again. And of course you want your piece to end in the key in which it began, which is why theme two in the recapitulation stays in the tonic.

So that’s why the sonata is the most substantial form of music of all time!

It’s not just because sonatas are so pervasive in music. It’s because the sonata form has been used in countless compositions other than just sonatas again and again. Even popular music is loosely based upon the sonata form oftentimes, because the idea of what is familiar and what is unfamiliar, and the interplay of those elements, is universal to human nature. And it really works! It establishes these themes for you so you can really grasp the music and where you are. You go far afield, then you get that great feeling of coming back home. The sonata form just fits human nature!

I’m interested in your opinion about this. You can leave comments on LivingPianos.com. I’m here to answer your questions. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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WHAT IS A SONATA?
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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to address a question from a viewer. The viewer asks, “Can you comment on finger staccato and how this interacts with the wrists and staying closer to the keys as speed increases? I’m referring to the technique of flexing the fingers toward a more closed fist with each staccato note. The action requires suddenly scratching the keys or sliding the finger pads on the key tops. This is described as feeling like pulling the notes from the keys. I found this very valuable, but I seek more wisdom on integrating this with other techniques of speed and lightness.” This is a very interesting question. I get a lot of people asking about this idea of rubbing the keys. Indeed, there is something referred to as finger staccato.

What is finger staccato?

I’ve talked a great deal about staccato and how it’s performed from the wrist. Indeed most of the time staccato is performed from the wrist. The wrists are fundamental in playing staccatos on the piano. But sometimes there is an articulation that you want to achieve to get space between the notes, something that’s too fast for the wrists to accomplish. For example, in the Gigue, the last movement of Bach’s French Suite in G major, his fifth French Suite, you can play legato, but playing with a finger staccato creates a harpsichord like tonality to the punctuation of each note. It almost sounds faster, even playing at the same tempo, because of the delineation of each note.

Is this being done by sliding on the keys?

I don’t recommend sliding on the keys for a variety of reasons. First of all, key tops on different pianos are dramatically different from one another. On most pianos today you have composite plastic key tops. Some pianos have ivory. Ivory is a porous material that has more friction than plastic key tops. Also consider the dryness or the moisture on your fingertips. Dry fingers can really slide like crazy on ivory key tops. Sweaty fingers can slide a lot on plastic key tops. But the point is that you have different levels of friction on different key tops. So trying to rely upon rubbing the keys isn’t a reliable technique.

How do you achieve finger staccato?

You achieve finger staccato by staying very close to the keys and getting used to playing with spaces between the notes. You can practice this in your scales. Try practicing at a slower tempo, doing progressive metronome speeds, and keeping it very light. Avoid using the wrists! The wrists can’t go fast enough.

Practicing with staccato fingers is a phenomenal way of training your hand to play fast passagework because each note is articulated.

One of the tricks to getting clean finger work, whether it’s scales, arpeggios, or other types of passagework, is focusing on the release of notes. You want to have note lengths that are uniform throughout. The only way to achieve that is by playing with spaces between the notes. Playing all the notes very short from the fingers makes the maximum space between notes. Which later you can control, so you can have different lengths of spaces between notes. We think of practicing scales as a one-size-fits-all, but why not practice them detached or semi-detached? Ultimately, what makes music sound even is not just the attack of the notes, but the release of the notes as well. You want to have even durations of notes and even spaces between the notes, which can only be achieved by the fingers. By practicing with staccato fingers, it’s an extreme difference from legato playing. Then you can try to fill in all the touches between notes from staccato fingers to legato, so you can get any kind of phrasing you’re after in your playing!

That was a very interesting question! Maybe I didn’t give the answer you expected. I hope this is interesting for you and valuable for your piano playing, as well as your practice. Practicing a piece that has a lot of finger work with all staccato fingers is a heck of a workout for you! And it’s a great way to strengthen your piano playing. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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