Piano and Music Videos

This sounds like a total contradiction. So, I’m going to show you something really fascinating today! You will hear an example of the famous Mozart Sonata in C major K545. Most of you probably know this sonata. I’m going to be demonstrating with the beautiful and lyrical slow movement. I’m going to first play it in a way that is pretty slow. But it won’t sound slow and I’ll explain why in just a minute.

This movement is in ¾ time and I’m playing every single sixteenth note in the left hand as its own beat. So you’re hearing a lot of motion in the music. Now I could play it at the same tempo or even slightly faster, but hearing the eighth notes as the beat. It will start to sound a little bit slower even at the same tempo or faster.

Finally, we’re going to go one step further and make the quarter note the beat. I will play a little bit faster. Yet, it will sound slower than anything you’ve heard so far. It will have a more relaxed quality. It was Rachmaninoff who said,

“The bigger the phrase, the bigger the musician.”

So in your music, try to think the long notes as the pulse of your music; particularly in slow movements. It will have the benefit of creating a relaxed quality. You will also be able to take faster tempos yet make it sound slower which can really help with slow movements that have repeats because they can get ponderously long if you take them too slowly. You can create a relaxed quality in your music at a faster tempo by hearing the longer notes as the beat.

Is it okay to use the pedal when playing Bach? This is a great question and there are many different ideas about this. Why should there even be issues with using the pedal or not when it comes to playing Bach? Bach lived from 1685 to 1750 and the very earliest pianos were invented just around 1700. While Bach got a chance to try some of these early instruments, he really never wrote for the piano. He never wrote for any specific keyboard instrument other than the organ. All his other works are written for clavier, which means simply “keyboard”. It is up to the performer to decide which keyboard. No keyboards had pedals anytime during Bach’s life (other than the organ, but that’s a completely different matter).

There are many purists who feel that you shouldn’t use the pedal simply because Bach did not have one. Other people feel that if Bach was alive today, he would love to use the pedal! There are different schools of thought. There is some music that absolutely calls for the pedal. Why? Music is written sometimes where there are notes to be held, yet you run out of fingers since you have to move your hands to another part of the keyboard. So the only way to hold those notes that are written to be held is to sustain them by using the pedal.

You can certainly play Bach without the pedal and get very good results. When I studied with Ruth Slenczynska, she insisted upon using no pedal in Bach and it works great! I am going to offer an example, of the beginning of Bach’s 5th French Suite. Why would you use pedal and how would you use pedal in Bach? You don’t use it to connect notes that you can’t hold with your fingers because there is nothing that is written that necessitates the use of the of the pedal for this purpose. Instead you use the pedal to add color. You’ll notice that even in this fast music, there are little touches of pedal to enhance the tone of key notes.

The important thing is that you must practice Bach using no pedal at all. In fact, I recommend practicing all of your music without any pedal until you can play as connected as possible finding the best fingering that accomplishes this first. Then it becomes obvious where the pedal can be utilized.

I am going to play the first section of the Bach 5th French Suite with the repeat as written. The first time I will play it with no pedal. Then upon the repeat, I will utilize the pedal to add color. If you listen to the video, you can determine which performance you prefer. I would love to hear from all of you in the comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube.

Is it necessary for pianists to sing? This sounds like a crazy question at first, but there is a lot of validity to this. Consider this: piano majors at conservatories and universities around the country, almost all of them sing in the chorus. (Sometimes they play an instrument in the orchestra if they play a second instrument.) In studying music theory, sight-singing is an intrinsic skill for pianists. I’ve had several videos on sight-singing because I consider it to be a beneficial skill for pianists.

Think about this: the piano and singing are about as diametrically opposed instruments that exist in the world. How so? The human voice is the most natural instrument. It’s the only instrument that everyone has and everybody has tried out. It was the first instrument, and for millenia was the only musical instrument. Eventually, people started banging on things and blowing through things. Even then, most music is evocative of the human voice.

What’s so unique about the human voice more than any other instrument is that you absolutely have to hear the notes you’re singing in order to produce the pitches. With the piano, you may have no idea of what a note is going to sound like. Yet, the pitch comes out anyway! However, it’s really important to hear what you’re playing. How do you quantify what you’re hearing? After all, a teacher can make corrections and you can do all the right fingering. You might play a note perfect performance but not really hear what you’re doing. Many pianists rely upon tactile memory.

This is not only dangerous but it is also not very gratifying. You must hear what you’re playing. This is really important in performance when inevitably you get off-track. It will happen. It doesn’t matter who you are and how experienced you are. At some point you will get off track and find your fingers over the wrong keys. You must make it sound right in order to get back on track. If you can’t hear it you’re pretty much done for if you’re doing it only by feel. That’s where singing comes in because if you can sing your music, you can play by ear until you get back on on track.

If you never sing, how do you know that you’re actually hearing what you’re playing? Singing is a tremendous tool. Likewise, singers need to study the piano. It’s a really important to play an instrument that can play more than one note at a time. An organ or guitar can also aid in this. Something where you can hear the underlying harmonic structure because after all, you can’t sing more than one note at a time! So singers must study the piano and pianists must sing. Does this mean you have to be a professional singer? Of course not. If you’ve heard me sing on some of my videos, you can attest to that! The fact of the matter is, I sing constantly as a way of hearing music. For me I love sight-singing with syllables because I can figure out the notes I’m hearing. It quantifies pitches.

I strongly recommend singing your music. One technique if you have music that has counterpoint where you have interweaving lines is to try singing one of the lines while you’re playing. Then try singing a different line. You will learn immeasurable amounts about your music. By singing, you’ll understand in a way you never will from only playing your music on the piano. So the answer to this question is a resounding “Yes”, singing is necessary to develop as a pianist.

Today’s show is, “Secrets of Phrasing: How to Approach Two Note Slurs on the Piano”. There are two aspects of phrasing. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but there are two distinct meanings. One meaning of phrasing is how you approach music in terms of musical units, a phrase being a musical sentence. The other meaning is the way in which notes are connected or detached. Two notes slurs are a classic example of phrasing. Last time we talked a bit about staccatos and how they are approached from the wrist.

Two note slurs are essentially one note connecting to the next note. Even if the second is not written to be played staccato, it still is played staccato in most musical contexts. Since staccato is simply not connecting notes, and a slur is connecting notes, if you have a two note slur, you essentially play, long-short for the two notes. The slurred note is long, the staccato note is short.

How do you approach such a thing? Staccatos are created by using the wrists creating a crisp sound, particularly with fast music. Slower tempo staccato is a completely different subject which I’ll cover in a future video. When you have two note slurs, you go down for the first note and up for the second note with the wrist. That is what creates the two note slur. When approaching staccatos, sometimes it can be difficult to identify the wrists separate from the arms. It is very important that you understand when you’re using the wrists and when you’re using the arms since the sound is extremely different. There is certainly a place for arms in piano playing, but with quick, snappy staccatos or two note slurs, the arms are too heavy and cumbersome in order to execute the phrasing in a musically pleasing way.

To sum up, the secret to approaching two note slurs is utilizing the wrists in order to accommodate the staccato. You go down for the slurred note and up for the second note of the slur which by its very nature is detached which is synonymous with staccato. I hope this has been helpful! Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com

The question today is: How do you play staccato on the piano? You may think of staccato as playing notes short. Indeed, in most contexts, that’s exactly how staccatos are played. However, staccato actually means to play detached, in contrast to legato which is played smoothly connected So if you have staccatos for example on slow notes (such as half notes), it might seem confusing at first for them to be marked staccato. In this case you would play detached but not necessarily short.

Many times staccato notes are found in faster music. Playing fast notes detached necessitates playing the notes short. In order to achieve a nice crisp staccato, you want to utilize the wrists. It’s really important to identify the wrists separate from the arms. The arms are too large and heavy to play fast and crisply. The wrists produce a completely different sound. The arms produce a heavy sound because the arms are large compared to moving only the hands from the wrists.

You’ve heard the expression, “It’s all in the wrist!” This is totally appropriate for successful execution of staccato in many contexts.