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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you about the three essential elements of sight-reading. I know so many of you want to read better, and you’re wondering what the secret is. I’m going to tell you about three different skills that you must have working together in order to be successful at reading music.

Sight-reading is all about what you see, feel, and hear.

Naturally, there’s what you see in the score. You have to really see what you’re reading, which is why you can’t be looking down at your hands while you’re reading. Which leads us to the second thing: You must have a certain feel for the keyboard. So you’re seeing the music, you’re feeling the keys, and the last thing, which is the most important, is what you hear.

All three of these things work together as a system.

You can’t look at your hands. You can occasionally glance for a moment, but you have to keep your eyes on the score. As soon as you’re not looking at the score, you’re not reading anymore! So you have to keep your fingers moving on the keys. If it sounds wrong, you must adjust by feel. You have black keys and white keys, so you can feel where the correct keys are and make the adjustments. If it sounds wrong, go a little higher or lower. You might think that that’s imprecise, but anybody who’s a really good sight-reader knows that you have to make those kinds of adjustments when you’re reading something difficult. Even if you don’t play perfectly, you get the basic idea across.

You have to keep going.

If you are accompanying a soloist, they don’t want you to stop when you miss a note. That’s not going to do it for them. It doesn’t give the satisfaction of understanding what the piece is like with the piano part. So you must keep going and feel your way by listening, watching the score, and recreating what you see based upon what you feel and hear. The best way to do that is by playing with other musicians, because it forces you to keep going. You have to keep going. You must keep your eyes moving. You must keep your hands and fingers moving, and you must keep listening.

The way to develop your reading on the piano is by doing it!

Find appropriate-level music. If you can find anybody who has some accompaniments that are not outrageously difficult, to where you have a chance of being able to play a good chunk of the notes accurately, offer to play with them. You can even accompany children or friends singing songs they know. Find music that is on your reading level and offer to accompany them! Use the essential elements of what you see, what you feel, and what you hear. You will become a great reader over time, I promise you. If you have epiphanies about how to become better at reading, let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

The 3 Essential Elements of Sight-Reading

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you how to make memorization easier. Memorizing piano in music is one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do mentally. It takes all of your concentration. I’m going to show you how to approach this so that you can make it easier and more effective!

How much music should you learn at a time?

I will use, as an example, the second movement of Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata. I’m going to play the first phrase, and then I’m going to show you how to approach memorizing it to make it easier. Let’s say you sit down to learn this piece. You figure the first eight measures is a good amount to learn, so you play it over and over again until you kind of get it. But that is far too much material to take at a time! If you were to add up the sheer number of notes, it doesn’t seem like a lot of music. But there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of details when you consider that every note has its own fingering, phrasing, and expression. So there are four details to each note, not to mention the rhythm!

I’ve talked about how to memorize by taking small amounts of music at a time, playing hands separately, and then putting them together. Well, there is more to it than that. I’m going to show you some tips right now. First of all, if you analyze the score right at the beginning, you realize that the right hand is in chords. So learn it in chords first. Now, if I were learning this, I wouldn’t take eight measures at a time. Sometimes you can learn four measures of one hand, but when you put the hands together, chop it in half. Just do two measures when you’re putting the hands together, because:

The hardest part about memorization is putting the hands together.

I would suggest just learning the first two measures. Start with just the first two measures, but give yourself the extra note of the beginning of the third measure as a connection point. That’s plenty of material, believe it or not. How long will it take you to learn that? Not so long. Now, you might have gone through the first eight measures and played it over and over again for 30 minutes or an hour. But you know what? You’ll never quite get it because you don’t give yourself the opportunity to really study the infinitesimally small details that you can master in just a few minutes. Once you get the right hand memorized in chords, then you get the left hand memorized. Then you put hands together in chords. The next step would be to play the right hand alone the way it’s written. And then finally, put the hands together going extremely slowly at first. Then, if you like, you can reward yourself and play with the pedal, which is the last thing you do in your practice.

If you have trouble delineating the melody from the 16th notes in the right hand, you can practice with articulations.

Play with a light finger staccato on the 16th notes to train your hand which notes are accompaniment and which notes are melody. Better yet, put your hands together, and you have a duet between the soprano and the bass with the inner voice playing with a gentle finger staccato.

If you learn just two measures, or if you learn four measures, hands separately and then put together just two measures at a time, you’ll give yourself a fighting chance to really perfect the music as you go. Plus, since you’re not overwhelming yourself, you can sustain a longer, productive practice. So remember to cut things in half. Learn less at a time, and don’t use the pedal until the very end of the process so that you can hear what’s there and develop the best fingering in your playing. So those are some memorization tips for you! I hope this helps with your memorization. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to Make Memorization Easier

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I’m going to show you how to recharge your piano playing. Have you ever gotten a piece to a really high level and played it on a regular basis, but somehow it goes stale? It’s just not quite there. It’s not like there are trouble spots you can practice. The whole thing just doesn’t have the spark that it once had. How can you get it back into shape? I’m going to show you today. There are some very basic techniques that are going to do the job for you.

Slow practice is one of the most important aspects of piano playing.

I have had the opportunity to study with some absolutely stupendous piano teachers, including my father, Morton Estrin, Ruth Slenczynska, Constance Keene, and John Ogden. They all practiced slowly. Every fine pianist I have ever met practices slowly. Even when you can play something up to tempo, going back and practicing slowly is absolutely essential on the piano. You should also take your foot off the pedal. Listen to what your fingers are doing. The pedal covers so much. I can tell you that these two tips I have just given you are so fundamental that every great classical pianist uses them.

Use the score.

Even if you have a piece memorized, it’s not good enough. You have to reinforce your memory. Do you think you can remember every single detail, like where a slur ends, where a crescendo begins, or the exact voicing of every chord? You must constantly reinforce your memory!

Use the metronome.

Practice with a metronome to keep yourself honest. Put the metronome on a nice, slow speed. Play with no pedal and keep your eyes on the score. The amazing thing is that just going through it slowly like that a few times will already clean up your playing enormously. But if you really want to develop a stellar technique, you can do all the speeds in between, where necessary. You might not have to do all the speeds everywhere. But any place that doesn’t come out consistently or feel comfortable, do progressively faster metronome speeds on those sections.

I remember watching my father practice when he was preparing to record his Brahms album. I used to watch my father practice all the time. I loved it! It was really enriching. I remember he got to a point where he was playing through everything just slightly under tempo without the pedal. It was totally relaxed and clean. That’s what you want. You want to get to the point where you get it up to tempo and it’s all comfortable. The notes are just there. You don’t have to work to make it come out. And because you study the score again and again, slowly seeing every detail, you really perfect your performance.

This is a great way to get any piece back into shape!

If you have a piece that’s gone stale or a piece you’re performing and you want to make sure it’s still in good shape, this technique is bulletproof. Practice slowly, with the score, no pedal, and using a metronome. Try it in your practice! You’ll be amazed at what this can do for your playing! I hope this is valuable for you! Let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to Recharge Your Piano Playing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how dynamics are like orchestration in your music. The piano is an amazing instrument because you have all the parts of a whole orchestra right under your fingertips! You want to think of your playing as orchestrating the sound and getting the quality of different sections of an orchestra—the strings, the brass, the percussion, all of it.

Thinking of your playing as different sections of an orchestra will help you play more expressively.

It can be richly rewarding for your audience to hear these kinds of dramatic changes in dynamics and tonal colors. I’m going to demonstrate this by using the beginning of Mozart’s Sonata in C Minor, K 457. This is a really good example because of the stark changes in dynamics. You can imagine the opening statement as a full orchestra with big, booming strings and brass. The next part is much quieter, so maybe you just have woodwinds. Then again, a full orchestra, followed again by delicate winds. Think of your music as orchestrating each section. Get a different tonal color and a different balance in your playing.

Whenever you’re playing, think of orchestrating.

This goes for every composition you play! Some can be more subtle than others. Not all music is going to change this often from one texture, sound, or dynamic to another. However, this also holds true when you’re playing a texture. This isn’t changing orchestrations for each bar or measure, but having a different sound for each strata of music. The treble might be a clarinet; the lower notes could be cellos; and in the middle, it could be violas. So you try to get different sounds on all the different lines you’re playing.

There are two kinds of orchestration.

There’s orchestrating different sections dynamically, and there’s orchestrating which lines of music you’re bringing out. Think of your piano music as being orchestrated, because after all, that’s exactly what the piano offers! That’s what’s so great about the piano—you can play compositions that would take a whole orchestra. Take advantage of that and discover the sounds and sonorities you can achieve in your playing! I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How to Orchestrate Your Playing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, we are going to discuss how much music you should keep in shape. This is a really delicate subject because you want to learn new music, but you always want to have something you can play. The challenge is that the time it takes to keep your music in shape can take away from the time you have to learn more music, and vice versa. So you have to strike some kind of balance.

Any pieces that you’ve learned recently, you should absolutely keep in shape.

It’s a real mistake to get to the point where you can finally play a piece on a high level and then drop it. First of all, you might not realize that you could take that piece to a higher level if you lived with it a little longer. The other problem is that if you’ve just learned it and then you drop it, you’re going to forget it as quickly as you learned it. You need to live with it for a while to have it solidify so that it stays with you and you can still play it weeks or months after you’ve learned it. You can do this simply by playing it on a regular basis and solidifying it from time to time with slow practice. By doing this, you can bring it back without much effort later on. But how much music should you keep in shape?

I generally say you should keep the last three or four pieces you’ve learned in shape.

It’s good to keep the three or four most recent pieces you’ve learned in shape, depending on what the pieces are. If you have, for example, a sonata with three movements, that’s almost like three pieces in itself! So that and maybe one other piece, in addition to the piece you’re working on, may be plenty of repertoire to keep in shape.

You should always have music that you can play at a high level.

It’s best to always have music you can perform in case somebody wants to hear you play. Isn’t it sad if you’ve been playing the piano for years but don’t have anything you can play? You put in all that effort learning your pieces, so you want to be able to play them for people. Imagine someone finds out you play piano and asks you to play for them, but you haven’t finished learning your current piece and you’ve forgotten the previous ones! You want to always have something you can play. People will appreciate hearing you. If they visit your home and see a piano, they might want to hear you play something.

Always have a go-to piece.

You should have something that you can always play and that you’ve played a million times. Certainly, you want to be able to play a piece you love and that you’ve worked hard to learn. So keep the most recent pieces you’ve learned in shape, along with any piece that you really love. You may also want to have something you can play that other people will really enjoy hearing. Maybe the piece that you really want to keep in shape is not appropriate to play for most people because it’s too subtle or because it’s a musical style that is not as popular with the general public.

The most recent pieces, pieces that people will like, and music that you really love are the three areas of music you should keep in shape. But you don’t want to be overwhelmed with so many review pieces that you don’t have time to learn new repertoire for yourself. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com

How Much Music Should You Keep in Shape?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to be in the moment in your playing. It’s so important! If you have performed for friends or your teacher, you know that sometimes it’s easy to become distracted. You want to be present in your playing; but it can be so incredibly difficult. I’m going to give you some ways of thinking about this, and approaching it, that hopefully will be helpful for you!

The first thing I want to talk about is a little bit philosophical.

We sometimes assume that words are thought. The whole idea of thinking in your head is that you’re stringing words together. But words were invented for communication, to be able to express ideas to one another. You don’t actually need words to think about something. Have you ever had a revelation that just came to you? Did you have to string words together in order to have that thought? Of course not! The words express the thought, but they aren’t the thought themselves. This is why there are those who master the art of meditation. They clear their minds from the internal dialog to be able to have pure thought, not hampered by words. If you’ve ever been in a state of flow while doing anything, whether it’s experiencing a beautiful sunset, looking at a beautiful painting, or just enjoying a moment of life without quantifying it and defining it with words, you understand that this is one of the most beautiful things there is in life! You don’t need to label every single thought.

How does this relate to music?

When you’re playing music, the thing that will distract you more than anything else is using words in your head, and thinking about what you’re doing instead of just doing it. You want to be present in your performance. You don’t want to be analytical and judgmental, thinking about what note comes next. You can’t think that way, it’ll drive you crazy and destroy your performance. You have to be right in the moment with a sense of where you’re going. Just like in life itself, you want to be living in the moment with a sense of continuity. You want to know where you are and where you’re heading.

The way to achieve this in music is simply by listening!

Listen to the sounds. Become absorbed in the beauty of the music you’re creating at that moment, rather than getting distracted with the mechanics of your playing. Of course, there has to be a certain amount that you keep present, in the analytical sense, so you don’t take a wrong turn in the score. There has to be a certain amount of intelligence. But moment to moment, you should not be bogged down with these intellectual ideas. Instead, enjoy the sound and explore where it’s going next. The most satisfying musical performance you can ever have is one where the music is unfolding, and you yourself are listening in anticipation of where it’s going to go next. You may have experienced this before if you have ever played on a different piano. It sounds different, and as a result, you’re playing with fresh ears. That’s the secret of what you want to achieve in your musical performance.

You want to be listening to, and engaged in your own music.

That’s what draws the listener in! It’s what keeps you on track in your musical performance. So remember, don’t get hung up with intellectualizing what you’re doing more than necessary. Just keep your wits about you to avoid taking wrong turns, knowing where repeats are, and knowing where you are in the score. If there are leaps that you have to quantify, you need to have your intellect alive. But don’t get bogged down with it. Enjoy your musical performance! Listen to it and everybody else will too. I hope you’ve enjoyed this! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com