Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you why you must practice your music in chords first. There are so many benefits to this! I’m going to dive right in and show you. One obvious example of how a
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must accept your limitations. I don’t want to bring you down. As a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite! Anybody who’s accomplished anything great, it’s because they accept their own limitations. You look at people who are masters at any craft or art, and you think everything must just come easily to them. What you don’t see is the hard work that goes into it. I can’t tell you how many times I have students who think they’re the only ones for whom piano is so hard. It’s actually really hard for everyone!
Different things are difficult for different people.
Some people excel at some things, and some people excel at other things. But the key to being able to accomplish anything is to accept where you’re at and what it takes to advance. And it takes way more than you think it does. This goes for everything. When you see a beautiful painting that’s absolutely photorealistic, you’re in awe of the quality of the work. You can’t imagine how it’s done. You might think the artist is just a genius and it comes naturally to them. But if you lived with that person, and watched them work, you’d realize the countless hours they spent working and crafting that painting to look like that. It doesn’t just happen. They accepted what it took to create that masterpiece. The same is true in your piano practice.
The learning process takes time and dedication.
It’s very easy to dismiss things and think, “I should be able to get this. Why can’t I get this?”. It’s because you’re human! I have a video that hasn’t come out yet. The editing has been mind-bogglingly difficult because I wanted to put the score in the whole video. I sat down for a while one day and practiced a piece that I had very briefly studied years and years ago. I just showed how I practice. It’s a Mozart fantasie, and there’s a fast section in there. I practiced just that part of it. It’s about a 40-minute practice session. I knew it was too long for anybody to watch.
So I have parts going in fast-motion. It shows how long I take to learn something—to really get it under my fingers and into my head. Just because I can play all this music from memory doesn’t mean that it just comes easily to me, It’s a meticulous process.
You can see for yourself how I learn a new piece of music!
I have a video I did years ago. I flipped open the Chopin Mazurkas randomly, found a mazurka I’d never even heard before, and started memorizing it. You can watch that here. You’ll see what it takes. So don’t beat yourself up! Accept that this is what it takes. Then you decide if it’s worth the effort or not. But to think that it should come easily—you’re not going to get anywhere with that type of thinking. You’ll just get frustrated, and you’ll think less of yourself. Just accept your limitations, and from there, you can accomplish almost anything! That’s the message for today. I hope it’s inspiring for you and not discouraging. 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
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must accept your limitations. I don’t want to bring you down. As a matter of fact, it’s quite the opposite! Anybody who’s accomplished anything
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I’m here at the PIPPA Piano Convention. It’s the first of its kind! I play the French horn, and I always enjoyed going to the French horn convention, the International Horn Workshop. M
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m asking: What do you do when you make a mistake in your piano practice? There are basically three essential go-to techniques that you can rely upon in your practice. Any time you make a mistake, you should do one of these three things. Let’s say you’re playing something fast and it’s sloppy, and you want to clean it up. What can you do to fix it? You can just go back and try it again, and maybe it’ll come out better. But suppose it doesn’t feel quite right. What can you do? I’m going to give you three practice techniques that are absolutely indispensable! These should be your go-to routines any time you have problems in your piano practice.
Go slower, play hands separately, or take a smaller section.
If you are having trouble with a section of music, try going slower. The metronome is a great tool for slow practice. What else can you do? Play hands separately. You could just play the right hand alone to get it solid. And lastly, take a smaller section. Maybe you’re working on the whole first section and you’re having problems along the way. You could take half of that section or a quarter of that section. You could take just two measures! The most important thing is to identify the amount of music you can master at a time. Try taking just the small section where you have problems and really cement the corrections. Then you can expand upon that with larger sections.
What you want to avoid is repeating a mistake.
If you make a mistake once, try it again, and maybe you will get it. But if you make the same mistake a second time, alarm bells should go off. You must do something different. Why is this so imperative? Well, I always talk about how you must get something perfectly at least three times before you move on. Why? Because three times in a row cements things. It begins to really come together in your hands and your head. Well, the same thing is true of mistakes. If you missed something twice and then you just flippantly go and play it again and make the mistake a third time, now you’ve really cemented that error. It’s going to be harder to dig out of that because your hands and ears are getting used to it.
Once again, either slow down, play hands separately, or take a smaller section.
Embrace these three techniques any time you miss something, and I guarantee that the productivity of your practice will skyrocket! Let us know how these techniques work for you in your practice! Leave it 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
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m asking: What do you do when you make a mistake in your piano practice? There are basically three essential go-to techniques that you can rely upon in your practice. Any time you ma
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you about the five benefits of scales and arpeggios. Maybe you work on scales and arpeggios on a regular basis. Maybe you know you should, but you don’t. You mi
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you why all beats are not created equal. Did you know that typically in 4/4 time, the strong beats are the first and third beats? The weaker beats are the second and