Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic for today is about why you must strike from above in your piano playing. However, this is not always the case. I’m referring to a very specific technique. In fact, striking from above can create a harsh, unpleasant sound in some circumstances.

When playing large chords, striking from above can sound brash.

When you strike from above using the arms, you have no control and end up with a crass sound. Instead, what you want to do is strike from the surface of the keys and drop the weight of your arms all at once. By doing so, you will achieve a gorgeous sound that will not be harsh no matter how hard you play.

Should you strike from above when doing finger work?

For slow practice, raised fingers can be a good way to delineate which fingers are up and down, so you get clean releases of notes. This is useful when practicing scales and arpeggios. However, when playing more quickly, you must stay right on top of the keys without raised fingers or you’ll never gain the speed. But to practice the release of notes, practicing with delineated fingers down with other fingers up and out of the way is a terrific exercise, akin to stretching before working out, as I’ve discussed before.

The real place where striking from above is vitally important is with staccato!

When practicing slowly, you might be tempted to play with your fingers close to the keys. The problem with this is that you won’t get the crisp staccato you’re aiming for. Playing faster using that technique will produce a muddy sound. Striking from above gives you a crisp staccato sound. So, you must strike from above in your slow practice to prepare yourself to play quickly and achieve precision and power in your staccatos.

It’s the wrist that is doing all the work.

Make sure you don’t let your fingers go down to notes before you play them. You want to strike from above in one smooth motion using your wrist. That way, you get the clarity of the staccato and the power from the wrist. Another thing to avoid is using the arms for the up and down motion. The arms are too big and heavy, which will result in a clumsy sound. You won’t get the crisp sound you desire. The arms are too slow, and it just bogs down. You should move the arms side to side to get over the right keys, but there should be no up and down motion.

You can achieve a light staccato with the wrist as well.

By utilizing the wrist staying closer to the keys, you can get a light, fast staccato as well. So remember: for more power, use more motion, and for light, crisp staccato, use smaller wrist motion. But always use the wrists when trying to achieve a short, crisp sound.

So that’s the tip for the day!

Remember to strike from above in your staccato, and you will be rewarded with a crisp sound. Doing this, you can achieve speed, fluency, power, and lightness. I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again 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 topic is about how to take your musical phrases further. One of the biggest challenges when playing lyrical music is controlling the ends of phrases to achieve a nice diminuendo, such as in the second movement of Clementi’s Sonatina in C major Opus 36, no. 1.

I like to play simple, effective trills that can be negotiated easily.

You don’t have to be distracted by highly ornamented trills. It’s not necessary to get the beauty of this music. Trills are left up to you. If you want to play more notes, go ahead. But don’t spend an inordinate amount of time on playing fast trills. Instead, concentrate on the beauty of the music and creating a singing line. Of course, the challenge of this movement, like so much other music, is twofold. You want to have melody above accompaniment throughout, and you also want to have the rise and fall of each phrase.

The secret to being able to control phrase endings to make them quiet is to peak later in your music.

Remember to start softly so you can grow in the middle of the phrase. You can keep growing further than the middle of the phrase. If you peak in the middle, instead of later in the phrase, it is very difficult to end the phrase quietly. Not only is it hard to control, but it also loses intensity and support. It sounds like a singer who doesn’t have enough air at the end of a phrase. Once again, it’s all about utilizing arm weight. You can look at some of my previous videos to understand what I’m talking about.

You can give the music more life by supporting the phrase further than the middle.

When you do this, the phrase endings have a nice taper. You won’t struggle to end the phrase without notes dropping out. Peak your phrases later so that the phrase endings can be beautifully controlled. You can make life so much easier for yourself while creating a longer musical line that projects all the way to the end of the phrase. You won’t have to worry about notes dropping out. So that’s the tip for today! I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about living in the comfort zone in your piano playing. Have you ever had a fast piece that you’re struggling to play fast? You have tension, but you want a beautiful, relaxed quality to your playing. You want to play with fluidity. You might wonder how to achieve this. If you keep struggling to play just a little bit faster than you are able to play with comfort and relaxation, you’ll never be able to achieve that kind of relaxed fluidity in your playing.

The secret is slow practice.

Find the speed at which you can play completely relaxed. It might surprise you how slowly you have to go in order to achieve that. The metronome is such an invaluable tool! Finding the speed at which you can play in a relaxed manner is the first step. You should have the score in front of you when you’re doing this kind of work. You may find that when you slow things down, you will realize you don’t know it as well as you thought you did. That’s why having the score in front of you and setting a metronome at a speed you can play your piece with absolute solidity is a great way to live in that comfort zone. Once you can play it at a slow tempo with total relaxation and accuracy, then you finally have the capability of speeding up your performance.

Slow practice is invaluable, but sometimes it’s hard to translate that slow playing to performance speed.

Another thing you can do is take small note groups and use extreme repetition to solidify the small section. You can take even just one or two notes! Keep playing them until you can play with complete relaxation. Then add other tiny note groups in the same relaxed manner. You can continue working this way through a passage or section of music.

These are two ways of approaching relaxation. Remember to go slowly enough that you can play with complete relaxation. Have the score in front of you so you can check your work. You’ll be surprised to learn what you know, and more importantly, what needs clarification in your playing. You can either play very slowly or you can take very small groups of notes and piece them together.

You’re working on two fronts!

One is to get a feel for what it’s going to be like when it’s up to tempo, even if you’re just playing small groups of notes that you string together. And the other one is to play at a slow tempo with complete security and relaxation. You live at that slow tempo! Live in the slow zone, in the comfort zone, and you’ll be rewarded with relaxation in your playing when you finally get things up to speed. I hope this has been 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

Hi, this is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. Amazingly, there are hundreds of free pianos available all over the country. You can check out the links in the description below. But there’s so much more than that! What about free piano lessons? There are so many resources online, it’s unbelievable! You can check out what we have for you right here on LivingPianosVideos

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how slowly the Moonlight Sonata should be played. I’m referring to the famous first movement that so many people love to play. There are some questions as to how slowly it should go. After all, it is written to be played Adagio Sostenuto, which is slow and sustained. More than that, it goes on to say “Si deve suonare tutto questo pezzo delicatissimamente e senza sordini.” Now that’s a mouthful! That translates literally to, “The whole piece must be played very delicately and without deafness.” Sordini, we know, means mute, so, without the mute. And what is the mute on the piano? Well, perhaps he was talking about the soft pedal.

Why wouldn’t you want to use the soft pedal in the Moonlight Sonata?

Well, you have to remember that the instrument that Beethoven wrote this piece for is drastically different from a modern piano. In fact, pianos early in Beethoven’s life are quite different from what pianos had become later in his life. He worked closely with instrument builders to develop the piano. My guess is that on the instrument he wrote the Moonlight Sonata, the tone was not sufficient with the soft pedal. I do like to use the soft pedal in the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata.

The Moonlight Sonata is not in 4/4 time.

I was teaching a student the Moonlight Sonata the other day. They were playing at a very slow tempo. I took exception with it. Why? Because in an urtext edition of the score, this piece isn’t in 4/4 time. Look carefully and you will realize it’s in cut time, 2/2 or alla breve. The symbol looks like a C with a vertical line through it. So instead of having four quarter notes getting the beat, you have two half notes getting the beat. Playing faster sounds slower when the pulse is a longer note value. Beethoven intended it to be played with the half note as the slow beat, instead of the quarter note which makes you play it slower. If you try to slow down that quarter note, the whole piece bogs down. It’s a fairly long movement as it is. To play it with a quarter note ticking makes it ponderous. It’s not the way Beethoven intended the piece to be played.

Check out your score and see if you have the cut time!

If your edition is in 4/4 common time, that is not correct. The authoritative urtext editions are written in 2/2 time, not 4/4 time. So you may want to think about your tempo of the Moonlight Sonata. I hope this has been helpful for you! Leave your comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! Thanks again 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’m going to discuss the incredible value of extreme repetition in your piano practice. This type of practicing can be really annoying to listen to, but it’s incredibly valuable. Anybody who’s lived with me knows that I do a lot of this kind of practice. I find it to be one of the most helpful ways of practicing. So I thought I’d share it with you!

Take a very small chunk of music and play it over and over again.

I practice this way much of the time. Focus on just a few notes. Sometimes even one or two notes! Try to play those notes with absolute security. Even more importantly, play them with total relaxation. Feel that your fingers are simply falling on the right keys with minimal effort. Play tiny note groups. Don’t push to articulate each finger. Instead, just play as relaxed as possible.

Don’t be afraid of taking very small chunks of music.

It could be just two notes! You want to be able to play them with security and relaxation. Don’t be afraid of repeating something again and again and again. This is a very effective way of working through your music. I spend an incredible amount of my practice time working this way. So play small groups of notes up to speed as relaxed as possible. Don’t be afraid to repeat something until, like I say, you feel like you’re just falling on the right notes.

Use the weight of the arms.

After some time, your fingers just know where to go. Don’t push your fingers into the right keys. Let the weight of your arms allow your fingers to just fall into the right keys, keeping everything relaxed, instead of punctuating each note with your fingers more than necessary. You can get so much accomplished if you’re not afraid to spend an inordinate amount of time on very small groups of notes. Try it in your practice! Let me know how it works for you. Leave your comments here at LivingPianos.com and 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