Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the importance of engagement in musical performance. At a concert, sometimes you’re riveted by the performance. You’re on the edge of your seat waiting to hear what’s going to come next. It’s palpable through the whole audience. You can feel it! Everybody is breathing together. It’s the oneness of a crowd. The energy of the room is just spellbinding. Sadly, sometimes you experience the opposite of that.

What makes us engaged in some performances but not others?

Oftentimes, you’re at a concert listening to an accomplished performer playing hard music, and playing it well, but you find yourself zoning out. You can’t concentrate on anything! You look around and people are fidgeting. You wonder what’s wrong with everybody. You wonder what’s the matter with yourself! “Why can’t I concentrate on this, is there something wrong with me?” I’ve found that in those moments, that’s when the performer will have a little glitch of memory or some other error. This is incredibly insightful as to why you are sometimes engaged in a performance and why sometimes you’re not. Of course, part of it could just be your mood. But I think a bigger factor is the engagement of the performer.

An engaged performer draws the audience in.

Sometimes you’re playing a piece of music and you’re kind of zoned out. You’re on auto-pilot. Your fingers are moving, but you’re not really engaged on an intellectual or emotional level. When you are engaged and you’re feeling the music, you’ll find your audience is equally impressed. They will be focused on everything you’re doing because you are focused. Now, how do you achieve such a thing? In practice, if you let yourself go all the time, you get to the performance and it feels stale. You’ve done it so many times. How do you bring something fresh to your performance where you’re actually engaged as if you’re hearing it or playing it for the first time?

In your practice, have a reserve of emotion.

Play strictly what’s written, follow the score without the luxury of the pedal, and listen critically to every note in an intellectual manner. I’m not saying you should never try things out and let yourself go in practice. You should sometimes do that so you know what your inclinations are and you know what to practice in order to achieve them. On the other hand, the predominant time you spend at the piano should be spent in a very mechanical fashion, cementing the music you’re playing. If you’re playing Brahms and you’re always playing it expressively, maybe that’s the way you want to play it, but in practice, get rid of the pedal. Put on a metronome and play strictly and accurately. This should be done with the score so you cement the performance. You’re focused on every note, every rest, every nuance of expression and phrasing. You play exacting with your fingers, metronomically, so when you finally get to the performance, and you put the pedal in to give a little bit of rubato and shadings, it feels great!

You don’t want to be indulgent in your performance.

If you practice playing with a lot of nuance of expression and you let yourself go, then in the heat of the moment of a performance you might actually let yourself go too far. It could be a little bit gross and self-aggrandizing. You don’t want to be so overly expressive that you lose the sense of the music. The expression should be in service of the music so there are nuances of expression rather than something that takes away from the overall structure of the piece.

This is the way to stay engaged!

In your practice, be precise. Take your foot off the pedal, play with the metronome, and play with the score so when you finally have your performance, it’s fresh. You can let yourself go while still having a solid foundation to build an expressive performance upon. I hope this helps you to stay focused and engaged in your performances! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you should practice the piano every day. Why is it so important? There are a number of reasons. Now, other instruments have their reasons. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m also a French hornist. With the French horn, like many wind instruments, there’s a physiology to the lips which produce the tone. It’s so hard to get back into shape if you miss too many days, because the lips are such tender muscles. The piano doesn’t really have that issue so much. If you miss a day, you’re not going to feel drastically different in your hands. Why is it so important to practice every day, then? Well, there are two reasons, fundamentally.

First, certain aspects of piano practice are extraordinarily difficult and taxing.

Things like memorization can’t easily be crammed into less days. When you’re memorizing music, there’s a certain amount that you can absorb fairly easily. Then it’s an uphill struggle to keep putting more music into your head. You have to really be committed and work extra hard to memorize the third and fourth phrase if you’ve already learned a couple of phrases. It can be done, but it’s harder. So why not take advantage of your fresh mind? Each day, learn something! Even if it’s just a short practice session, it can really help you in the long run if you at least take on some of your score each day.

Second, a lot of times you’ll feel like you’ve made two steps forward and four steps backwards.

When you practice something, then leave it for a day or two, when you come back to it, you might feel like you didn’t even learn anything. It’s so demoralizing! You can’t get that continuity, so you’re just learning the same thing again. Not only is it not as productive, but it kind of drains your soul. You don’t feel excited about practicing when you come back to the same problems over and over again. But if you come back to it the next day, you’ll forget some from the previous day, but it’ll come back pretty quickly. Then you can get right to work learning more music. It’s encouraging. You can keep the momentum going.

Use your mind when it’s fresh, even if it’s for a short practice session.

Keep the continuity of your learning day by day. This is not only a good technique for memorization, but also refinement. You might have an epiphany into your technique with arpeggios, but then you’ll skip a day or two and you come back to it and the same issues persist. So practice every day, even if it’s only a little bit. You might not have much time, but by using any little time you do have each day, you can maintain productive practice. Dinner’s in the oven, you’ve got 10 minutes. Practice! Even those short amounts of time make a big difference if you do it on a regular basis. I do the same thing with exercise, by the way. When I’m waiting for something I’ll do some simple exercises and stretching. Take advantage of every moment with the things that are important in your life. Over time it makes a dramatic difference! That’s the message for today. I hope it works for you! Let me know in the comments on LivingPianos.com and on YouTube. Thanks so much 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 making your practice hard so your performing will be easy. I have a strong recommendation for those of you who want to maximize the effectiveness of your practice. Now this isn’t for everyone. There are many reasons why people study the piano. There are some people who just want to enjoy playing the piano and not work too hard. For those of you who feel that way, this message is irrelevant. But for the rest of you who really want to get as much done for the time you spend working at the piano, this will be very helpful for you!

When I practice, I want to get as much done as I can in my limited time.

There’s almost no one who has the freedom to practice as much as they want. It’s very rare to have that opportunity. Even conservatory piano majors have to do their coursework. And some people have to work side jobs and learn accompaniments as well. So you want to maximize the effectiveness of the time you have to spend at the piano. What does that mean? It means you’re going to work really hard! But does it mean hours and hours of scales, arpeggios, exercises, Czerny? No, quite the contrary. Exercises are what you do when your brain is tired. You can just work your fingers and do your scales, thirds, octaves, and anything else that you want to do work on. Go for it! But that’s not the hardest thing. The hardest thing is learning music.

Learning music is the most important thing that we do as pianists.

Learning music is important in all styles of music. Of course, other styles have other disciplines. But certainly with solo music and accompaniments, you’re learning scores. And if you try to make that an easier process, you will be less equipped to handle performing. For example, I know people who spend hours and hours a day reading through music. Now that’s good for developing your reading. You will become a better reader if you do that. Although I know people who spend a great deal of time, but they never quite get their playing to a high level. They spend hours and hours practicing. But it’s not really practicing, because practicing is a thought process.

If you’re just mindlessly reading notes and letting your fingers follow the score, even if you’re working for hours and hours a day, you might not accomplish very much. But when you memorize music, methodically working through small chunks and assimilating them, getting them on a high level, that takes tremendous mental effort! Almost as tough is refining the music you’ve already learned. You must go through slowly and carefully, making sure every nuance of every phrase is just as the composer wrote, studying the score and then taking small enough sections that you can assimilate and incorporate all those tiny refinements of the score into your playing. That is really hard work! When you’ve done even an hour of that kind of practice, you will know you’ve done some work. And you’ll have something accomplished for it!

This kind of practice is very hard, but extremely rewarding!

When you’re performing a piece that you have on a high level, it is such a joy. To have that kind of command over the music is a great experience. It’s worth the sweat and effort you put into your practice! So remember to make your practicing hard, so you’re performing is easy. It’s worth it! And for those of you who don’t feel that way, you’re going to enjoy what you’re doing. But understand that you’re not going to get that pristine high level in your playing by just having casual practice. If that’s what you’re after, that’s fine. But if you want to play on a high level, you must go through the steps. Make your practicing worth it! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why learning music one line at a time makes no sense. I’m going to demonstrate this for you in two ways. First, I’m going to play the beginning of Bach’s famous Minuet in G. I’m just going to play the first line. Then I’m going to do something different to show you why it makes absolutely no sense to learn a line of music at a time. It’s not just that it might not be the appropriate length of material to learn at a time. It’s something else that you’re going to understand once I give you this parallel. Let’s take the first line of Bach’s Minuet in G. Bach composed so many of these lovely pieces that are little gems that are accessible even to people in relatively early years of study. I love these pieces! They are a treasure for piano students. And they’re great pieces as well.

If you approach this piece and learn just the first line to start, why wouldn’t that make sense?

For an example, I’m going to read you a little bit of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. I’m just going to read the first line of this play. “The fog was where I wanted to be, halfway down the path you can’t see this…” That first line doesn’t really make sense. But if I were to read the entire line, it says, “The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house.” Alright, now that has meaning. So how does that relate to music? Well, if you listen to the rest of the musical phrase of the Bach Minuet, not just the line, you get the full musical idea. Just as the text of the play makes more sense by finishing the sentence, the music makes more sense by finishing the phrase, which doesn’t always line up with the lines of music.

Instead of learning music line by line, learn one phrase at a time.

The phrase is a complete thought, whereas the line is arbitrary. It makes much more sense to learn the phrase. Now if that’s too much material to learn, you could break it in half and learn half phrases at a time. That would still make sense. Knowing how much music to learn at a time is important. If I go further with this Eugene O’Neill play, the next sentence, “You’d never know it was here or any of the other places down the…” Obviously, that doesn’t work at all. Of course, it’s supposed to go on. “You’d never know it was here or any of the other places down the avenue.” Much like on the Bach Minuet, if I take the next phrase and just go to the end of the line, you end up with an incomplete thought. It makes about as much sense as learning half a sentence in a play, doesn’t it? Because you need to finish the phrase.

The music is written out on the page in a certain way, but that has no bearing on how much to learn at a time.

It’s critical to learn sections that make sense musically. Also, to take the amount that you can digest in a relatively reasonable amount of time. Because if you take too large of a chunk, just like if you are memorizing lines of a play and you try to memorize a whole paragraph, you might read it until your eyes are crossed and you still might not get it! But if you take just a sentence at a time and string the sentences together it is much more digestible. It’s exactly the same with your music! Take an amount you can digest, learning hands separately, taking five minutes with each hand, another five minutes to put them together, and then you can go on phrase by phrase connecting material as you go. It’s just like memorizing a play!

I hope this is helpful for you! I hope it’s opened your eyes to the significance of the musical phrase. Sometimes phrases are delineated with slur markings over them. Sometimes you just have to get a sense of the music in order to know how much to take at a time, because it varies tremendously. Some pieces have very long phrases, other pieces have shorter phrases. So it isn’t one-size-fits-all. You have to use your musical sense by reading through the piece first to understand the structure and the sizes of the phrases. Thanks so much 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

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to project your piano playing in a hall. This isn’t just for when you’re playing in a concert hall. This is actually appropriate for anyone playing in any room. And it’s drastically different from what you might think! I’ll give you an analogy. Let’s say you go to a museum and look at some gorgeous paintings. You see a magnificent impressionist landscape painting from across the room by one of the great French impressionists. And as you get closer, you see the beauty, the colors and the wonderful imagery. But if you get close enough, at a certain point, you just see little jabs of paint all over the canvas. It doesn’t even look like an image anymore! It almost has a grotesque quality to it when you get too close. But when you back up, the beauty of the artwork is revealed.

When you are playing the piano, you are closer to that instrument than anyone who’s listening to you.

You get a skewed idea of the sound you’re creating, because you don’t hear what it sounds like for anybody else. Just like in the museum, being too close to a painting looks angular. If you want your playing to project, particularly in a hall or a church where there’s reverberation, you have to delineate things much more clearly than you ever would imagine. This goes for articulations, phrasings and dynamics. They all have to be exaggerated.

I’ve played in many orchestras as a French hornist. Sometimes a solo is written to be played piano. But a solo that’s written piano for horn, clarinet, oboe, or flute has a much bigger sound when you’re in the orchestra. Because to project even a quiet solo out into the hall requires a tremendous amount of energy. If you play the beginning of a slow movement of a Mozart Sonata in a lackluster fashion, without projecting, as if you just want to hear it for yourself, it may sound fine to you sitting right at the piano. But from even a short distance away someone listening to you probably won’t get a sense of the performance. It’s just out there somewhere and it doesn’t really draw you in. But if you play with much more intensity and articulate all the notes, and more importantly, the line and dynamic changes, then you’ll get something that may sound exaggerated for you. But for someone listening to you, it sounds more distinct. You have to put much more energy into the phrasing. There are bigger rises and falls of dynamics. The articulation, the slurs, and all the little markings are exaggerated and delineated so that it comes through throughout the room. This technique is not just for quiet music. It’s equally important in more heroic music.

This is a really important lesson about how to play for other people.

This is not just for playing in concert halls. Even in your own living room, for people across the room, the sound is dramatically different from sitting right in front of the piano. In order to project your ideas, your interpretation, your musicianship and your concept of the music, you must delineate and exaggerate! It may even have a slightly grotesque quality when you’re playing it, much like looking at an impressionist painting up close. This is because you’re really stretching everything so that it comes across, whether somebody is ten feet away or one hundred feet away. I hope this is a valuable lesson for you!

If you ever have the opportunity to go to a concert hall with a fellow pianist and play for one another, you could try this out for yourself! Or you could even take a recording device. Record it two different ways and see which one you like better! Thanks so much 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

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Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. I have a tip for your practice that can save you vast amounts of time! The subject today is the secret power of interlocking phrases. I’ll explain what I mean, but first I’m going to give you an idea of how I practice the piano and how I teach others to practice the piano.

There are many different skill sets in practicing the piano.

For example, if you’re accompanying and reading, that’s one type of skill. If you’re improvising, that’s another skill. But if you are memorizing music and you want some tips about that, you’ve come to the right place! Taking a small phrase at a time hands separately and mastering all the elements of the music is the way I’ve been taught to memorize music from the time I started the piano as a young child. My father, Morton Estrin, taught this method. It’s so powerful!

Let’s say you are learning the famous Mozart Sonata K. 545 in C major. Of course you’d want to read through it first to get familiar with it. But then my suggestion is to get right to work and start learning it rather than playing it over and over again. It’s almost impossible to absorb all the thousands of details in the music, because you don’t just have the notes and rhythm. You have to figure out fingering, phrasing, and the expression as well. There’s so much information to digest; which is why you want to learn small chunks at a time, hands separately at first, putting together each phrase, then connecting sections as you learn them.

Taking smaller chunks is great because you’ll never work yourself too hard, which enables you to sustain a longer productive practice.

Let’s say you just take the very first phrase, right-hand alone. You get that memorized. You get it fluid. You check your work. Then you take the left-hand, and you get that perfect. Then you put the hands together, slowly at first. Then you go on and learn the next phrase one hand at a time. You get that memorized hands together. Now you think, great, I’m going to go back to the beginning and connect the phrases. You play the first phrase, which you’ve gotten up to speed. You start slower at first to give yourself a chance to connect the phrases smoothly. But when you reach the end of the first phrase, you feel lost. The tip I’m going to give you is going to make this a fluid process. You will be able to connect your phrases like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces fit together perfectly right from the get-go!

Go one note beyond so you have a common note between the two phrases.

So, as you learn the right hand, take the first phrase plus the first note of the second phrase. That is the connecting note. You do the same thing with the left hand. And when you put the hands together, you will play through the first phrase landing on the first note of the second phrase. When you learn the next phrase, you do the same thing. This makes it a seamless process to connect phrases as you go. The hardest part about learning music is putting the hands together, which is why you want to solidify each hand separately first, getting them up to tempo, fluid and repeatable. This gives you half a chance of being able to put the hands together to get them memorized. The next hardest thing is connecting phrase to phrase in a smooth manner. By using interlocking phrases this way, where each phrase is going one note beyond, you have that connection note!

This is a great tip that I want all of you to try out! Let me know how it works for you! You’ll find this will save you a lot of time in your practice as you connect your phrases. Thanks so much 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

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