All posts by Robert Estrin

Is Piano Hard for Everyone?

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Is piano hard for everyone? I know there are some of you out there who are frustrated. You find that you want to play well, and yet it seems so hard. Why is it so hard for you? You see other people play and it seems effortless. So is it really just hard for you? Or is it hard for everyone? I’ve got news for you. Piano is hard for everyone!

There are many different aspects of playing the piano.

Somebody who has very large hands can reach chords you could only dream about reaching. You think, “Oh, it must be great for them.” My father had enormous hands. He could reach some incredible chords in Rachmaninoff. But he had to work extra hard to be able to play delicately. For somebody with really massive hands, playing fast and light is a huge challenge. That’s just one example. Piano playing encompasses so many aspects of the brain, ears, emotions, and memory. For example, some people might have a great deal of emotion in their playing. But maybe it’s a tremendous challenge for them to keep straight where they are in a piece of music. Intellectually, the demands of being able to memorize music and keep track of where they are in an extended work could be really tough. The opposite could also be true.

When you see young kids playing really well, you might think it comes naturally to them. That’s not true.

Those kids practice a lot. I can guarantee it. Nobody comes out of the womb able to play the piano. Sometimes it seems that way. Sometimes it’s sold that way. For example, I went to the Manhattan School of Music. A lot of musicians in the orchestra would say, “I don’t need to take my music home.” They would pretend they didn’t even have to practice, they were just naturally that good. But that is bunk! They would get the parts somewhere else. They were probably actually practicing more than other people. But they wanted to give the illusion of effortlessness.

It takes hard work to be accomplished on the piano or any other instrument.

That is the honest truth. If you spend the time, you will develop. So don’t be discouraged if you find that piano is hard for you. It’s hard for everyone! The things that are hard for you might be easy for someone else, but the opposite is also true. You might think nothing of the fact that rhythms come pretty naturally to you. But somebody else might struggle with them. You have some things in your playing that are much harder for somebody else. So don’t fret. If you find something hard, just spend time with it. Anybody who’s really accomplished on the piano has spent a lot of hours with the instrument over a long period of time. That’s simply what it takes. I hope this is inspiring for you and not discouraging. I’d like to hear from you! Let me know, is piano easy for you? 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

www.LivingPianos.com
www.Facebook.com/LivingPianos
949-244-3729

The Importance of Engagement in Musical Performance

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.

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

Why You Should Practice the Piano Every Day

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

The Secret of the Thumbs in Arpeggios

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about achieving fast, smooth arpeggios by preparing your thumbs way in advance. You know what arpeggios are. But how do you play them fluently? Scales are hard enough with thumb and finger crossings. But with arpeggios, there is a secret to achieving smooth thumb crossings. In the left-hand you have fourth and third finger crossings. But going down in the left-hand or going up in the right hand, you have thumb crossings. I see so many students moving their whole arms for thumb crossings. They move their elbows in and out which disrupts the sound. It doesn’t allow for playing fast. Many people find it helpful to reach with their thumbs. But by the time they do that, it’s already too late!

The secret is to tuck your thumb under when you play the second finger.

That’s right. When the second finger plays, the thumb tucks under. That way, it’s already ready for the next note. The left-hand coming down does the same thing. You don’t want to wait! If you wait to move your thumb until the moment of the crossing, it’s already too late. So tuck the thumb right when you play the second finger. Then you don’t have to move your arm with your elbow going in and out. You are prepared way in advance.

Slow practice of stretching your thumb under right when you play the second finger is the secret for getting smooth thumb crossings in your arpeggios.

If you’ve never tried this before, try it! Work slowly at first. I suggest 60 beats per minute at one note to the beat because you have to train your hand to do this. It’s not going to do it automatically. But once it does become automatic, you’re going to get smoothness and speed out of your arpeggios like you’ve never had before! This is a really important tip. Let me know how it works for you in the comments on LivingPianos.com and 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

How to Make Corrections in Your Playing

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share a tip with you for making corrections in your playing. I’ve discussed so many different techniques, from taking things slowly, referencing the score, playing with the metronome, and playing hands separately. So what could I possibly be bringing to this video that I haven’t shared before? Today I have a tip for you that really helps to make corrections stick. Because that’s the hardest problem, isn’t it? You correct something, but then you make the same mistake again.

The answer is to articulate out loud what the correction is.

Say you’re playing through a piece and you miss something. Well, you have the score handy. You have the patience to find where you are in the score. You realize your mistake and find exactly what the correction is. Then you say the correction out loud, “It’s a fourth finger on F in the right hand. The first time it goes up. The second time, it goes down to the fourth finger on F.” Boom! You verbalized it. Now it’s not abstract. You don’t just say, “I’m going to get that right next time.” You really make the correction omnipresent in your mind. So when you get there, you go, “What was it? Oh, fourth figure F.” Boom! You have that extra bit of information floating in your head just when you need it.

If you’re not 100% sure of what you’re trying to achieve, you’re very unlikely to achieve it.

If you can’t put it into words, you might not really fully grasp what it is you want to do next time. It’s too abstract. You can’t just say, “I want to get that right.” It’s not black and white. It has to be quantifiable and precise. It’s not just the notes. You have to remember every articulation. For example, if you need to remember to play staccato on the repeat of the second section. You say, “Second section, make sure it’s staccato in the right hand.” So you think about where that second section is before you play. You see as you’re coming into it, “Oh yeah. When I get there, I’m going to play staccato in my right hand.”

Articulate it in words!

That’s the tip for today! Among all the other ways of solving problems, make sure you articulate with words specifically what you want to be different in your playing each time you repeat a phrase that you want to correct. 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

How the Well Tempered Clavier are Like Bach Chorales: The Seeds of Western Music

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the similarities between the preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier and Bach chorales. If you know the Well-Tempered Clavier you know that these are monumental works. Bach decided to write these preludes and fugues to celebrate the fact that it was finally possible for keyboard instruments to be tuned in such a way as to be able to play in all the keys. Before that, instruments had to be tuned for specific keys. So he decided to write preludes and fugues in every single major and minor key. But there are 48 preludes and fugues, because he did it twice! There are two books of preludes and fugues. The fugues are masters of counterpoint. The preludes are beautiful little gems in their own right.

The four-part writing in Bach chorales is really the basis for the writing of all of Western music, one could argue.

I had the good fortune of studying four-part harmony with my father when I was a child. I really mastered the art of voice leadings, doublings, and all of that. It stays with me to this day to understand the structure of the music I’m studying, as well as for composing, arranging and improvising. You can see the relationship between the Bach chorales, which are the pure four voice writing containing soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, parts, and what he did in the preludes and fugues. Naturally, none of the preludes are based upon strict four-voice writing, but they’re still based upon the same structure of harmony, voice leadings, doublings, and all of that. For example, if you take the famous C Major Prelude from Book 1, what would happen if it were played more like a four voice chorale? If I were to play it with some passing tones and other non-chord tones, it really wouldn’t be so different from a Bach chorale. But what about another prelude that maybe is not as obvious, like the C Minor Prelude, also from Book 1. Well, it really has the fundamental structure of a chorale as well.

Looking at the music of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Shostakovich, and other composers, you’ll see the same foundation of the essential elements of a Bach chorale.

It’s all just embellishment of one sort or another. Did you ever realize that? Everything back then has just grown like a forest of music from the original seeds of inspiration going back centuries! It’s really remarkable how the language of music has grown. And you can hear how the Bach chorale transcends into more complex music. We could go further, whether it’s Beethoven, the second movement of one of his sonatas, like the Opus 10 Number 1, for example. It’s essentially a chorale. It’s broken up, but it’s the same basic structure. It’s remarkable, isn’t it?

I want you to think about your music, whatever music you’re playing. Whether it’s 21st century or 15th century, even. Notice how these same elements have been in music all along, exemplified beautifully in Bach chorales. I hope this has been interesting for you! 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

www.LivingPianos.com
www.Facebook.com/LivingPianos
949-244-3729