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. Today I’m going to give you five ways to develop your sight-reading skills. Have you ever watched somebody who’s a good sight-reader play a piece of music they’ve never seen before, and it almost sounds like a performance, and wished you could do that? There are countless reasons why sight-reading is a joy if you can do it. In high school, I was a pretty advanced player, but my sight-reading was at an elementary level. I have a video about that. But today I’m going to give you practical tips that you can use to develop your sight-reading skills.
1. Choose pieces that are at your reading level.
I know it can be tempting. You hear a piece of music, and you want to play it so badly. So you try to read through it, and it’s such a struggle that it’s discouraging. More than that, you can’t really get a feel for the piece because you’re stopping and starting so many times. Accept the level that you are at and read pieces at that level. If you read enough of them, you will gain from the experience. Over time, you will grow and be able to read more complex scores.
You want to hear the piece the way it’s meant to be heard. Maybe the beginning isn’t that hard for you, so you take it at a comfortable tempo. But then you’re slowing down, speeding up, and stopping, and you really don’t get a feel for the piece. If you play slowly enough, it’s much more valuable. Even though it might seem frustrating at first, you will gain much more from the experience.
3. Have some pieces that are reading pieces.
I don’t know how many of you are like I was, but I used to memorize all my pieces. When it came to sight-reading, I just couldn’t do it. Well, an answer to that is to have some pieces that are reading pieces. Maybe there are pieces that you can’t really sight-read. You can read parts of it, but other parts are a struggle. Take those pieces and work on the parts you can’t read. Go through them, practicing hands separately, taking little phrases at a time, and get those sections so that you can read through them. You make it a reading piece that you never memorize. You always read it. You use the score, and you gain the confidence to be able to play the piece with the music. This is incredibly important if you ever want to play chamber music, because you’re not going to memorize every single thing that you want to read.
4. Look at groups of notes.
When you’re reading English, you’re not looking at letters; you’re looking at words. It’s the same thing with music. You don’t look at each individual note. You look at chords and clusters of notes, and you grab the meaning of the notes so you understand the essential structure. Instead of just painstakingly looking at each note, try to recognize patterns and intervals so you can grab groups of notes.
This is the most important tip of all, and this was my epiphany with reading. This is the way you truly learn to become a good sight-reader. Why? When you’re playing by yourself, when you miss something, it’s only natural to stop and make corrections. You’re programmed to do that in your practice. It’s almost impossible to keep going when you’re missing notes. But when you’re playing with other people, you have no choice but to keep going. So you learn to make that connection among the three aspects of what you see, what you hear, and what you feel.
If you have any other tips for sight-reading that aren’t covered here, please leave them in the comments for other people. I know this is such an important subject for people. We all want to be better readers, and anything that helps is welcome. 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 going to give you five ways to develop your sight-reading skills. Have you ever watched somebody who’s a good sight-reader play a piece of music they’ve never seen befo
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how a room can affect your piano. This is an incredible story that I would love to share with you. My sister is also a pianist, and a couple of years ago, we were playin
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. The question today is: What happens to old pianos? I’m going to tell you right now that what I’m going to share with you today is very disturbing. For those of you who love piano like
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m asking: Can you play at 208 on the metronome? Metronomes have all kinds of speeds, typically starting at 40 and going to 208. There are metronome applications that you can put on y
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 7 YouTube piano channels you should know about. It’s remarkable what a resource YouTube is. Did you know that YouTube is actually the second-most popular search engine after Google? Which is kind of scary when you consider that they’re both owned by the same company, Alphabet. I’m going to tell you about channels you may already know about and some you may not know about.
I’m going to start with a very popular channel by concert pianist Josh Wright.
Josh Wright Piano is the name of his channel. He’s here in the United States. He started on YouTube in 2009, the same year that Living Pianos started our YouTube channel. He has over 20 million views, 187,000 subscribers, and 711 videos! Josh is very professional in his delivery. He’s a fine pianist, and he’s got so much to offer. He’s a concert pianist and a teacher. He has everything from mastering sight-reading to tutorials on different repertoire, from Chopin waltzes to Scott Joplin rags. He also has performance videos of his playing. He has exercises. He even has videos about the psychology of playing and tips on piano technique. So it’s a really well-rounded channel that covers a lot of basic things that you’re probably interested in.
Tiffany Poon has a very different channel that I came upon years ago, and I’ve been following it ever since.
Tiffany Poon Pianist is the name of her YouTube channel. She’s a young, aspiring concert artist. She gives you a glimpse into what it’s like, from her days at Juilliard to the concert stage. She’s also in the United States. She started on YouTube back in 2007. She has 54 and a half million views, 323,000 subscribers, and 374 videos! From her Juilliard admissions to backstage at concerts, you get a real feeling for what it’s like for a young artist in this world and the psychology of it. She lets you into that world, so you feel like she’s talking just to you. It’s very personal. She reveals her inner emotions about all the things involved in the rigors of concertizing, traveling, and all of that. She’s proud to be releasing her Schumann album, which is just coming out now. This is really an achievement for this young concert pianist. She has tutorial videos on famous piano pieces like Clair de Lune and Chopin Fantaisie-Impromptu. She’s a delightful young woman and an emerging artist worth checking out.
Moving on to the other side of the world, we have Paul Barton.
Paul Barton Piano is located in Thailand. He started on YouTube in 2008. He has 199 million views, 700,000 subscribers, and over 2000 videos! He has involved his daughter in the videos since she was a baby sitting there by the piano. And now, he has four-hand videos playing along with his daughter. Sometimes he’s accompanying his daughter while she’s singing, and it’s really touching to see this development. He has tons of videos, playing famous piano pieces like Clair de Lune. But perhaps you’ve seen his most famous videos, where he plays piano for elephants! Pretty wild stuff. It’s definitely a different YouTube channel that covers many things and has a personal element with the family involvement.
Pianist Magazine is a tremendous resource, and they also have a YouTube channel.
Pianist Magazine is the name of the YouTube channel. One of their main artists is Graham Fitch. He’s in the United Kingdom. He started on YouTube in 2012. The channel has 9.7 million views, 100,000 subscribers, and 350 videos! This is a terrific channel! He gives in-depth tutorials of all different types, like How to Use Rubato and Understanding Meter and Rhythm. He has videos on scales and arpeggios and a masterclass series on different techniques like wrist and octaves, pedaling runs, and passage work. This channel is just a treasure trove of useful tips from a great pianist. Interestingly, Josh Wright, who I mentioned earlier, did an interview with Graham on his channel. So you can see them interacting together, which I think could be richly rewarding for you.
Another great channel you may have come upon is Pianote.
Pianote Official is the name of the YouTube channel, and it’s all the brainchild of Lisa Witt in Canada. The channel started on YouTube in 2008. It has 142 and a half million views, over a million and a half subscribers, and 834 videos! Lisa covers a wide range of styles, from worship music and rock piano to Chopin. She has videos like How to Play by Ear in Three Simple Steps, The Genius of Stevie Wonder and Piano Finger Speed Exercises. And she helps you to be able to match chords to melodies. So it’s not just about classical repertoire. It covers a wide range of styles in a very friendly, easy-to-follow format. It’s worth checking out if that’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.
Another great YouTube channel is Learn Piano with Jazer Lee.
Jazer Lee Piano is the name of the YouTube channel. He’s located in Australia. He started on YouTube in 2017. His channel has 32 million views, over 600,000 subscribers, and 165 videos! He covers piano technique with videos like 5 Classical Pieces Beginners Shouldn’t Skip, 5 Common Pitfalls of Self-taught Pianists, and Learning Piano as an Adult. These are subjects that I’m sure many of you are interested in. His videos are definitely worthwhile!
Next, we have Nahre Sol.
Nahre Sol is the name of her channel. She started on YouTube in 2017. She has 695,000 subscribers, over 54 million views, and 227 videos! She does some spectacular things that you’ve got to check out. For example, she plays Happy Birthday in the style of ten classical composers. And she nails it! It is really fun to listen to things like this. But she also covers things like piano technique. Her videos have very intriguing titles, like Is Chopin Jazz. You really have to see her take on these things. She has a whole series on how to sound like different composers, like Rachmaninoff, Debussy, and Chopin. It’s really interesting to get her insight into these composers. She really grasps the fundamentals, which is how she’s able to improvise and play in these styles. She also has great warm-up exercises. She has really keen insights into the great composers that could be really enriching for you!
That covers the seven great YouTube piano channels, but I have two bonus channels I’d like to share. The first one is Lord V.
Lord Vinheteiro is the name of his channel. You’ve probably already seen him because he’s so famous. He has over a billion views, over 7 million subscribers, and 671 videos! Can you believe it? How could he be that far ahead of everybody else in terms of views? The reason why is because this man is a comic genius! You’ve got to check him out. His videos have the goofiest titles sometimes, and yet, he never disappoints. He always takes you on an interesting journey. The funny thing is, he never talks in his videos! He plays, and he does little routines. He has videos like, Can You Hear The Difference Between a Cheap and Expensive Piano? 10 Songs You’ve Heard and Don’t Know The Name Of, and Can You Play Piano With Your Feet? Sometimes they get absurd, but they are so fun. They’re not usually that long. If you just want to have a blast and laugh your head off, tune in to Lord V, and you won’t be disappointed. Interestingly, Lisa Witt at Pianote has a collaborative video with him where he identifies pianos blindfolded. It’s unbelievable! You’ve got to check that video out! It’s a great introduction to both of these artists.
Lastly, my dear friend Zsolt Bognár.
Living The Classical Life is the name of his channel. This is such a rich resource. He travels the world with an absolutely exquisite video team from Germany and interviews some of the great artists of our time. He’s interviewed artists such as Yuja Wang, Daniil Trifonov, Vladimir Ashkenazy, and Joshua Bell. Zsolt has a way of disarming people, so you feel like they’re talking just to you. It’s almost like you’re grabbing coffee with someone and they’re just pouring their heart out. There’s a personal element to it. He’s able to get these people to just relax and open up. And the production is absolutely stellar! In fact, many of these videos are seen the world over on television broadcast stations. So check out Living The Classical Life – The New Channel. You’ll love it!
Let me know how many of these channels you already watch! Which ones do you like, and why do you like them? 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.
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 going to tell you about 7 YouTube piano channels you should know about. It’s remarkable what a resource YouTube is. Did you know that YouTube is actually the second-most popu
