Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share my personal story about how I became a pianist. You might think that it would be obvious. Many of you know that my father, Morton Estrin, was a concert pianist. My sister is also a pianist. I’ve been surrounded with pianists and pianos my whole life! So you might think it’s the most natural thing in the world that I ended up being a pianist. Far from it!

I’ve always loved music.

I had the opportunity to start piano studying with my father when I was seven years old. Shortly thereafter, in fourth grade, I was given a French horn at school to play in the band. I was very taken with the instrument. I loved the tone! The French horn is everything the piano isn’t, and vice versa. On the piano, there’s only so much you can do with tone. Some pianists create a much more beautiful sound than other pianists. There’s something to that. But on the French horn, you can hear just one note and identify the player! What you can do with just one note is extraordinarily limited on the piano. But on the French horn, there is so much you can do with each note. It’s unbelievable! Plus I loved playing in the orchestra and the band. I was very serious about French horn. I divided my time between French horn and piano all through school.

In junior high I had a great French horn teacher, Hugh Cowden.

He was such an inspiration to me. I learned so much from that man that it was unbelievable! He used to come over to my house for lessons. We would go downstairs in the playroom and he would spend all afternoon there with me. We would play duets together, we would play recordings, he would have me do excerpts as well as etudes and concertos and sonatas. I learned all the Mozart Horn Concertos, the Strauss Concertos, the Glière Concerto, the Hindemith Sonata, and more. I really learned a tremendous amount. I loved the French horn. I played in several very good orchestras in high school. I even had the opportunity to play lead French horn with Chuck Mangione, and had a bunch of solos! I also played principal 1st horn on Mahler’s 1st Symphony under Seiji Ozawa on ABC Television at Tanglewood, as well as at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. I was extremely serious about the horn.

In middle school I remember saying to my parents, “How am I going to decide between French horn and piano when it’s time for college?”

My parents told me, “Oh, you’ll know.” And I said, “No, I won’t.” And sure enough, I didn’t! I couldn’t make up my mind between French horn and piano. To some extent, there were many mitigating factors to this. One was, my father had so many brilliant students, many of whom were far more accomplished technically than I was. I have small hands. Growing up, I struggled to develop enough strength to be able to play the literature I wanted to play on the piano. It was really hard for me. I overcame it, but it took much more work. I realized as a teacher, years later, how much easier piano was for so many of my students than it was for me! I’ve had students who could just leap from one level to another because their hands could handle it once they could intellectualize the music. I didn’t have that luxury. I had to work and work to develop the muscles, and to figure out how to break chords I couldn’t reach in order to be able to play advanced piano literature.

I loved playing in orchestra. And furthermore, I enjoyed practicing the French horn more than I enjoyed practicing the piano!

Playing the French horn is a visceral experience. It was just fun going through all the musical excerpts of the famous horn solos, whereas piano was almost drudgery. It takes so much work to memorize music on the piano! I loved refining the music once I had it memorized. That was the part I’ve always loved. But that initial memorization is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And if any of you memorize piano music, you understand. It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Memorizing music is really hard! And it’s an essential part of piano practice (which I have come to enjoy!)

I decided that I would only audition at schools that offered double majors with horn and piano.

That’s why I didn’t apply to Juilliard, because they didn’t offer a double major. But the Manhattan School of Music and the Cleveland Institute of Music did. I applied at those schools and got into both schools on both instruments! I decided to go to the Manhattan School of Music to get to study with the principal horn of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. The piano faculty was tremendous there as well.

When I went to my counselor to put my schedule together, it became obvious that doing a double major would never leave me enough time to practice.

It wasn’t just the private lessons. It was the entire course load that would be doubled up just about. Finding enough time to practice even with just a music performance degree on one instrument is a great challenge since you’re working towards a bachelor of music degree. It’s an academic degree. So you have a substantial course load. You have music theory, history, on and on as well. I decided to be a French horn major, because I could continue to study piano with my father. I wanted to be able to play in the ensembles. Playing with an orchestra is an integral part of playing the French horn. Piano, you can play all by yourself, or you can do collaborative work with four hand piano, accompanying, or chamber music. But you certainly have a lot to keep you busy just with solo repertoire. Whereas with the French horn, almost everything involves other instruments. Even solo music, you’re playing with a piano. But playing in an orchestra, that’s the end goal for a French hornist generally. There are very few people who only play solo French horn.

Well, I had an experience that I won’t go into and I won’t mention the name of the teacher. But it was a miserable experience that maybe I’ll write in a book someday. I’m not going to share it with you because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But a really horrific thing happened and I had to stop studying with the horn teacher who I had. At that point I figured I might as well study with a piano teacher. I was accepted by all the piano teachers at the Manhattan School of Music, which was very thrilling. I chose to study with Constance Keene. I decided to go back to my previous horn teacher, Hugh Cowden. He was such a great horn teacher, so it made sense. So I went and studied with Constance Keene on piano and continued doing horn outside of school.

When did I finally just go for piano?

I haven’t played the horn in quite a number of years. The last time I played the French horn, I played concerts in both New York and California with my father and my daughter! We did the Brahms Horn Trio, which is a magnificent work. You should listen to it if you’ve never heard it. I also performed the Benjamin Britten Serenade for Horn, Strings, and Tenor with an orchestra in Orange County. I was in top shape! This was in the early 2000s. But it was at the same time that I had just put together the concept of my Living Piano: Journey Through Time: Historic Concert Experience. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldMu-RHXfec&list=PLC9F55F8E11E5FBDE I was really gung-ho about this. This ended up being something I performed dozens of times in universities, art centers, and convention halls all over California. I performed this show for the annual conventions of the Music Teachers’ Association, as well as the Piano Technicians Guild. I even did a Living Piano cruise!

I divided my time between French horn and piano up until the early 2000s.

I was in the formative stages of the Living Piano show. My mind was completely wrapped up in it! Yet I had these important performances on the horn. I was practicing the horn incessantly! I had almost no time for the piano. So once those performances were over, I just completely left the horn in the case ever since, which is kind of a shame. I do have some recordings. One of these days maybe I’ll post the Brahms horn trio performance. Naturally, I played the horn part of that. My father, Morton Estrin, played the piano. My daughter, Jenny Estrin, played the violin part. She is an incredibly accomplished violinist!

That’s my personal piano story! I bet many of you are surprised to hear this. Have any of you had experiences with multiple instruments? Have any of you taken as long as me to make up your mind about what instrument would be your primary instrument? I’d love to hear from you! Let me know in the 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

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is, “Do Concert Pianists Have to Keep Learning New Music?” You would think after decades of performing concerts, artists would have enough repertoire to last a lifetime. I grew up around my father, Morton Estrin, who was a concert pianist. He would be aghast when one of his colleagues was playing a New York recital without new repertoire. He would say, “My goodness, that’s the same program they played for their graduate recital at Juilliard 20 years ago!” My father was a firm believer in constantly expanding his repertoire. In fact, it wasn’t until he was in his eighties that he learned the complete Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which he then performed at Hofstra University Playhouse.

Concert pianists continue learning new music for their entire careers.

My teacher, Ruth Slenczynska, who you may have seen in the interview here on LivingPianos.com and YouTube, is also a spectacular pianist. She started concertizing at the age of 4! She studied with some of the most luminary pianists of the 20th century, including Rachmaninoff, Schnabel to Cortot and Hoffmann.
At 97 years old, she’s still performing and recording. And yes, she’s learning new music!

Why is it so important to continue expanding your repertoire?

In life, you’re either growing or you’re dying. You must constantly explore new avenues. Never give up your curiosity! As a pianist, you constantly expand your repertoire. This is how you grow as a musician and remain vibrant and vital in this world. In that spirit, I’ve been learning some new pieces lately, and I thought I’d share with you an absolutely stupendous piece of music I’ve always loved, Chopin’s Fantasy in F minor. My father’s first recording in the 1950s for Fantasy Records was of the complete Chopin Ballads and the Fantasy in F minor. So I’m thrilled to share this performance with you!

It’s a pleasure to learn new music!

It’s exciting to explore great works like this! The remarkable thing about piano repertoire is that it’s virtually endless. There’s more great piano music out there than anyone could possibly tackle in a lifetime. The other great thing about piano repertoire is that not all pieces are that difficult. There are pieces of Chopin and dozens of other composers that are very accessible. So no matter what level you’re on, whether you’re a seasoned concert pianist, or just starting out, always learn new music! It enriches your life, and it’s good for your soul! 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’s subject is about why slower means louder on the piano. Now, you might think I’ve gone off the deep end! Obviously, composers write things that are slow, things that are fast, things that are loud, and things that are soft. How can I say that slow means loud?

The piano is a percussion instrument. Hammers hit strings, and the notes die away as soon as you play them. So, longer notes have to last longer. The only way for that to happen is to play them louder! If you were to play equal volume with one hand that’s playing faster than the other, the hand that has the faster notes will sound louder.

Accentuate the melody, especially if it’s slow.

Say you are playing a piece where the melody is very slow. You want to accentuate the melody tremendously for two reasons. First of all, the acoustics of the piano are such that longer notes have to be louder to balance with the other notes that are faster. Secondly, the melody is usually on top, and you want it to be louder anyway. You always want the melody to be louder. You want to play the melody substantially louder than the accompaniment in order to make it come through. Even though the right hand may be drastically louder than the left hand, it still can have a piano quality to the sound.

Use the weight of the arm so you get smooth volume from note to note.

If you just punctuate each note separately without using the weight of the arm to get a natural, beautiful legato, you get an ugly, harsh sound. It can sound lifeless! You will hear a bunch of separate notes, but no line. It’s such a challenge on the piano to form a phrase that has a rise and a fall that’s smooth, which is the analog of the breath of the singer or the bow of the string player. That’s where the weight of the arm comes in.

Higher notes on the piano have less sustain.

There’s one other reason why slow notes have to be articulated so much more than fast notes. The higher up you go, the problem is exacerbated! The higher notes on the piano don’t last very long at all. In the bass, the tone keeps going and going. But most of the time on the piano, you’re playing the melody in the treble and the accompaniment in the bass. The accompaniment usually has more notes than the melody. But the melody should be louder. The notes in the treble don’t last as long, so you have to play them much louder to create a pleasing balance of sound.

So, that is key for the acoustics of the piano! Slow notes have to be played louder than fast notes. That’s the way to achieve a good balance on the piano. Use the weight of the arm in slow melodies. Exaggerate the difference between melody and harmony when the melody is higher than the accompaniment or the notes are longer than the accompaniment, which is so often the case. Let me know how this works for you in the 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

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to take your piano playing to the next level. This is a really fascinating subject. This transcends piano. It even transcends other musical instruments! With almost anything anyone wants to master, it really comes down to a critical mass of practicing. What do I mean by this? The term critical mass is typically associated in physics with radioactive material. You put enough of it together and it starts a chain reaction. But you could have plutonium and it would never start a chain reaction, no matter how much you have, unless you put enough of it in one space at one time. That’s what causes the chain reaction. It’s the same thing with your piano practice or any other endeavor you want to master.

There has to be an extended period of time where you’re spending just about every waking moment at the piano.

Anyone who’s really mastered an instrument has gone through this process. Once you go through that process, you will be forever changed. You will be on another level. You can depend upon what you have given yourself with that experience. Another example of this, since I’m into physics, is something called escape velocity. For example, if you were to go into a rocket, and just keep going and going and going straight up, you will never go into orbit. In fact, the way to go into orbit is not by how far you go, but how fast you go. You have to reach a certain speed to escape the force of Earth’s gravitational pull. There has to be enough speed generated. You have to have enough energy to be able to get your piano playing on that level.

You can practice for your whole life one or two hours a day and never reach that pinnacle of achievement of a true virtuoso technique.

To be a really accomplished concert level player, you have to go through this process. There is no substitute for that. Now that I’ve made this bold statement, since a lot of people watch my videos, I’m interested in your feelings about this. It doesn’t have to be just piano, any field of endeavor. Are there any of you who feel you’ve mastered painting, or physics, or anything, and you haven’t gone through that process of total absorption for an extended amount of time? I want to hear from you! I want to know if it’s possible, because my feeling is that it’s not possible. I believe that’s what it takes, and there is no shortcut to that. You can grow. You can become better. But you’re never going to be on that top echelon level without going through this process. Talk to any friends you have who have mastered their instrument or their craft, and ask them if they’ve gone through this process. I’m really interested in the comments on this one here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I’m here today with the piano owned by Thomas Edison! This piano was purchased by Thomas Edison in 1890 for $725! It’s a Steinway Model B with 85 keys, which is the last year Steinway offered pianos with less than 88 keys. This piano has had some restoration, but is largely original. There are other artifacts about it that are so fascinating, you’re not going to believe it!

This instrument was one of the first pianos ever recorded!

Everybody knows that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but he also invented the phonograph two years earlier in 1877. I have here a recording made, perhaps on this piano, from the late 1800s. It’s played on an original Edison phonograph which used wax cylinders instead of familiar discs. You can hear quite a difference in the recording quality compared to modern recording. But it is remarkable that recordings could be made so long ago. I have the original invoice here from 1890 from Steinway, and a letter Thomas Edison wrote to Steinway from his laboratory.

From the Laboratory
of
Thomas A. Edison

Orange, New Jersey, June 2nd, 90-

Steinway and Sons,

Gents,

I have decided to keep your grand piano.
For some reason unknown to me It gives
better results than any so far tried.
Please send bill with lowest price.

Yours,

Thomas A. Edison

Isn’t that unbelievable? Well, you might wonder where this piano came from.

I’m very pleased to introduce to you someone who you may have seen before here at LivingPianos.com, The Steinway Hunter: Bob Friedman who located this piano and whose home in upstate New York I am in right now.

Robert Estrin:
Bob, it’s a pleasure to be with you here.

Bob Friedman:
Well, thank you. It’s nice that you came to visit me.

Robert Estrin:
A lot of people might not know that you are The Steinway Hunter.

You have perhaps found and sold more Steinway pianos than anyone ever!

I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s arguably true, wouldn’t you say?

Bob Friedman:
I’d say that I haven’t stopped for close to 50 years now. So if I get up to bat every day and do this until the big leagues close, then maybe that will be true!

Robert Estrin:
I know there are so many great stories in The Steinway Hunter, your book, which is a fabulous read. But tell us about how you came upon this piano.

Bob Friedman:
Interestingly enough, it was put up for sale on EstateSale.com in Huntington, Long Island.

Robert Estrin:
Did they even know what they had?

Bob Friedman:
They knew what they had, but they didn’t know the value in the history of the instrument. After all the research was done and all the paperwork confirmed that it was Thomas Edison’s piano, the one that was in his laboratory music room from 1890 when he purchased it new from Steinway until 1929. I bought the piano.

Robert Estrin:

What are your plans for this piano?

I know here it is in your living room, which is awesome. But you have so many pianos coming and going. This should be in a museum or something, shouldn’t it?

Bob Friedman:
We’re hoping to do a Smithsonian documentary, and then to try and find a home for it in a museum that would like to house the piano.

Robert Estrin:
That would be great! I understand The New York Times was here to do a write up on the piano.

Bob Friedman:
We made some discoveries about the instrument.

Thomas Edison was nearly 100% deaf, and the only way he could hear his instruments and his music boxes was to bite into them.

It just so happens that Edmund Morris, who is a Pulitzer Prize winning biographer who did the last biography on Thomas Edison, completed in 2019, wrote in his book that Edison would bite his piano. The proof was really not out there. It was information that he’d researched over his life and he put it in his book. Well, we made that discovery! A very good associate of mine, who is a historian for Edison, found the bite marks on the piano right there. So, I called up James Barron, who’s a staff writer for The New York Times, and the minute he heard that he said, “I’d like to do a story on the piece.”

Robert Estrin:
People may be thinking, “Why would he bite his piano and his phonograph?” It seems kind of crazy. But it’s because sound travels through solid much more readily than through the air. So your teeth are a fantastic conductor of sound.

Bob Friedman:
The sound goes up into your head. Your head feels like a tuning fork. That’s how Edison heard his piano.

Robert Estrin:
Thank you so much for inviting me into your home and allowing me to play this historical piano. I appreciate it.

Bob Friedman:
And I appreciate it!

Robert Estrin:
We also have here today a wonderful historian who knows a tremendous amount about Thomas Edison. He’s a musician and he’s a piano technician. He also has an incredible collection of early phonographs going back to the 1800s! He can tell us a little bit about the technology. And because he has the unique perspective of being a piano technician and also an Edison historian, he’s going to shed a lot of light on this subject for you.

I’m really pleased to introduce to you, Charles Frommer. Charles, thanks so much for joining us today.

 

Charles Frommer:
Thanks for having me!

Robert Estrin:
You prepped this piano and I’m loving what you did with it. It sounds amazing for an instrument from 1890! It is pretty incredible.

Charles Frommer:
It was a pleasure to work on it. The story goes that Bob Friedman had me come in to tune Thomas Edison’s piano. I was very excited. I’ve been a fan of recording history since I was a kid.

Robert Estrin:
And you have quite a collection of phonographs. What’s the oldest recording gear you own?

Charles Frommer:

My oldest piece of recording equipment is an 1898 Berliner Gramophone, which was sort of the competitor to the cylinder phonograph at the time.

 

Robert Estrin:
A lot of people don’t know that the precursor to the disc was the cylinder. And the reason why discs won out is that you could store them more easily. But was there any sonic advantage to the disc initially?

Charles Frommer:
The discs were more convenient. They were easier to manufacture because you could press them like pancakes, and they were easier to store. They were also a little louder. But Edison was correct in noting that the surface speed was constant on a cylinder, whereas on a disc, as it gets towards the inside, if the rotation is steady, you have less surface per time and the quality reduces. Edison was fairly stubborn in his resistance to using disc technology. I think it was only in 1911 or thereabouts that Edison yielded and made discs. His discs were still different in that he continued his vertical cut technology.

Robert Estrin:

Another interesting thing about Edison is that he chose artists based on how well they reproduced on his technology.

 

He was less interested in the musical content. On many of his cylinders, he wouldn’t even put the names of the artists. He was more concerned with how they sounded. Which is why you have mentioned that he recorded a lot of banjo, because the transients could cut through.

Charles Frommer:
Banjos and woodblocks. Things with a very quick decay. There was actually a diaphragm that vibrated, much like the surface of a banjo. It was connected directly to the cutter, which would cut the wax. That made the groove. There was no electronic interface in between until about 1925. What I find interesting is that there’s a picture of Edison later in life listening to his assistant who’s playing music. He was actually somewhat controlling of the music that he had on his label. He liked to choose what bands would record and what tunes would be recorded. I think his favorite song was I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen. But he would sit and listen while somebody played.

Robert Estrin:
So a dental professional confirmed that these are indeed teeth marks. Is that right?

Charles Frommer:
Yes. I didn’t know what they were. Personally, I was just here to tune. I was halfway through tuning it and I noticed these marks on the top. Usually when a piano has been played by a professional, you will see marks on the fallboard. So I was puzzled by this. And suddenly, I remembered having read somewhere that Edison, being almost completely deaf, would sink his teeth into the wood of his phonograph to listen to records. It was then that I realized that’s what these marks are!

Robert Estrin:
What’s really remarkable is that although this piano has had some restoration along the way with a new sound board, new strings, hammers, and damper felt, that nobody got rid of these marks. And thank goodness for that! It has tremendous historic significance. It is a wonderful instrument and I just want to thank both you and Bob for sharing this instrument with everybody out there.

Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

You can find Bob Friedman’s book, The Steinway Hunter HERE!

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 what piano concert pianists play at home. The first thing to think about is, what piano concert pianists play when concertizing. What piano do you usually find on stage in classical concerts? Most of the time, it’s a Steinway model D concert grand, which is just under 9 feet long. Sometimes, in smaller halls, it could be a 7-foot or just under 7-foot Steinway model B, but usually it’s the 9-foot piano. Touring artists may encounter other great pianos from time to time, but usually they play on Steinways because they are the last company servicing the concert market globally. So, you might think they would want to have that piano at home, so they’re familiar with the pianos they play in concerts. That would provide a seamless adjustment.

A concert grand is oftentimes impractical for homes.

Let’s say someone is performing a Rachmaninoff concerto with an orchestra. That pianist can fill the hall all the way to the back row of the balcony balancing with the full orchestra! There’s a tremendous amount of volume these instruments can produce. So, in somebody’s home, an instrument like this can be overwhelming. You have to have the right room to be able to handle the volume an instrument like this can produce. So the instrument that many concert pianists have at home is the Model B semi-concert grand Steinway, which is just under 7-feet.

The challenge is, a new Steinway B costs around $125,000!

Pianists like Lang Lang and other famous pianists can afford it. But there are many budding young artists who can’t afford a new Steinway B. So, people look in the used market for good Steinway model B’s. The challenge there is that even a late-model Steinway can be very expensive. With the older ones, the challenge is that although Steinway has been making the Model B since 1878, the design has changed. The specifications keep evolving over the years. So When rebuilding an older Steinway, the choice of parts is very difficult, because the design may have different geometry from current Steinway parts. Some parts aren’t even available from Steinway, like soundboards. So, you have to count on somebody being able to craft a great soundboard, and there is no assurance that they’re going to be able to build the kind of soundboard that was on the piano originally.

What is so different about concert grand and semi-concert grand pianos?

 

Obviously, the bass is far greater on larger pianos. But the tone throughout the instruments have more depth because of the larger soundboard, and the sympathetic vibrations of longer strings. Also, with larger pianos, the actions feel different. This is because the keys are longer on these pianos. Of course, not the part of the keys you see, but behind the fallboard the keys are longer. The difference is particularly noticeable when playing black keys and between black keys close to the fallboard. There is greater key travel, so you can control the sound far better.

If you want to compare the sound of a Steinway B to a Steinway D, you can listen to almost any recording of a concert pianist, and in most cases, you will be hearing a 9-foot concert grand Steinway model D since the vast majority of concert pianists record on Steinway D’s.

If you’d like to compare the sound of a 9-foot to a 7-foot Steinway, you can listen to the accompanying video

The video contains performances of the Mozart D minor Fantasy, and Debussy’s Golliwog’s Cakewalk performed on a 1981 Steinway B in concert condition. I hope you’ve enjoyed this! Any comments or questions you have can be addressed here at LivingPianos.com or 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 question today is, “Why do you play too fast?”. Most people try to play faster than they’re comfortable. Sometimes you will have a piece you can play just fine, but when you try to play it slower, you can’t even figure out where you are! There’s a great deal of motor memory or muscle memory that is involved in piano playing. Your fingers just seem to know where to go. So you want to go fast enough that you won’t forget where to go next. The problem with this is, unless the music is really secure, your tempo will fluctuate. You’ll make accommodations to the parts you don’t know quite as well, going a little slower. Then you’ll speed up again so you don’t forget where you are.

Motor memory on the piano is akin to touch typing.

I took a typing class in high school. I learned how to touch-type, so I don’t have to look at the keys. Little did I know, that would be probably the most important course I had in high school! In the computer age, it’s so great to be able to type without looking at your hands. But the funny thing is, if I stop and think where a letter is on the keyboard, for example, the letter “W”, I don’t even know! I have to look at the keyboard. If I have to type on a screen, where the keyboard is smaller, and you have to just touch the letters on the screen with your finger, I can’t even find them! Yet on a keyboard, I can type almost as fast as I can speak. I’m a really fast typist. I was the fastest in my class in high school. I guess all those years of piano paid off in my typing class!

Playing the piano too fast is a rampant problem among many piano students.

What you must do is take the time to slow down your playing and figure out what is there. This can be a painstaking process. I’ve talked a little bit about how sometimes when you want to start in the middle of a piece, you may have to speed up just to figure out what fingers to start with. When you’re playing slowly, you might want to play faster just a little bit at first, just to see where you are, and what fingers are on which notes as a starting point of a section.

Every fine pianist I have ever met practices slowly, incessantly.

There are three things that every accomplished pianist does: practice slowly, practice with a metronome, and practice without the pedal. I’ll also add to that, practice with the music! When you memorize a piece, that doesn’t mean you don’t use the score anymore. As a matter of fact, it’s the opposite. I like to memorize a piece first and then do all my practicing with the score, reinforcing the memory, practicing slowly with the metronome with no pedal and really solidifying.

The reason why you play too fast is because you’re not really cognizant of the score.

You play too fast because you don’t really have an intellectual understanding of the score. You’re just going through the motions. Your fingers kind of remember on their own without knowing what they’re supposed to be doing. But that’s extremely dangerous. It doesn’t have a solid foundation. Things can fall apart if you depend upon that type of playing. Thank goodness we do have motor memory! Piano would be so much more difficult if you couldn’t depend upon it at all. But you want to minimize your reliance upon the feeling of the keys and where your fingers naturally go. Slow, deliberate playing is the way to do it. Refer back to the score.

Try slow, deliberate practicing for yourself!

Take a piece that you can play fast, but you can’t play slowly with security. Take out the score and play slowly. You’re going to discover so many things! You will always find more details than you initially remembered. Your music has so many details in it! Let me know how it works for you here in the comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again 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

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to keep a piano piece in shape. Sometimes it’s the most difficult thing. You have a performance, and you get everything in good shape. But it can be like a ripe banana. Suddenly the whole bunch is just a disaster and you have to throw them away. Sometimes that happens with your piano music! Everything is going just fine, and then suddenly, you feel like you can’t even play! What can you do about this? It’s a tremendous challenge keeping your music on a high level. Sometimes you can peak early. Everything’s in shape, and then at the performance just two or three days later, everything disintegrates. How can you get things back into shape?

Go back to the score!

One of the most important practice techniques for a piece you have learned, whether it’s a reading piece or a memorized piece, is to go back through the score slowly with no pedal, using the metronome, exaggerating everything. Even if it’s a quiet piece of music, it really doesn’t matter what the piece is, play it with everything over articulated. If everything is fine, great! But suppose you’re playing, and little mistakes are happening. You have insecurity, and the technique isn’t clean. Go back to the score! Go slowly. Take your foot off the pedal, and play incredibly deliberately, almost like you’re practicing scales or arpeggios slowly with raised fingers. By doing this, you reprogram your hands. You also reprogram the sound into your head by playing with the metronome very deliberately with raised fingers.

Play slowly and deliberately.

You’ll instantly know if the piece has gone overly ripe, and has started to show some signs of rot. That’s because when you try to play slowly, suddenly you can’t play it! You’ll be tempted to go back to the beginning and play fast just so you can have the satisfaction of playing through it again. But make sure to take the opportunity to slow down and figure out how to play it slowly and deliberately, whatever the piece is. This is the answer: keep your eyes on the score, play with the metronome, without pedal, and play deliberately. If there are staccatos in the piece, you’ll want to articulate those with the wrist. Exaggerate all the dynamics. Exaggerate every finger that goes up and every finger that goes down so you really feel it. You still have the dynamics, but everything is raised up.

Don’t depend upon motor memory.

You’ll find that anything that’s weak, anything you really don’t know, will become obvious. Your fingers sort of have a memory all their own. But you can’t depend upon that. After a while, like making a copy of a copy of a copy, things degrade. You’ll find that the music will deteriorate over time, and your fingers don’t really know what they’re doing anymore if you just keep playing over and over and over and don’t go back to the original source: the score. Use the metronome, take your foot off the pedal so you can hear what you’re doing, and watch the score carefully. You will learn so much! It will help to revitalize your music so it stays in shape. You can get music back into shape using this same technique. Let me know how it works for you! I love to read your comments here on 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

This video was produced by my protégé, Bijan Taghavi. Bijan is a jazz artist who has performed in Los Angeles, New York City, Europe and Asia, and currently tours with Rodney Whitaker who is part of Jazz at Lincoln Center.

Bijan began studying piano with me from the time he was 8 years old, until after high school when he attended the Manhattan School of Music in New York City where he earned a degree in jazz piano studies. He has a masters from Michigan State University, and currently teaches jazz piano at Hillsdale College in Michigan.

From the time Bijan started lessons with me, it was obvious that he had enormous talent. He amassed a repertoire of many of the blockbusters of the piano repertoire, and was part of my Living Piano: Journey Through Time: Historic Concert Experience which we performed together throughout the state of California:

Watch Here

While in high school, Bijan won the South Coast Symphony Competition and performed the Grieg Piano Concerto with the orchestra.

Throughout his studies, Bijan played a great deal of music in popular idioms which he had a natural affinity for in addition to his high level classical playing. Here he is in a performance at the age of 15 performing the Liszt 2nd Hungarian Rhapsody in a concert series we had in our live/work loft:

Watch Performance Here

We maintain a close personal relationship to this day.

Bijan offers jazz piano correspondence lessons you can learn about here: http://www.bijantaghavi.com/personalized-correspondence.html