Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com! I’m Robert Estrin. Sight-reading was a real challenge for me when I was a kid. I was playing complex works like Beethoven sonatas and Chopin ballades in high school, but when it came to reading even simple music, I just couldn’t do it. Sound familiar? Well, I eventually discovered the secret to overcoming this obstacle, and I’m going to share it with you today. If you want to improve your sight-reading, keep reading—because at the end, I’ll give you the most powerful tip that changed my life!

Start with Accessible Music

One of the first things I realized is that to improve your sight-reading, you need to read music that’s within your reach. If you choose music that’s too difficult, where you’re stopping and starting every measure, you’re not going to make any progress. You might not love the idea of playing simple, beginner-level music, but if that’s where you are, that’s where you need to start. It may seem like a step back, but trust me—it works. The more you practice music at your level, the more your skills will grow. The key here is continuity. If you can play through simple music without stopping and keep a steady rhythm, you’ll build the foundation needed for more complex pieces later on.

Make Sight-Reading Part of Your Daily Routine

Just like anything else, consistency is key. You don’t need to spend hours each day practicing sight-reading, but you should aim to do a little bit every day. Think about a child learning to read—they don’t get far if they only read occasionally. It’s the same for you. Regular practice is essential for making progress.

Keep Your Eyes on the Score

One of the most important pieces of advice I can give you is this: keep your eyes on the music. It sounds simple, but it’s crucial. Sometimes, it’s tempting to look down at your hands, but the moment you do, you’re no longer sight-reading. You’re just playing.

Of course, if you really need to glance at your hands, it’s okay—but do it quickly, and only look with your eyes. Keep your focus on the score as much as possible. You’ll be amazed at how much better your reading improves when you train yourself to keep your eyes on the music.

Choose a Tempo You Can Maintain

A common mistake is to start too fast. You might get excited and try to push the tempo, but then you end up speeding up and slowing down throughout the piece. This back-and-forth is not helpful for improving your reading skills. Instead, pick a tempo that you can maintain consistently. Once you’ve gone through the piece a few times at a steady pace, you can gradually increase the tempo, but starting slow is important for building fluency.

Don’t Stop—Keep Going!

Here’s the most crucial tip I can offer: don’t stop. This is perhaps the most important distinction between sight-reading and practicing. In sight-reading, you need to keep going, even if you make mistakes. If you stop every time you hit a wrong note, you won’t be able to get a sense of how the piece flows.

It’s okay if you don’t play everything perfectly, especially the first time through. Just keep moving forward and try to capture the overall feel of the music. The more you practice this way, the easier it becomes to read through a piece without getting caught up in minor mistakes.

Look at Groups of Notes, Not Just Individual Notes

When you’re reading, think about the bigger picture. Instead of focusing on each individual note, try to see groups of notes—like half measures or full measures. This is just like how you read words instead of focusing on individual letters. In music, you want to capture the “word” or the phrase, not the individual notes.

The Game-Changing Tip: Play with Other Musicians

Finally, here’s the tip that made all the difference for me: play with other musicians. When I started playing with other people, everything clicked. At first, it was a little uncomfortable, and I felt like I wasn’t doing a good job. I worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up, and I’d be holding the group back. But the truth is, many musicians, especially instrumentalists, rarely get a chance to play with a piano. For them, playing with a piano (even if it’s not perfect) helps them understand how the piece fits together as a whole. They need that accompaniment to bring their part to life.

Playing with other musicians forces you to keep moving. You can’t stop, or the group will fall apart. This pushes you to read more fluently, keep your hands and eyes moving, and create something coherent with the other musicians. You can even accompany children singing simple songs. They will love it! That’s what playing music is all about—making music together, not stopping and starting every measure.

If you can incorporate these tips into your practice, I promise you’ll see big improvements in your sight reading!

And remember, don’t be discouraged if it feels tough at first—just stick with it. You’ll get there! Let me know how this works for you in the comments. And if you’re serious about taking your piano playing to the next level, click the link below for more resources on learning music, refining your skills, and performing with confidence. I’m here to help!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com! I’m Robert Estrin. As a second-generation pianist, teacher, and lifelong lover of music, I’ve had the privilege of experiencing and teaching the piano for most of my life. My father, Morton Estrin, was my teacher for many years, and my sister is also a pianist and teacher. Through this rich family tradition, I’ve learned some powerful lessons that have shaped my approach to both playing and teaching the piano. Today, I want to share with you four keys to accelerate your piano progress that you can start using right away.

1. Always Be Learning New Music

This is a lesson I learned directly from my father. Even in his 80s, he decided to tackle Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition for the first time! You might think, “Isn’t he too old for something like that?” But that was the mindset of a true lifelong learner. My father was always seeking new music to challenge himself, and he would often lament when he saw other pianists playing the same pieces they had performed years ago. He was constantly evolving, always expanding his repertoire.

This idea of continually learning new music is one of the most important things you can do to grow as a musician. It’s how you keep improving and keep your practice fresh. One of my other teachers, who just turned 100, by the way, was the same way. She was always learning new music, even releasing a new album just a few years ago. The key to being a great pianist is to never stop learning.

2. Choose Music That Matches Your Level

Here’s a tip that some of you might find a little surprising. Choose pieces that are within your current skill level. It’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to play music that feels just out of reach, like Clair de Lune or something by Brahms or Rachmaninoff. While it’s important to challenge yourself and occasionally push yourself outside of your comfort zone, you also need to make sure that you’re picking music you can actually master.

The beauty of the piano is that it has an abundance of fantastic music at all levels. Unlike some other instruments, where great music that isn’t extremely challenging can be scarce, the piano offers a wealth of phenomenal pieces that are both rewarding to play and within reach. So, while it’s great to aim for the more challenging pieces down the road, you should primarily focus on mastering music that is right for you now. That way, you’ll gain confidence, control, and the satisfaction of truly getting pieces under your fingers.

3. Perfect three or four Pieces

One mistake I often see is students trying to juggle too many pieces at once. They start a new piece, work on it for a while, then move on to something else before the first piece is fully mastered. This constant shifting can result in a repertoire that’s never truly polished. Instead of spreading yourself too thin, focus on just three or four pieces that you can really perfect. This is how you can make true progress.

Having a smaller selection of pieces that you really work on will allow you to develop a deeper understanding and connection with the music. And it’s important to always have a few pieces in your repertoire that you can confidently perform. Don’t let your pieces get rusty. Keep revisiting and refining them so that they stay in top shape, even as you continue learning new works, while not overwhelming yourself with too many review pieces.

4. Work on a Variety of Techniques

Finally, to make your practice time more effective and engaging, you need to cover a variety of skills each day. Don’t just focus on one aspect of playing. Make sure you’re working on learning new music, refining music, sight-reading, and technique such as scales and arpeggios, as well as more specific things like octave and wrist technique. A well-rounded practice routine is essential for growth.

By incorporating different areas into your daily practice, you’ll stay more engaged and make faster progress. Working on scales and technical exercises may seem tedious at times, but if you incorporate just a few minutes of each practice session on them, trust me, you will develop more strength and security you need to tackle more challenging music. Consistent, focused practice across multiple areas will set you up for success in the long run.

By following these strategies, you’ll see significant improvement in your piano playing!

If you’re looking for more tips and resources to help you along your piano journey, be sure to check out the link below for more information. I’m here to help you supercharge your playing!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com! I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you a piano exercise that can truly transform your playing. And the best part? You don’t need to learn anything new because this technique takes the music you’re already playing and turns it into an exercise for improvement.

Playing the Hands Together

One of the biggest challenges pianists face is playing the hands together, especially as the music gets more complex. When you’re working with advanced pieces, you’re not just dealing with two voices—there are often multiple lines happening at once, and you need to find a way to make them all distinct.

Think of it like listening to an orchestra: you might want to hear the oboe melody while the strings play a soft accompaniment, or perhaps you want the reverse. On the piano, how do you control the various parts to achieve that kind of control over balance?

A Simple, Effective Technique

The answer lies in a technique that you can apply to any piece of music to bring out the different parts in the score. It’s all about varying your articulation between the hands. This allows you to give more emphasis to some voices and let others recede into the background, much like managing multiple instruments in an orchestra.

How to Turn this into an Exercise

You may have difficulty achieving the desired balance of melody being above the accompaniment. The secret is to play with different articulations. Play the melody legato and strongly while playing accompaniment with a gentle finger staccato. This clearly delineates melody and accompaniment from one another and trains your hand to be able to control the individual parts.

Adjust Articulations for Balance

This technique also works well in pieces where you have more complex textures, such as chordal or contrapuntal passages. By breaking out the different lines within a chord or passage, you can practice emphasizing certain notes (playing legato) while letting others fade into the background (with a gentle finger staccato). This works even when you’re not dealing with traditional melody and accompaniment.

In chord playing, you can isolate individual voices. For example, in four-part chorale-type music, you can play each separate voice, one at a time, legato with all the other voices with gentle finger staccato. This gives you control over all of the voices in counterpoint!

The Key to Control: Quantifiable Articulation

The beauty of this technique is that it offers a more precise method of control than simply adjusting dynamics (loud and soft). Instead, it’s about varying the articulation of each hand and each voice by simply using a gentle, staccato touch for the parts you want to underplay and a more pronounced legato or sustaining touch for the melody or important voices.

By doing this, your hands learn to distinguish between the parts of the music, making it easy to bring out anything you like in your music.

Turning Your Music into Exercises

What makes this technique so powerful is that it’s applicable to any music you’re working on. It doesn’t matter whether you’re dealing with a simple melody and accompaniment or a more intricate texture—by adjusting articulations, you can turn any piece into an exercise that develops your control of balance and expressiveness.

In the end, this simple yet effective exercise can take your playing to the next level. You don’t need to learn new music or complicated exercises; just apply this technique to what you’re already working on, and watch your playing transform.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com! I’m Robert Estrin. Today, I want to talk about the number one mistake that is holding you back in your piano playing. If you’ve ever felt like you’re practicing hard but not making the progress you want, this could be the reason. It’s all about clarity. The biggest mistake most pianists make is not being clear about which aspect of their playing they’re working on at any given moment. When you practice, there are many different skills and techniques to focus on. But if you aren’t clear about which one you’re addressing during your practice, you might end up not improving any of them, despite spending a lot of time at the piano. So, let’s dive into why clarity is so important and how it can make your practice sessions more productive.

Know What You’re Working On

To make the most of your practice time, you need to know exactly what you’re aiming to improve. There are several different areas of piano playing that need attention, and they each require different approaches. If you try to address them all at once or don’t have a clear focus, you might end up spreading yourself too thin.

Let’s take a closer look at the different things you need to focus on during your practice.

Learning New Music

One of the most fundamental aspects of piano playing is learning new music. But are you truly learning the music, or just playing through it? If you’re working on learning a piece, you need to be methodical about it. Break it into small sections, work hands separately, and make sure each hand is fluent before putting them together. Progressing this way is far more effective than just playing through the piece over and over and hoping it sticks. Get each section down thoroughly before moving on, and connect the sections as you go.

Developing Reading Skills

Another essential skill is reading music. Reading is a macro skill—it’s something that develops over time with consistent practice. To improve, make reading a part of your daily practice routine. Find music at your current reading level and work through it regularly. Over time, you’ll notice that your reading skills improve. If possible, find someone to play with—whether it’s a singer, another pianist, or a friend who enjoys music. This will help keep ythings moving and make reading more fluid.

Refining Your Playing

After you’ve learned a piece, the next step is refining it. It’s not enough to just play through the piece and hope it sounds good. If you’re not happy with how it sounds, go back to the score and work through it slowly. Take your foot off the pedal, use a metronome, and focus on the details. There are many ways to refine a piece, but it’s important to know whether you’re just playing through it, learning it, or actively refining it. Understanding the difference will help you stay focused and productive.

Developing Technique

Your technique is essential for all your playing. When you refine a piece, you’re already developing technique, but there are other ways to specifically work on technique. For example, knowing all your major and minor scales and arpeggios is crucial. Music is made up of scales and broken chords, so if you’ve mastered these, you won’t have to spend extra time learning them when they appear in your pieces. Spend a small amount of your practice time each day working on technique, including wrist and octave work, and you’ll see improvements across everything you play.

Understanding Music Theory and Structure

Knowing the theory behind the music you play is another critical element. It’s not enough to just learn the notes and rhythms. Understanding the structure of a piece helps you interpret it more effectively. For example, if you’re learning a sonata, it’s important to understand its form. Are you clear on the different sections of the piece? Can you identify how the harmonies shift? Knowing the theory behind the music will make learning and performing much more intuitive and will also strengthen your reading.

Practicing for Performance

Finally, there’s the aspect of performance. Many pianists just play through their pieces in practice, but that’s not the same as performing. To practice for a performance, you need to simulate the experience. Set up a recording device and pretend you’re performing for an audience. Don’t stop, even if you make a mistake—just keep playing. This will help you build confidence and get a better sense of what needs more work. The more you practice performing, the more comfortable and prepared you’ll feel when it’s time for the real thing.

The Key to Productive Practice

To get the most out of your practice sessions, the most important thing is clarity. You need to know exactly what you’re working on at any given moment. Whether you’re learning a new piece, refining your technique, developing your reading skills, or practicing your performance, each skill requires a different focus and methodology. When you approach each of these areas with clear intentions, your practice will be far more effective.

By defining your goals and using a methodical approach, you can make huge strides in your playing. So the next time you sit down at the piano, take a moment to think about what you’re focusing on, and practice accordingly. Knowing what pillar of your playing you’re working on will make all the difference in your progress.