Piano Lessons- Music Theory Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how you can develop brilliant octaves in your piano playing. It’s exciting when you go to a concert and there are big octave sections, like in the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor Piano Concerto. Or, in Liszt or Chopin octave sections where both hands are playing octaves in unison. There’s a power to it that is so exciting! It almost seems impossible if you’ve never done it before. But there are techniques that I’m going to share with you.

I’ve been working on the Liszt B minor Sonata for a recording session that I’m doing later this year. In relearning this piece, I’ve had an epiphany that I’m going to share with you. But first, I want to show you the essentials that I’ve covered before in previous videos.

What are the essential techniques for brilliant octaves?

Just playing octaves doesn’t seem very difficult. So what’s the technique? Playing octaves with the arms won’t work at speed because the arms are just too big to move fast enough. There’s a limitation to how fast the arms can go. So it comes down to the wrists. I’ve talked a great deal about the importance of the wrists in piano technique. It’s important to use your wrists not just for octaves and fast chords, but also for articulating staccatos. Even in Baroque and Classical period music, the wrists are so important for clarity of your phrasing. Even for something like a Bach minuet. If you were to play a Bach minuet without using your wrists for staccatos, it just would be lacking in definition. By using the wrists on the staccatos, instead of the arm, it has far greater clarity. Even for music that was written when the piano was in its infancy, the wrists delineate phrasing in a way that the arms can never achieve. But when you’re doing fast octave or chord technique, the wrists have to be independent from the arms. But there’s more to it than that.

The most important thing for achieving fast octaves is maintaining an arch position of your hands.

One secret of octaves is having your hands in exactly the right place. In order to accomplish this, you use a technique I refer to as, the arches. Your hand must form an arch. The arch is an amazingly strong structure. The Roman aqueducts used arches. A tent that you go camping in has supports that form an arch, and they’re very strong to withstand winds. Your hand must have an arch for strength as well. You do this to mitigate the difference in strength between the thumb and the pinky. Forming an arch equalizes the force that you have on either side of your hands. Even with an arch, the other fingers are in the way, aren’t they? So the other fingers need to go up and out of the way. This forms another arch! There are two sets of arches, essentially. The arch for support, and the arch to get the fingers out of the way. That way, positioning your hands less than an inch over the keys, any effort goes directly to playing the keys. You want to always keep your hands just a fraction of an inch above the keys, never touching the keys. You don’t want a big motion because there’s no time for that. If you place your hands precisely over the keys, less than an inch, with a nice arch, you can get tremendous power and speed with a minimal amount of effort.

How do you practice the arch technique?

There’s a great little exercise I’d like to show you. You must not use the arm for the up and down motion of octaves, only for going from key to key, moving towards the fallboard for black keys, and closer to the edge of the keys for white keys. Set the metronome to 60 and just play a slow C major scale in octaves. When you play this, your wrists should be moving up and down, but your arms should just be making a fluid motion over the keys. The arms provide absolutely no up and down motion at all. Maintain the arch position between your thumb and pinky, and keep your other fingers up and out of the way. That doesn’t seem hard. To play it correctly, however, is very important. It’s how you play this exercise that will develop your strength. If you just play with your arms, it might work at a slow tempo. With your metronome set at 60, you could play almost any way at all, and it’s going to come out! But to get greater speed, the motion must all come from your wrists. The wrists can go very fast! Once you’re secure and you’re not using any up and down arm motion, just your wrists, go to two notes to the beat, then three notes to the beat. Go as fast as you possibly can, adding a note each time.

Playing fast octaves with the arms feels horrendous.

Playing with the arms, and not the wrists, is painful. And you can’t get control or speed. The secret of the arch is equalizing the force of the pinky with the thumb so you get a sound that is equal in both notes of the octave. As you go faster, stay closer to the keys and play lighter. That’s the secret of fast octaves! Develop the independence of the wrist and unlock the secret power of the arch! Work slowly and identify the wrists separate from your arms as you practice octaves. For some people, this comes very quickly. Other people struggle for a long time because it’s not something you’re accustomed to doing, isolating wrist motion from your arms. Sometimes, I liken it to waving bye-bye, just moving your wrists up and down keeping them separate from your arms.

The arms only place the hands over the right keys, the wrists provide the up and down motion.

Using the arms will just slow you down and make everything much heavier. Get used to waving bye-bye first. Then, eventually get into the arch position. You’ll be able to get clear, fast octaves! So that’s what brilliant octave technique is all about! You can work on your octaves with the exercise I’ve shown you. Learn to get into the arch position. Start off just waving bye-bye a bit, and then go to the piano and try it out. Then get into the arch position and work on the octave exercise. And you can develop brilliant octaves. I promise you! I’m 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

Supplemental Content:

How to Play Piano PT 2 – It’s All in the Wrists

The Best Piano Exercises (Part 4) – Octaves

A Secret Octave Technique for Piano

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about learning a piece of music from the end to the beginning. This is quite a concept! I once had a long discussion with a pianist who swore by this technique. There is some merit to it. If you watch my videos, you know my practice method is to start from the beginning of a piece. You read it through a couple of times, then get to work learning one small section at a time. Take a little phrase, learn the right-hand, then the left-hand, memorize each of them. Then memorize hands together. Then go on to the next chunk. Connect each section as you go until you get to the end of the piece. Well, what about starting at the end and working backwards?

Why would someone learn a piece backwards?

If you start at the end of a piece and work backwards, when you’re done practicing, the end is already solidified for you. You just get to the beginning and you’re done! It sounds great, doesn’t it? Sometimes you will see a student recital and they’re doing just fine, but when they get to the end, they don’t close strong. The end of their piece is weak and you feel badly for them. Maybe they just didn’t have enough time to get the end of the piece secure. So why not just start a piece from the end? That way, you avoid that whole problem. I have never used this technique, even though this gentleman begged me to do so. He even gave me a score. He said, “Learn this working from the end to the beginning like I learn pieces, and I’ll learn one your way, from the beginning to the end.” And I didn’t take him up on it. You may wonder why not?

Like reading a book, learning a piece of music is a story that unfolds.

There’s a logic to the sequential nature of a musical composition. Dramatic material, motifs, all develop as they go. To go from the end to the beginning is like being in a maze. You don’t know where you are. When you finally get to the beginning you have to rethink everything because it’s not meant to be thought of that way. I just have an aversion to the whole idea. When I’m learning a piece of music, it’s an exciting adventure! I start off at the beginning. I’m always raring to go at the beginning because I’ve often heard the piece before. If I’ve read through it, I’m already a bit familiar with the beginning. As I get further along, I’ll notice similarities to the beginning. It’s fun exploring a piece and seeing the changes along the way. It’s interesting to see how the themes are slightly different in various places.

Learning a piece beginning to end gives you a deep understanding of the structure of the music that learning it backwards would not reveal.

My take on this is that it’s better to learn a piece in order. Afterall, there is a reason the composer wrote it that way! I’m sure some of you have a differing viewpoints. I’d love to hear from you! I’ve articulated some of the benefits of learning from the end to the beginning. Maybe you have others that I haven’t even thought of that would encourage me to try it at least once with a piece of music. For those of you who have tried learning a piece from the end to the beginning and from the beginning to the end, and found one to be better than the other, let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com, and on YouTube. I look forward to hearing from you! I’m 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 you can play really quietly on the piano and have all the notes play. I’m sure you’ve experienced some frustration trying to control the tone of a piano at some point. You’re playing a beautiful melody, trying to craft things just the way you want, and then notes drop out. Is there anything you can do about that? The simple answer is yes, as long as you are playing on a well-regulated piano. If you’re playing on an instrument where some notes don’t respond equally to other notes, it’s going to be impossible to play delicately, and have all the notes play just the way you want them to. But assuming you’re playing on a piano that is regulated properly with all the myriad adjustments of each key, then yes, you can get every note to play as softly as you like!

There’s a way that you can make sure all the notes play no matter how quietly you play them.

It’s possible to go for extreme pianissimo in your playing and it’s a wonderful thing. In fact, there’s no better way to draw an audience in during a performance than playing delicately, where everybody’s hushed listening to what comes next. It’s the contrast between loud and soft that ultimately is key for being able to get dynamic contrast in the first place. Soft doesn’t mean anything if it’s not in relation to something else that is loud. So what’s the technical secret behind this? It’s really quite simple. As long as you push the key from the top of the key to the bottom of the key in one motion, it will always play. Mistakes sometimes happen if you don’t quite push the key all the way down, or if the key’s already down a little bit and then you push it the rest of the way.

It’s helpful to understand how a piano action works.

A piano action is a very complex mechanism that has what’s called a double escapement. You must get to that feeling where you have that click. You probably know what I’m talking about. Particularly on a grand piano you can feel it. But it’s exactly the same on any fine piano, uprights included. There’s an escapement you must overcome. So as you push the key down slowly, you get to a certain point and there’s a little bit of resistance. That’s why you must play with the weight of the arm, which I’ve talked about so many times. If you play with floppy fingers that aren’t supported with the weight of your arm, there’s no way to be sure that the key is going to go all the way down in one smooth motion. So you have to have a certain amount of firmness to your touch in order to achieve this.

The weight of the arm is a great way to achieve balance because the weight transfers smoothly from note to note.

When you’re playing loud, there’s a lot of arm weight supported by the fingers. When you’re playing quietly, there’s very little weight. But there always must be some weight. That is how you get the key to depress from the top of the travel to the bottom of the travel in one motion. Remember to make sure the key isn’t down even a tiny amount before you push it, because that could mess things up. Piano keys are not meant to be able to respond that way. The action will not always be responsive if the key is partially down to begin with. You want to travel from the top to the bottom of the key bed in one motion. Try this and see if it works on your piano! If it doesn’t, ask your piano technician next time you get your piano tuned to check the regulation. It may not be you at all. It could be your piano!

Try this for yourself.

I’m interested in your reactions to this. Let me know what you discover in your playing and on your piano. You can leave comments on LivingPianos.com and on YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me again. We have some big announcements coming soon, so stay tuned! I’m 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

Hi, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com. Living Pianos is now located in the Waterloo Arts District. This is a unique neighborhood in Cleveland Ohio. About one-hundred years ago, Cleveland was the epicenter of culture and wealth in the United States. The Rockefellers and the Carnegies were here. There was Millionaire’s Row on Euclid Avenue. It was a vibrant place. It’s left a legacy of culture and diversity. There’s the Cleveland Orchestra, one of the world’s finest orchestras, about 15 minutes away from here at Severance Hall, which has spectacular acoustics. The Cleveland Museum of Art is one of the great museums in the country. We also have the Cleveland Cultural Gardens that stretch from the lake all the way inland to University Circle, celebrating the diversity of cultures here in this city.

The Waterloo Arts District is about 10 minutes east of downtown a mile from Euclid Beach on Lake Erie. There are a lot of galleries, restaurants, coffee houses, venues, recording studios, you name it, it’s here. My wife and I really love the fact that we’re with like-minded people who appreciate art, music, and culture. It’s really quite an experience living here! Yet the pace is not as intense as Southern California where we lived for so long. You get on the freeway here and it actually moves! You don’t have to worry about rush hour. When we lived in Orange County, we used to love to go to Laguna Beach. The only problem was we couldn’t come home without hitting major traffic.

Take a tour of Living Pianos and the Waterloo Arts District Here

Check out the accompanying video to see the neighborhood and the spectacular new Living Pianos showroom! This area offers so much. One of the region’s noted music venues where national touring acts perform, Beachland Ballroom is right down the street. So there is a nice mix of musicians who come through. There are several vintage record stores, cool bars and restaurants, art galleries, and spectacular murals. It’s a unique part of the city! Last night was Art Walk, which happens the first Friday of every month and it was packed. There are three outdoor stages where bands play. It’s really a vibrant place to be, particularly on the first Friday of the month. There are all kinds of festivals. Next Saturday they’re blocking off the entire street and there will be artists, crafts, music and food. There’s so much to celebrate!

We bought a beautiful building here in the Waterloo Arts District.

There’s room for everything here in our new space. It’s four stories! On the top two floors we have a beautiful place to live. In our music room, we have a vintage, Chickering baby grand that blends right in with the vintage woodwork. My wife has her music studio on the third floor. Downstairs are our pianos in a beautiful showroom with great acoustics! The front part of the building is a Civil War era structure originally built in 1862. Of course we have done some work. Fortunately, the person who owned the building before us was a contractor. Thank goodness, because a lot of the restoration was already done including the plumbing, electrical, and all the important structural work. We just finally got air conditioning in the whole building. It was no easy task. It’s hard to find people to do that kind of work these days. On the lowest level we have our ping pong room. In the back we have a large warehouse that houses our piano shop. We are in the process of remodeling part of it to allow for even more showroom space. I also have a studio on the main level where I shoot a lot of my videos. I do a lot of my teaching there as well. I have students from all around the world!

It’s a new world we live in. It’s so easy to connect with people! That’s why I wanted to connect with you to let you know what’s going on here. If you’re ever in the area, you’re welcome to arrange a visit. We’d love to have you! In the meantime, you can watch videos which we continue producing.

We are celebrating Living Piano’s 15th year and hit 20 million views on YouTube with 95,000 subscribers!

Thanks so much for all your support, we couldn’t do it without you. It’s all for you! So thanks again to everyone. I’m 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

Going way back, Living Piano, originally, was Living Piano: Journey Through Time: Historic Concert Experience. I was playing concerts, but I wanted to play more concerts. It’s always a struggle because, let’s face it, in 21st century America, piano has been in decline for a long time. I wanted to think of something that I could do that was more enriching for audiences. How do you set yourself apart from everybody else? There are so many accomplished pianists. I had this idea of creating a whole experience starting with the harpsichord and fortepiano, which are the predecessors to the piano. I would dress up in period costumes and not only play the harpsichord, but explain what it is and the technology behind it. I bought several historical keyboard instruments and learned how to play and service them. If you’re a harpsichordist or you play fortepiano, you’re also a technician because they need constant maintenance. I got a van and I traveled all through the state of California. I performed at dozens of universities, art centers, and conventions. There was even a Living Pianos cruise! I would play these concerts going from the harpsichord, to the fortepiano, to the modern piano, and beyond, to cutting edge 21st century keyboard technologies, showing the whole lineage, and dressing in various period costumes. I had some of my very talented proteges, prodigy students who would also come out as young Mozart. It was really fun!

I also have always sold pianos because I love pianos.

I wondered what to call the piano business. So, I called it Living Pianos! I had Living Piano, which was the concert experience, and then Living Pianos, where I sold classic restored pianos. So that’s how the name came about. It’s actually a really good fit because we specialize primarily in restored, top-tier American and European pianos, which are so rare today. And they are so expensive to buy new, that most people are shut out of that market. Of course, we always have Steinways, but there are so many other phenomenal brands that many people haven’t even heard of, like August Förster and Ibach. Some of these pianos are phenomenal instruments in their own right. Better than that, each one has its own personality, and I think it’s really enriching to be able to find your voice in music.

I get to connect with so many people through Living Pianos.

Every single day, I get hundreds of emails and hundreds of comments on LivingPianos.com and YouTube. I connect with people all around the world, one-on-one, through lessons on Zoom and other streaming platforms. I also connect with people through the videos, where I get to discuss anything that is important to me. I get to share my passion for music with so many people. That is an unbelievable privilege! Anything that I care about, I find people who also care about those subjects. That is so enriching, because sometimes it’s easy to feel like nobody cares about classical music anymore in society. And yet, when your audience is the world, there are a lot of people out there who share these interests. I get to connect with so many people, and it is thrilling! If I play a live recital, maybe I’ll get a hundred people. That’s a decent size crowd. But I can put out a video and it will reach 1,500 people in 10 hours! It’s my forum. This is really where the crux of my energies go because I love to connect with people. I love the fact that people care about the piano as much as I do. It makes all of the work I put in really worthwhile! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

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

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the importance of the rotation of the hands in piano playing. There are so many applications for this. What do I mean by the rotation of the hands? I’ve talked about the weight of the arm, the importance of using the wrist for staccato, octaves, and chord technique. I’ve talked about how the arms are necessary for really massive chords. The fingers, of course, do so much on the piano. So what’s this about the rotation of the hands?

There are certain instances when the rotation of the hands is absolutely essential.

With broken octaves it’s absolutely essential to rotate the hands. For example, in the famous Alla Turca movement from Mozart’s Sonata in A-major K.331. The last movement is in A minor, incidentally. It has the octave sections earlier on, but at the end the octaves are broken. When you play this, your hand must rotate back and forth. That’s the technique you must use for passages like this. It’s not just in this piece, but this is an extreme example. How would you play this without rotating the hands? I have no idea. I don’t think it would be possible. It’s nearly impossible to do this with the fingers alone. But by rotating your hand back and forth, suddenly it comes to life! It’s actually quite easy when you rotate your hand back and forth.

Feeling the weight transfer from one side of the hand to the other is an essential component of piano playing.

Sometimes the weight has to shift from one side of the hand to the other when you’re playing large intervals. But this technique is useful even in something slow, like the famous E -flat Nocturne of Chopin. There’s a certain rotation you need to get the weight of the arm to transfer from the first finger to the fifth finger. You must rotate! So rotation is an essential part of piano playing. It’s not just with extreme intervals either, although they tend to be places where it’s essential.

I want you to try this in your piano playing!

Think about the weight of your arm and transferring that weight smoothly from one side of your hand to the other in your melodic playing. Certainly with broken octaves, you can see this is absolutely instrumental, no pun intended! I hope this is helpful for you.Try it out! If any of you play the Mozart Alla Turca movement, try rotating your hand, and you’ll appreciate the facility this technique achieves. It makes it so much easier to play. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

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

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to play smoothly on the piano. The answer: Avoid the impossible! What am I talking about? Playing smoothly on the piano is something you hear great artists do. The way they play is just so pristinely smooth. You wish you could achieve that same smoothness in your playing. But your playing sometimes can sound choppy. You don’t know how to achieve that smooth sound that you hear other people doing. You want it so badly, and you wonder, what can you do about it?

One of the most important aspects of learning to play smoothly on the piano is to practice incessantly without the pedal.

When you practice without the pedal you learn how to connect things with your fingers. That’s the secret, in a nutshell, of how to play smoothly. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Oftentimes there are things that are just not possible to play smoothly. So, what can you do about that? Do you just smear it all with the pedal? No. It will sound awful if you do that. You will hear the beginning of the second movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral Sonata as an example in the accompanying video. It’s really hard to connect those opening chords in the right hand. So how do you do it?

The secret is that you shouldn’t try to connect everything.

If you just try to connect everything, you can end up with a mess. There’s no way to bring out any lines. It comes out blocked and choppy. So sacrifice the things that are not as important to connect, for the things that are vitally important to connect, which is the melody! So, in your right hand, you sacrifice the lower notes so that you can connect the melody which is the top line. You can grab a certain amount of those chords on the pedal so it doesn’t sound quite so austere. You purposely let go of the bottom notes so you can connect the top notes. That’s what I mean when I say avoid the impossible. If you try to connect all the notes, you can’t do it. It’s impossible, so don’t even try. If you connect the melody really well, it sounds gorgeous.

Try this in your music!

Whatever you’re playing, when you want to really play smoothly, sacrifice what you can’t connect for what you must connect. That is the lesson for today! Let me know how it works for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com, and on YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

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

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about stage presence. How much should you move during your performance? How much emotion should you show during a performance? This is a deep subject. You would not believe how important stage presence is. I’m going to tell you a personal story first, then I’m going to talk about specific pianists and how they emote through the way they look on stage.

In high school I had an epiphany.

At my high school we had a student recital. There was one girl who sang and I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever heard in my life! I was so excited about it that I went to listen to the tape afterwards. But when I listened to it, I was shocked to discover that it wasn’t as great as I had thought it was. How could I have been so off on that? I thought it was a phenomenal performance. But I realized afterwards, the way she looked at the audience and the vibrancy in her whole presentation made it such an experience to watch her. That’s when I realized the significance of how you look on stage.

Your presence during a performance is part of your personal style.

Sometimes I will watch piano competitions on YouTube to see contest winners. It’s very interesting. But because they’re in a contest situation, oftentimes they’re very robotic. I have a video from years ago about extraneous motion in performance that you can see here. But the opposite of moving a lot is just being very still. I had an experience years ago hearing a great recital of Ivo Pogorelich, a phenomenal pianist. It was interesting how he dealt with the whole performance. Just before he came on stage the lights went out. You couldn’t see anything. The spotlight was on the piano. The hall was completely dark when he came out. Before the audience even stopped applauding, he just sat down and played. Straight ahead, business. He didn’t even look at the audience. I hadn’t seen that before. The playing was so superb though that it really didn’t matter, but it was an extreme style. If you’re on that level, maybe you can get away with that. Now, a polar opposite of that is someone like Lang Lang, who shows everything. For those people who are less sophisticated musically, there’s actually a lot of merit to that. You might not realize the mood of a piece, but when it’s shown with gestures, or even on the face of the performer, it can bring people in.

How do you know how much to emote on stage?

Watching concerts of Andre Watts, every single nuance of the music is interpreted through his body language, particularly his facial expressions. You don’t even have to hear the music to know what he’s emoting moment by moment. But how much is appropriate and how much becomes distracting? I think the most important thing about any kind of motion during a performance, or showing emotion on your face, is that it has to be genuine. If you really feel it and you’re showing it, there’s nothing wrong with that. And for those watching for whom the music is new, they’ll probably pay closer attention based upon the gestures or the facial expressions. It gives a clue to people as to what to listen for, which parts are surprising, which parts are sad. It can all be shown. It’s part of the performance.

Think of a great conductor.

The job of a conductor is to convey the feeling of the music, as well as the timing and many more aspects. Look at Leonard Bernstein conducting and you really get the sense of the music just watching him conduct. If you’ve never heard a Brahms symphony, or even if you have, and you watch him conduct it, you’ll understand it on a deeper level just from watching his face and his gestures. Well, the same is true of performers on the piano to some extent. It can be a very good thing to add to the whole experience of going to a concert. Otherwise you can stay home and just listen to the music and have a first class aural experience. But it’s the whole experience that makes the music greater than the sum of the parts. That’s my opinion. I’m Interested in hearing from you! You can leave comments at LivingPianos.com or on YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

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

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have a special treat for you! Today’s video is about how you can solidify your musical performance. Sometimes you practice a piece and learn the whole thing, but when you perform it, you just can’t count on it coming out the way you want. Maybe sometimes it comes through in practice, but you’re afraid to play for anyone because it’s not dependable. Sometimes your performance comes out well, sometimes it doesn’t. What can you do about that? In this video I’m going to show you how to overcome those insecurities!

How do you approach a new piece of music?

A few years ago I made a video about how to practice a new piece on the piano. I chose a piece randomly. The first thing I did was to read through it. Then I started learning it from the beginning. I practiced in front of you, showing you exactly how I approach a new piece. You can reference that video here. In that video, and in my general practice, I start from the beginning of a piece. I start with a very small phrase, just a couple of measures. I look at just the right hand and figure out the notes, then the rhythm, the fingering, the phrasing, and finally the expression. In other words, looking at all the details to get that one little phrase memorized. Then I do the same thing with the left-hand. I learn that same little phrase, notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression with the left hand. Once I get that memorized, I then put the hands together and get that memorized. Then I go on to the next section in the same way, connecting as I go.

What can you do after you’ve learned a piece of music and you have it memorized, but it’s still not really solid?

Let’s say you learn a piece of music, but you don’t feel 100% confident in your performance. Maybe it was solid at one point, but it’s kind of deteriorated over time. What can you do about that? Well, I have an answer for you! Today, once again, I’m going to show you how I practice. I’m going to practice the Liszt Sonata in B minor which I’ve been working on. We just moved here to the Waterloo Arts District in Cleveland. We finally have air conditioning here! It’s been tough making videos because it’s been very hot. So I decided that I would relearn this piece. I couldn’t find my scores, so I have my father’s old score. It’s tattered, but it has all the notes in it!

When you’re practicing, have the music handy, and of course your trusty metronome. Start from the beginning. In this case, I won’t start from the very beginning because the beginning is slow and there’s nothing technically oriented. I’m going to go ahead and start from where the fun begins! I will check with the metronome when necessary. I won’t necessarily use the metronome throughout, but any time there’s any insecurity with tempo or if I need to do metronome speeds, I want to have a metronome handy. This is a great way to practice. I’m going to play slowly and securely with no pedal. I’ll have the score handy. If anything isn’t right in the pocket, I will stop and reference the score.

You may notice how I don’t just work to the point of getting trouble spots to sound O.K., but to be able to play in a relaxed manner. Try stopping just before a place you miss to give yourself a moment to relax. Then, incorporate the memory of the relaxation right at that point, so when you’re playing up to speed:

It’s like having an infinite amount of relaxation in a speck of time.

Another essential technique is to practice in chords wherever possible to reveal the harmonies and discover the best fingering. Also:

Divide difficult passages into manageable chunks of music.

Then you can put the small sections of music together. But you can feel like you are starting over at each new chunk of music, again fostering playing in a relaxed manner. My father used to say:

Through strength comes relaxation.

There’s a lot of truth to that. Years ago when I first studied the Liszt B Minor Sonata, I didn’t have the strength I have now. I had to sometimes contort my body in order to negotiate some of the most difficult sections of the piece. But over the years, the combination of increased strength, along with practicing relaxing at strategic points has made playing the piano a much more fluid experience. I hope this demonstration of how I work will help you in your practicing!

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