Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is, “Tempo Must be the Lowest Common Denominator.” What does this mean? You may hear a performance that starts at a nice fast tempo and everything’s going great. Then the performer gets to a section they don’t know quite as well as the rest of the piece, so they slow down in order to make accommodations. Maybe they’ll speed up again when they get to a part they know better. This is a a terrible way to perform, but I understand the temptation. If you know a piece and you can play most of it at a nice tempo that sounds great, but there are one or more parts that you can’t quite play up to tempo, you might want to play everything up to that point at a good tempo and slow down for the sections you are struggling with. But, in a performance, you never want to do that. So, what can you do in order to correct this?
If there are just a few key sections of a piece that you can’t quite play up to tempo, work on those sections!
Zero in on the parts of the piece you can’t play up to tempo and work with a metronome. Set the metronome at a tempo you can keep up with, then slowly increase the tempo to get those sections up to the speed of the rest of the piece. Better yet, work until you can play them even faster than the rest of the piece! Then the weakest parts of your performance become the strongest parts. But if you ever find yourself in a situation where you don’t have parts of your performance up to speed, you must take a tempo at which you can play the whole piece, including those parts. This is very important if you are performing. At a piano lesson, or something of that nature, it’s not really necessary to do this. A teacher will understand if you haven’t quite gotten everything up to speed yet. But in a performance, be sure to lock in the right tempo!
How do you find the right tempo for your performance?
Think of a piece you’re playing where you have a couple of sections that you have really put work into, but your performance is still not secure. Listen to yourself play it. Then find the speed at which you can play those sections comfortably and make that the tempo of your piece. You will give a much more convincing and satisfying performance that maintains tempo throughout, rather than changing tempo to accommodate parts you can’t play as fast. You might think that it makes you sound less impressive because you can play some other parts so fast. But believe me, it will be much more enjoyable for the listener and they will be more impressed with you for giving a more cohesive performance.
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is, “Tempo Must be the Lowest Common Denominator.” What does this mean? You may hear a performance that starts at a nice fast tempo and everything’s going g
Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin with a really interesting subject today, “How mistakes in performance are like driving on ice”. I’ll never forget when I was a young child starting piano lessons with my father, Morton Estrin. While he taught piano at Hofstra University, he also had a huge teaching studio attached to the back of our house. We had a terrace on top of it. We had a lot of fun there. That’s a subject for another video! But what I want to tell you is about recitals my father had in his studio. Monthly, he would feature different students. Some of his students were incredible concert pianists who went on to illustrious careers.
In June, he would have his student recitals for everybody else who were not up to the level of playing a whole recital. That’s where I first got my feet wet in performing. I remember how terrifying it was because you practice and practice. You get used to playing your pieces. Then you get in front of people, and everything feels totally different! Something goes wrong, your hands are sweating, and everything seems surrealistic, exaggerated, almost like being in some kind of dream state.
But it can be like a nightmare when something goes wrong.
So, how do you deal with such a thing? And what am I talking about, mistakes being like driving on ice? It’s a very good analogy. Before I tell you about this analogy, let me share something with you I’ve mentioned before about mistakes in performance and how to deal with them appropriately. The way I sometimes describe it is, if you just keep going, most people aren’t going to notice mistakes. People who are intimately familiar with the score will probably notice. But even if they are:
If you keep the music going, that’s key because it keeps the performance enjoyable.
That is the important thing. It’s like going to see a motion picture. If you were watching a film and suddenly there was an edit which jumped back or forward even a fraction of a second, it would be jarring. And that’s what happens if you lose your rhythm or continuity in a musical performance. So, how is this like driving on ice?
If you’re ever driving a car on ice, as soon as it happens, it’s an unnerving feeling, because when you turn the steering wheel and nothing happens. Press the brake, no response! And so what do you do? Do you just go wild trying different things? Do you put the car in reverse? No, you don’t put it in reverse! You don’t start over-steering or hitting the brakes like crazy. Instead, you realize that you’re just going to keep going in that direction like it or not. Eventually, you’re going to hit dry ground and you’re going to gain control of your car.
It’s exactly the same thing in musical performance. Something goes wrong. Of course, it’s horrifying, just like driving a car and losing control. Even though your life isn’t in danger, you don’t feel that way. You feel like your life is flashing before your eyes! You’ve got a whole audience looking at you and even though everything went perfectly in practice, suddenly you find yourself in this horrendous situation.
The best thing you can do is keep your fingers moving.
Keep any part of the score you can remember, even if it’s a mishmash of notes, until your fingers and your ears can piece together where you are, and you keep moving forward. That’s the secret for getting through mistakes in performance. You never stop and correct them. This creates a real problem because in practice, of course, you always stop and correct mistakes because that’s what practicing is about. Performance is a completely different situation. I’ve talked about the necessity of practicing performance. You have to practice performing or else when it finally happens, you’re not ready for it. You can first try recording your playing on your phone or other device as if it’s a performance and see if you can generate some excitement that way. Then play for family members, trusted friends, then maybe groups of people, until finally you’re ready to do a live performance. At any time, even if you’re with a group of friends and something goes wrong, don’t stop and say, “Oh, I can play this perfectly. Let me start it over.” No.
Make it a performance!
This is an ideal opportunity to iron out what you’ll do in an actual performance when something inevitably goes wrong. And I’ve got news for you. You might think that concert pianists know the music so well, nothing ever goes wrong. That’s not true. There are always catastrophes! I don’t care how much you practice and how great you are, things will happen, whether it’s memory or something, where the piano doesn’t feel quite right and you find yourself in the wrong place, not feeling comfortable.
So, remember, just like driving on ice, don’t freak out! Just keep going until you get some traction in your music, just like in the car, and you’re going to be just fine. Try it the next time you perform. I’m very interested in any of you who have had this kind of experience. And for those of you who haven’t done this before, and you try it, let me know how it works for you. I’m really interested! Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource. See you next time!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin with a really interesting subject today, “How mistakes in performance are like driving on ice”. I’ll never forget when I was a young child starting piano lessons with my father, Morton Es
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we have a piano quiz! You can take this quiz below. It should be a lot of fun! It’s not very long or very difficult. There are just five questions. I’m going to ask all five questions, then go back and give you the answers. You can see how well you’ve done on this. Also, you can email me and let me know any thoughts you have about these questions.
The first three questions are true or false.
1. If you buy a new Steinway piano, it will go up in value. True or false?
2. Concert pianists practice scales and exercises for many hours every day. True or false?
3. If you see the Yamaha name on a piano, you can be assured that it is a good quality mid-range instrument. True or false?
The next two questions are multiple choice.
4. Why are there repeat signs in music? A.) They provide performers with flexibility of timing for programming.
B.) It saves paper!
C.) They help composers increase their output without having to do extra work.
5. Ideally, how often should your piano be tuned? A.) Twice a year is perfect because of seasonal changes.
B.) Having your piano tuned once a month keeps it in tune best.
C.) Your piano should be tuned constantly, every time you play it.
Here are the Answers!
Now we’re going to go back and see how well you did on these questions. Here is the first question, once again:
1. If you buy a new Steinway piano, it will go up in value. True or false? This is a really tough question. If I just had a choice of true or false, I would say true. Now, you might wonder, how can this be? Let’s think about this. My grandfather bought my father a brand new Steinway baby grand in 1939. He paid $900 for it. That same model Steinway now sells for around $80,000. So yes, if you keep it long enough, it’s going to go up in value. But one thing to consider is inflation. Of course, condition is of paramount importance. I rebuilt that particular Steinway of my father’s, so it’s worth quite a bit. But if a Steinway is completely thrashed over the years, if it’s been subjected to the elements, it can have very little value. So, it’s really kind of true or false, depending on the conditions.
Here’s how it can be false.If you buy a brand new Steinway piano, and then just a few years later you want to sell it, you’re going to take a loss because it takes a long time for the yearly increases in the list prices and the sale prices of Steinway pianos to overcome the new versus used value. Like when driving a car off the dealer parking lot, you know that it’s going to lose a tremendous amount of value immediately. The same is true with pianos. But if you keep the piano long enough, the new ones keep going up, so you could be in pretty good shape, provided you take good care of it.
2. Concert pianists practice scales and exercises for many hours every day. True or false? A lot of you are going to be really surprised about this one. The answer is false. You might think concert pianists practice scales, arpeggios and exercises relentlessly. At some point in every concert pianist’s life, they have spent countless hours working on scales, arpeggios, octave exercises, thirds, trills and other technical studies. This goes on for years. But with touring concert pianists, they are so busy learning repertoire. They get such precious little time to practice. So when they’re practicing, they’re going through their programs, their concertos, their chamber music. Sure, they’re going to spend some time with scales, arpeggios and exercises, but the vast amount of the time they spend is rehearsing and practicing for upcoming performances. They don’t have vast amounts of time to practice exercises and scales every day.
3. If you see the Yamaha name on a piano, you can be assured that it is a good quality mid-range instrument. True or false? This is false. Yamaha is a very large music company. In fact, they’re the largest music company in the world! They have pianos on every conceivable level. Most Yamaha pianos you find out there are good mid-range pianos like the U series uprights and CX series grands. They’re good quality pianos for the money with a sweet spot of price and performance, so they’re very popular. But there are also Indonesian-made Yamahas that are entry-level, promotional-level, bare bones instruments. They are well made, of course, but they are far from what I would call fine instruments. On the other end of the spectrum, there are SX and CF series of Yamaha pianos that can be more expensive than Steinways. These instruments are meticulously crafted to the highest possible standards. So, the name Yamaha doesn’t tell you much about the level of piano you’re looking at.
4. Why are there repeat signs in music? Believe it or not, the answer is B.) It saves paper! Now, you might wonder if that’s serious. It is. Here’s the thing about repeat signs. Sometimes you’ll have one edition of a piece with repeats and you’ll have another edition of the same piece with the repeated music printed out in the score. If you saw the repeat notated, you wouldn’t think of leaving it out. But with repeat signs, somehow people get the feeling they are optional. Repeats are an intrinsic part of the composition and composers do it not only to save paper. Think about composers back when they had to write with duck quills. That was no easy task. Anything to save time was a godsend for them. I’m a firm believer in taking repeats. If you find a piece of music where the repeats don’t make sense and it seems too long, consider that maybe your tempo is too slow. The repeats are put in there for good reasons and they make the structure of the piece gel.
5. Ideally, how often should your piano be tuned? I consider twice a year to be the minimum. My father always had his pianos tuned once a month, and yet, by the end of the month they were out of tune. Believe it or not, the answer is C.) Your piano should be tuned constantly every time you play it!
Think about going to a concert featuring a guitar player. Between each song they tune the guitar because it’s going out of tune little by little. Well, so is your piano! It’s just not practical to tune it constantly. At my father’s recording sessions, as well as many other pianists’ recording sessions, the tuner is there. When they hear any notes going out of tune, which can happen at any time, there will be a break in the session, and the tuner will touch-up the few unisons that are out of tune. In a perfect world your piano would be tuned every day! That might be a surprise to some of you, But in recital halls at music conservatories, it’s not unusual for pianos to be tuned daily.
How well did you do? Do any of you have different ideas about these subjects? I know a lot of these questions are subjective in how you answer them. I hope this has been enjoyable for you!
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we have a piano quiz! You can take this quiz below. It should be a lot of fun! It’s not very long or very difficult. There are just five questions. I’m going to ask all five ques
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is, “Can You Play Expressively on a Portable Piano?” I am presenting an award-winning digital piano for you. I first saw the Casio Privia PX-S1000 and S3000 when it was introduced at the NAMM show, the huge, annual, international music trade show in Anaheim, California. I knew immediately that I wanted to buy one for myself! You might wonder why. I have all kinds of pianos. I have the top-of-the-line Casio Grand Hybrid and my beautiful semi-concert grand Baldwin SF10. Why would I need this? Well, with the Casio Privia PX- S3000, you just take off four thumb screws, and you’ve got a 24-pound piano you can take with you anywhere! It even runs on batteries! And I was blown away by the sound. The on-board speakers are really nice, the action feels great. I just love this piano! I even got one for my daughter! I think it’s an ideal piano for a lot of folks. And It’s only a few hundred bucks. How can you beat it? Casio has been winning awards like crazy on these pianos. It’s really pretty remarkable.
What’s the difference between the PX S1000 and the PX S3000?
There are more sounds and rhythms on the 3000. But you get the same action, the same speakers, the same high quality piano sounds on both. You also get the addition of a pitch bend wheel and a couple of continuous controllers on thePX S3000. It also has 700 sounds, which is massively more than the 18 assorted sounds on the PX S1000. But if you just want piano and keyboard sounds, the 1000 is a great choice.
There’s so much to love about this piano. It has Bluetooth, so you can use the speakers to stream music from your phone and play along! You also get the incredible Chordana app. This app gets you to all the functions of the piano easily. If you’ve ever used a digital piano, trying to do splits, layers, adjusting the touch, and other functions on a little screen, you know how difficult it can be. On this piano, you just use an iPad or your phone, even an Android phone, and you get to all the functions right in front of you! It even has music education software built in. It’s really pretty amazing.
There have been some questions about the action on this piano. I think the action is stellar for a piano of this type.
One of the challenges with any digital piano is being able to fit an action into a compact package. This is such a sleek cabinet, it’s unbelievable how they fit an action in here. So the question is, can you play expressively on this piano? If you want to know more about the Casio Privia PX S1000 and S3000, there are lots of great videos online. But, today, I’m going to focus on whether you can play expressively on these pianos.
In the accompanying video, I played a little bit of Chopin’s B-flat Minor Nocturne, a piece that has all sorts of flourishes, fast notes, and slow notes, to see if it’s possible to get good control out of this digital piano. You can watch that here:
So, if you want a piano that you can take anywhere, there’s even a backpack that you can pop this thing in. You can take this piano to gigs, to friends, even out to the park to play the piano! I can’t think of anything more fun than this, a piano you can take anywhere!
I’m interested in your opinion. Did you think that was expressive playing? Any of you who have these pianos at home, I’d love to hear your comments.
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is, “Can You Play Expressively on a Portable Piano?” I am presenting an award-winning digital piano for you. I first saw the Casio Privia PX-S1000 and S3000 when
Throughout the centuries, there have been period styles with varying degrees of obvious emotions. For example, listen to Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet or Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. While there may be some people who are put off by the sentimentality of this music, it’s hard to not at least appreciate the rises and falls of phrasing in an attempt to elicit strong feelings of longing, desperation and passion in this music.
But is the emotion in the music?
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In fact, art itself is subjective. Everyone has their own interpretation of what they see and hear. So, how universal emotions are felt in music is one question. But there’s more to this subject.
While there are certainly works of Johann Sebastian Bach which are extremely emotional in nature, such as his B minor Mass, or his Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, there are also works that are masterpieces of counterpoint which primarily hold great intellectual interest. Flash forward to the 20th century with composers who explored 12 tone serialized music which exhibited extreme ordered complexity in works of composers like Anton Webern and Karlheinz Stockhausen and the intellectual demands of listening to this music are predominant. Does this mean that people don’t feel emotion when listening to this music? Not at all! In fact, much atonal music can have a dark mood.
Another aspect to all of this is, how do we as performers address the implied emotions of the musical scores we play? Some people may play even the most blatantly emotional music with reserve so that listeners can take their own cues from the scores. Listen to Sergei Rachmaninoff play his 3rd piano concerto and you will be amazed at how straight he plays his music unlike so many obviously emotional interpretations out there. Performers succumb to emotions to one extent or another.
When I was at the Manhattan School of Music, I had the opportunity to study with a great pianist and teacher, Constance Keene. She described emotions in music like this:
You must play with the memory of the emotion.
She felt that it was self-indulgent to be gushing with emotion while performing music. There are other performers who completely let themselves go with total abandon. Keith Jarrett comes to mind. So, is one type of performance better than the other?
When listening to some of the greatest musicians of all time, there are those who are reserved in their playing allowing the music to speak for itself crafting jewel-like performances of pieces like the great pianist, Josef Lhévinne. Others allow the music to take them to new places every time they perform.
Listen to various recordings of Vladimir Horowitz in concert playing the same piece and you will be amazed at how unique each one of his performances were.
Each performer must find their own balance of emotion versus intellect. I sometimes describe it as the part of you looking down on yourself as you perform making sure you don’t go too far. While performers who let themselves go in performance may hit high points unimagined in practice, it can also lead to disaster!
You can listen to a musical example which demonstrates emotion in music. In the accompanying video, there is original music with unabashed emotions for you.
So, while emotion in music is subjective since music is a language and everyone has their own interpretation of what they see and hear, some composers and performers prioritize control and structure while others allow their emotions to inflict itself one way or another in music. How you feel when you listen to music is a personal thing. Ultimately, the most important thing is to be true to yourself when composing or performing music.
I hope this has been an interesting exploration for you. I welcome more questions and am happy to hear from each of you personally. Again, I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com. Thanks for joining me.
Hi, this is Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource. Today’s topic is emotion in music. Does Music Have to Have Emotion? There’s a lot to this subject, so let’s dive in! Throughout the centuries, there have been perio
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I got a great question from a viewer, “How do You Approach Playing From A Score Compared to Playing From Memory?” They’re two completely different skill sets.
Let me tell you a little story. Years ago I would go to competitions to accompany performers. Sometimes at the last minute someone’s accompanist wouldn’t show up. Maybe it was a kid with some very simple accompaniment. They would ask some of the other accompanists to fill in. But some of them just couldn’t do it unless they practiced. They couldn’t sight read even easy student pieces! They would have to spend the time to learn the score first.
I’ve also seen people who could read very well, but even if they practiced a piece for months, they couldn’t gain security in memorization. They’re two completely different skill sets. So, why do you need both of them anyway? That’s the first question I’m going to answer for you. There are some types of music where reading the score is intrinsically important. There are other times when playing from memory is of tremendous benefit.
Why would you ever have to memorize music?
You’ve got a music rack right in front of you, so why not just read the music? I play solo music from memory all the time. But why? Am I just trying to show off? The secret is that once you have something memorized it’s much easier to play it without having to look up at the music. With solo music, there’s no reason not to have it all memorized. Put the work into the front end and enjoy a much easier performance not having to look up and down from the music to the keyboard.
Why wouldn’t you memorize all your music?
First of all, it’s time consuming. But more importantly, when you play with other musicians, chamber music or accompanying, you absolutely must get a grasp of the entire score. You have to know what everybody is playing. The score shows not just your part, but it has the other musicians’ parts as well. It’s really important when playing with other musicians to have the score so you’re aware of everything going on.
Practicing pieces to be memorized compared to pieces to be played from the score requires completely different methodology.
When approaching a piece of music you want to memorize, you want to read through it just two or three times and then get to work one little section at a time starting with the right hand, learning absolutely everything: the notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing and expression. You can master a small phrase in a couple of minutes. You do the same thing with the left hand part. Get the left hand memorized, just a small phrase. As each phrase is learned, you put the hands together and then connect from the beginning. Eventually you have the whole piece learned and you continue solidifying the memory with and without the score. You get to a point where the music is part of you. It’s a great feeling of liberation!
When accompanying pieces of music, you don’t practice that way.
There might be certain key sections you work on that way, but generally speaking, you go through the piece slowly reading. Any parts that you can’t play satisfactorily, use the band-aid approach. Focus your attention on the parts that you can’t play up to speed and I work on those sections until you can. Try to play so you don’t have to look down at your hands at all so you can keep your eyes on the score and play totally by feel. It seems impossible! There will be quick glances for leaps and things like that. But in your practice, try to make it so you don’t have to look down at your hands at all. You get to the point of total comfort, being completely absorbed with the score. That’s a great feeling because then if you need a quick glance here or there, you’re okay. But never move your head, only your eyes.
How is it possible to play a piece without looking at your hands?
There are some incredibly great blind pianists who could play anything, even music with large leaps So, it is possible. Think about what violinists and cellists do with no frets making big leaps without always being able to look at their hands. So, you can learn to play without looking at the score. These are two completely different ways of practicing. With solo music it is worth memorizing, but when you’re playing with other musicians, seeing the score is of benefit. There are two completely different approaches to practicing. I’m interested in how others have dealt with these issues.
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I got a great question from a viewer, “How do You Approach Playing From A Score Compared to Playing From Memory?” They’re two completely different skill sets. Let me tell you a l
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I want to talk about something that is very dear to my heart. I’ve done quite a number of videos about how to play piano with small hands. My hands are not particularly large, unlike m
Hi, and welcome to LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource, I’m Robert Estrin. I am very pleased to announce that I am offering online video chat piano lessons. This is available to anyone in the world as long as you have a stable internet connection, a piano, as well as a modern smartphone, iPad or computer with a camera and microphone. For those of you who are unfamiliar with video chat, we offer technical support to get you up and running. You can email me at Robert@LivingPianos.com to get more information.
I started teaching the piano assisting my father, concert pianist, Morton Estrin while I was still in high school as my sister, Coren Estrin Mino did before me.
Teaching the piano has been an important continuum in my life and I am making the time to help musicians around the world who may not have great teachers available in their area.
When I attended the Manhattan School of Music in New York City after high school, I was surprised that many of my fellow classmates asked to study with me. There were such great pianists teaching there, however, not all performers are effective teachers.
The most important thing teachers offer students is showing exactly how to practice on a daily basis.
Because, no matter how much you get out of lessons, it is what you do the other 6 days of the week that’s going to make the biggest difference in your progress at the piano. When you have a lesson with a great teacher, you finish the lesson with a clear path of work ahead of you that will consume your time productively for the days that follow. So you accomplish exponentially more at the piano than just the time at the lesson.
I believe that you don’t teach at the student, you teach with the student.
There isn’t one curriculum that works for everybody. You must connect with each individual student with their unique strengths and weaknesses. Not only that, but each student has their own goals at the piano.
So, if you’re interested in finding out more about how to set up private video lessons with me online, please email Robert@LivingPianos.com and I’ll send you more information. Thanks for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Resource.
Hi, and welcome to LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource, I’m Robert Estrin. I am very pleased to announce that I am offering online video chat piano lessons. This is available to anyone in the world as long as you have a stable internet con
Today’s subject seems somber. Yet, it can transcend into something much greater. You may be wondering what death has to do with music – a lot! Just look at some of the most magnificent pieces of music ever created, from Mozart’s Requiem, to
