Piano and Music Videos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about drummers who play the piano. Why do drummers love to play the piano? I want to hear from all of you drummers out there who tune in to this video. Tell us why you love to play the piano.

I have a lot of drummers in my life, and, almost categorically, they all love to play the piano!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to have a piano while traveling. Sometimes I go on vacation, and it’s frustrating not having a piano. I finally have time to devote to the piano, but there is no piano to play! What kind of vacation is that? Maybe you feel the same way. You’re busy all the time, and then when you finally have some free time, there’s no piano. Not that you want to spend your whole vacation practicing the piano, but you certainly want a piano you can play. How can you achieve such a thing?

Bring a digital piano with you!

One way you can have a piano on vacation is by doing what I do. I have a high-quality, very lightweight digital piano that I can take with me. It weighs just 24 pounds! If you have a simple folding X-stand, it takes up so little room. If you like, you can even take some headphones with you so you don’t have to disturb anybody. You can just put it in your trunk along with your other stuff. I’ve taken that piano with me to all kinds of places. What about if you’re flying? This is a big problem, but I have some tips for you!

Do you know that you can search Airbnb for places that have pianos?

You’ll find that there are some places you can stay that have pianos in them. There’s even a website that has places you can stay all over the world that have pianos in them. So that’s an ideal situation. Stay in a nice house, apartment, or condo that has a piano. Maybe you want the amenities and convenience of a hotel. Well, a lot of times, bigger hotels have pianos in them. I’m pretty brave in that respect. I will sneak into rooms and find a piano. You might get kicked out, but you might just be able to play for a while. People might even appreciate it! Sometimes there’s a piano in a bar or a restaurant, and you can possibly play it when they are not that busy.

There are different places you can steal time on pianos, if you’re lucky.

If you have any friends in different cities who have pianos, that is obviously a great way to get some time with a piano. Piano stores are probably not the best place to try to play pianos because they have an agenda of selling pianos. If you’re in there practicing or even playing, that’s probably not going to be conducive to their business. Sometimes a school will have pianos, but getting into schools can be tough. So I recommend finding hotels or Airbnbs that have pianos.

There is another option, but it’s not a very good option…Yet!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about playing by ear. Will playing by ear hurt your classical playing? There are many teachers who tell their students they must not play by ear because it will mess up the precision of their classical playing. The only ounce of truth to this is if somebody is learning classical repertoire by ear and not studying the score. You’re never going to be able to play Beethoven, Chopin, Schumann, or Bach as intended if you do it all by ear.

Is playing by ear intrinsically bad for you?

Not only does playing by ear not hurt your classical playing, but I’ll go so far as to say that all playing is by ear! You may take it from the sheet music initially, but ultimately, with all the music you play, you’re playing by ear. You first learn it from the visual representations on the page. But then you hear it and create it on the piano. So playing by ear is essential for piano playing. Not only that, but for most styles of music, it’s absolutely necessary to play by ear because the written score is not how that music was conceived to begin with. You’ll never be able to play blues faithfully from a score. You have to be able to play by ear.

What about playing classical music by ear?

Ultimately, when you play your classical music, even though you’re playing the notes faithfully to what the composer wrote, you should be essentially playing by ear. In fact, one of the biggest fears when playing a memorized piece or program is having a memory slip. But if you can play your classical music by ear, how can you possibly have a memory slip? It’s virtually impossible to have a memory slip because even if you forget where your hands go for a moment, you’ll know where you are and you can keep going. You can get back on track instantly because you know what it’s supposed to sound like.

I encourage all of you to play by ear!

Play your classical music by ear. Even though you’ve digested the score from the sheet music, you must transcend the visual and turn it into an aural experience that you can share with your audience. I wonder if any of you disagree with this assessment about playing by ear and how it affects your classical playing. Be sure to let me know how you feel about this in the comments!

Will playing swing rhythms in jazz or blues affect the integrity of your classical playing?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. With over 1500 videos on LivingPianos.com, it’s amazing when I think of a topic that I’ve never covered before that’s so fundamental! Today I’m going to talk about how to practice reading pieces. First of all, let me explain what I’m talking about. I have obviously described the process of practicing pieces to memorize: the painstaking process of taking one hand at a time, very small phrases, mastering all elements of the score, the notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression of each hand separately, memorizing them, putting them together one phrase at a time, and then connecting them. But sometimes your pieces are not solo pieces, and it wouldn’t make much sense to memorize them.

You may have pieces you aren’t going to memorize but still want to play at a high level.

For example, let’s say you’re playing in an orchestra that has a piano part in it. You’re not going to memorize such a score. Or if you’re accompanying a singer, if the piece is at your reading level, you can just read through it. But suppose it’s harder than that, and you want to play it with them. You’re not going to memorize this piece; so how do you approach such a thing? I’m going to tell you about that. Read to the end because I’m going to tell you an additional benefit to this that’s essential for your piano practice.

You can’t learn a piece by simply reading through it.

I describe the process of how to learn a piece of music that you’re memorizing as opposed to just reading it through again and again until you kind of get it. The danger with that type of practice is that unless you’re playing it perfectly, you are likely doing more harm than good. If the piece is of sufficient difficulty for you, it’s probably not something you cqn just read through perfectly. Otherwise, why study that piece if you can already play it? So usually, you’re taking a piece of music that has more challenges than something you can just read through perfectly. If you read through something you’re missing again and again, you’re going to reinforce those mistakes. In a piece, each note has a rhythm, a fingering, a dynamic level, and other expression markings. So if you count up the number of notes in a piece and multiply by four or five with all the elements that it has, you come up with thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of details! There’s no way that you can just assimilate that kind of information without an organized approach.

What do you do to learn a piece of music you’re not memorizing?

Interestingly, you can use much of the same type of practice method with a piece you are not going to memorize! First, read through the piece just to get acquainted. If there are large sections you can already play just reading, that’s good. You may not need to practice those parts further. But for any sections that you can’t just read through adequately, practice them the same way you practice memorizing. However, because you’re not memorizing, you can take a bigger chunk of music at a time. So if normally you take two measure phrases, hands separately, maybe you take four measure phrases or even eight measure phrases.

Get one hand really fluent, study the score carefully for all details, get the dynamics right from the get-go, and work out good fingering. Learn all the details of the score. If there are expression marks that provide additional indications of how the music should be played, incorporate them right from the beginning. Get one hand as fluent as possible, and then do the same thing with the other hand. You’re not memorizing, but just getting it totally fluid. Then put your hands together. Slow down at first so you can get it accurate the first time, then play it many times and speed the phrase up. Work through the whole piece in this manner connecting sections as you go. You might not be able to get everything up to tempo right at the beginning, but get each section as fast as you can, knowing that you’re going to revisit it tomorrow to work on all the sections again. Then you can get it a little bit faster and get more fluid connections between sections, always working to the point of diminishing returns on all sections. You’ll know which sections still need work because you won’t be able to play those sections adequately up to tempo yet.

You can revisit pieces you’ve already memorized and solidify your work by reading them.