Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about happy accidents in music. This transcends just performance. This can occur in composition, improvisation, and so many aspects of music. What are happy accidents? When something unexpected happens, particularly in a live performance, where you can’t just stop and try it again. So you go with it and it takes you to unexpected places. From that point on, you will envision this piece in a way that you had never imagined before.
Just go with it.
Now, here’s the thing that I want to encourage all of you to do. If while playing piano something happens where you’re feeling uncomfortable for some reason, maybe you took a dramatically different tempo, go with it and see where it takes you. You can discover things. Maybe you won’t want to take that faster or slower tempo later, but you envision the piece in a new way that you never would have come upon before. In composition, it’s even more important to experiment wildly, with abandon. Don’t be worried about what comes out. You can always judge later what you want to keep and what you want to discard.
Don’t let the beauty in life pass you by!
I say that happy accidents can only happen if you pay attention to them. Otherwise you might just hear it as a mistake and move on. If it’s interesting, listen to it. You might discover something new. It’s the same with life. Take in the beautiful things around you, even if you don’t expect them to be beautiful. Maybe you’re on your way to someplace and you pass a beautiful scene without expecting it. You didn’t plan this, but here it is. Enjoy it! It’s the same thing with your music, your performance, your composing, and your improvisation. Pay attention to what is around you and take advantage of those opportunities. Explore them further, because they can be the seeds of creativity!
I hope this is enjoyable for you! Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about happy accidents in music. This transcends just performance. This can occur in composition, improvisation, and so many aspects of music. What are happy accidents? Whe
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how piano is a flawed instrument. Now, I love the piano. It’s incredibly expressive. It’s one of the greatest instruments of all time. So I’m not complaining about the piano in any way, shape, or form. But it’s important to understand the limitations of the piano. The piano is a tempered instrument, meaning it can play in all keys. So, every single interval on the piano, with the exception of the octaves, are out of tune.
There are no two notes you can play on the piano other than the octaves that are in tune with one another.
So when you play a perfect fifth, it is not perfectly in tune. How can this be? Well, years and years ago, keyboard instruments were tuned for the specific key they were playing. String players, singers, and other instrumentalists will naturally adjust their tuning to make every interval pure. It’s just not mathematically possible to do that on the piano to be able to play in all keys. Every interval is a little bit out of tune, but they’re all equally out of tune in all keys. That is what is meant by tempered tuning. And we’re so used to it now that it sounds in tune to us as long as the piano is in tune. It’s important to understand this fact.
I recently listened to a piano roll of Gustav Mahler playing his Fifth Symphony, the first movement. If you’re familiar with any Mahler symphonies you know that these are incredibly complex orchestrations. Piano rolls are actual performances of the great composers and pianists from years ago before audio recording existed. A lot of times they don’t sound quite right, because the playback instrument has to be regulated exactly the same as the instrument that it was recorded on for it to work properly. Well, this is an amazing recreation of Mahler’s piano playing, which is astounding! This is an orchestral work with lush strings and brass with a huge orchestration. So, in order to achieve the sustain of these rich sonorities, there are tremolos all over the place. Because if you’re trying to get the sound of sustained strings and you just play the notes, they will quickly fade away. And you certainly won’t be able to create a crescendo.
A crescendo of one note on the piano is virtually impossible.
There are nuances of tonal shading you can impart using the pedals. A crescendo is a little bit of a stretch, but there is a small amount of crescendo you can achieve by judicious use of the pedals. Starting with the una corda pedal, and then putting the sustain pedal on just as the note begins to fade out will give a little extra swell, but that’s all you’ve got to work with.
So yes, the piano is a flawed instrument. But what a wonderful instrument it is anyway, because of all the things it can do! You have this huge range of keys from the very highest notes to the lowest notes. And you’ve got the ability literally at your fingertips to play complex orchestrations that are all but impossible on just about any other single instrument. So, as flawed as it is, I love the piano! How do you feel about this? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and other subjects. Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please consider joining the Living Pianos Patreon to unlock exclusive content!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how piano is a flawed instrument. Now, I love the piano. It’s incredibly expressive. It’s one of the greatest instruments of all time. So I’m not compl
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about the challenge of playing the piano while wearing glasses. I was lucky enough to be born with perfect vision. To this day my distance vision is 20/20. But for close vision I need reading glasses, like almost everybody at a certain age. One of the problems with wearing glasses while playing piano is you can see your score fine, but the bottom of the frames oftentimes forms a line right where the keys are and it blurs everything out.
Find glasses that are the right size for your needs.
With larger reading glasses, you can see everything through the lenses. But it’s really not necessary. I’ve found smaller glasses allow me to see the music just fine, but they don’t go very low. I can see the score well, and I don’t need glasses to see the keys. They’re big. It’s not a problem, whatsoever. But you have to find something that works for you.
Bifocals can be really distracting while trying to play the piano.
My wife is a flutist. She has specific glasses for reading music while still being able to see a conductor. The possibilities and the combinations of what you need to see when playing the piano will dictate what sort of eyewear you need. Contact lenses could make a great choice. But even people with contact lenses eventually need reading glasses. So, I wonder how many of you have found little tricks, like the smaller glasses I have found which allow me to see the keys without going through the lenses, but still see the music through the glasses. It’s an unusual pair of reading glasses that I just happened to notice worked really well for this purpose.
So that’s a little tip for reading your music and playing the piano with glasses. I’d love to hear from you! Tell me about any challenges you’ve faced or solutions that might help other people. Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please consider joining the Living Pianos Patreon to unlock exclusive content!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about the challenge of playing the piano while wearing glasses. I was lucky enough to be born with perfect vision. To this day my distance vision is 20/20. But for close v
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic today is about how computers and pianos require completely opposite approaches to problem solving. For example, in a recent video I talked about how when you make a mistake in your practice, it’s actually a great opportunity to stop and to find where you are on the score so you can cement the correction. The worst thing is when people make a mistake and they go back to the beginning to try again. Maybe they will get it and maybe they won’t, but it doesn’t solve the basic insecurity that’s there. It’s a real shame because you want to cement the correction by finding what it is and approaching the score. You don’t want to just hope that your tactile memory will just happen to get it right next time. Computers are the exact opposite! I’m going to tell you a story about how I discovered this years ago.
In the early 2000s, I was engaged by a music software company called G-Vox in Huntington Beach, California to be the head of the music content development team.
When I arrived the first day there were brand new Dell computers in boxes. I was a Mac guy all the way. I’d never even worked with Windows computers, and then I was the head of the department with Windows computers! It was my job to set them up, so I was a little bit scared. But everything kind of worked. I was very lucky and started getting productive. It was great! The team there was wonderful. It was a lot of fun. I was working in a high-rise right near the beach. I was very happy.
Every now and then something would go wrong with the computer system, not just for me but for the whole team. Something would screw up and we would ask the head of the program, “Isn’t there somebody who can help us?” So, he sent in an IT specialist. We were all looking forward to that because every time something went wrong we couldn’t figure out how to fix it. When this gentleman came in, I was actually looking forward to the first time I had a problem so that I could see how he solved it. I wanted to learn from him. Finally, I had a problem. I went to him and showed him what the issue was. He asked if I had tried restarting, I told him I had. He asked if I had tried reinstalling the program, I told him I had done that, too. Then he told me to reinstall Windows. I was shocked! I thought he was going to go in there with his magic fingers. I wanted to see the codes he would find, the underlying programming where he would get to the nuts and the bolts of what was wrong. But that’s not the way it’s done. This is diametrically opposed to piano where you want to zero in on the correction when there’s a problem. You want to figure it out so you can find out how it’s supposed to be.
When there is an issue with computers, the best thing you can do is just restart your computer or reinstall the program.
You want to start with a clean slate. It’s really counter-intuitive for me. I’ve owned recording studios for years. I had an analog studio many years ago. When there was a problem, you would simplify, but you wouldn’t tear everything apart and start over. You would want to try to identify where the problem was and correct it so you wouldn’t have that issue again. With modern digital technology, that just isn’t the case. When data is corrupted in one way or another, the best thing you can do is start over.
So many of us now are spending so much time online with virtual piano lessons and virtual visits with friends and family. As great as this technology is, it isn’t perfect. Sometimes for no reason, the audio drops out or something gets distorted. Of course, the best way to solve these problems is to logoff, close the program, and start over.
That’s the lesson for today. There is a huge difference in approach to computer technology, where you just want to start with a clean slate when you have a problem. Because you can spend far more time trying to identify the problem than just starting over again. Whereas, on the piano, that’s the worst thing you can do, because you’ll never really develop security. Isn’t that interesting? They are diametrically opposed! I’d love to hear from any of you who have different ideas about this subject. There are plenty of people who know more about computers than I do. Maybe there are secret tools that I don’t know about. Let me know in the comments! Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic today is about how computers and pianos require completely opposite approaches to problem solving. For example, in a recent video I talked about how when you make a mistake in your pract
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how playing the piano is like learning how to walk. Obviously playing the piano seems much more complicated than walking. But have you ever seen a toddler taking their first steps? Each step is very careful and deliberate. They are trying not to fall down as they figure out all of the mechanisations of walking. And yet, we can walk and talk, and you don’t even have to think about walking! If there’s something in your path, you could possibly trip, That’s when you become cognizant of walking. But most of the time, you don’t need to think about it. How does this relate to piano playing? Let’s say you’re playing a 90 minute solo recital from memory. Obviously, no matter how skilled you are, there are going to be moments when you’re going to lose your concentration.
There’s a certain amount of motor memory or tactile memory that we depend upon.
Now, this isn’t something desirable. But it is a fact of life that you’re not going to be able to concentrate fully every single moment in your performance. I’m going to show you how this is true for piano playing, just like you can talk while walking. You don’t really have to think much about it. But I’m going to show you something in the accompanying video which proves how this same fact of life is present in your piano playing. We all depend upon this automatic pilot that we have. I’ll talk about the benefits and the dangers of that.
Learning to play the piano is similar to learning how to walk.
If you watch a toddler learning to walk, particularly the first time they are unaided, each step is a milestone. You can see the concentration it takes. The same is true in piano playing. When you’re learning something, at first it’s very complex. It’s a slow arduous process. But eventually, it becomes automatic! Your fingers just go where they’ve gone before, because you’ve done it so many times. Chances are, you’re going to remember where your hands go. Or your hands will remember where they go, because they’ve done it the same way hundreds of times before. This is sometimes described as, muscle memory.
There will be moments during a performance where you will lose your concentration.
Maybe there’s a noise in the audience or a key trips up on the keyboard, and yet you can manage to keep on going. Well, this is extremely dangerous, because your hands have no idea whether you’ve taken a repeat, whether you’re in an exposition, or a recapitulation. You could take wrong turns anywhere, because your hands are just doing what they’ve done before. But your hands don’t have intelligence. Your hands just have motor memory. So, how do you overcome this limitation? How do you get your memory so it’s not just motor memory? Rather than practice a piece over and over for months and then memorize it, you flip it.
The first thing you should do with a piece, after reading it through a couple of times, is to begin memorizing it.
Take small chunks at a time, putting the hands together and connecting phrases as you go. I’ve described this process many times before. Eventually, you will get to the point where you really know the score well. But how can you know if you’re just depending upon tactile or motor memory? How much is intentional? To better understand, take the motor memory completely out of the equation! The way to do that is to:
Practice the score away from the piano.
If you try to play the score without the benefit of your fingers moving, it’s really difficult. At first when you try this, you may need to move your fingers, even if it’s just in your lap. Eventually, you can get to the point where you’re not moving your fingers. Then you’re just thinking it all through with every nuance of sound and touch, knowing every finger and imagining the music in great detail. If you can get through your music like that, it’s almost impossible to have memory problems. It’s like singing a song that you’ve sung countless times before, or telling a story that you know so well. It’s part of you. So, that’s the way to overcome this limitation of what your motor memory can do. At the same time, you’ve got to be thankful that you have motor memory to rely upon for those times when you become distracted in your performance. But you want to do everything you can to not have to rely upon it.
I hope this has been interesting for you. I’d love to hear perspectives from all of you. Have you had this kind of experience? If you think that you’re playing just by feel without an intellect behind it, you can try this idea of playing away from the piano and let me know how it works for you. Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please consider joining the Living Pianos Patreon to help support us and get access to exclusive Living Pianos content!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how playing the piano is like learning how to walk. Obviously playing the piano seems much more complicated than walking. But have you ever seen a toddler taking their f
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is how Mozart can sound like Beethoven when the music is in a minor key. You might be thinking that Beethoven and Mozart have completely different musical personalities. That’s true. Even though they lived around the same time, you hear the fire and the passion of Beethoven and the elegance and sweetness of Mozart. So, what are the similarities between these two brilliant and unique composers?
Mozart wrote very few pieces in minor keys.
Mozart mostly wrote works in major keys. But the few pieces that he wrote in minor keys are among his greatest works! For example his 40th Symphony, in G Minor Symphony, or his Piano Concerto K 466 in D minor are masterworks. The few works Mozart composed in minor keys sounds a lot more like Beethoven. I have a way of proving it to you today. First, I’m going to share a brief theory lesson with you, so you can understand the significance of what I’m about to show you which is something truly extraordinary!
Major intervals become minor intervals when inverted.
This is an interesting subject and I’m going to demonstrate this. Major intervals include 2nds, 3rds, 6ths, and 7ths. They are major only when the top note is found in the major scale of the bottom note. For example, in C major if you play C and D, that’s a major second because D is the second note of the C major scale. If you invert the 2nd so the D is on the bottom and C is on top, you have a minor 7th because C is not the 7th note of the D major scale. The 7th note of the D major scale is C-sharp. So, the interval has become smaller by a half-step and is now minor. You can do the same thing with a 3rd in C major. Playing C and E, you have a major 3rd because E is the 3rd note of the C major scale. Invert the 3rd and you have E on the bottom and C on the top which is a minor 6th because C is not the 6th note of an E major scale. The 6th note of an E major scale is C-sharp. So, again, the interval has become smaller by a half-step and becomes minor. All major intervals when inverted become minor.
I’m going to play just the exposition of the famous Mozart C major Sonata, K 545. With the help of my computer, I’m going to invert it. So, every note that goes up goes down, and visa versa. What that’s going to effectively do is take this piece in the major and turn it into a whole other piece in the minor! With the keyboard switched around you wouldn’t even believe it’s the same piece! It’s all exactly the same notes and rhythms, except reversed. You can hear the minor characteristic. It sounds angry. And it sounds a little bit more like Beethoven than Mozart. Check out the video to hear this for yourself! You will be amazed. You will also hear the beginning of two sonatas both in C minor, one by Mozart, one by Beethoven. I’m not going to tell you which one is which. I want you to listen to these two sonatas and see if you can guess which one is Mozart and which one is Beethoven.
It’s remarkable how Mozart takes on a very different character when played in a minor key! I’m very interested to see how all you did out there with your guesses. If you didn’t know either of these works before, I wonder how many of you got it right. Let me know in the comments! Thanks again for joining me. I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please consider joining the Living Pianos Patreon to help support us and get access to exclusive Living Pianos content!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is how Mozart can sound like Beethoven when the music is in a minor key. You might be thinking that Beethoven and Mozart have completely different musical personalities. ThatR
