Tag Archives: how to play piano

Brahms & Ravel VS Tchaikovsky & Beethoven

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today may sound strange to you. Today we’ll be discussing Brahms & Ravel versus Tchaikovsky & Beethoven. What could I possibly be talking about? These are four great composers, and this indeed is not a contest. It’s just an interesting observation, a fundamental difference among composers. There is something that Brahms and Ravel share that distinguishes them from Beethoven and Tchaikovsky. There is a fundamental difference in how they presented their music to the public, which lives on to this day. I wonder, do any of you know what the difference is?

Brahms and Tchaikovsky are both 19th century Romantic composers who wrote a lot of works.

Tchaikovsky wrote six symphonies, and Brahms wrote four symphonies. So the output of Tchaikovsky is a little bit bigger than Brahms in this regard. However, if you look at what orchestras typically program, it’s only three of the Tchaikovsky symphonies that get 90% of the play. The Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth symphonies are played constantly. They’re played in public performance and recording. If you were to search out how many different recordings there are of those latter three symphonies, it’s far greater than his first three symphonies. Not that those early works were mediocre, by any stretch of the imagination. However, the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Symphonies are arguably better works than his earlier ones.

So what about Brahms? He wrote four symphonies. Could you say that maybe the third and fourth are better than the first two? I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, you might have a favorite, but you couldn’t honestly say that any one of those Brahms Symphonies is better than the next. Why is this?

Brahms destroyed any music he didn’t feel was on the absolute highest level!

We don’t know what Brahms wrote that wasn’t his absolute best. Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, wrote a lot of works. Some of them are phenomenally great, for example his B-flat Minor Piano Concerto. Everybody knows and loves that concerto. But that is his second piano concerto. What about his first concerto? I don’t even really know it, and you probably don’t either, because it’s seldom played. The second concerto is a blockbuster everybody knows and loves. So Tchaikovsky released whatever he had, whereas Brahms was more selective. And the same thing is true of Ravel.

Beethoven, on the other hand, wrote nine great symphonies.

Beethoven didn’t write any bad symphonies. However, generally, the odd-numbered symphonies are the ones that are really enriching, and played much more often than the even-numbered ones. They’re all great worthwhile works. But you could arguably say that his third, fifth, seventh and ninth are his most famous works for good reason. Not that any of them are bad works, because it’s all great music! But there are some Beethoven works that are arguably better than others, and have lived on more.

Beethoven wrote 32 piano sonatas. There are some that are absolutely stupendous! They’re all more than worthwhile. But some are arguably better, like the Appassionata, the Hammerklavier and the Pathetique. Yet Beethoven wrote other sonatas that are not played as much. They’re still worthwhile works. He let it all out, for better or for worse, and they’re all worthwhile! But some are more substantial works than others.

If Brahms and Ravel had released more of their music that wasn’t up to their highest standard, would we be richer for it?

I certainly wouldn’t want to have less Beethoven and Tchaikovsky works out there! Even if some of the pieces are not among the absolute cream of those composers, it’s still nice to be able to hear and enjoy those works. So it’s a different methodology. I’m curious as to what your feeling is about composers being very selective and self-editing (or burning as Brahms did!) before the music even gets out to the public. We only have the greatest works of Brahms and Ravel. But with Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, there are some works that are still great, but not as great as some of their other works.

I hope this has been interesting for you! Let me know how you feel about this in the comments! Can you name composers you feel released things they perhaps shouldn’t have? Or composers you wish had released more? It’s a tough thing as a composer, knowing which compositions to release and which ones to hold back. The same thing is true as a performer. If you have recordings of concerts, or recordings that you made in the studio, which ones should you release and which ones should you hold back? Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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Did Classical Musicians Ever Play from Lead Sheets?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about lead sheets. Lead sheets are what jazz, rock, country, new age, and many other musicians play from. It’s simply the melody line and chord symbols rather than all the notes on the grand staff to be played by both hands. That’s what most working musicians read from, not the full score. As a matter of fact, other than Classical and perhaps Broadway musicals, the vast majority of music is not all written out note for note. The musicians kind of make up their part based upon the chord symbols and the melody line. So you might wonder: Did Classical musicians ever play from lead sheets? The answer is surprisingly, yes! Perhaps it’s a lost art, but let’s look back to the Baroque Era, with composers like Bach, Handel, Telemann, Corelli, and Vivaldi.

In the Baroque era music was written very differently.

With Baroque music, first of all, there were very few dynamics or phrasing indicated in the score. It was mostly just the notes, and that’s about it. Not only that, but you’ll notice ornamentation symbols throughout the score. These are squiggly lines that scholars, centuries later, are still trying to decipher what the composers meant by them. There are volumes of books written about how to approach mordents, trills and turns, as well as other ornamentation. The fact of the matter is, everybody has different ideas about them now. Back then, it’s likely that performers had the freedom to decide how much to embellish the score based upon these ornaments that were in the score. Perhaps they even added ornamentation in places that didn’t have any of these markings. There was a freedom to improvise on the music. But it goes much deeper than that.

Did you know that the trio sonata, which so many composers from Corelli to Telemann wrote hundreds of, were not actually completely written out?

Today, if you buy the sheet music to a trio sonata, it’s all written out. But it wasn’t originally written out. What is a trio sonata? A trio sonata was actually written for a solo instrument. It could be a violin. It could be a flute. It could be any instrument. And a basso continuo, which could be virtually any instrument playing the low part. Perhaps a cello, viola da gamba, something that could play the bass line, which was written out. So you had the melody and the bass written out. Well, what about the keyboard part, the harpsichord, in most cases back then? Was that part written out? No. Now, it wasn’t a lead sheet the way we think of a modern lead sheet. It was what’s called figured bass. Figured bass was a type of lead sheet notation, for lack of a better term.

It did not have the notes. It just had chord symbols (in addition to the melody and bass line). The player had to realize the part based upon those symbols. They were improvising based upon chord changes, just like a jazz musician does today! This is the lost art of improvisation of the Baroque era.

Today when you buy sheet music for a Corelli or Telemann trio sonata it is all written out.

Somebody has gone to the trouble of realizing and writing out a keyboard part from those chord symbols of the figured bass. So almost nobody improvises anymore today. There are some early instrument enthusiasts who actually do this sort of thing. But for the most part, Classical musicians are so used to the sanctity of the score, that they don’t even realize that it wasn’t originally written out! These early works were not written out, except for the melody and the bass. The rest of it was left up to the performer to realize. And even the other parts could be embellished with ornamentation.

This is the truth about Classical music. It was much closer to modern styles of music than most people know. But today we look at it almost like pieces in a museum that you shouldn’t touch. They need to be preserved exactly as they were. But these were living, breathing works of music that evolved depending on who was performing them. So you want to approach Classical music in this way.

Cadenzas were originally improvised, not necessarily written out and learned.

The cadenza was a time for performers to showcase what they could do in the middle of a concerto, taking off on the themes that they had just played. Again, this is all but a lost art. During the Romantic period at salon concerts and informal gatherings, people would make up music going back and forth. They would try to outdo each other. This is what keeps Classical music alive and fresh, that spontaneous element. So while I certainly respect the scores of the great composers and fastidiously learn them, at the same time, you want to understand the lineage where this music comes from. You can add an element of spontaneity and inventiveness to your playing, realizing that these weren’t just static, etched-in-stone works. But they evolved, depending upon who was performing them!

I hope this has been interesting for you! 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

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How to Use the Pedal on the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to use the pedal on the piano. This is such a deep subject. I have other videos on the finer points about pedaling, how it imparts changes in tone, when to use it, when not to use it, and how to use the sustain pedal in conjunction with the soft pedal. But today I will cover the fundamentals. If you’ve ever wondered how the pedal works, you’ve come to the right place!

The interesting thing about the pedal is that it does not go down rhythmically.

If you’ve just started using the pedal the hardest thing about it is that it is not used rhythmically, because you want to tap your foot on the beat. It’s the most natural thing in the world! Yet that doesn’t work on the piano. It doesn’t work because if you push the pedal down when a note plays, you will capture the harmonies of the previous notes that were down. It’s a mess. Why is that? The fact of the matter is, when you push the pedal down, whatever notes are held down are going to continue holding down. When you play a note, you’re still holding down the previous notes to some extent, particularly if something is slurred.

How do you create a slur on the piano?

A slur is a glide between notes. A singer or a French horn player does it very naturally and the notes between the slur are all there. On the piano, you can’t do that. So you tend to overlap notes, and that’s the way you create the illusion of a slur. But what happens when you pedal on the beat is the previously played notes are going to be held. If I play middle C and then a C sharp and I pedal at the same moment as I play the C sharp, you’re going to hear the C and the C sharp together. You will hear dissonance. The pedal must go down right after notes plays.

But here’s some good news for you, the pedal comes up exactly on the beat!

The pedal goes up exactly when you play a note. But the pedal goes down right after the note, arrhythmically. It’s important that you understand that, otherwise, you’re going to hear dissonance. It’s the nature of the pedal.

There’s so much more to the pedal. As a matter of fact, I will put links in the description of some other videos I have on pedaling. Decades ago, I made 50 hour-long presentations live on the internet, for a company in Irvine. My show was called Keyboard Kaleidoscope. One episode is an hour long show on the pedal that I will share with you in the notes below, in the description, and on LivingPianos.com! I hope this is helpful for you. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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HOW TO USE THE PEDAL ON THE PIANO – KEYBOARD KALEIDOSCOPE – ROBERT ESTRIN

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TEACHER RANT: What Makes a Great Teacher

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about what makes a teacher great. Great teachers are so rare. In public school I could count on one hand the truly great teachers I had throughout all my years of schooling. Oftentimes at a certain point in the year, the teacher would assign a paper. It had to be a certain length and you had to have a bibliography of the works you referenced. Everybody in the class would break out into a cold sweat. Why? Because nobody ever actually showed us how to write a paper! They would tell you to make an outline, as if that’s helpful. You wouldn’t even know how to make an outline! Nobody ever showed us how to approach such a thing. They just said, “Do it.” And that was the way it was so much of the time with homework. “Read the book,” they would say. But the people who wrote the books weren’t always great teachers either. I encounter this so much of the time with theory books, by the way. It can be so confusing that it goes right over students’ heads. If you already understand the theory, you can kind of grasp what they’re going for, but in the most convoluted and complex way. It doesn’t help someone to actually learn music theory.

In 11th grade I had a great teacher named Mr. Gray.

Mr. Gray changed my life because he actually showed us how to craft an English composition. To this day I am thankful for what he showed us. I still use the tools he provided in my writing today. It’s the way of organizing. There’s a methodology which I could go into another time, if any of you are interested. It’s a little off topic from music, but not really because in this world, we all have to express ourselves in print. Even if it’s just emails to people, you want to be concise. You want to be digestible and memorable. Organization is a big part of that. This is true for all teaching.

What is the most essential element to teaching?

What is the best way to convey ideas? The best way is to break things down to their component parts in a logical fashion. If you’ve ever had a great math teacher, you know what I’m talking about. Because when you have a math teacher who’s not great, you just feel completely overwhelmed. It can make you feel stupid! Because you think, “Why can’t I get this?” You’re looking at some mathematical equation that you can’t begin to solve because nobody’s given you the tools. But if you have a great math teacher who shows you the methodology, step by step, it’s enlightening. Not only that, it makes doing your homework fun because you understand what you’re doing. You’re not just trying to grope in the dark and hope you stumble upon answers. You know exactly what to do, step by step. That is what you look for in a teacher. This is true with any subject.

Music theory is one of those subjects that is often taught poorly.

I’m not going to mention the school by name, but I went to a school that was guilty of constantly teaching above the students’ comprehension. Part of it was the teachers would write the books that would be used in the class and they wanted to appear smarter than the students. What’s the best way to do that? Have a lot of jargon in the book that’s just not quite digestible. You seem smarter than your students and the students are looking to you for guidance. If you’ve ever felt that way with a teacher, it’s not you. It’s them! They are not giving you the tools you need.

A great teacher empowers you to solve problems.

Whether it’s how to play the piano, how to do math, or how to figure out music theory, a great teacher will completely solidify the basics. It’s the same thing with studying pieces of music. You must have a complete grasp of what you’re doing. It’s so satisfying when you’re anchored that way intellectually. Then you can build from there. Each concept builds on the previous. It’s obvious with a subject like math. But music is no different. In fact, most subjects need to be addressed this way so you can build logically from a solid foundation of understanding and have the tools and the steps needed for your daily work. And that’s how you know you have a great teacher in whatever subject you’re learning. When you have one, you’ll feel so grateful. It opens your mind because it’s not just the little tidbits you get at the lessons. It’s what you get not only throughout the week, but in the months, and yes, the years to follow. Just like the lessons I learned from Mr. Gray in 11th grade!

I hope this is helpful for you. 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

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Rhythm: The Most Important Element of Music!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about the most important element of music: rhythm. Is rhythm really the most important aspect of music? What about the notes? Well, think of it this way: Let’s say there’s a party and you know where the party is. You know it’s a birthday party for your friend. You know whether you’re supposed to bring presents or not, and what the activities are going to be. But if you don’t know when the party is, guess what? No party!

You need to know the when!

Imagine hearing a piece of music with no rhythm, all the notes played equally. Would you even be able to identify the piece? it would sound drastically different without the rhythmic component. But hearing the same exact notes with a rhythmic context sounds completely different. Rhythm is so intrinsically important! Of course there are many elements that are important, but without rhythm, what do you have? You really have nothing unless you put it in some context of time. It’s human nature because our entire experience is based upon the element of time. We go through life in a linear fashion, after all. It’s the way we relate to everything! You could play all the notes of a piece, but it’s meaningless if you don’t have a rhythmic context. That’s why it’s so vitally important in your practice to count out your rhythm.

Composers weren’t haphazard about rhythmic notation.

Things were written precisely for a reason. Because without the rhythm, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony doesn’t sound like much of anything. This is true of all music. I encourage all of you to count in your practice, to measure your rhythm with a metronome, and double and triple check note values as well as rests. That’s what brings music alive and gives it meaning. This is such an important topic. I’m curious how all of you feel about this! Let me know in the comments. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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

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3 Ways to Bring out the Melody in Your Piano Playing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to bring out the melody in your piano playing. One of the great things about the piano is that you have control over all the individual sounds and lines in your playing. But how can you do that? Today I’m going to give you 3 techniques for bringing out the melody in your piano playing!

Typically, you think of the melody as being the top line, but that certainly isn’t always the case. The techniques I’m going to show you will work no matter where the melody is. But the melody in the piece I’m going to use as an example is on the top where melodies are typically found. I’m going to use the second movement of Beethoven’s Sonata no. 5 in C minor, Opus 10, no. 1. The second movement is in A flat major. Beethoven could write a slow movement like no one else!

So, what are some techniques you can use to bring out the melody?

If you were to just play without regard for the top-line being louder than the rest, without trying to balance any particular way and just letting the hands flop on the keys naturally, you won’t fully hear and appreciate the melody. Some inner lines may come to your attention which isn’t all bad. And indeed, balance isn’t just melody being loud and everything else quiet. You want to be able to craft all of the lines and balance them both horizontally as the melody is going across, as well as vertically – the balance in each and every chord. It’s a great challenge! So how do you approach such a thing?

One technique is to use different articulations.

Whatever line you want to bring out, you play legato, and the notes you want to underplay you play with gentle finger staccato. So if you just want to practice bringing out the melody, you can use this technique. You might actually choose to bring out more than just the melody. You might want to bring out the bass and the melody, which you can do with this technique as well. You can bring out inner lines if you want to. There’s no end to the possibilities! Whatever you want to draw the listener’s attention to, play those notes legato and then gently release with a finger staccato the other notes. This trains your hand which notes are down, which notes are up, and which notes you can give more emphasis to. This technique can be quite challenging the first time you try it.

Are there easier techniques than that?

 

Yes, fortunately, there is something as simple as reaching for the melody notes you want to bring out! If you get the sense that your fingers are reaching for the notes you want to hear, they are going to come out more. So those are two techniques for bringing out melodies in your playing: different articulations, and reaching for the notes you want to bring out.

One more technique that can be extremely valuable in certain applications is leaning on one side of the hand more than the other to balance the weight of the hand. To bring out the top melody, you lean on the right side of your right hand so that you have more weight on that side of the hand than you have on the left side of your hand. And of course the left hand underplays completely. This can be a wonderful way to bring out a melody without having to resort to difficult practice techniques. Simply lean on different sides of the hand, depending upon what you want to bring out. If you want to bring out the top notes in your right hand, you lean towards your pinky. And if you want to bring out an inner line, you lean the other way towards your thumb and your other fingers.

Those are 3 techniques you can try out! If you’ve ever had difficulty coming up with a balance you want in any music you play, try these techniques and you may find that one or two of them will be particularly useful for a certain textures or types of writing. And you can always try them all and see what helps you to bring out what you want to hear in your music. What is so great about the piano is the control you have over all the lines. It’s such a pleasure to get the sound you’re after! Try this out, let me know how it works for you! 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