Tag Archives: music theory

Make Your Practice Hard and Performing Will Be Easy!

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about making your practice hard so your performing will be easy. I have a strong recommendation for those of you who want to maximize the effectiveness of your practice. Now this isn’t for everyone. There are many reasons why people study the piano. There are some people who just want to enjoy playing the piano and not work too hard. For those of you who feel that way, this message is irrelevant. But for the rest of you who really want to get as much done for the time you spend working at the piano, this will be very helpful for you!

When I practice, I want to get as much done as I can in my limited time.

There’s almost no one who has the freedom to practice as much as they want. It’s very rare to have that opportunity. Even conservatory piano majors have to do their coursework. And some people have to work side jobs and learn accompaniments as well. So you want to maximize the effectiveness of the time you have to spend at the piano. What does that mean? It means you’re going to work really hard! But does it mean hours and hours of scales, arpeggios, exercises, Czerny? No, quite the contrary. Exercises are what you do when your brain is tired. You can just work your fingers and do your scales, thirds, octaves, and anything else that you want to do work on. Go for it! But that’s not the hardest thing. The hardest thing is learning music.

Learning music is the most important thing that we do as pianists.

Learning music is important in all styles of music. Of course, other styles have other disciplines. But certainly with solo music and accompaniments, you’re learning scores. And if you try to make that an easier process, you will be less equipped to handle performing. For example, I know people who spend hours and hours a day reading through music. Now that’s good for developing your reading. You will become a better reader if you do that. Although I know people who spend a great deal of time, but they never quite get their playing to a high level. They spend hours and hours practicing. But it’s not really practicing, because practicing is a thought process.

If you’re just mindlessly reading notes and letting your fingers follow the score, even if you’re working for hours and hours a day, you might not accomplish very much. But when you memorize music, methodically working through small chunks and assimilating them, getting them on a high level, that takes tremendous mental effort! Almost as tough is refining the music you’ve already learned. You must go through slowly and carefully, making sure every nuance of every phrase is just as the composer wrote, studying the score and then taking small enough sections that you can assimilate and incorporate all those tiny refinements of the score into your playing. That is really hard work! When you’ve done even an hour of that kind of practice, you will know you’ve done some work. And you’ll have something accomplished for it!

This kind of practice is very hard, but extremely rewarding!

When you’re performing a piece that you have on a high level, it is such a joy. To have that kind of command over the music is a great experience. It’s worth the sweat and effort you put into your practice! So remember to make your practicing hard, so you’re performing is easy. It’s worth it! And for those of you who don’t feel that way, you’re going to enjoy what you’re doing. But understand that you’re not going to get that pristine high level in your playing by just having casual practice. If that’s what you’re after, that’s fine. But if you want to play on a high level, you must go through the steps. Make your practicing worth it! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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How to Learn a Fugue

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to learn and memorize fugues. Fugues are some of the most complex examples of counterpoint. Most music has melody and harmony. Typically on the piano, you have the melody in the right hand and accompaniment in the left-hand. But with a fugue, you have several intertwining melodies. To demonstrate this, I’ve chosen the C Minor Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier book one. I’m choosing this one because it’s a relatively simple fugue. I want you to understand the methodology, because it’s going to apply to all counterpoint and all fugues.

A fugue has a subject and a countersubject.

The entire fugue is built upon the subject and countersubject. The subject is stated and then the subject repeats starting in a different key, typically, the dominant (5 notes above the starting note). So with the C Minor Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, the subject repeats starting on G. While that’s happening, the counter subject is introduced. Amazingly, the entire fugue is crafted from those two elements! The subject is of particular importance. So you want to bring out the subject wherever it occurs. Of course it will start with just the subject, but then when the subject returns in the dominant, you want to bring that out more than the countersubject. Throughout the entire fugue you want to bring out the subject whenever it occurs.

Sometimes the subject is divided between the hands.

Any of you who follow my YouTube channel knows that I learn music and teach music by absorbing digestible chunks of music at a time. Dividing the hands and learning hands separately is a great way of doing that. Once you can play each hand fluently from memory, you have a good chance of being able to play the hands together and getting that memorized. But with a fugue, sometimes it’s not so neat and tidy! This is true of any music that has substantial counterpoint. When you have a place in the music where the fugue subject is divided between your two hands, you still want to bring out the subject. So anytime the fugue subject is divided between the hands, you want to play it so you hear it when you play hands together. That way, you can bring out the fugue subject, even when it’s divided between the hands.

So aside from learning hands separately, you also want to have the integrity of all the lines so you can hear them. You must not only learn the hands separately, but make sure that you follow each voice through, particularly in instances where a voice is divided between the hands. You need to hear each voice. Play voices by themselves so you can hear them. Then when you play the hands together, even if you do learn hands separately, you can follow through and hear the voices. You don’t want to hear just your separate hands, because they really are not complete by themselves when a subject (or countersubject) is divided between the hands.

That’s the method for learning fugues!

Learning a fugue uses the same methodology as learning any music, but with the extra element of following the counterpoint of all the lines. Now this is a very simple example. Sometimes you have things that get really complicated. You’ll see fugues where notes are constantly dividing between the hands. So you really have to study the score to hear what’s going on and not just abstractly learn each hand separately when voices are divided between the hands since that doesn’t always make sense. 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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Family Improvisation

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is personal. I found an old video of an improvisation I did with my nephews which I’m going to share with you today. Google photos is really cool, because you can go through and look up places or time periods. All the pictures or videos you took from that time or place come up. I was just exploring that the other day and found an improvisation I did with some family members almost seven years ago! It was just a spontaneous thing that popped up and I thought you would enjoy it.

Let me tell you a little bit about these guys.

They are my nephews. Both of them are very accomplished musicians. First, there’s Sean Kleve. Sean is a percussionist. He graduated from the Manhattan School of Music. He’s played in all kinds of orchestras and such. He has a great percussion ensemble called Clocks in Motion, which is worth checking out. In high school he was very accomplished on piano. He even played the Grieg Piano Concerto with orchestra. Currently, he’s got a really cool Twitch. If you go to Twitch you can see his video streaming playing harpsichord. So if you’re into harpsichord, you’ll definitely want to check that out!

My other nephew, who plays the other piano in this video is Evan Kleve. Evan is a really accomplished violinist. He’s done everything from playing with symphony orchestras to touring with rock bands. He’s also a really fine trumpeter. One night, it was late, there were no preconceived notions, we just started playing together. I thought what came out was really cool! I encourage all of you, whether you have training or no training, to try improvising. Sometimes things just come together. I hope you enjoy this.

See the video here

You may have noticed a little cameo from my daughter, Jenny, who walked through. This was one of those late night jams. All kinds of things were happening. We had a great time. Nearly my entire extended family are musicians of one sort or another. Whenever we get together, there’s all kinds of music! I thought I’d share this little personal glimpse with you. I hope you enjoyed it! If you like these sorts of things, let me know in the comments below! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

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What’s the Difference Between Sforzando and Forte?

This is LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the difference between sforzando and forte. On the piano, it’s really tough. You don’t have much control over the shape of the tone once a note is played, other than the pedals. I’ll get into that in a moment. You must be able to delineate what a sforzando is compared to a forte or fortepiano. Sometimes you’ll see a forte and right after that a piano (FP)! What is it!? Is it forte or is it piano? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about today!

Forte means loud.

Forte indicates everything is played at a high volume. On the piano when you play a note, it’s immediately fading away. So you get a strong attack. In fact, when you play the piano without the pedal, everything is somewhat sforzando, because a sforzando is basically just a strong attack. So forte is loud throughout, sforzando is a strong attack that fades away, whereas a fortepiano is like a sforzando, but with a longer time before the sound diminishes in volume. I also play French horn. All of those distinctions can be achieved with much more precision on the horn. So how do you achieve these things on the piano?

One sforzando technique is to let go of the pedal after the initial attack to make the chord fade away.

You can fake a sforzando-like sound by utilizing the pedal. It’s a very subtle difference in tone. Little touches of the pedal sometimes can create a sforzando effect. On the piano we don’t have as much to work with on the tone of a note once it’s struck. All you have are the pedals! You can do half pedals, you can incorporate the soft as well pedal. But to understand the tone you’re after is key for achieving the desired results. If you listen to the beginning of Vladimir Horowitz’s performance of the Pathetique Sonata of Beethoven, it is very stark in the way he pedals it to get that fortepiano effect. Other pianists play a little bit smoother, without so much angularity in their fortepiano or sforzandi. So there are a lot of different ways of approaching this.

On the piano, you just have to do your best with what you have to work with.

On the piano, you can use the pedal to try to achieve some sense of the beginning of the note compared to the end of the note. But on wind instruments and string instruments, there are infinite possibilities for the shape of every note! That’s why you see all these different markings of accents in the score: fortepiano, sforzando, accents, fortissimo piano, et cetera. You have to understand what the sound would be if it was played by a symphony orchestra, or a string quartet, or a brass choir, to get a sense of the sound you are after. As a pianist, you just have to do the best you can with your hands and your pedaling to achieve the sound the composer intended.

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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5 Classical Music Myths

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you about 5 classical music myths. I’m going to finally put these myths to rest! I hear these things all the time. But usually from people who don’t have much exposure to classical music. They just think these things are true, but they’re really not. Are they 100% categorically false? Not all of them. But generally, these things are not necessarily true:

Myth #1 – Classical music is relaxing.

People will say they like classical music because it’s relaxing. And it’s true that some classical music is relaxing. There’s some beautiful music on the piano as well as other instruments. But classical music isn’t just relaxing. It can elicit a wide variety of emotions. It can be angry. It can be scary. It can be exciting! It can be relaxing. It can be contemplative. It can be humorous. There’s a whole range of emotions. It’s not just relaxing. So if you want relaxing music, there are some pieces that are relaxing. For example, Mozart and Brahms offer relaxing music, however. a lot of their music is not relaxing at all! There’s a lot more to classical music than just being relaxing

Myth #2 – Classical music is serious.

I just mentioned that classical music can be humorous. There are many places where Beethoven and other composers have elements of humor in their music. It’s not all serious! Like I said before, classical music has a whole range of emotions.

Myth #3 You have to have training to appreciate classical music

If you have training, it may help you to appreciate classical music. But simply listening to classical music is all you need to appreciate it. If you listen enough you will develop an understanding and appreciation for the music. Listen to the same piece more than once, because you may capture more the second, third or fourth time listening to a piece as you become more familiar with it. So you do not need training to enjoy classical music.

Myth #4 – Classical music is boring.

Once again, if you take the time to become familiar with a piece of classical music, you may find that it’s incredibly enriching! There’s so much there that you might not capture in one listening. It might just go right over your head the first time you listen to it. So you think it’s boring because you didn’t get it. It’s like learning a concept that is a little bit hard to grasp. You might just decide it is too boring and give up. But if you just stay with it a little longer, you may come to understand the concept you didn’t get the first time you are exposed to it. But once you spend the time to become familiar with it, it can be really exciting and enriching once you understand it. The same thing is true with classical music. Once you become familiar with a piece of classical music, it’s not boring, far from it.

Myth #5 – Classical music is for snobs.

This one is tough. Unfortunately, since classical music is not supported by the government, at least in the United States, the only way that it can exist is by donors. So if you do go to the symphony or to the opera, there’s the exclusive section with the gold plaques honoring the donors. And then during intermission. they’re sipping champagne behind velvet ropes. You might say these people are snobs. But thank goodness for these snobs! If they didn’t support the symphony and the opera, as well as chamber music and concert halls, we wouldn’t even have classical music! So you might think of them as snobs. And when you’re on the other side of the velvet ropes, it might feel that way. But in reality, they have a passion for music and they have the means to bring music to people. That is a great service to the community. Are some of them snobs? Absolutely. Some people do it for the wrong reasons. They want to get dressed up and be looked up to. There’s some of that. But the classical music world is so underfunded. They’ll take any support they can get!

Generally speaking, classical music is not just for snobs. It’s for everyone! Once you become familiar with a few key pieces, you’ll fall in love with them. Maybe at first you’ll think those are the only pieces that are worth listening to. But when you open up your horizons and listen to other music, you’ll realize there’s a world of great music for you to enjoy!

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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Why is Your Left Hand Bigger Than Your Right Hand?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. Is your left hand bigger than your right hand? This is a great question. My left hand is bigger than my right hand. I bet a lot of you pianists out there find the same thing. You might wonder why. I’m really interested in comments from all of you to see if this is true! I’ve talked to many pianists who have found that their left hands are slightly larger than their right hands. It has nothing to do with being right-handed or left-handed either.

My left hand has a bigger reach than my right hand.

I can barely play white key tenths around the front of the keys. That’s my maximum reach. I’m going to talk more later about how you can overcome small hands and why it doesn’t really matter. Some of the greatest pianists of all time had very small hands, even smaller than mine! I can just barely reach white key 10ths. I don’t really depend upon it. I rarely play tenths because it takes so much time for me to grab tiny slivers of keys. It’s not really very useful. On the right hand, if I try to do the same thing, I absolutely can’t do it at all. I just can’t reach tenths with my right hand. You will find that this is true for most pianists. So you might wonder why this is the case. It might have to do with how much you practice and play the piano. And of course, natural physiology enters into it. I’m sure this is not a hundred percent universal. The reason pianists’ left hands are usually a bit larger is that left-hand parts tend to be more outstretched than right-hand parts. The right-hand usually has the melody. The left hand has accompaniments involving all kinds of stretching. So, your left-hand ends up being ever so slightly bigger than your right hand, generally speaking.

What are some ways to overcome the limitations of small hands on the piano?

I promised you some tips about small hands. I have relatively small hands. I always wanted to play music beyond my reach. I will say this: if you don’t have a solid octave you’re going to have a hard time with a lot of repertoire. Fortunately, you don’t really need much of a reach for baroque music or even most classical period music. Octaves are somewhat prevalent, but the reaches in earlier period music are not nearly as great as later period music. So you still might be okay, at least in some repertoire, if you don’t have good solid octaves. If you want to be able to play bigger reaches than an octave, or you can’t quite reach an octave as well as you’d like, perhaps what you want to do is to break the chords. I’ve talked about this before. When you break chords very quickly on the pedal, it’s hard to tell that you aren’t reaching all the notes at once! So, if you want to play big chords that you can’t possibly reach, how can you play them? Using the pedal while breaking chords very quickly will create the illusion of playing big chords beyond your reach.

Can you stretch your hands to expand your reach?

When I was a kid, my father taught me a stretching technique he had heard about. It involved gently pushing your hands against the keyboard to get a little more reach. I didn’t find this technique to be at all helpful. What did help me enormously was developing more strength for rapidly breaking chords. Chords that were beyond my reach became accessible to me! And, you’re going to find the same thing. So don’t fret if you don’t have a big reach! If you develop strength in your playing, you can learn how to break chords successfully and it sounds great! In fact, a lot of pianists with large hands will choose to break chords because of the richness of the sound it creates. So, get your hands nice and strong and learn how to break chords quickly and you’ll be fine. Just from playing music that has bigger reaches you can develop a slightly larger reach. Since the left hand generally has bigger stretches than the right hand, you will tend to find your left hand reach will be a smidgen larger than your right hand.

Have you noticed this? I’d love to get a conversation started! Let me know in the comments how you feel about this! 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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