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How Fast is Allegro? How Loud is Forte?

I have two questions for you today: How fast is allegro, and how loud is forte? Have you ever seen a metronome with a tempo guide? It gives you all the speeds for andante, adagio, allegro, presto and more. But when you look at the guide, allegro is from 80 to 120. How do you know how fast it is? Is 80 allegro, or is it 100, or is 120 allegro? It’s the same thing with forte. How loud do you have to play for it to be considered forte? These are excellent questions!

The answer is, it really depends upon the context.

For example, in Mozart, forte may be the loudest indication of an entire piece. When Mozart writes fortissimo it’s really serious business! It’s really loud because it happens so rarely. Same thing with pianissimo in Mozart. But I’ve played some Mahler symphonies that have , FFF, sometimes FFFF, and even FFFFF fortissississississimo! So when you see a forte in Mahler, you have to take it with a grain of salt. There’s such a range and so many different levels of loud, louder, loudest and beyond.

You must consider the acoustics of the room and the sound of the instrument you’re playing.

The acoustics of a room and the sound of the instrument have an affect not just in regards to volume, but speed as well. How you articulate can make something sound faster or slower. If you play very legato, it might sound slower even playing at the same tempo. But if you play with more separation between the notes, really well-articulated staccato fingers, it will sound faster even at the same tempo.

Allegro isn’t just a speed, it’s a mood.

The same thing is true of presto which is very fast, and vivace, which is lively, and andante which is a relaxed tempo like taking a stroll. These are not just tempos or speeds. They have to do with the mood and character of the piece you’re playing. This is really obvious when you have dance movements, like a minuet or a waltz. Everything has to be in the character of the music. It’s not just an absolute speed or volume. Everything is related to everything else, just like in life itself. There are very few absolutes in this world. There are some, absolutely! But in music, most things are relational.

How fast is allegro? How loud is forte? It depends upon the piece and what you’re trying to create with it!

Listen to how loud the loudest part of your piece is and how soft the softest part is. Then you can come up with an architecture that makes sense of the dynamic scheme. Find tempi that work for the mood you’re trying to create in your music. That’s the answer. Keep an open mind, and think about what you’re trying to achieve with every piece you’re playing. Thanks so much for joining me. I’m 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

How Do You Know When to Move on in Your Piano Practice?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to know when to move on in your piano practice. This is one of the most important aspects of working at the piano productively. After all, you don’t want to shortchange yourself and give up before you solve problems. Yet, you don’t want to bang your head against the wall and spend hours on something that isn’t progressing. This will leave you frustrated. You won’t even want to touch the piano anymore! So, what is the balance? Well, in a nutshell, it’s:

Realizing where you have reached the point of diminishing returns.

What do I mean when I say, “the point of diminishing returns”? I remember the first time I ever heard that phrase, I had no idea what it meant. I was a young child. I asked my father and he described it this way, which I think is a really good description. Imagine there’s a building going up in Manhattan on a very valuable piece of real estate. Building a house on that property would never make sense, because the land is worth millions of dollars. There’s no way a house is ever going to be worth that much. Not even a 10-story building will be worth enough no matter how elaborate. So you have to have enough stories to lease or sell in order to make the building profitable. But at a certain point, it gets more expensive to build higher and higher. You have a certain amount of costs involved per story, but anything above 50 stories starts to get extremely expensive. Eventually, you get to a height where it’s absolutely the point of diminishing returns. There’s no way you could possibly lease space or sell condos on that many floors to overcome the tremendous costs of building a structure so tall. That’s an example of the point of diminishing returns.

Understanding how this relates to your piano practice is essential.

What makes it tough is knowing when you should give up and when you should keep plowing ahead. I think you want to give things a good shot. For example, if you’re working on a difficult passage and it just isn’t coming, you try playing hands separately, you put them back together, and it doesn’t quite do it. Is it time to give up? Not necessarily. You might try going very slowly with the metronome and doing progressive metronome speeds. If you get to a certain point when you can’t get any faster, do you give up? Well, maybe not. Maybe you try to squeeze out a few more notches. Sometimes, you get to a point where you think you’ve taken the metronome as far as you can, then you lighten up your touch or something else, and boom, you get a few more metronome notches! But, then you get to a point where you’re spending so much time getting one more notch, maybe that’s the time to leave it for another day.

Oftentimes, when you are learning a new phrase or phrases you are assimilating into your memory, it becomes really difficult to get things beyond a certain point of refinement.

You might get the music really refined once or twice. Maybe you get it three times in a row way under tempo, and that’s all you can do with it. Well, try to squeeze a little bit more out of that. If you got it perfectly at least a few times in a row, even if it’s way under tempo, it’s very likely the next day, when you refresh your memory on it, you’ll be able to play it faster right from the get-go just from sleeping on it. So, you must know when to move on. The key is to not give up right away. Try a couple of different techniques. Try slowing down. Try hands separately. Try using the metronome. Try stopping at strategic points. You can also try playing very strong or very light. You can try accenting different notes in a passage, or you could even alter the rhythm. If you have straight eighths, you could make them into a dotted rhythm, then reverse the dotted rhythm.

There are many, many different techniques to try before abandoning something altogether. However, you don’t want to get stuck and spend so much time on so little music that at the end of a week, you have very little to show for your work. Sometimes just plowing through something, getting it perfectly two or three times in a row under tempo allows you to learn more music. Because the next day you can take all of that music up to a higher level and push forward in the score. So, you have one part from the day before that’s starting to come along, the part from two days ago is getting quite secure, and the part from before that is already at performance level. You’re working on all these different sections simultaneously.

Try to push to the point of diminishing returns in your practice!

Try many different techniques before giving up, but don’t feel that giving up is necessarily a bad thing. It allows you to move forward and amass more music in your daily practice. I’m wondering how this all works for you. Try it out and let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me. I’m 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

Robert Estrin Plays: Debussy Pour Le Piano

This is a live performance of one of Claude Debussy’s great piano works. The 3 movements were written at different times in Debussy’s life. So there is a great variety of sounds and textures.

Prélude: The first movement, Prélude, utilizes many interesting techniques on the piano including glissandi, as well as notes held with the sostenuto pedal (the middle pedal) creating a great variety of sounds.

Sarabande: The Sarabande middle movement is one of the most beautiful gems of piano writing which explores rich harmonies with haunting melodies

Toccata: The work ends with the virtuoso Toccata which is a tour de force of intricate undulating patterns of music which build to a spectacular climax!

Are Pickups Measures?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is, are pickups measures? Let’s say a piece is in 3/4 time, and it starts with a quarter note. Is that a measure? For example, in the Beethoven Sonata Opus 49 No. 2, the famous G major Sonata, the second movement starts with a dotted 8th and 16th. Then there’s a bar line right after that. Are those first two notes, the dotted 8th and 16th, a measure? They’re in a box. Well, the movement is in 3/4 time. 3/4 time tells you there are three beats in each measure and the quarter note gets one beat. Since you only have one beat total with a dotted 8th and 16th, this can’t possibly be a measure. This is a pickup, sometimes called an anacrusis.

A pickup is simply a beat (or beats) before the first measure (or other measures).

After the first bar line comes the first measure. The pickup notes are not a measure. When learning a piece in 3/4 time that starts with pickups, each phrase starts on the third beat and ends on the second beat. The whole piece is kind of juxtaposed starting with the third beat. An interesting thing that you may have noticed in most pieces that have pickups is that they almost always end on beat that make up the time from the beginning. So indeed, if you look at the end of the movement of this Beethoven Sonata, it only has only two beats in the last measure !And yes, that is considered a measure even though it only has two beats. This is because it starts with a pickup on the third beat and ends on the second beat. You could actually loop it back to the beginning. Now this doesn’t repeat. Although sometimes, you will have repeated sections with da capos or repeat signs that will repeat with pickup. You’ll have a partial measure at the end and the pickup at the beginning. It all works seamlessly! So that’s the way pickups work.

Remember, pickups are not measures.

The first measure comes after the bar line. If you don’t have a complete measure, even if it’s two beats out of four, those would be two beat pickups. If you don’t have a complete measure at the very beginning of a piece after the time signature, that is considered a pickup. Take a look at the last measure of a piece that starts off without enough beats, and nine times out of 10, it’s made up for in the last measure. That’s an interesting little fact for you! You count that note at the beginning backwards from the first measure. That’s why the first note of this movement would be counted as three, not one. You never have two first beats in a row. You know that after the bar line is the first beat. So the beat before the first beat of the measure must be the third beat.

That’s everything you need to know about pickups!

I hope that’s cleared things up for you! I’m sure a lot of you are already well aware of this, but I thought I’d make this video in case there’s any confusion for anybody. Thanks so much for joining me. I’m 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

Musical Stress Test

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to discuss a musical stress test. What am I talking about? You practice, and practice, and practice, but you wonder if you really know the score. How do you know if you have security with the music? Are you ready for a performance? Are you ready for a lesson? Are you ready to accompany someone? How do you know when you’re ready? You don’t want to wait until the moment of truth comes to find out you weren’t prepared! How can you know? Because as you well know, you can play something by yourself in your home perfectly, and then when you try to play it for somebody else, it goes haywire. What can you do to test things out?

Try playing faster.

There are a lot of things you can do to test yourself. You can try playing things faster to see if you can still hold it together. Because when you get nervous, one of the first things that happens is your physiology speeds up a little bit. Your heart rate, your breathing, all of that speeds up. So guess what happens to your playing? You go faster! You don’t even think you’re going faster. I’ll never forget many, many, years ago, listening to recordings of myself as a child, playing in my dad’s student recitals. I couldn’t believe how fast I was going! I was playing faster than I ever played those pieces! It could be a disaster if you’ve never tried your pieces faster, and the first time it happens is during a performance. I’ve had times where I would keep my fingers crossed hearing my students perform in recitals taking outrageously fast tempos they had never tried before, hoping they had some reserve in their playing.

Another great thing you can do is record yourself.

Psych yourself up like it’s an actual performance. Set up a device, and go through your music and make yourself a little bit nervous. Make yourself feel like you are performing. The key is not to stop! Even if you mess up right at the beginning, keep going. Because that can happen in a performance, and you don’t want to start over. Nobody wants to hear you start over. First of all, it’s as much as announcing to everybody that you’ve messed up. But more than that, it destroys the continuity of the performance for the audience. Speaking of which, there’s no better way to create stress than to play for an audience. If you regularly play for people, play for more people. The more people you play for, the more nervous you’re likely to get. That’s the ultimate stress test. And if you c witanhstand that, then you’re ready for anything.

What I recommend is ratcheting up little by little.

Start with recording for a device. Then play for a family member or a trusted friend. Then play for larger and larger numbers of people until you’re ready for an audience. If you can withstand that and you can withstand playing faster than you usually play, you should be ready for a performance. You can also try playing on different pianos as a musical stress test. Play on a piano you’ve never played and see what happens! Right from the get go, without even trying the piano first, just jump right in. Play on as many pianos as you can. It’s a great way to improve your preparedness, because you can’t take your piano with you. Usually, you have to play whatever piano is wherever you are performing. So playing on as many different instruments as possible is another great way to get ready for your performance. Make sure you’re in the best shape possible to withstand anything in your playing. I hope this is interesting for you! I’m 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

The Top 5 Piano Lesson Fails

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to tell you the top five piano lesson fails. Now I just want to say right from the get-go that I love teaching and I appreciate the hard work all my students put in. I have students all around the world. I counted it up on my schedule yesterday. I have students in 12 different countries! It’s mind-boggling, the world we live in, that such a thing is even possible! I appreciate the time everybody makes to practice and diligently attend lessons. So with all due respect, I’m going to give the top five piano lesson fails.

1. Stopping to ask if you should take a repeat

You’re playing a piece and as soon as you get to a repeat sign, you turn and say, “Do you want me to go on? Or do you want me to repeat it?” I always kind of chuckle inside. It’s better to just make a decision. I’m happy with either one, frankly. But it’s better to go on when you get to the repeat sign or take the repeat so that you have the continuity of the repeat or the continuity of going to the next section. But that’s a heck of a time to ask whether you should go on or not. Make a decision and go with it, or ask beforehand if you’re really not sure.

2. Waiting until the lesson is over to ask questions

You go through an entire lesson and you’re getting some good things done. Then later in the day when checking my email, there’s an email with a bunch of questions from the student. We just got done with this whole piano lesson and now after the lesson, when there’s not going to be another lesson for a week, all of these questions come in. Now I am always happy to answer questions by email. I’m always available for that. I encourage it! But obviously, during the course of the lesson, these questions could be answered much more thoroughly with a back and forth communication that emails don’t allow for. So if you have questions during the course of a lesson, ask your teacher. That’s what they’re there for, to answer all your questions. So make sure that you take the opportunity to ask your teacher at the lesson anything at all that is important to you.

3. Cramming in all your practice just before a lesson

This is something that students are sometimes guilty of. You get busy during the course of the week and you only have a few days left before your lesson. So you just start cramming through everything, trying to get as far as you can. Then you come into the lesson and right from the beginning, nothing is solid. From the very first phrase, everything is muddy and sloppy. This is a real problem for you as a student. Why? Because now you’ve just spent all this time solidifying sloppy playing. Undoing the damage of bad practice is much harder than just learning a smaller part really well. Your teacher will appreciate the thorough work you do, even if it’s a small section, rather than have a whole bunch of music that isn’t on a high level. So don’t worry. Your teacher understands! Believe me, my life gets so busy, it’s hard for me to find time to practice! So I understand. I get it. I’m sure your teachers are understanding in that respect also. Cramming doesn’t work on the piano.

4. Starting a piece at a tempo you can’t maintain

You’re starting to play a piece for your teacher, and you’re gung ho. So you start at a nice fast tempo. But almost immediately you start slowing down. You get a little further and slow down more and more. This isn’t very helpful for you. You must find a tempo that you can maintain throughout the piece. If you can’t play measure 12 at the tempo that you’re starting, you’re in trouble. Now, if it’s a long piece and there’s a section you don’t know as well, you might want to stop at a certain point and say, “I don’t know this part as well, so I’m going to take it slower”. That’s perfectly understandable. You don’t want to necessarily take the whole piece drastically under tempo if you have a large chunk of it at a good clip. But if you’re going to keep slowing down the whole time, this does not really help you. You want to get used to playing at one tempo.

5. Stopping after a couple of measures when your teacher asks you to play from a specific section

Your teacher asks you to start on measure 47, so you start at measure 47. You get one or two measures in and you stop and say, “Do you want me to go on?” This is similar to the repeat thing, but in this case, there’s no repeat or anything. It’s just that they asked you to start at a certain place. For some reason, you think they didn’t want you to play more than that one measure or two. Now, often I will have students play one specific section. I will say, “Only play up to the first note of measure 50 and that’s it.” Then of course, it’s very hard for students to stop on that note because they’re not necessarily aware of where that note is in the score. But sometimes it’s really important to stop on a specific note to gain security with it. But if your teacher asks you to start at a certain place, you can assume they want you to keep playing unless they stop you or instruct you to play a smaller section.

If you avoid these piano lesson fails, you’ll have more productive lessons. I promise you!

So take it to heart. It’s meant in a positive spirit! I hope I’m not hurting anybody’s feelings with these. That’s not my intention. Hopefully, you find it helpful. Anybody who knows of other lesson fails, share them in the comments here on LivingPianos.com or YouTube. Thanks to all you subscribers and Patreon subscribers! You are what keep me motivated! I’m 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