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How to Play Smoothly on the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to play smoothly on the piano. The answer: Avoid the impossible! What am I talking about? Playing smoothly on the piano is something you hear great artists do. The way they play is just so pristinely smooth. You wish you could achieve that same smoothness in your playing. But your playing sometimes can sound choppy. You don’t know how to achieve that smooth sound that you hear other people doing. You want it so badly, and you wonder, what can you do about it?

One of the most important aspects of learning to play smoothly on the piano is to practice incessantly without the pedal.

When you practice without the pedal you learn how to connect things with your fingers. That’s the secret, in a nutshell, of how to play smoothly. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Oftentimes there are things that are just not possible to play smoothly. So, what can you do about that? Do you just smear it all with the pedal? No. It will sound awful if you do that. You will hear the beginning of the second movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral Sonata as an example in the accompanying video. It’s really hard to connect those opening chords in the right hand. So how do you do it?

The secret is that you shouldn’t try to connect everything.

If you just try to connect everything, you can end up with a mess. There’s no way to bring out any lines. It comes out blocked and choppy. So sacrifice the things that are not as important to connect, for the things that are vitally important to connect, which is the melody! So, in your right hand, you sacrifice the lower notes so that you can connect the melody which is the top line. You can grab a certain amount of those chords on the pedal so it doesn’t sound quite so austere. You purposely let go of the bottom notes so you can connect the top notes. That’s what I mean when I say avoid the impossible. If you try to connect all the notes, you can’t do it. It’s impossible, so don’t even try. If you connect the melody really well, it sounds gorgeous.

Try this in your music!

Whatever you’re playing, when you want to really play smoothly, sacrifice what you can’t connect for what you must connect. That is the lesson for today! Let me know how it works for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com, and on YouTube. 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

How To Solidify Your Musical Performance

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I have a special treat for you! Today’s video is about how you can solidify your musical performance. Sometimes you practice a piece and learn the whole thing, but when you perform it, you just can’t count on it coming out the way you want. Maybe sometimes it comes through in practice, but you’re afraid to play for anyone because it’s not dependable. Sometimes your performance comes out well, sometimes it doesn’t. What can you do about that? In this video I’m going to show you how to overcome those insecurities!

How do you approach a new piece of music?

A few years ago I made a video about how to practice a new piece on the piano. I chose a piece randomly. The first thing I did was to read through it. Then I started learning it from the beginning. I practiced in front of you, showing you exactly how I approach a new piece. You can reference that video here. In that video, and in my general practice, I start from the beginning of a piece. I start with a very small phrase, just a couple of measures. I look at just the right hand and figure out the notes, then the rhythm, the fingering, the phrasing, and finally the expression. In other words, looking at all the details to get that one little phrase memorized. Then I do the same thing with the left-hand. I learn that same little phrase, notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression with the left hand. Once I get that memorized, I then put the hands together and get that memorized. Then I go on to the next section in the same way, connecting as I go.

What can you do after you’ve learned a piece of music and you have it memorized, but it’s still not really solid?

Let’s say you learn a piece of music, but you don’t feel 100% confident in your performance. Maybe it was solid at one point, but it’s kind of deteriorated over time. What can you do about that? Well, I have an answer for you! Today, once again, I’m going to show you how I practice. I’m going to practice the Liszt Sonata in B minor which I’ve been working on. We just moved here to the Waterloo Arts District in Cleveland. We finally have air conditioning here! It’s been tough making videos because it’s been very hot. So I decided that I would relearn this piece. I couldn’t find my scores, so I have my father’s old score. It’s tattered, but it has all the notes in it!

When you’re practicing, have the music handy, and of course your trusty metronome. Start from the beginning. In this case, I won’t start from the very beginning because the beginning is slow and there’s nothing technically oriented. I’m going to go ahead and start from where the fun begins! I will check with the metronome when necessary. I won’t necessarily use the metronome throughout, but any time there’s any insecurity with tempo or if I need to do metronome speeds, I want to have a metronome handy. This is a great way to practice. I’m going to play slowly and securely with no pedal. I’ll have the score handy. If anything isn’t right in the pocket, I will stop and reference the score.

You may notice how I don’t just work to the point of getting trouble spots to sound O.K., but to be able to play in a relaxed manner. Try stopping just before a place you miss to give yourself a moment to relax. Then, incorporate the memory of the relaxation right at that point, so when you’re playing up to speed:

It’s like having an infinite amount of relaxation in a speck of time.

Another essential technique is to practice in chords wherever possible to reveal the harmonies and discover the best fingering. Also:

Divide difficult passages into manageable chunks of music.

 

Then you can put the small sections of music together. But you can feel like you are starting over at each new chunk of music, again fostering playing in a relaxed manner. My father used to say:

Through strength comes relaxation.

 

There’s a lot of truth to that. Years ago when I first studied the Liszt B Minor Sonata, I didn’t have the strength I have now. I had to sometimes contort my body in order to negotiate some of the most difficult sections of the piece. But over the years, the combination of increased strength, along with practicing relaxing at strategic points has made playing the piano a much more fluid experience. I hope this demonstration of how I work will help you in your practicing!

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How to Make Corrections in Your Playing

Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share a tip with you for making corrections in your playing. I’ve discussed so many different techniques, from taking things slowly, referencing the score, playing with the metronome, and playing hands separately. So what could I possibly be bringing to this video that I haven’t shared before? Today I have a tip for you that really helps to make corrections stick. Because that’s the hardest problem, isn’t it? You correct something, but then you make the same mistake again.

The answer is to articulate out loud what the correction is.

Say you’re playing through a piece and you miss something. Well, you have the score handy. You have the patience to find where you are in the score. You realize your mistake and find exactly what the correction is. Then you say the correction out loud, “It’s a fourth finger on F in the right hand. The first time it goes up. The second time, it goes down to the fourth finger on F.” Boom! You verbalized it. Now it’s not abstract. You don’t just say, “I’m going to get that right next time.” You really make the correction omnipresent in your mind. So when you get there, you go, “What was it? Oh, fourth figure F.” Boom! You have that extra bit of information floating in your head just when you need it.

If you’re not 100% sure of what you’re trying to achieve, you’re very unlikely to achieve it.

If you can’t put it into words, you might not really fully grasp what it is you want to do next time. It’s too abstract. You can’t just say, “I want to get that right.” It’s not black and white. It has to be quantifiable and precise. It’s not just the notes. You have to remember every articulation. For example, if you need to remember to play staccato on the repeat of the second section. You say, “Second section, make sure it’s staccato in the right hand.” So you think about where that second section is before you play. You see as you’re coming into it, “Oh yeah. When I get there, I’m going to play staccato in my right hand.”

Articulate it in words!

That’s the tip for today! Among all the other ways of solving problems, make sure you articulate with words specifically what you want to be different in your playing each time you repeat a phrase that you want to correct. 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

In the studio with Morton Estrin – What I Learned Watching My Father Practice the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I want to tell you about what I learned watching my father, Morton Estrin, practice the piano. It brings back such memories. We grew up in a house in the suburbs on Long Island, about an hour from Manhattan. When we first moved into that house, I was five years old. It was a very exciting time. My father had a studio built. We had a pretty big house to begin with, but the studio was enormous! We had a lot of concerts there, and a lot of fun.

Although my father taught music at Hofstra University, he did most of his teaching right in the back of our house.

He did an immense amount of teaching! But whenever my father had any time free from teaching, he would be practicing piano. I would often go down there to sit and listen to him. I always found it interesting. I want to share with you an extremely personal story about what I learned watching him practice. This was really an epiphany. And I’m going to share something that was kind of a sad mishap that I’ve never really shared with anybody.

My father had an illustrious recording career.

My father started making records in the 1950s. His first recording was the complete Chopin Ballades and the F Minor Fantasie, for Fantasy Records by coincidence. Then he did some recordings of the music of Meyer Kupferman. These were pieces written specifically for him. They were extremely difficult 12 tone pieces that he played all from memory! Then he started making a series of recordings for Connoisseur Society Records. Alan Silver, who was the producer and the owner of the company, was truly an artist. What he was able to achieve both sonically and musically in his recordings was truly astounding! I love those recordings to this day.

My father’s first record for Connoisseur Society was the Scriabin Opus 8 Etudes, which won record of the year.

It was the first LP of these magnificent works. Wonderful performances! Then he recorded the Rachmaninoff Opus 32 Preludes. He performed the complete Rachmaninoff preludes on several occasions, including in Lincoln Center. It’s a mind boggling task!

There was a time when he was preparing a Liszt record. I remember attending the sessions. Somehow things just didn’t gel. And even though everything was set up and the piano was chosen and the technician was there, they had to abandon the session. It was a really tenuous moment, but that’s what happened. So some time went by and then the next recording my father decided to do with Connoisseur Society Records was a Brahms album. They also had a plan for a series of albums entitled, Great Hits You Played When You Were Young, which sounds kind of corny. But these ended up being really popular. The performances were so magnificent and the recording quality was exquisite. Radio stations just loved these records! They were played constantly all over the world!

In preparation for those sessions, he worked so hard that he ended up recording three records in one series of sessions! It was just a few days. They thought it was going to be the Brahms and maybe one of these discs. He just had so much repertoire at such a high level that he slammed through three complete albums in the one session!

I’m going to reveal to you what I learned from listening to his preparation for those recording sessions.

I remember listening to him practice. He got to a point where he would just be going through everything with no pedal, taking everything a little bit under tempo. Every single finger just fell in place. It was exciting for me to hear him play like that because there was such unbelievable refinement and security in his playing. He prepared so unbelievably for those sessions. It was astounding! There were so many of those recordings that were just the first take. He was that well-prepared. He just went through all of this music. And by the way, you must listen! I’ll have links below for these discs.

You want to get to the point where you have ultimate security in your playing.

I knew from listening to my father practice that the recordings were going to be great. He was so completely prepared, he could play everything accurately in a completely relaxed manner. Most classical recordings have a lot of editing because it saves time. If you have a work that’s 20 minutes long, to get one perfect performance is very difficult. On recordings, if you have just a little cracked note that you might not notice in a live performance, it’s really annoying when you listen over and over again. But he was so well prepared for this that a minimum amount of editing was necessary.

So that’s my personal story for today. I hope you’ve enjoyed 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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Supplemental Links:

Rachmaninoff Opus 32 Preludes
Scriabin Opus 8 Etudes
Chopin Ballades and the F Minor Fantasie
The Music of Meyer Kupferman: II
Great Hits You Played When You Were Young

Performance Anxiety: You Believe What You Say to Yourself

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about easing performance anxiety by avoiding negative self-talk. You believe what you say! I’ve seen this happen so many times with performers. It’s not just in music, it’s in everything in life. Whether it’s sports, interviews, public speaking, and more. You believe what you say in your head to yourself. So if you tell yourself you’re going to bomb a performance, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, because you believe what you’ve told yourself. You really have to be careful what you say in your head before and during a performance.

You have to envision a positive outcome.

Imagine yourself at a performance. Imagine the successful outcome in great detail. Live in that moment in your head. Close your eyes, breathe deeply and meditate on that moment. Then when you are at your performance, it feels familiar. You’ve already set yourself up for success. It’s so vitally important! This can work for anything from your piano lessons to job interviews. Imagine yourself having a positive experience. Keep that projection in your head. Once you start telling yourself, “I can do this. I feel good about this.” Then you’re going to bring about a better performance.

Once you start with negative self-talk it’s a spiral that’s really hard to get out of.

Be careful what you say to yourself! It will manifest itself either positively or negatively. It’s really important in musical performances and in life itself to have a positive outlook. 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

www.LivingPianos.com
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949-244-3729

The Secret to Fingering: Always Look Back, Never Look Forward

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to give you a really valuable tip for fingering: Always look back, never look forward. If you’re an advanced player, you know that doesn’t make any sense at all, because you have to know what’s coming in order to negotiate a good fingering. That is absolutely true. However, if you’re a student, it’s very different, because the fingering that’s indicated in the score is what you must follow. A good teacher will provide you with good fingering. You must always determine what finger to use by looking back to the last note that has a fingering marked. Put your hand in the position over those notes. Then, whatever finger is over the next note is the finger to use. Because if you look forward, you could run into trouble.

If you want to know what finger to use, always look back to the last printed fingering.

I have a Burgmuller study here called Innocence. It’s a lovely little piece. I want to show you something in the right hand after the second ending. You have your third finger on C, but you have a first finger on the very next C. So if you look ahead you might think you have to have your first finger on the first C. And then the same thing happens again. You have your third finger on E, and then you have another E after that which has the first finger marked. So instead of using the third finger, you may think you need to use your first finger on the first E since the E coming up has a first finger marked. You might think you should use the first finger because you’re going to need it later. But that is not the way fingerings work in music.

So indeed, you would play this passage with the first, second and third fingers, then change your third finger to your first finger on the same E, and then use your second finger on the F. Why? Because the last printed finger was the first finger on E, so you naturally use your second finger on F. You always look back to the last printed fingering to know what finger to use on the following notes. If you look forward, you’ll get fouled up because that’s not the way fingerings are followed in the score.

I hope this clarifies things for you!

If you’re figuring out a fingering because there’s no fingering written, you might want to get a sense of the whole passage to be able to execute a good fingering possibility. But if you’re a student, and you have an edited edition that’s fingered, and your teacher provides additional fingering solutions for you, you must always follow the fingering by looking back to see the last note that had a finger marked. Put that finger on that note and see what fingers are over the next notes instead of looking ahead to see what fingerings are coming. That won’t work. This is something that some of my students have asked about. I hope this is helpful for all of 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

www.LivingPianos.com
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949-244-3729