Tag Archives: piano lessons

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

Can You Be Upbeat in 1,200 Videos? Why I’m So Upbeat in my Videos

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I’m here today with a comment and question from a viewer. They said, “Your enthusiasm is amazing. How do you stay so passionate and enthusiastic? You should make a video on that.” At first when I read that, I was flattered and all. But then I started thinking about it and I thought you might be interested in the backstory as to why I always seem to be upbeat in my videos. I have over 1,200 videos and I don’t think I’m really depressed in any of them. Does that mean I’m never depressed? Well, no. Everybody has their ups and downs.

Growing up, my friends didn’t have a strong appreciation for classical music.

I grew up in a musical household. My father, Morton Estrin, was a concert pianist. Although he was a Professor of Music at Hofstra University, he did most of his teaching right at home. There was a big addition totally separate from the rest of the house where my father taught. So, I did connect with many of his students. But truth be known, my friends couldn’t have cared less about Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin. That stuff wasn’t cool. I would play a few popular songs, but it wasn’t really my thing. I didn’t listen to very much rock music. There were some songs that I really enjoyed, but my whole life was centered around classical music!

After all these years, to find an audience of people who are enthusiastic about the piano and classical music, the way I am, is actually thrilling!

I look forward to these moments. It’s not easy to find them! I manage to make videos every week. I’ve been doing them on YouTube since 2009 and first started making piano videos in the late 1990’s! That’s a long time. But even right now, I’m here in the showroom. Everything looks great. I’m having a good time. But at the same time, our water heater went out. Our basement is flooded and I’m waiting for a plumber to arrive. So, it’s not all as rosy as you may think! But I take life at face value to a great extent.

You live. You die. So you want to make something happen in between!

I make these videos to share the things that are important to me. It really is thrilling to have people watch and care about classical music and the piano in the 21st century. It’s not irrelevant! I’d love to hear your experiences with classical music as a child and growing up. Did people respect you for it, or did they mock you? I wonder what experiences all of you have had being immersed in classical music, assuming you are. You can comment on LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks so much for the question. And I appreciate the support from all of you subscribers out there! 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 to Negotiate When Buying a Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to negotiate when you’re buying a piano. This doesn’t just apply to pianos. You’ve probably experienced this if you’ve bought a car or anything where the price isn’t set. With large ticket items there’s often negotiation in the pricing. How do you approach such a thing? A lot of people are very uncomfortable with this. That’s why cars are being sold at Costco, so people don’t have to negotiate. There are also things like college sales where the prices are pretty much set so you don’t have to go through the rigmarole of having to negotiate down to the lowest price.

How do you approach negotiating a price?

Well, there are all different personality types in this world. You have to go with what’s comfortable for you. But what I recommend is to just be honest with people. If you tell the salesperson what you’re looking for, what your budget is, and what you have seen, you give them the opportunity to help you. After all, they’re there to make a living. You want to let them know what they’re up against. They might be able to give you special treatment if you let them know the truth!

Be honest and respectful.

Blowing a bunch of smoke and pretending things, that’s really not going to help you. You want to deal with people in a respectful manner and, hopefully, most people are going to be respectful back. There’s no science to this. It’s just a matter of being forthright with people. You should be able to find out what the situation is and work something out if you find the right piano for yourself. Keep in mind that there isn’t always room in the price of pianos or cars. Right now there is scarcity of both due to shipping industry problems.

So some prices are actually being negotiated up from list price!

I hope this is helpful 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

What Can You Do With a Piece You Have Learned?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about what to do with a piece you have learned. There are so many things you can do with it! The first thing is the most obvious thing in the world: Play it! You’d be surprised how many people learn pieces but never play them and they forget them. There are so many benefits to playing the pieces you have learned. One, it’s fun! What’s all the work for anyway if not to be able to play music? Secondly, it keeps the pieces fresh. If you play your pieces every day it gets to the point where you can just whip them off without any problems. So if you ever have a performance opportunity, you’re so used to playing it that it’s almost automatic.

Playing your pieces keeps you physically and mentally in shape on the piano.

A lot of people spend hours a day on exercises to keep their fingers in shape and their muscles moving. You know what? There are many pieces of music that can accomplish the same thing. Now this isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for exercises. There certainly is. Scales, arpeggios, octaves and other exercises are a vital part of piano practice. But in regards to just keeping your fingers limber and the muscles in good shape, playing through your music can accomplish that. You also have the ancillary benefits of developing fluidity and reliability in performance. But like anything else, if you play them over and over and over again, there could be minute changes along the way.

It’s important to periodically reference the score of pieces you have memorized.

In the olden days of analog tape recording, if you ever made a tape of a tape of a tape, the sound gets pretty awful. Each successive generation has a little bit of loss of quality, unlike digital recording today. Another example of this is the old game of telephone that we all played in school, where you whisper a message to the person next to you who then whispers it to the person next to them going all the way around the room. At the end, you have a completely different message! Well, you can end up with a completely different piece of music if you just play it over and over and over again without ever referring back to the original score!

How do you approach reviewing your pieces with the score?

The best way is to take your score out and find a tempo at which you can read it. Now that tempo is going to be far slower than the speed you’re probably playing it. If it’s a piece you have played hundreds of times, you have a tempo that’s much faster than the tempo at which you can actually read all the details of the score. Slow way down, find the appropriate speed on the metronome, and take your foot off the pedal so you can clearly hear everything you’re doing. Then exaggerate everything as you play, delineating all the notes, phrasing, fingering and expression. For example, let’s say you learned the Moonlight Sonata and you want to refresh it. You’ve been playing it and playing and playing it and you want to make sure you’re playing it accurately. And you want to solidify the performance. You want to know exactly where all the rests are, whether chords have two notes or three notes, where the crescendos start and end. There are so many little details. It’s not just the notes and the rhythm and the fingering, it’s every single detail you want to cement and re-cement.

I guarantee this will help you with any piece, no matter how well you play it and how well you’ve learned it.

If you slow it down and play with the score, with no pedal, and with a metronome, you will find little things you had forgotten. You’ll cement your performance and make it much stronger. So the lesson for today, what do you do with pieces you’ve played before that you’ve learned? Keep playing them so you don’t forget them, number one. Number two, review with a score, playing slowly with no pedal, with a metronome to make sure you keep an honest performance. There are other practice techniques you can also employ in strategic parts that need the work, but these are the basics for what to do with pieces you already know. I hope this is helpful 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

Secrets of Improvisation: Improvisation Made Easy

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about improvising using diatonic seventh chords. I’ve been to many conservatories and master classes. Improvisation is almost never taught unless you’re a jazz major. It’s really shameful. As a matter of fact, I remember once meeting a pianist who was doing master’s work at Julliard in piano performance who couldn’t play Happy Birthday by ear! Isn’t that a sad fact? I’m here to show you some very simple improvisation techniques you can use in your playing. If you’re a sophisticated jazz player, this might not be of great value to you, although you might get something out of it. But for those of you who think you can’t improvise, you can! A great deal just comes down to having a command of some basic theory.

You have to know what notes to choose among when you’re improvising.

I’ve talked about simple things like improvising utilizing the dorian mode, but today is a little bit different. I’m going to talk about diatonic seventh chords. Now, that’s a mouthful! What am I talking about? First of all, what are seventh chords? I’ll just give a very quick theory primer, because it’s not that complex. It’s only complex if you don’t know your key signatures and your major scales. You have to learn those first before you can do much of anything with improvisation. It also is unbelievably helpful for your sight reading and learning music. So any of you who haven’t learned your key signatures, I highly recommend it. I’m going to assume you know your key signatures for this lesson, because it’s all based upon that. If you would like a video tutorial on key signatures, just let me know in the comments.

What are diatonic chords?

Well, first of all, what are chords? Chords are notes arranged in the interval of thirds. What are thirds? Thirds are notes of the scale that are three notes apart counting the first and last note. The notes in a scale are all seconds apart. If you skip one note between each scale degree, you have thirds. 7th chords consist of 4 notes: a root, third, fifth and seventh. That’s why they’re called seventh chords! The interesting thing is that you can do this in any major key. If you are in C major, you play every other white key going up from C to form a 4 note chord, C – E – G – B. If you are in D major, you can leave out every other note of the D major scale. You’re left with a D major 7th chord: D – F-sharp – A – C-sharp. You can do this in any key. But that’s just the one-seven chord. That’s a seventh chord built on the first scale degree. What about a two-seven chord? You can start on the second scale degree and have a two-seven. So in C-major, a two-seven will be D – F – A – C. You can start on the third scale degree and have a three-seven chord, and so on.

How does this apply to improvisation?

If you just want to play something really simple, you can go from a one-seven chord to a two-seven chord, back and forth. You can use any note of the scale to make up a tune in your right hand. If you find that easy, you can continue going up to three-seven, then to four-seven, then back down to three-seven, two-seven and finally one-seven. It’s a lot less complicated than it sounds. Here’s the beauty of it: you don’t have to play fast. A lot of times, people see great artists playing a mile a minute and think you have to play fast to improvise. You don’t have to play fast! You just have to make melodies. Strive for something that you would want to sing. It doesn’t have to be fast. It doesn’t have to be technical.

If you find that you’re having difficulty, the difficulty is most likely going to be with your left hand, believe it or not.

It can be challenging keeping the left hand rhythmically coherent, where you’re not changing the chords in random fashion, but holding each of them the same amount of time. You can use a metronome for that. Or better yet, find a drum beat on your keyboard or on YouTube to play along with. The best way is to play with other musicians where there’s give and take. But you can get your feet wet just by finding a drum beat to play along with. YouTube is loaded with drum beats. Just come up with any kind of drum beat you can imagine, like lounge drums, swing, or a shuffle drum beat, and you’ll find them at different speeds (BPM, Beats Per Minute). People have posted just about every kind of beat you can imagine on there! Find one that’s a speed you like, and then experiment!

Try it out for yourself!

Start off in C major. If you’ve never improvised before, just go from a one-seven to a two-seven in C major – back and forth holding each chord for 4 beats. Make sure you maintain the integrity of the comping. In your right hand, just play any white keys. Try to vary how long you hold notes. And play some notes at the same time you play the chords, and sometimes play chords without playing notes at the same time in your right hand. If you have friends who play music, comp for them and let them solo, and then let them comp for you while you solo. Comping is playing the chords behind the solo. Improvising by yourself, where you’re doing both the comping and the soloing is hard at first. If you have musical friends, this can be so much fun for you! When you get into things like blues, and if you learn how to read a lead sheet, which has just the chord symbols and the melody line, it opens up vast possibilities of music for you in a myriad of styles from folk to rock to new age, jazz, blues, country, you name it! This is a great way to get your feet wet. Let me know what you think! 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 to Develop Brilliant Octaves in Your Piano Playing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how you can develop brilliant octaves in your piano playing. It’s exciting when you go to a concert and there are big octave sections, like in the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor Piano Concerto. Or, in Liszt or Chopin octave sections where both hands are playing octaves in unison. There’s a power to it that is so exciting! It almost seems impossible if you’ve never done it before. But there are techniques that I’m going to share with you.

I’ve been working on the Liszt B minor Sonata for a recording session that I’m doing later this year. In relearning this piece, I’ve had an epiphany that I’m going to share with you. But first, I want to show you the essentials that I’ve covered before in previous videos.

What are the essential techniques for brilliant octaves?

Just playing octaves doesn’t seem very difficult. So what’s the technique? Playing octaves with the arms won’t work at speed because the arms are just too big to move fast enough. There’s a limitation to how fast the arms can go. So it comes down to the wrists. I’ve talked a great deal about the importance of the wrists in piano technique. It’s important to use your wrists not just for octaves and fast chords, but also for articulating staccatos. Even in Baroque and Classical period music, the wrists are so important for clarity of your phrasing. Even for something like a Bach minuet. If you were to play a Bach minuet without using your wrists for staccatos, it just would be lacking in definition. By using the wrists on the staccatos, instead of the arm, it has far greater clarity. Even for music that was written when the piano was in its infancy, the wrists delineate phrasing in a way that the arms can never achieve. But when you’re doing fast octave or chord technique, the wrists have to be independent from the arms. But there’s more to it than that.

The most important thing for achieving fast octaves is maintaining an arch position of your hands.

One secret of octaves is having your hands in exactly the right place. In order to accomplish this, you use a technique I refer to as, the arches. Your hand must form an arch. The arch is an amazingly strong structure. The Roman aqueducts used arches. A tent that you go camping in has supports that form an arch, and they’re very strong to withstand winds. Your hand must have an arch for strength as well. You do this to mitigate the difference in strength between the thumb and the pinky. Forming an arch equalizes the force that you have on either side of your hands. Even with an arch, the other fingers are in the way, aren’t they? So the other fingers need to go up and out of the way. This forms another arch! There are two sets of arches, essentially. The arch for support, and the arch to get the fingers out of the way. That way, positioning your hands less than an inch over the keys, any effort goes directly to playing the keys. You want to always keep your hands just a fraction of an inch above the keys, never touching the keys. You don’t want a big motion because there’s no time for that. If you place your hands precisely over the keys, less than an inch, with a nice arch, you can get tremendous power and speed with a minimal amount of effort.

How do you practice the arch technique?

There’s a great little exercise I’d like to show you. You must not use the arm for the up and down motion of octaves, only for going from key to key, moving towards the fallboard for black keys, and closer to the edge of the keys for white keys. Set the metronome to 60 and just play a slow C major scale in octaves. When you play this, your wrists should be moving up and down, but your arms should just be making a fluid motion over the keys. The arms provide absolutely no up and down motion at all. Maintain the arch position between your thumb and pinky, and keep your other fingers up and out of the way. That doesn’t seem hard. To play it correctly, however, is very important. It’s how you play this exercise that will develop your strength. If you just play with your arms, it might work at a slow tempo. With your metronome set at 60, you could play almost any way at all, and it’s going to come out! But to get greater speed, the motion must all come from your wrists. The wrists can go very fast! Once you’re secure and you’re not using any up and down arm motion, just your wrists, go to two notes to the beat, then three notes to the beat. Go as fast as you possibly can, adding a note each time.

Playing fast octaves with the arms feels horrendous.

Playing with the arms, and not the wrists, is painful. And you can’t get control or speed. The secret of the arch is equalizing the force of the pinky with the thumb so you get a sound that is equal in both notes of the octave. As you go faster, stay closer to the keys and play lighter. That’s the secret of fast octaves! Develop the independence of the wrist and unlock the secret power of the arch! Work slowly and identify the wrists separate from your arms as you practice octaves. For some people, this comes very quickly. Other people struggle for a long time because it’s not something you’re accustomed to doing, isolating wrist motion from your arms. Sometimes, I liken it to waving bye-bye, just moving your wrists up and down keeping them separate from your arms.

The arms only place the hands over the right keys, the wrists provide the up and down motion.

Using the arms will just slow you down and make everything much heavier. Get used to waving bye-bye first. Then, eventually get into the arch position. You’ll be able to get clear, fast octaves! So that’s what brilliant octave technique is all about! You can work on your octaves with the exercise I’ve shown you. Learn to get into the arch position. Start off just waving bye-bye a bit, and then go to the piano and try it out. Then get into the arch position and work on the octave exercise. And you can develop brilliant octaves. I promise 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

Supplemental Content:

How to Play Piano PT 2 – It’s All in the Wrists

The Best Piano Exercises (Part 4) – Octaves

A Secret Octave Technique for Piano