Tag Archives: robert estrin

How to Project Your Piano Playing in a Hall

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to project your piano playing in a hall. This isn’t just for when you’re playing in a concert hall. This is actually appropriate for anyone playing in any room. And it’s drastically different from what you might think! I’ll give you an analogy. Let’s say you go to a museum and look at some gorgeous paintings. You see a magnificent impressionist landscape painting from across the room by one of the great French impressionists. And as you get closer, you see the beauty, the colors and the wonderful imagery. But if you get close enough, at a certain point, you just see little jabs of paint all over the canvas. It doesn’t even look like an image anymore! It almost has a grotesque quality to it when you get too close. But when you back up, the beauty of the artwork is revealed.

When you are playing the piano, you are closer to that instrument than anyone who’s listening to you.

You get a skewed idea of the sound you’re creating, because you don’t hear what it sounds like for anybody else. Just like in the museum, being too close to a painting looks angular. If you want your playing to project, particularly in a hall or a church where there’s reverberation, you have to delineate things much more clearly than you ever would imagine. This goes for articulations, phrasings and dynamics. They all have to be exaggerated.

I’ve played in many orchestras as a French hornist. Sometimes a solo is written to be played piano. But a solo that’s written piano for horn, clarinet, oboe, or flute has a much bigger sound when you’re in the orchestra. Because to project even a quiet solo out into the hall requires a tremendous amount of energy. If you play the beginning of a slow movement of a Mozart Sonata in a lackluster fashion, without projecting, as if you just want to hear it for yourself, it may sound fine to you sitting right at the piano. But from even a short distance away someone listening to you probably won’t get a sense of the performance. It’s just out there somewhere and it doesn’t really draw you in. But if you play with much more intensity and articulate all the notes, and more importantly, the line and dynamic changes, then you’ll get something that may sound exaggerated for you. But for someone listening to you, it sounds more distinct. You have to put much more energy into the phrasing. There are bigger rises and falls of dynamics. The articulation, the slurs, and all the little markings are exaggerated and delineated so that it comes through throughout the room. This technique is not just for quiet music. It’s equally important in more heroic music.

This is a really important lesson about how to play for other people.

This is not just for playing in concert halls. Even in your own living room, for people across the room, the sound is dramatically different from sitting right in front of the piano. In order to project your ideas, your interpretation, your musicianship and your concept of the music, you must delineate and exaggerate! It may even have a slightly grotesque quality when you’re playing it, much like looking at an impressionist painting up close. This is because you’re really stretching everything so that it comes across, whether somebody is ten feet away or one hundred feet away. I hope this is a valuable lesson for you!

If you ever have the opportunity to go to a concert hall with a fellow pianist and play for one another, you could try this out for yourself! Or you could even take a recording device. Record it two different ways and see which one you like better! 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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The Passing of a Piano Legend: Joe Ross

The piano world has lost one of the great proponents and innovators with the passing of Joe Ross. Joe has had a profound impact on countless people around the world by creating PianoMart.
Ross was a piano technician who had a vision way back in the 1990s when the internet was in its infancy, he thought, wouldn’t it be great if people could buy pianos from private parties, just the way they do cars and books and things like that. And he started PianoMart.

You think about back then most homes didn’t even have internet!

And if they did, it was probably dial up. A lot of people thought what he was doing would be impossible, but he built this into an amazing empire. And I think about the countless people and families who grew up with piano as a direct result of Joe’s vision and determination and perseverance and creating this resource for people to buy pianos. After all:

Joe wasn’t a computer programmer. He was a piano technician.

But he found allies in his venture and persevered over many, many years. He came up with an innovative escrow system because you think about the challenges of people doing commerce on the internet back in the nineties. This was really cutting edge. And that way, people could put the money into an escrow account held by PianoMart to make sure the pianos were safely delivered.

Back then, the only way people in rural communities could get a piano from a private party was through local classified advertisements, or maybe a bulletin board at a local supermarket.

Many people living in outlying areas didn’t even have piano stores!

Joe’s vision also created the opportunity for people to find some relative value of their pianos. So if somebody for example, had a Steinway model M for sale, they could look and see all the Steinway M’s all around the country and yes, around the world, and get some idea of what the value was.

So I thank Joe for bringing piano to countless families all over the world. People who maybe would not have had pianos ever if he hadn’t had the vision and the determination, and worked so hard to help bring pianos to people. Joe is going to be missed by a lot of people. Everyone who knew him, loved him and loved his dedication. And we’ve all been touched by Joe. So this is for Joe Ross. Thank you. Thanks for joining me. Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com.

How to Start a Piece: The Secret of Lifting

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to start a piece of music. I’ve talked a great deal about how to create tonal balance between the hands. And I’ve talked about using the weight of the arm, transferring weight from note to note in order to create a smooth line. So, instead of just playing a key and having no support, no weight, you actually support the weight of your arm on each key, transferring the weight smoothly from note to note enabling you to get a smooth line where every note plays, no matter how quiet and delicate. That’s the secret to crafting a musical line. But how do you start that first note? How do you get the sound you want out of it?

What’s the analog of diaphragm support on the piano?

To start notes on the horn, you put the breath under pressure and start with the tongue saying, “tu”. On the piano, it’s a little bit different. On piano, you use the weight of the arm to start notes. If you push a key on the piano and you want a certain volume, how do you get the precise volume you want? How can you possibly be assured of that? Well, if you were to lift your arm and your hand, with your wrist bent upward, then bring your hand down while straightening your wrist, you would be increasing the speed your hand hits the keys. But if you do exactly the opposite, it gives you tremendous leverage! You relax your hand letting your hand hang from your limp wrist. And then, as you go down with your arm, you slowly straighten your wrist. So, as your arm goes down, your hand is coming up as you straighten your wrist. By going two different directions at the same time, you can achieve exactly the sound you want. You can start any note at any volume with total assurance! You may want to watch the accompanying video to see this in action.

That is the secret of how to start a piece of music!

Now, of course, there are some pieces that start heroically. If you’re starting a piece like the Military Polonaise of Chopin, there’s no need for lifting. You can just sail right into it. Because when you’re playing with that kind of volume, it will pop just the way you want it to. But starting something like a Chopin Nocturne, this technique will help you get exactly the sound you want. By lifting, letting the wrist go limp, and as you’re going down with the arm coming up with the wrist, you have total control, no matter what piece you’re starting. Even within the piece, sometimes it’s helpful to lift for new phrases. Much like on a wind instrument, when you’re playing each new phrase, you take a breath, put it under pressure, and attack using the tongue. It’s the same thing. Whenever you start a phrase fresh, use this lifting technique. I want you all to try this and see how it helps you to start with precisely the tonal balance you want, right from the very first notes you play. Let me know how this works for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

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

www.LivingPianos.com
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Saving Time in Your Piano Practice: Interlocking Phrases

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. I have a tip for your practice that can save you vast amounts of time! The subject today is the secret power of interlocking phrases. I’ll explain what I mean, but first I’m going to give you an idea of how I practice the piano and how I teach others to practice the piano.

There are many different skill sets in practicing the piano.

For example, if you’re accompanying and reading, that’s one type of skill. If you’re improvising, that’s another skill. But if you are memorizing music and you want some tips about that, you’ve come to the right place! Taking a small phrase at a time hands separately and mastering all the elements of the music is the way I’ve been taught to memorize music from the time I started the piano as a young child. My father, Morton Estrin, taught this method. It’s so powerful!

Let’s say you are learning the famous Mozart Sonata K. 545 in C major. Of course you’d want to read through it first to get familiar with it. But then my suggestion is to get right to work and start learning it rather than playing it over and over again. It’s almost impossible to absorb all the thousands of details in the music, because you don’t just have the notes and rhythm. You have to figure out fingering, phrasing, and the expression as well. There’s so much information to digest; which is why you want to learn small chunks at a time, hands separately at first, putting together each phrase, then connecting sections as you learn them.

Taking smaller chunks is great because you’ll never work yourself too hard, which enables you to sustain a longer productive practice.

Let’s say you just take the very first phrase, right-hand alone. You get that memorized. You get it fluid. You check your work. Then you take the left-hand, and you get that perfect. Then you put the hands together, slowly at first. Then you go on and learn the next phrase one hand at a time. You get that memorized hands together. Now you think, great, I’m going to go back to the beginning and connect the phrases. You play the first phrase, which you’ve gotten up to speed. You start slower at first to give yourself a chance to connect the phrases smoothly. But when you reach the end of the first phrase, you feel lost. The tip I’m going to give you is going to make this a fluid process. You will be able to connect your phrases like a jigsaw puzzle where all the pieces fit together perfectly right from the get-go!

Go one note beyond so you have a common note between the two phrases.

So, as you learn the right hand, take the first phrase plus the first note of the second phrase. That is the connecting note. You do the same thing with the left hand. And when you put the hands together, you will play through the first phrase landing on the first note of the second phrase. When you learn the next phrase, you do the same thing. This makes it a seamless process to connect phrases as you go. The hardest part about learning music is putting the hands together, which is why you want to solidify each hand separately first, getting them up to tempo, fluid and repeatable. This gives you half a chance of being able to put the hands together to get them memorized. The next hardest thing is connecting phrase to phrase in a smooth manner. By using interlocking phrases this way, where each phrase is going one note beyond, you have that connection note!

This is a great tip that I want all of you to try out! Let me know how it works for you! You’ll find this will save you a lot of time in your practice as you connect your phrases. 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

Improve Your Sight Reading by Looking at Chunks of Music

I’m Robert Estrin, and this is LivingPianos.com. Today’s subject is about how you can improve your sight reading by looking at chunks of music. When you first start out it’s really tough just being able to identify notes on the page! Eventually you get to the point where you start to make the relationship between lines and spaces and keys on the piano. So when you see line to line, you skip the space, and when you see space to space, you skip the line, which means you skip a key when you’re going from line to line or space to space. Chords usually are all on lines or all on spaces because they’re built on the interval of a third which is every other note of a scale. Or if you’re going from line to space to line to space, they’re probably going to be consecutive notes on the keyboard. Now, of course, there are black keys. That’s a whole other issue, but this is one way that you can improve your reading, by identifying distances between notes.

When you have really high or low ledger lines, way above or below the staff, sometimes it’s hard to know what the notes are.

There are some little cheats you can use. For example, when you have really high notes, if the bottom note is on a space and the top note is on a space, that’s not an octave. Because octaves are always space to line or line to space. That’s a little tip for you. If you have never really thought about this before, you can sometimes guess the right note if it looks like around an octave. But it better be line to space or space to line, or it’s not an octave. But what I’m talking about today is something quite different.

The secret of sight reading is to look at groups of notes!

At first, when you’re reading, it’s an arduous task. It took me many years to become a good sight reader. The secret is instead of looking note to note, look at groups of notes. Depending upon the piece, sometimes you’ll look at half measures at a time, taking in the entire thing as a digestible chunk you can comprehend. For example, the famous Bach Prelude for The Well-Tempered Clavier Book One in C major is a great example of this because the whole prelude is just broken chords. So if you’re playing the beginning of this piece, there’s no need to look at every note. Once you see the first chord, you can shoot your eyes to the next measure even before you’re there, because you’re already over the chord that you’re playing. This is an ideal piece to check out this technique for yourself if you’ve never done it before, because the entire piece is broken chords. And the whole measure is the same chord repeated twice, broken. You always want to be looking at the next group of notes, getting ahead of where you are. This is an incredibly valuable technique!

You’re never going to be able to read and keep time if you’re looking at each individual note.

This is one of the most important lessons for learning how to read in a fluid manner. Sometimes you have to surmise what the harmonies are and what the composer’s intentions were. There are some scores that are just so dense with notes and articulations! If you’re sight reading, you can’t always take the time to figure out every little detail. Particularly if you are accompanying other musicians.

Nobody wants you to take the time at rehearsal much less performance!

They’d rather you just flesh it out and get a sense of the music. A lot of times, you can kind of guess what the composer intended by seeing enough of the chord structure that you can play what’s written without necessarily seeing every single note. Now, that’s not an ideal situation. But if you’re reading something for the very first time, particularly if you’re playing with other musicians, sometimes that’s necessary.

Try this in your reading!

I’m very interested in how this works for you! Take a piece like Debussy’s 1st Arabesque or Bach’s Prelude in C Major to start, but you can do this with virtually any music! Some music is going to be a lot more difficult to do this technique with. That’s why a Bach fugue is really hard to sight read, because it doesn’t break itself down this way. You have too many separate lines. So this is not 100% foolproof. But in some pieces of music, it’s a godsend! So try it out for yourself and let me know how it works for you! Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

For premium videos and exclusive content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin

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

www.LivingPianos.com
www.Facebook.com/LivingPianos
949-244-3729