Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how you can get great bass sound out of an old piano. There’s nothing more frustrating than having a piano where the lowest notes just sound pathetic. It can make you not even want to play down there! I remember practicing for many years before I had a formidable instrument, and I found that I would kind of punctuate the low notes. I would bang them trying to get any sound out of them at all. Then I would play a concert grand or even a semi-concert grand and realize I was overplaying everything below the two octaves below middle C. It would all sound too loud and ugly.
Is there anything you can do to get a better bass sound out of your old piano?
The answer is yes, but it depends upon the size of your old piano. If you’ve got an old spinet, there’s not much you can do because the strings are so short. But if you have an older piano of a decent size that lacks sound in the bass, there are oftentimes ways you can get new life out of the bass. One obvious thing, if your piano is old, the bass strings might have lost their life. Replacing the bass strings may be necessary. Restringing the whole piano is a big job. But there aren’t that many bass strings because there are only one or two usually for each note down there unlike the rest of the piano, where there are three strings for each note. So you can get your piano technician to replace just the bass strings. They might even be able to use the existing tuning pins if they’re tight enough. If not, just replace those tuning pins while you’re at it with slightly larger tuning pins to make sure that they are good and tight.
There are also ways to bring new life to old strings.
Sometimes simply loosening the bass strings and then tightening them back up in tune can make them sound dramatically better. Better than that, bass strings can be twisted. Bass strings all come with at least a half twist or a full twist, depending upon the manufacturer. You can put another half or full twist on those strings. But it does flex the string. And if the strings are really old, you could snap some bass strings. So there is some caution advised here. But if they’ve never been twisted before, sometimes the sound you can get out of the bass strings with a simple twist is unbelievable. The way you find out if this will help your piano is to have a technician twist just one of the strings. Find a note that has two strings and twist one of them. Then listen for the difference by muting each string and listening to them separately. If the string that was twisted is dramatically brighter and more vibrant, have your tuner twist all of the strings to get new life out of the bass on your piano. Sometimes technicians will actually remove the strings, not completely, just at the point where they could take it off of the loop and then they clean it by folding it onto itself like tying a knot. This gets the crud out from between the coils, which can also really enhance the sound of those bass strings.
So, there are techniques for reviving the bass on your piano! I advise any of you who want the bass on your piano to sound more vibrant to talk to your piano technician about these techniques. But make sure that they’re versed in this technology because not all piano technicians do this. Don’t have them do it if they are not accustomed to doing it. Find a technician who is familiar with these techniques and they will know whether it’s going to work on your piano or not. You might just get new life out of your bass without having to spend a lot of money! I hope this helps you! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to cement corrections in your playing. One of the most difficult things about practicing is when you work on something, you get it right, and you think you have it locked in. And then later the same mistake creeps in again and again. So what can you do if you make a correction, but then still make the same mistake? Today I’m going to show you two techniques that will help you cement corrections in your playing.
You must be able to recognize where the correction has been made!
This first technique is incredibly important. It is crucial for you to know where the correction is. I have a brief story for you:
A young boy is getting ready for school. His mother hands him his lunch and asks him to return a library book on his way home from school. The boy agrees, and his mother hands him a large book. He carries the book to school. He has the book with him all day. It’s rather cumbersome and a bit annoying as he carries the book from class to class. He can’t wait to drop off the book after school. But at the end of the day when the bell rings he excitedly runs straight home. When he comes inside his mother asks if he had returned the book, and there it is sitting under his arm. He had been thinking about it all day long as he carried the heavy book from class to class, yet somehow he still forgot to return it.
This is indicative of what happens when you make a correction in your music and yet, the mistake happens again anyway. It’s because when you’re coming to it from a certain place, you’re used to missing it, even if you corrected it. So how do you alleviate this problem? Once you make a correction, you need to cement that correction by going back and being aware of the correction when you arrive at it. To do this, try going back different amounts of time to approach the correction from different places in the music. This is a really valuable technique.
Slow things way down to fully understand every detail.
There is another completely different technique I want to introduce to you today. You probably know the feeling you get when you say a word over and over until it loses its meaning. You say it enough times, and it sounds like giberish. It almost makes you wonder if it’s even a real word! The same thing can happen in your piano playing. You’ve played something so many times up to speed that at a certain point you approach your music, and it seems completely unfamiliar. How can you eradicate this? If you go extraordinarily slowly on something that you can play up to tempo comfortably, it’s going to feel totally different to you. It’s going to feel almost as unfamiliar as saying a word over and over again. Is that even a word? Is that even a phrase? Am I playing the right chord?
It comes down to intentionality. You must have a musical intelligence, looking down upon yourself, making sure you’re going to the right place. This is absolutely essential, particularly when you’re making a correction in your music. You must know where that correction is, as I mentioned previously. And you must know what the correction is on a deep level. Do this by slowing it way down. There could be something you’ve played a million times, but when you slow it down you realize every single nuance. Maybe you never really thought about it. You just played it and it came right out. Then for some reason you start missing it again and again. To alleviate the problem, play very slowly note by note and study your fingers. You will start to understand it on a much deeper level by this intensely slow practice. Just this in itself may solve your problem.
You can use a metronome to bring corrections up to speed.
Sometimes, it takes progressive metronome speeds to put the correction into context. But just going through the piece slowly can be of tremendous value. One of the most important types of practice you can do on any music you have already learned is to slow it way down, take out the score, take your foot off of the pedal, put the metronome on really slowly, and play everything very definitely. Maybe play a little bit stronger than usual because when you play slower, the notes have to last longer. This is a great way to reinforce your memory and your performance!
These are two valuable techniques to cement corrections in your playing. I hope these are helpful for you! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how much you should practice the piano. I hear this question all the time. Of course, parents always want to know that for their kids, and adults also want to know if they are practicing enough. This is a great question, but it really isn’t the right question, believe it or not. The most important aspect is not how much you are practicing, but how often you practice. Why is this so important?
Practicing on a daily basis is essential to maximize your productivity and progress at the piano.
When you practice every day, you reinforce what you’ve done the day before on a daily basis. Skipping days is like taking one step forward and two steps backwards. It’s very difficult and can become frustrating. It makes you not even want to practice because you forget what you did and you feel like you’re not getting anywhere. And maybe that’s true. So it becomes self-defeating. Practice every day and you’ll see your progress growing.
Your mind has only a certain amount of time when it can work with maximum effectiveness.
When your mind is fresh, it can be so productive! You can get so much done. So you want to take advantage of that every day. You can even practice more than once in the course of a day. Maybe you have a little bit of time before you start working when you can review what you did the day before. By keeping it present in your head, right from the moment you sit down to practice, you’re ready to go! So that is the most important thing.
Setting the clock to practice a certain amount of time every day isn’t necessarily productive.
Why? Because what is practicing? Sure, there’s a certain amount of physiology involved. You want to develop strength and independence of your fingers and wrists for technique. But that’s not the most important aspect of piano practice. Practicing is a thought process. You can’t just do it by the clock. I’ve seen kids do this when their parents make them practice and they just sit there thinking about anything other than the piano! They’re thinking about what they’re going to do later when they run out the clock. So you must maximize the productivity of your practice. And that takes a thought process that you can’t always force. If you practice for 30 minutes and you’re really focused, you can accomplish far more than practicing for hours while daydreaming or just going through the motions. You want to digest a chunk at a time and really have something to show for your work at the end of practicing. So make sure you get to the piano every day. At least refresh what you did the day before and try to learn something new. Even if it’s just one tiny phrase. And on good days when you’re fresh and you’ve got time, do as much as you can! That way you will really grow tremendously rather than trying to have an arbitrary time limit that you are going to practice.
I hope this is helpful for you and for your teachers. This is a great recommendation, particularly for parents of students, because a lot of parents don’t know how hard it is to practice if you’re doing it correctly. So give your kids a break! Just make sure they do some work at the piano every day. That’s the most important thing. Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
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Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share with you two ways of solving technical problems on the piano. There are many different ways of solving technical problems. But I find that most pianists use these two methods, particularly the first method I’m going to show you. We’re going to use a very tiny excerpt from the first movement of the Mozart Sonata in C major K. 330. There’s a tricky passage in the development section early on. I’m going to play this for you on the accompanying video starting from the beginning of the development section through to this tricky passage. Then we’re going to go back and dissect what makes this passage difficult and how to solve it. This can translate to problems you have with finger work on almost anything you play. So this will be very valuable for you!
One of the primary ways of practicing is utilizing progressively faster metronome speeds.
I think all serious pianists practice this way. This is the lifeblood of serious piano practice. So if you’re having trouble with a passage, start at a speed in which you can play it with total security. Start very slow, 60 bpm, for example. Play through the passage as many times as it takes to be able to play fluidly and easily. You not only have to be able to play it reliably, you have to feel comfortable. You want to feel like you can do it without even thinking. You want to make it a total fluid line before ever raising the metronome at all. You have to be very critical at this stage because if you start increasing the speed before you have it absolutely perfect and repeatable, then you’re just going to be embedding those insecurities in your playing when you get it up to speed. This is the most important part. Take the time on the front end to really cement things and get it really comfortable before ever raising the metronome.
Take it one notch at a time.
Once the passage feels 100% solid at 60 bpm, raise the metronome speed by one notch. Why one notch? Because you can’t even feel it! That’s the secret. Gradually get the security in your playing, not just playing it perfectly, but feeling comfortable where you can repeat it again and again easily. If you have the patience to work through your music this way, you will be rewarded with a refinement and a security that is unparalleled. That’s the secret to developing security and confidence in your playing. I guarantee if you spend the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to get a passage up to speed this way you will be richly rewarded.
Work to the point of diminishing returns.
You’re going to get to a certain point where you can’t play any faster. You might have a breakthrough and get two or three more notches. Then you hit that brick wall again. At that point, it’s time to stop and move on to another part of the piece to work on. There’s always tomorrow. When you get to a point when you really can’t get it any faster without spending an inordinate amount of time, leave it for the next day. You’ll be surprised the next day, maybe when you first start, you’ll have to do it at a slower speed. Maybe not all the way back down to 60. Maybe the first day you’ll get it up to 80 or 84. And maybe the next day you start around 72 and you work it up the same way and get it up to 90 or 92. Each day you will get metronome speeds progressively faster, starting a little faster than you ended up the previous day. Find a speed where you can play it with that same security and confidence and move up from there. Practicing this way is really rewarding because you might think you’ll never be able to get it, but it will only take 10 or 15 minutes to do this.
Very few passages in the sonata are this difficult.
You don’t have to necessarily work the entire piece one notch at a time. Although if you have the patience to do that, you’ll have an incredibly refined performance. But certainly key sections will require this kind of focused attention. And of course you’ll have to work on larger sections than just tiny snippets. You have to put things into context! So after this, you might go back a few measures or even go back to the beginning of the section.
There’s another way of practicing that’s diametrically opposed to this.
This second method is completely different. It’s sometimes a tremendous time saver, preventing you from having to go through the tedium of metronome speeds. Sometimes you can pinpoint the exact place where you can’t play up to speed. Maybe you can play almost all the notes up to speed, except there are two or three places where you can’t get from one note to the next fast enough. If you can isolate those two or three places, you can get the whole passage without having to go through the entire thing methodically. Let me show you how this works.
Of course if there is a scale passage as in this excerpt, that helps. If you can play a G major scale in one octave as occurs here, you’ve got it, right? Well, it’s more complex than that because normally when you play the G major scale you’re going to end with fingers over the next keys of the scale. But here, you want to end with the fourth finger over A, and the second finger over the F-sharp to be ready for the next section. So you need to practice that. Then you can play the next small note group and get it up to speed. Then you put the two small sections together. You might not be able to put them together right away. You can try, but chances are, if you’ve never played the note groups together, you’re going to have trouble with that at first. So instead, play just up to the second note group but don’t play it yet. First, get just those first few notes fluid and comfortable and up to tempo. Then stop just before the next group of notes with your fingers right over the next notes you are about to play, but don’t play them. After the pause, play the next note group. Do this again and again, shortening the break between these two small note groups little by little until you get to a point where the break is so short that it’s rhythmically imperceptible. So you know the break is there mentally, but it’s no longer aurally perceptible. It just gives you that moment to relax because you practice relaxing at that exact point by stopping on the last note of the previous group of notes while being over the next note group in a totally relaxed manner. You can work through small snippets one by one in this manner stopping just before the next note group while being right over the notes you are about to play.
Now you have two entirely different ways of solving technical problems!
The great thing is you can alternate between them. Sometimes one method will work just like magic. You’ll be able to move quickly through metronome speeds and in 10 minutes you’ve got an entire passage solved. Another time you may work this way and find that you can play almost all of it up to speed, so you find exactly where you can’t quite play up to speed and work on just those note groups. Then you can put the note groups together.
These are two incredibly valuable techniques for solving many technical problems you have in your piano practice. Remember when doing progressive metronome speeds, be totally secure at the slowest possible speed so you gain a high level of security and confidence and repeatability first. Then with each progressively master metronome speed, strive for that same level of comfort and speed. Take it to the point of diminishing returns. When you are working way too long just to get one notch, leave it for the next day. But it’s possible you can focus on just a couple of small note groups that you can master by stopping just before a problem spot, being relaxed with your fingers over the keys of the following passage.
I would love to hear how these methods work for you! I use these two techniques incessantly in my practice, and many other pianists do too. Thanks again 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
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. I’m here today with part two of, How to Make it in Music. In part one I talked about how you just have to keep moving forward even if you don’t know where you’re going exactly. Move in the general direction. You will get clues as to where to adjust your path. You will be able to see what opportunities present themselves, as well as what resonates with you and what you can bring to light. I used the analogy of being lost in the woods and getting any clues as to how to get out. Sometimes you might feel that way in life. You’re yearning to do something with music but you just don’t know what that is. You don’t know where to begin. Keep moving forward! If you stay stuck in one place you’ll never get out of those metaphorical woods and you’ll never get anywhere in music.
Eventually you’re going to find your goal in music.
Seeing an end goal clearly and envisioning it is the first step. Once you have that, you can start filling in all the steps. Work backwards from that end goal. Find out what is required in order to get there. Work day-by-day in an organized fashion. You’re not going to have all the answers. But once you have identified a clear goal you can work step-by-step each day getting closer to achieving your goal. That is intrinsically important, not just for music, but in any field. But in order to be successful, first you have to explore. Let yourself go wild in many different directions to see what resonates with you, what’s genuine and what you have a passion for. Once you see something, latch onto it and figure out the steps involved in getting there. I know that sounds really simple. But obviously every single career has a different path and you have to find your own way.
It’s essential to find strategic partners.
People can help you on your journey. Once you identify something tangible, and you’re taking steps to get there, you’ll find people to give you that lift where you need it. People will be inspired by your commitment. They’ll also feel like it’s worthwhile helping you if they can see that you have thought things through, and you just need a few strategic partners in order to achieve your goals.
So that’s what I recommend. Go into that exploration phase. Don’t stand still! Once you find something you want, latch onto it and take all the steps to get there. That’s a life journey that’s worthwhile, if you have a passion for music or anything else. I hope this is enjoyable for you! Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about getting into a state of flow with your music. You’ve probably heard this term before, and we’ve all experienced it. What does it mean to be in a state of flow? When you’re completely absorbed in something, whether it’s making pottery, a walk in the woods, practicing the piano – it can be almost anything. You stop thinking about what you’re doing, and you just are. It’s all one experience where you don’t have that sense of looking at yourself and telling yourself instructions with words. Instead it just flows naturally.
Getting into a state of flow during a musical performance can be a magnificent experience.
If you’re playing written music from the score, you have to keep a certain amount of your cognition so that you don’t take a wrong turn. You don’t want to get carried away! But you can get to a point with a score, if you are intimately familiar with it, where you are just absorbed in it completely. It comes out of you so naturally that it isn’t even work anymore and time seems to disappear. Have you ever had that experience? If you can get into that state in your practice, you’re really doing well.
Improvising is a fantastic opportunity to get into a state of flow.
With improvisation you don’t have to focus on a score. It’s much easier to get into a state of flow where you’re no longer thinking about what you should do next. It just comes out of you, and you can feel the trajectory. You can feel the flow of the music. You are just part of it. In music and in life, to be in the moment is the ultimate feeling! But it’s one of the most difficult things to do. People use meditation and other things to try to get into that state of flow. But music is a fantastic vehicle for that. So, let yourself go! Sometimes you just have to see where music takes you. You can do that in the privacy of your own home. Eventually, if you have the confidence and the security in your playing, you can do it in performance as well!
I hope this is enjoyable for you. Thanks again for joining me! I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
For premium videos and other content, you can join my Living Pianos Patreon channel! www.Patreon.com/RobertEstrin
