Tag Archives: bach

Should You Play Your Melody Notes Slightly Late?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The question today is about why you should play your melody notes slightly late. What am I talking about? You have to play in rhythm, don’t you? What I’m talking about is something extremely subtle. It’s an expressive element utilized mostly in Romantic period music. It used to be much more popular in the early part of the 20th century.

In this video, I exaggerate by playing every single melody note late in the famous E-flat Nocturne of Chopin.

First I play it straight, where the notes are played exactly together, then I play all the melody notes slightly after the bass notes. You can hear the difference between the two examples in the video. Of course, delaying every melody note is excessive, but there is a certain beauty to it. And there is actually a physical reason why this makes some sense, if done in a very subtle manner.

The sound waves of low notes are slower than the sound waves of high notes.

Because of this, the high notes will reach your ears just a fraction of a second sooner than the low notes when they’re played precisely together. It takes a little time for the low notes to swell. If you listen to the sound of one low note alone, it takes a moment for it to reach full volume. But high notes are at full volume right away. But there’s more to it than that.

This technique adds expressiveness to your playing.

When every melody note is delayed, it’s excessive. It’s a mannerism that becomes predictable, and it’s distracting from the music. But if you just do it occasionally on certain notes to add an expressive element, you can end up with something quite beautiful. It’s like seasoning your food. A little spice in a dish can go a long way, but if you use too much, you can’t appreciate all the subtle flavors of the meal. It’s the same thing with an expressive device like this. Listen to some early 20th-century great pianists, and you will hear that this expressive technique was certainly overused by today’s standards. But pianists today still utilize this technique in performance. The only time it becomes offensive is when it’s predictable. If it’s done right, you don’t even notice it’s happening!

Try it out for yourself and see how it works!

I’m very interested in what all of you think about this. Let me know how this technique works for you in the comments! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

How Much Music Should You Keep in Shape?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today, we are going to discuss how much music you should keep in shape. This is a really delicate subject because you want to learn new music, but you always want to have something you can play. The challenge is that the time it takes to keep your music in shape can take away from the time you have to learn more music, and vice versa. So you have to strike some kind of balance.

Any pieces that you’ve learned recently, you should absolutely keep in shape.

It’s a real mistake to get to the point where you can finally play a piece on a high level and then drop it. First of all, you might not realize that you could take that piece to a higher level if you lived with it a little longer. The other problem is that if you’ve just learned it and then you drop it, you’re going to forget it as quickly as you learned it. You need to live with it for a while to have it solidify so that it stays with you and you can still play it weeks or months after you’ve learned it. You can do this simply by playing it on a regular basis and solidifying it from time to time with slow practice. By doing this, you can bring it back without much effort later on. But how much music should you keep in shape?

I generally say you should keep the last three or four pieces you’ve learned in shape.

It’s good to keep the three or four most recent pieces you’ve learned in shape, depending on what the pieces are. If you have, for example, a sonata with three movements, that’s almost like three pieces in itself! So that and maybe one other piece, in addition to the piece you’re working on, may be plenty of repertoire to keep in shape.

You should always have music that you can play at a high level.

It’s best to always have music you can perform in case somebody wants to hear you play. Isn’t it sad if you’ve been playing the piano for years but don’t have anything you can play? You put in all that effort learning your pieces, so you want to be able to play them for people. Imagine someone finds out you play piano and asks you to play for them, but you haven’t finished learning your current piece and you’ve forgotten the previous ones! You want to always have something you can play. People will appreciate hearing you. If they visit your home and see a piano, they might want to hear you play something.

Always have a go-to piece.

You should have something that you can always play and that you’ve played a million times. Certainly, you want to be able to play a piece you love and that you’ve worked hard to learn. So keep the most recent pieces you’ve learned in shape, along with any piece that you really love. You may also want to have something you can play that other people will really enjoy hearing. Maybe the piece that you really want to keep in shape is not appropriate to play for most people because it’s too subtle or because it’s a musical style that is not as popular with the general public.

The most recent pieces, pieces that people will like, and music that you really love are the three areas of music you should keep in shape. But you don’t want to be overwhelmed with so many review pieces that you don’t have time to learn new repertoire for yourself. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again 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 Keep Pieces in Your Memory

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about memorizing piano music. I’m going to give you strategies and techniques for long-term retention. This is a really important subject. Have you ever learned a piece and gotten it to a high level, but after some time you don’t remember it? You put in all that work, and now you can’t remember how to play the piece! Now what do you do? You can go back to the score and play it slowly. That might help you rekindle the music. But today, we’re talking about how to keep pieces in shape.

How many pieces can you keep in shape?

There are only so many pieces you can keep in shape. If you spend too much time with your review pieces, you don’t have time to learn new music. So you have to prioritize which pieces you’re going to keep in shape.

How do you keep pieces in shape after you learn them?

The most obvious thing of all is to simply play them on a regular basis. If you don’t play the pieces you learned before, they’re going to elude you after a while. So play them on a regular basis. If they’re short pieces, play them every day! People do all kinds of exercises just to keep their fingers in shape. Instead, you can use the pieces you’ve learned as good physical exercise for your hands. That way, you get the added benefit of keeping them in your memory.

Is playing through your pieces regularly enough to keep them in shape?

Sadly, just playing through your pieces regularly is not enough to keep them in shape. Did you ever play the game Telephone as a kid? You whisper a message to somebody next to you; they whisper to the person next to them, and it goes on and on. By the end of the class, you end up with a whole different message! The same thing could happen with your music. If every time you play it, it’s slightly different and you don’t realize it, you can end up with a whole new piece!

You have to refer back to the score.

The best thing you can do is get out the score, take your foot off the pedal, and play slowly, delineating everything in a very deliberate manner. You may also want to work with the metronome. For example, let’s say you’re working on the third movement of Mozart’s K. 545 C Major Sonata. You want to practice that piece slowly, exaggerating the staccatos from the wrist and using raised fingers so that the fingers that are up are up, and the fingers that are down are down. By doing this, you’re not just using motor memory. You’re deliberately playing each finger in a relaxed manner. You shouldn’t have any tension playing with raised fingers. It’s just like the stretching of an athlete. If you stretch to warm up before exercising or dancing, it doesn’t add tension. Quite the contrary, it’s a relaxation technique if you do it correctly. Playing very deliberately and slowly, absorbing the score, and solidifying the fingers and the sound is a fantastic way to solidify your review pieces.

You can also just think through your scores!

If you ever have time when you’re waiting in line somewhere or taking a shower, you can play the music in your head! Keep the sound of it, even just the sound of the melody, in your head so that you don’t forget it. Ultimately, the sound is the most important part of your music! Listening to recordings is a great way to keep a piece familiar while expanding your interpretive possibilities. Keep your music fresh by playing it on a regular basis, practicing it, listening to it, and thinking it through. You will be rewarded by having music you can play! What is it all about if you don’t have music you can sit down and play? If you do this enough, and take pieces that you have dropped and re-learn them again and again, then you really will have pieces in your permanent memory! I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again 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

Why You Must Exaggerate Your Playing When Practicing Slowly

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you must exaggerate your playing when practicing slowly. Why would you want to exaggerate? Shouldn’t you try to play exactly the same way slowly as when you speed up? Yes, that’s a valuable technique, but there are many times when you want to exaggerate dynamics and phrasing in your slow playing.

If you don’t exaggerate your slow practice, you may end up with a watered-down performance.

If you’re practicing a piece slowly without exaggerated dynamics, when you play it up to speed, it can sound dull. Since you had so little definition of dynamics and phrasing, it all but disappears when you go faster. You naturally lighten up in order to facilitate speed. Those differences in dynamics and phrasing become diluted. So instead, when practicing slowly, exaggerate all the elements of the music. Then, when you play faster and with ease, your hands know what to do. The fingers are staying closer to the keys. The wrists are not making such exaggerated motions because they are already solidified. It still comes out because you have trained your fingers and wrists to delineate the phrasing and dynamics with such definition that when you speed up, staying closer to the keys, and lightenening up, the dynamics and the phrasing are still there. You can play with ease, and you don’t lose the expressiveness of your playing!

Try that in your practice! Let me know how it works for you in the comments! Thanks again 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

Why Do You Need Urtext Editions?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why you need urtext editions. I received a question from Chris. Chris asks, “I find urtext editions online, but then they say ‘edited by.’ I thought urtext meant they weren’t edited. So how does a fully edited edition differ from an earlier text?” This is a great question!

The original manuscript scores of the great composers can be a nightmare in some cases.

For example, take a look at some of Beethoven’s scores. With all the crossing out and the quick way his calligraphy was executed, it’s all but impossible to tell what he really meant.

Sheet Music

So there are scholars who go through early editions – not just the autograph copies, but early editions as well. They compare them to the autograph and try to figure out what is authentic. Another challenge is that many times composers rewrote their scores again and again. Chopin, for example, rewrote many of his compositions. So what is authentic? Is it the first one that he signed, or is it the last one? Is it something in between? So there’s a lot of scholarly work that goes into figuring out what is authentic.

Urtext editions strive to have exactly what the composer intended. However, there are also edited urtext editions.

It sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it? Well, not exactly. Here’s how it works: either with footnotes giving alternatives to what is printed or, very often, in a different typeface like gray instead of black, the composer’s markings are augmented with suggestions. For example, in a sonata movement, if during the exposition there are certain phrase markings or dynamic markings, then later in the recapitulation the composer didn’t write those markings, it’s assumed that they should be there. So the editor of the urtext edition will put it in lighter type or some other way to distinguish it from what is in the original manuscript.

Do you really need all of that? Is it important to have an urtext?

If you’re a serious player, you really want to know what the composer wrote and what the editor added. Otherwise, you might not be faithful to the intentions of the composer. However, Bach, for example, rarely wrote any phrasing or dynamics in his keyboard music. But that doesn’t mean it should be played devoid of expression or phrasing. So having some suggestions from the editor can be a godsend. Even Mozart doesn’t have a lot of expression marks. Sometimes having those markings can be incredibly helpful if you’re a beginner or intermediate student. So the ideal, to sum it up, is to have a good scholarly edition that’s an urtext with editors markings and fingering.

Composers didn’t write in fingering!

If you’re a student, you want to have fingering suggestions. Even for a professional, having fingering suggestions can save you vast amounts of time. On websites like IMSLP.org, you can actually get two or three different editions for fingering suggestions. It’s such a wonderful thing. Before the internet, it would have been very costly to compare several editions. Maybe at the library you could do that, but buying several editions wouldn’t be in the cards for most students. This brings up the cost. Many urtexts are very expensive, like Henle Editions, which are really beautifully bound, scholarly editions of many works by Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven, Mozart, etc. But there are others, like Schenker Editions by Dover, which are very well bound, good scholarly editions that are not as expensive. Search out good, fingered, edited urtext editions for yourself! I think you’ll be rewarded with good suggestions and the knowledge of what the composers actually wrote. Great question, Chris! Keep them coming! Thanks again 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

Why Not Playing is Practicing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about repetition in your piano practice. Repetition is an essential part of piano practice, but did you know that the essential element of repetition is not the repetition itself? It’s the time between the repetitions. All too often, I’ve seen students fall into a trap. If you don’t take the essential time between each repetition, you can fall into an endless loop of missing things over and over again, essentially practicing playing badly. That’s what you want to avoid!

There are myriad ways you can practice.

I would suggest practicing slowly. You can turn the metronome on at a comfortable speed, and do progressively faster metronome speeds. You can work on note groups. You can do rhythms. You can do so many things! But that’s not what I’m showing you today. I’m showing you how to deal specifically with just repeating something until you get it right, which I’m sure all of you do on a regular basis in your practice. But you have to remember that the repetition is not where the value comes in.

The time between the repetitions is the practicing; the playing of the passage is not the practicing.

The playing is only a check of your work. The work happens in your head between each repetition. So if you play, and something isn’t clean, identifying the correction is number one. Find where the correction is. Focus your attention on the correction, and then you can come up with a strategy for cementing it. You want to find a spot to start just before it so you can repeat the correction. Once you get the correction solidified, go back and see if you can put it into context by starting at the beginning of the passage. Each time you play it, take a moment to think about what you just played. If it comes out absolutely perfectly, see if you can repeat it perfectly again. If there’s anything that isn’t quite right, identify the specific correction before you repeat it. This is essential. Each time you play it, stop and think about what you just heard.

Take the time between repetitions to mentally study what you just played.

Find the correction in the score, then implement the correction by starting strategically at the exact right spot before it at the beginning of the phrase. You don’t want to start right on the correction. However, initially, just to know what the correction is, you might play the notes you are having trouble with, but then find where you can start just before it. You have to be able to get into it in the context of the piece. You want to find the closest spot before the correction to start from. You can either land on that note or land right after that note, then cement it and go back. Initially, you may even want to stop just before the correction, then play the correction so you are sure to play it accurately from the get go. With each repetition, you must analyze your work and think about what you want to accomplish. If you fall into mindless repetition, where you are just repeating things without listening to what you did and coming up with a strategy to improve it, you are not practicing at that moment.

Remember, practicing is a thought process!

Playing is not practicing! It’s the analysis of what you’ve played that is going to improve your playing. That’s the lesson for today! If you have any questions, you can ask them in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. I hope this has been helpful for you! Thanks again 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