Tag Archives: bach

How to Stay Engaged in Your Musical Performance

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to stay engaged in your musical performance. This is such an important topic. You can tell when a performer isn’t engaged. You can tell because your mind wanders. You can’t listen to a performer who isn’t engaged in their own performance.

The secret to engaging an audience is being engaged in the performance yourself!

So how do you do such a thing? Think of the challenge. Let’s say you’re playing a piece or a whole program. You’ve practiced for weeks or months on this music. You can play it without even thinking about it because you’ve gone through it so many times. Your fingers just know where to go. That’s the problem! How can you possibly concentrate on something that you’ve done so many times? How can you hear it? How can you really listen to it? The number one key is listening to what you’re doing! Focus on the sound as if it’s the first time you’re hearing it. Now, that’s a hard thing to do.

Are there any things you can do in your practice to help keep the musical score fresh?

Absolutely! What I’m going to tell you right now is the greatest thing you can do if you have pieces you can play, but they just feel kind of lackluster. You’ve finally gotten to where you can play the piece, but you’ve played it too many times. You can play it, but there’s just no spark anymore. You’ve almost gotten tired of it. You’ve lost the enthusiasm. Is there any way to regain that enthusiasm? Yes! It’s so satisfying to play through pieces with all the expression and the pedal and all the nuances. But to regain your enthusiasm for a piece, you have to flip it.

Go back to the score!

Whether it’s a piece you’ve memorized or a piece that you play with the music, either way, put the music up there. Take out your metronome and play without any pedal, slowly and absolutely faithfully to the score. No more and no less. Just play with precision. I’m not saying to play unmusically. You can play musically and still play exactly what’s written. But no shtick! You have little nuances you like to do. Maybe the second time around with a repeated phrase, you play a little softer. Maybe you do other little things that aren’t necessarily written. Get rid of all that stuff and just play exactly what’s written. Just taking your foot off the pedal is going to make you work harder to get a halfway decent sound. Practice this way a great deal. When you finally add the pedal, get rid of the metronome, and free yourself from the score, if it’s a piece you’ve memorized, it’s so refreshing to come back to it. It feels good and it sounds great! You will become engaged in your musical performance again!

I do more of my practicing without the pedal than with the pedal.

I also do a great deal of metronome work. With pieces I have memorized, I constantly revisit the score. Now, this could be extraordinarily difficult, particularly for those of you who are not very good readers. If your sight reading is at a very low level, maybe you have a piece memorized, and you can play it fine, but you go back to the score, and you can barely play it! Well, guess what? You need to play it with the score! If that means going back and playing way under tempo, do it.

You will always learn things from the score.

This process is a way to really engage in the music in a new way. Put the metronome on. Open your music. Play slowly and take your foot off the pedal. Practice that way and when you get to your musical performance, if you have an audience, and you’re nervous, let that energy inspire you to do new things. Listen to the sound of each note. Maybe you’ll hear inner lines you hadn’t noticed before. Particularly when people are watching you, things seem different, don’t they? Go with it! Don’t be afraid to follow a line that you haven’t really paid attention to before in your practice. It may put you a little bit out of your comfort zone. That’s the way to become engaged in your own musical performance and draw in your listeners. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

What is the Most Expensive and Least Expensive Instrument?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about the most expensive and least expensive musical instrument. There are so many choices! You might think the piano is the most expensive instrument. There was a time when digital pianos didn’t exist and the cheapest piano was about $1,000. But now, you can get an 88 key digital piano for a few hundred bucks.

What are the most expensive pianos?

The most expensive pianos go for $200,000 to $300,000, unless it’s some sculpted work of art. There are some pianos that are worth millions, if they were owned by one of the Beatles or something like that. But generally speaking, the top end is going to be in the $200,000 to $300,000 range, unless it’s an exotic wood or intricately carved or painted or something of that nature. The cheapest pianos may be a few hundred dollars. So pianos might not be the most expensive or the cheapest. You know, you can get a student model clarinet for not that much money. There are a lot of instruments that you can get for less than $1,000. rMany orchestral instruments are not that expensive.

You’ll be surprised to learn that the most expensive instrument and the least expensive instrument are the same instrument!

How can this be? The cheapest instrument you can buy is the violin. Go on Amazon and see if I’m right. Search for the cheapest violin you can find and it will probably be the cheapest instrument you can buy. I mean a real musical instrument, not a kazoo or a penny whistle. Violins are really cheap. You can get one for far less than $100 easily. But Stradivarius and other rare violins can be in the millions of dollars! These aren’t works of art, like pianos that are carved and painted. No, these are just instruments that cost that much.

Any great violin is going to be very expensive.

It’s not just Stradivarius violins. High level violins can be in the high five figures. And for something really high level, you’re going to get into six figures pretty quickly. And like I say, if you want a world class violin, you could easily get into the millions! Yet it’s also the cheapest instrument there is. I bet you didn’t expect that one instrument is the cheapest and most expensive instrument there is. I hope you find this interesting! If you have different ideas about this, leave a comment on LivingPianos.com and YouTube! 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

How to Play With 2 Hands on the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to play with two hands on the piano. Now this may seem like the most basic thing. But I bet you there are people searching for answers about this. This can be particularly perplexing for those of you who have played other instruments where you play only one note at a time. You might wonder, how the heck do you play with two hands and play all those notes? So it is really a valid question, and the answer may surprise you!

The secret to learning how to play with both hands is to practice hands separately!

That might seem like a contradiction, but it is far from it. The hardest part about piano playing is putting the hands together. Practicing small sections at a time, hands separately, really breaks things down. It makes it easier for you to play hands together. If you try to play hands together immediately, and that is the way you practice a piece of music, it’s going to be tough to get all the details straight. You will struggle to get the phrasing and fingering. There’s just so much information to amass when you’re looking at a score. So that is the secret to playing hands together.

When you first start learning a new piece of music, read through it really slowly, hands together, to get familiar. You’ll probably have to play incredibly slowly at first, because it’s hard! But once you do that a couple of times, you can start from the beginning, just taking a very small section. Figure out the right hand. Learn all the details of the right hand. Then do the same thing with the left hand. Then put them together. You repeat this process one small section at a time. I’ve talked about this process many times before. I was so fortunate to study with my father, Morton Estrin, who showed me this at my first lesson as a young child. I have taught this to countless people. It really works!

If the piano was played with only one hand, it would probably be the easiest instrument there is!

Trying to get a sound out of a clarinet or a flute is an arduous task. Basic tone production on a piano is as simple as pressing down a key. You can get a sound the first time you try it! But put those hands together and it becomes exponentially more difficult. So the secret to playing hands together is to work out your music section by section, hands separately. Get each hand really flowing and then slowly put them together. Then increase the tempo. You can connect section by section working through the piece this way. Before you know it, you can play hands together on the piano! I hope this is helpful for those of you who are afraid of the piano because of having to play with two hands. 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

Piano Music for Small Hands

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. What are good pieces of music for people with small hands? Many of you know that I have rather small hands. Fortunately I have a good, solid octave. I can even reach most 9ths. Although, I can’t quite reach a 9th from above the keys. I can only reach a 10th if I grab one key and stretch to grab the other. But that’s not very practical. I can’t quite reach it with my right hand. As many of you know, your right hand is a little bit smaller than your left hand, if you’re like most pianists, from all the years of stretching. The left hand generally has more outstretched reaches than the right hand.

You can play music beyond your reach, as many great pianists have in the past.

Josef Hofmann had such small hands that Steinway actually built a piano for him with a smaller keyboard! This is a technology that some companies are even working on today. I have videos on this subject for you as well. You can see one here.

What repertoire is ideal for people with small hands?

Early period music is perfect! During the romantic era, the pedal was utilized extensively. The reach was greater, generally. However, the key to being able to play music beyond your reach is capturing notes you can’t reach on the pedal and breaking the chords very quickly. You can hardly tell they are broken the way they’re caught on the pedal. That is a technique that many pianists use in order to play music beyond their reach. It’s very effective. It does not in any way hinder the music.

If you have really small hands, and you don’t want to struggle, the music of Bach, Scarlatti, Mozart, or Haydn is great.

The instrument wasn’t as highly developed yet during the time these composers lived. It didn’t have the sustain pedal that we enjoy today. The music doesn’t demand a lot of big reaches. Think about Bach two part inventions. There’s never more than one note in each hand at a time anyway! That’s going to be splendid for anyone with a smaller reach. But even Mozart is really accessible for people with small hands.

There is a wealth of music that will fall right in your hands, even if an octave is all you can reach.

Now, if you don’t have a solid octave, it is more of a challenge. You might want to look into some of those smaller keyboards. It would be wonderful if this became a standard. It’s possible that if this became a standard, a pianist could choose among different sized keys. Why is this size the standard? It doesn’t have to be this way! It’s just what evolved. If you can’t reach an octave, a smaller keyboard could be just the thing 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 99% is Bad in Piano Playing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about why 99% is bad in piano playing. You might think I’m a very strict teacher or something like that. How can 99% be bad? Valedictorians would be very pleased to have a 99% average! Usually somebody is lauded if they’re at even 90%. How can 99% be bad in piano?

The incredible complexity of piano music requires more than 99%.

If you were to play even a relatively simple piece of music like Minuet in G of Bach, just the first section has well over 100 notes. But consider that each note has a rhythm. So that’s over 200 details. Each note has a fingering. So now we’re up to 300. Each note has a phrasing, either slurred or staccato. That’s 400. How about dynamics? So there are over 500 details just in that first section of this short piece! So if you are at 99%, you’re missing a handful of details just in that small section of this short piece. That’s why 99% is not a good average for playing classical music.

There are almost an infinite number of details that have to be present for the music to sound right.

There are more aspects of the music than I mentioned above, the elegance of the balance between the hands, the rise and the fall of the phrases dynamically, and more. That’s why you have to strive for something much greater than 99%. How do you do that? By being organized in your practice! That’s why you can’t just simply read through music over and over again and expect to assimilate the thousands of details, even in a short piece like this. You must be very meticulous in putting together small chunks of music, studying the score carefully, looking at tiny phrases at a time, and amassing this information into your head and into your hands. Put things together little by little. And beyond that, go back and check your work constantly! Nobody can remember that many details without constant review. When you think about what you’re accomplishing when you play a piece of music on the piano, if you’re playing it accurately, you’re not missing notes and rhythms, phrasing and fingering and expression all over the place, it is a remarkable feat!

You are playing at a level much higher than 99% accuracy if you’re getting through something without any obvious glitches.

You have a lot to be proud of in the work you’re doing! If you’re not breaking up all over the place, you are well above 99% in your playing. That is what it takes to be able to play a piece of music on the piano. So remember to be organized in your practice so you can achieve something that is astounding. You are learning thousands of details that you can perform just like that. What a pleasure! When you put the practice in and you learn it correctly, then playing can be such a joy. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.

Is Playing the Piano Hard?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Is playing the piano hard? You see some people playing and they make it look effortless. For example, I have played the Chopin Ballade in G minor hundreds if not thousands of times. Is that hard to do? Well, I’ve done that so many times, I wouldn’t say it’s particularly hard. It does take concentration. But for the average person, is playing the piano hard?

Playing the piano is a very complex task.

There was an article in The New York Times Magazine years ago. It was an article not about the piano. It was about the human brain. In this article, they cited piano playing as the single most complex activity of the human brain. It involves motor coordination with the fingers. You have to coordinate the sound with the visual, and it encompasses long term and short term memory. It really is complex! So in a nutshell, yes, piano playing has a lot of elements that make it difficult. However, it really depends upon what you’re after in your piano playing.

Not all piano playing is equal.

Somebody who hasn’t ever even touched a piano, if they have some degree of exposure and an appreciation of music, and a modicum of talent, they might be able to sit down the first time and just play different black keys and make it sound reasonably good. So depending on what you want to achieve at the piano, it may not be that hard. Now, having said that, playing classical compositions, learning them and being able to play them faithfully and accurately with security, is very difficult. I won’t kid you.

Practicing is a very difficult process if you’re doing it right.

If practicing is easy, you’re probably not accomplishing that much. I always feel that practicing should be hard so performing is easy! Make your practicing intense. Every minute you should be absorbing some little detail. Keep your concentration by not overwhelming yourself with too much at a time. By doing this you can sustain a long, productive practice. It takes immense concentration and focus to do that. The harder practicing is, assuming it’s productive, the easier performing is. So is piano hard? Yeah, it’s hard! But if you practice well, you can make playing enjoyable and much easier than your practice. I think that should be the goal, don’t you?

I want to hear from you!

Do you think piano playing is hard? Do you think practicing is hard? What kind of enjoyment do you get out of the instrument? Let me know in the comments here at Living Pianos.com and on YouTube! 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