Tag Archives: music lessons

How Mozart Broke the Rules

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how Mozart broke the rules. Did Mozart really break the rules? What do I mean by that? It’s a funny thing that we, in retrospect, analyze music from hundreds of years ago, and come up with the forms these great composers composed in.

The quintessential form of all time is the sonata allegro form.

Sonatas are generally three- or four-movement works (sometimes two movements), and the first movement is almost always in the sonata allegro form. Why do they call it the sonata allegro? Because the first movement is usually the fast movement, and allegro means fast. In a nutshell, it’s a three-part form:

A. Exposition

– Theme 1. in the tonic key (the key of the piece)

– Theme 2. in the dominant key (the key starting on the 5th note of the scale of the key of the piece). – The Exposition Repeats-



B. Development: This is a free development of both themes
C. Recapitulation

– Theme 1. in the tonic key (the key of the piece) – Theme 2. in the tonic key (so the movement ends in the key it started in!)

The exposition has two themes. The first theme is in the tonic key, which is the key of the piece. The second theme is in the dominant key, which is five notes higher than the tonic. Then, the whole exposition repeats.

I’m going to outline it here in Mozart’s famous K 545 C Major Sonata, so you can see how he broke the rules.

The first theme is in C major, naturally, which you would expect. It continues to the second subject in G major, and the entire exposition ends in G major. This is a classic sonata allegro form. That’s the end of the exposition. Then you come to the repeat, and the entire exposition repeats.

After the exposition, you come to what’s called the development section. The development comes after the double bar, after the repeat, and it’s a free development of both the first theme and the second theme. After the development section comes the recapitulation. What’s the recapitulation? It’s a repeat of the beginning. You have theme one and theme two. Except theme two this time doesn’t modulate to the dominant. It stays in the tonic. So the piece ends in the same key it started!

But Mozart takes a turn that is unexpected.

Then the first theme comes back in F major, the subdominant. How did this happen? It continues in F major. But the first theme is supposed to come back in the recapitulation in the tonic key, C major, but we’re in F major. Then it goes to the second theme in C major, which is what you would expect. But there is never a restatement of the first theme, the opening theme in C major, which is a textbook of what a sonata is, and he just leaves it out. In fact, that statement of the main theme in the subdominant in F major is simply part of the development section. He never gives you the first theme in the recapitulation in the tonic key as expected. The recapitulation just has a short statement of the first theme in the subdominant, F major, in the development section. Then it goes right into the second theme in C major to the end. So yes, Mozart broke the rules.

All great composers break the rules!

The rules are just observations after the fact. It’s all the deviations from what you expect that make music great. Lesser composers do exactly what you think they’ll do, and it’s boring! Composers like Mozart or Beethoven are so full of surprises, always taking turns you don’t expect. That is the secret of great music! I’m wondering what you think about this. Are there any examples that you can bring to the table? Let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube! 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

Are There Musical Geniuses Like Mozart Alive Today?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Are there musical geniuses like Mozart alive today? In the world today with billions of people, there have got to be some people with tremendous talent. There are great players and child prodigies, but is there anybody at the level of artistry, creative beauty, and pure genius of Mozart?

The answer is yes!

If you have not seen her already on YouTube, you must check out Alma Deutscher. I’ve been following her for years. She started posting on YouTube when she was five. There are videos of her playing the violin from a very young age. She is unlike any musical talent I think you’ve probably ever seen in your life. Just to give you an overview, she’s now 18 years old. She has composed three operas. She composed her first complete opera when she was only ten years old! There are some videos of her performing where the audience chooses notes and she improvises using those notes. She can instantly create a composition on the highest level, beyond what you would think of as improvisation.

She is an accomplished pianist, violinist, and singer.

She’s great on all three of these instruments, as well as being a conductor. She’s written violin concertos, piano concertos, and three operas. It’s just amazing. You could see her evolution through time. But from the youngest age, there is a spark of joy in her, and an appreciation for beautiful melodies, which just flow out of her naturally, whether she’s improvising or composing. If she just played the violin, sang, played the piano, or composed even a fraction of the music that she’s written, she would be noteworthy. But the fact that she does all of these things is astounding! She is much like Mozart, who was great on violin, piano, conducting, improvising, and composing for so many different ensembles, from opera to piano to symphonies, from the youngest age.

There are still musical geniuses like Mozart alive today! But where can they shine?

Are there places for people like Alma Deutscher? Where will her career take her? This will be very interesting. Many composers today are in the film industry because it’s one area where people can actually make a living composing music. We no longer have royal courts with benefactors the way they existed back in Mozart’s time.

I want all of you to check out Alma Deutscher!

Check out her compositions and her improvisations. Watch her from the youngest age to what she’s doing now. I think you will be astounded at this world-class musician in our midst. I just thought I’d call it to your attention to her. I’m interested in other great artists of our time. If you know of anyone like this, share it in the comments here at LivingPianos.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

Alma Deutcher Improvisation

https://www.almadeutscher.com

https://www.youtube.com/@AlmaDeutscher

How Much Freedom Is There in Musical Performance?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. How much freedom is there in musical performance? If you listen to the same piece by different performers on the piano or any other instrument, you’ll find dramatically different interpretations. How much do you have to be faithful to the score, and how much can you just take off and do what you want to do? The answer may surprise you!

You want to play faithfully to the score.

If somebody was listening to a piece of music written by a great composer and they were transcribing it note for note, they should end up with the same score that the composer wrote with every last detail. Does that mean that every performance should be the same? No, surprisingly, because you can execute every detail of the score in different ways to indicate what is written, and different people have various ideas about how to achieve that.

I’m going to give you a great example today, which is Debussy.

Debussy was a French impressionist composer from the early 20th century. His music is a wash of colors and sounds. And yet, it’s important to have the clarity of what is intended in the score come out in your performance. But there is more than one way to achieve that. For example, sometimes there are double-stemmed notes, a note with a stem going down and a stem going up. Why are there two stems? Well, that note is part of two different lines of music, like different instruments playing. It may be 16th notes and 8th notes at the same time. One voice is on the top and one voice is on the bottom. Sometimes voices overlap, and they both hit the same note at the same time. The composer wants you to understand that and project it into the performance. It creates different sounds. So in the first movement of Debussy’s Children’s Corner Suite, there are double-stemmed notes. Interestingly, it starts off in the third measure with double-stemmed eighth notes (with staccatos), which intersect with 16th notes on the bottom. What makes it even more interesting is that starting in the fifth measure, you have a similar passage except with double-stemmed quarter notes with 16th notes on the bottom. This is a subtle difference which is the genius of Debussy creating nuances of sound. (You can reference the accompanying video to hear this on the piano with the score provided.)

Ideally, you want to do as much as you possibly can with your fingers and then use the pedal for expression.

That’s just one example where the composer wants to have different lines of music, and it’s up to you as a performer to find a way to execute it to create the effect. On the seventh measure, you have the same pattern twice, but the first time with a crescendo/decrescendo, then it repeats with no dynamic changes. There are all kinds of subtle phrasing, double stemmed-notes, inner lines, expression, and crescendos. What I have found over the years is that if you really learn the precision of where the crescendos start and end, exactly how many notes are slurred, attention to double-stemmed note values, and you delineate all the minutiae of the score, it brings the music to life!

Be sure you’re not working from a heavily edited edition of the score.

You want to follow the markings of the composer, not the editor, because the editor may or may not have great ideas. You should always know what the composer had in mind with an urtext edition, one that is not edited, or one that clearly indicates what’s coming from the editor rather than the composer. That way, you can get in the head of the composer and get an idea of the concept of what they really were after. Those small details all come together to mold a great performance. So you can indeed follow the inclinations of the composer and do so with the conviction of how you believe the music can best be expressed. I hope this is helpful for you! Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at Living Pianos: Your Online Piano Resource. Join the discussion at LivingPianos.com where you can leave your comments on countless articles with accompanying videos.

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

The Secret to Executing Trills

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I will share some secrets to executing trills. When I was in music conservatory, I remember the really advanced students would spend an inordinate amount of time working on trills. And in fact, it’s one aspect of my playing that I have developed further in the past year or so. I’m always discovering new things.

The most intrinsically important thing about trills is that they must be measured.

I know that when you hear a trill, it just sounds like a whole bunch of random notes. But if you don’t know exactly how many notes you’re playing in a trill, good luck ending it! You may not end up on the right note. You have a 50/50 chance of being on the right or the wrong note. So you have to figure out exactly how many notes you’re playing. So even though it sounds like a flurry of notes, the number of notes is worked out precisely. There are different ways to execute trills with different numbers of notes, but each one should be measured.

Today I’m going to give you a hack for your trills!

I recently performed a concert in New York. I played the Mozart Sonata K. 457 in C minor. It’s loaded with trills! I wanted to execute those trills really cleanly, and I also wanted to play a good number of notes. You can always play an easier trill with fewer notes, but I didn’t want to do that. I started my program with this sonata, so I wanted to be rock solid on it. I figured out how to achieve very clean, faithful, and accurate trills. And it’s not just for trills like this, but virtually all ornamentation.

The secret is lifting up your fingers just a little bit instead of being right on the keys.

You want to lift up your finger just a little bit before you play the trill. That little bit of lifting articulates trills so wonderfully, you won’t believe it! Try it with your playing wherever you have trills. Lift your finger just before the trill, and you’ll get a clean trill. If your fingers don’t lift up, the notes may not play reliably. That’s the hardest part of a trill. The hardest part about piano playing and finger work isn’t so much the pushing down of the fingers, it’s the lifting up of previously played fingers. If you try to play a trill and the fingers don’t come up, the notes won’t play.

By lifting your fingers, you are certain that the fingers are up and out of the way, so the keys can replay.

The secret is to get the previously played fingers up and out of the way so the key is up and can go down again. It’s simple physics, really. So try lifting your fingers just before you play your trills and see how you get cleaner execution of ornamentation in your playing. I hope this works for you! Let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.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

Why Drummers Love to Play the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about drummers who play the piano. Why do drummers love to play the piano? I want to hear from all of you drummers out there who tune in to this video. Tell us why you love to play the piano.

I have a lot of drummers in my life, and, almost categorically, they all love to play the piano!

My son is a drummer, and he loves to play the piano. And this video was inspired by my good friend Bob Friedman, the Steinway Hunter. If you haven’t checked out his book, by the way, it is absolutely the most enjoyable book to read if you love pianos. Bob said I should talk about why drummers love to play the piano, so here it is!

Drummers already have a really highly developed sense of rhythm.

Rhythm is one of the most intrinsically difficult aspects of playing the piano. Drummers are also used to playing with two hands as well as their feet, so they have a good sense of coordination. But what they don’t have is a pitched instrument. It’s all rhythm. Unless they happen to play mallet instruments, they don’t get melody. They play with other musicians, and they hear the melodies in their heads. They want to be able to enjoy that, so they go to the piano.

It’s interesting how drummers approach the keyboard.

Sometimes they’ll take solos in such an interesting fashion, playing like a drummer and coming up with patterns that you wouldn’t think of as a pianist because we’re used to using our fingers in a way that drummers are not. So they come up with interesting patterns and melodies that might not occur to other musicians. It also helps them understand the music they’re playing drums to by playing on the piano. Getting a sense of chord progressions and melodies helps them achieve a more sensitive rhythmic backdrop for the music they play. So there are many reasons why drummers love to play the piano.

The piano is a percussion instrument.

Instead of hitting drum heads with sticks, it’s hammers hitting strings. It’s activated with your fingers. But really, the piano is the ultimate percussion instrument. So, of course, drummers are going to love to play the piano because it’s a percussion instrument and arguably the quintessential percussion instrument. Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments here at LivingPianos.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

How to Get Your Kids to Practice Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to get your kids to practice the piano. This is a really important subject because you want your kids to enjoy the piano. But if they never practice, how can you justify the lessons you’re taking them to and spending money on? You feel really committed, and you want your kids to be committed. Sometimes it can really come to loggerheads. So I’m going to give you some tips today!

I have vast experience with this subject.

I come from a family of teachers. Both my parents were music teachers. My sister is a piano teacher. I’ve taught piano pedagogy to many teachers. Getting kids to practice is a universal challenge for anyone who teaches kids or parents with kids studying the piano. I started teaching the piano when I was in high school, assisting my father with his teaching, as my sister did before me. And it’s been a continuum of my career since that time. I’ve pretty much always taught. Today, I have the great privilege of teaching students all over the world because of my popular YouTube channel and website, LivingPianos.com. I have students from Australia to Alaska and all points in between. For the most part, they’re serious students. I have some kids who are just wonderful to work with, as well as people decades older than me! However, when I was starting out making a living as a private piano teacher, I took all kinds of kids and adults as well. They didn’t all love the piano the way my students do today. I saw many different ways that parents dealt with their kids, some effective and some that were really counterproductive.

The first thing you have to understand about working at the piano is that practicing correctly is hard work.

So when you tell your kids they have to practice for 30 minutes or an hour, realize that, if they’re doing it correctly, it’s an incredibly intense experience. You must appreciate that. I remember my wife had a student, and the mother was always upset with her child for not practicing enough. Eventually, the mother started taking lessons, and then she finally realized how difficult it really was! So you have to appreciate that. To encourage your kids to practice, you have to think of it the way you think of so many other things in life.

Your kids, given a choice, probably wouldn’t clean their room, do their homework, or brush their teeth!

There are myriad things that your kids are kind of coaxed or trained to do, and piano practice must fit into that realm. So the techniques you’ve used to get your kids to do what they need to do are also appropriate for piano practice. But piano practice is not something that’s legally required, the way school is, or a matter of personal hygiene, the way brushing your teeth is, so they might feel there’s some wiggle room there. You must encourage your kids to practice by understanding and appreciating the hard work they do. Showcase their talents to your family and friends whenever possible. If they’ve been working really hard and they have a piece they can play well, when company comes over, let them shine. Give them a chance to enjoy the fruits of their labor!

You can encourage young students by bringing them to concerts and expanding their scope of music.

Bring them to classical concerts and other styles of music that maybe they haven’t been exposed to. I can’t tell you how many times people have said to me something like, “I hate opera.” And I say, “Have you ever been to an opera?” And they say, “No.” Well, how do you know? Seeing an opera performed by a great opera company, like the Metropolitan Opera, is just an astounding experience. You can’t get that experience by listening to music on a sound system. It’s not the same at all. That’s also true with classical music in general. Some types of music translate better to an electronic medium. For example, rock music is coming out of speakers, whether you’re going to a live event or not. But acoustic music sounds so much better when you’re listening to it live. It doesn’t sound the same coming through speakers. The sound of an acoustic performance in a great hall can’t be described or duplicated any other way. So take your kids to concerts! But you can also play them great recordings. Expose them to great music. They may just latch on to a few key pieces that could change their lives.

So remember to encourage your children!

Remember that it’s hard work to practice correctly. Expose your kids to great music, both live and recorded. Showcase their talents whenever possible so that they can feel appreciated for the hard work they do with the instrument. If nothing seems to work, condider finding a more inspiring teacheer. I hope this is helpful for you! Share your stories in the comments about what has worked for you or the challenges you have faced. 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