This is Robert Estrin from LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store with a question. “Does playing the piano make you smarter?” I hope so. I’ve been playing a long time and wonder what I would be like if I didn’t play the piano! This is a serious question. Indeed there have been studies, like famous Gordon Shaw – Frances Rauscher studies at UC Irvine. These studies showed:
With a control group of children studying the piano, compared to other groups studying computers, as well as a control group studying nothing, the children who studied piano showed an increase of math and science scores and even increase in English skills!
That is exciting to think about! Later on, they even discovered the “Mozart Effect”, which had some controversy. They simply played recordings of Mozart while kids were taking tests and found that there was a temporary increase in IQ scores just from listening to the music! Temporary is the keyword here. Later on their findings were diminished when they found it was just a temporary boost, but that is exciting enough!
Why should playing the piano increase your intelligence? Did you know?
Playing the piano uses more parts of your brain than any other human activity.
This is according to the New York Times in article years ago about the human brain that showed piano playing as the single most complex endeavor of the human mind. How can this be? Think about it. You have short-term memory, long-term memory, tactile memory as well as visual and aural cues.
You have just about every part of your brain firing when playing the piano.
It is a fantastic opportunity to develop your mind. Of course if you play with other musicians you also develop social skills. It is endless. Just playing music is a great way to expand your mind. The discipline of practicing and the organization it takes to digest a piece of music make for an incredible opportunity to explore aspects of your own mind in ways that are richly rewarding. At the end of the line, you have something to show for it. You can play a piece of music or many pieces of music!
As if that isn’t enough of a reason to play the piano, being able to increase your intelligence is a benefit too! Everyone should study the piano, don’t you think? Let me know how you feel about this. I wonder how many of you are on board. I suppose if you are reading this there could be skewed results because many of my readers might already feel this way!
There are studies that prove an increase in intelligence just from playing the piano.
Spend more time with the piano and your brain will thank you! Once again, this is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store.
This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store. Today, I have three secrets to playing slow music. When you hear instrumentalists, such as pianists, you notice that many have a lot of technical achievement. But when you hear a great artist play a slow movement, magic can happen. It can reach the inner depths of your soul. This is the sign of a great musician. How do you approach slow movements in order to get that quality, to get that beauty and be able to reach people on an emotional level? These are the secrets I’m going to give to you today.
Number one is: Make sure you take the right tempo.
A lot of people play slow movements too slowly. For example, if someone were to perform Debussy, Clair de Lune, you may hear it played very slowly. Now, it might be okay at the beginning, but by the time you get to the middle and compare the tempo they’re playing in the middle of the piece, often, they’re going faster because it gets ponderous after awhile at such a slow tempo.
Another clue for you when you’re taking a tempo that is too slow is that you will find that if there are repeats, you won’t want to take them. They don’t seem to work. So, if you have a piece of music and think, “Mozart didn’t mean all those repeats”. Yes, he did! And if they don’t work, it’s a clue that you are playing too slow a tempo. Another thing related to this is to:
Hold long notes long enough.
There’s nothing worse than robbing long notes. But it’s so easy to rob long notes because you’re just sitting there doing nothing! It’s easy to count to yourself and accelerate your counting in your head. You can lose the pulse.
A lot of performers play very slowly and rob the long notes, such as again, the beginning of Clair de Lune. To me, that is simply playing out of rhythm. But you’d be surprised how many performances you’ll find online of very renowned concert pianists playing this piece and robbing the long notes. Holding all the long notes for their full written value gives the music soul, doesn’t it? You’ve got to take the right tempo and you must hold the long notes long enough. What else is there? The other thing is to:
Think of the long note as the pulse.
This enables you to have a slow pulse with a faster tempo. An example is the second movement of the K. 332 Mozart Sonata in F major. First, you could play it thinking of each sixteenth note as the beat. The left hand has sixteenth notes, and each one of those can be punctuated as the beat. Then, instead of thinking each sixteenth note as the beat, try thinking each eighth note as the beat. It’s already going to be better. Rachmaninoff said,
“The bigger the phrase, the bigger the musician.”
Well, related to this is, the longer note that you feel as the pulse, the more freedom you have with your music. Now try feeling the quarter note as the pulse. This also gives you the benefit of being able to take a faster tempo but still having a relaxed feel to your music. Even with a slightly faster tempo, but with the quarter note as the pulse, it doesn’t feel hurried! Those are three secrets to being able to play slow music.
Make sure to hold long notes long enough, feel the long note as the beat, and choose the right tempo.
Don’t take slow pieces too slowly. If you do those three tips, it will enhance the performance of your slow music. I’d love to hear from all of you and give me your perspective. And if you haven’t subscribed to LivingPianosVideos’ YouTube channel, go for it! You’ll get all the fresh videos. We produce them for you every week.
Music expresses emotion. It can be a great challenge to bear your soul in a genuine way when performing music. It can be a challenge avoiding distractions whether it is noises from an adjacent room or a squeaky bench. Worse yet, you may find your mind wandering to concerns of daily life taking you away from your purpose as a performer – to reach the audience with a message only music can convey.
Perhaps the greatest challenge in offering true feelings in your music is when you are improvising, particularly freeform improvisations, not music based upon written scores. This is something most typically associated with jazz musicians, but not exclusively.
In the accompanying video, you will hear a performance of a freeform improvisation in which my purpose was purely to convey honest emotions.
Sometimes it can be a rewarding challenge to create musical forms such as Sonata or Theme and Variations. But in this instance, my goal was not to impress the listeners with displays of virtuosity or musical prowess, only to convey musical expression in a genuine way.
This is one of the greatest musical challenges! Fortunately, I had a great Baldwin SF-10 grand piano to inspire the performance with its beautiful sound. Please feel free to leave your thoughts about this subject.
Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Storeinfo@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729
Musical expression is the personal take a musician has on the music they perform. It’s a uniquely individual experience. What do I mean by the term, “infinite expression” and how can you apply this to your music? Let’s start by explaining the two concepts of infinity and how they can relate to music.
The first concept of infinity is the idea of moving endlessly in any direction.
For example, if you go out into space and just keep going in any direction, you could theoretically go on forever. So, when it comes to music, what if you were to allow the music to flow in any direction with no limits? In the video included with this article, I demonstrate this concept with Chopin’s A flat Ballade No.3, Op.47.
If you listen to the piece in the video you might have an interesting response. Those who are intimately familiar with the piece would probably not be pleased with the performance. However, those of you who are new to the piece might have a more positive response. How can this be? In the context of the whole piece, adding so many liberties with timing, expression and voicing with infinite expression causes the music to go in so many different directions that it would be unsustainable. The whole piece wouldn’t hold together. It’s impossible to maintain the music cohesiveness for the duration of the piece playing in this manner. Infinite expression in this sense simply doesn’t work for classical performance.
The second concept of infinity is the idea of going halfway to a destination again and again repeatedly.
This presents another concept of infinity. Your musical framework allows for minute levels of expression and detail which is truly limitless. The nuance of each note, the levels and the balance of each chord, there are an infinite number of possibilities to add more character and expression to your performance. This concept of infinity can be applied to musical expression. This might sound like a complex concept, and it is, but I have provided an example of this type of performance in the video included in this article as well.
If you listen to the second performance in the video, you will notice how it contrasts with the first performance. While there are an infinite number of gradations of tone, balance and expression, there is a continuity that holds the music together.
I could play that section over again and again and never play it the same way twice!
Adding subtle details to different elements allows you to create character and expression while potentially never repeating yourself – a truly infinite form of expression.
Adding subtle details to your music within a framework allows for infinite possibilities in your music while still maintaining the intentions of the composer and the structure of the music. Yet with this concept, you can still add your own unique voice and expression to everything you perform. When you look at your performances in this way, it’s incredibly exciting – you can truly play a piece thousands of times and always add something fresh and creative.
I hope you have enjoyed this video and I encourage you to experiment with this type of expression in your music. Thanks for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Store info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729
When I first thought of this question, I was interested in what information was available from Google and on Youtube. I was surprised to find that there isn’t much information available on this subject! This is a really important subject for anyone who has studied Chopin Waltzes or Mazurkas. Chopin wrote a thick book of Mazurkas as well as a big book of Waltzes. These staples of the piano repertoire are stupendous pieces of music!
The Differences and Similarities of Waltzes and Mazurkas
First, there’s a great deal that Waltzes and Mazurkas have in common. Waltzes and Mazurkas were both dance forms of the 19th century. They are also both in ¾ time. So, what makes them different? In this video, I’m going to demonstrate the B-minor Waltz and the B-flat major Mazurka so you can hear them for yourself to see if you can figure out what’s different about them. Since they are both based upon dance forms in 3/4 time, you might wonder what sets them apart.
In a nutshell, the difference between Waltzes and Mazurkas is which beats are accented!
Let’s start with a Waltz. They typically have a strong first beat. The third beat is also somewhat strong, but the first beat is the strongest beat. In a Mazurka, the emphasis is on the second beat. On the accompanying video you will hear complete performances of the B-minor Waltz and the B-flat major Mazurka with all of the changes of sections. You can listen for the accented first beat in the waltz as well as the somewhat prominent third beat.
When listening to the Mazurka, notice the strong second beat. I chose these particular selections for you because they have similar tempos and are both energetic pieces. Some Waltzes have a solemn mood with slower tempos while there are Mazurkas which are highly introspective. They can be quite deep pieces of music. They’re well worth listening to and I may present these in future videos. I hope you get a sense of the fundamental differences between Waltzes and Mazurkas. This is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store 949-244-3729 info@LivingPianos.com
Welcome to LivingPianos.com. This is Robert Estrin. Today the subject is, how to approach a new piece of music on the piano. I randomly opened this big fat book of Chopin Mazurkas to the Mazurka in A-flat Opus 24 No. 3. I do not know this piece. I literally flipped through the book, and we’re going to see what happens.
The first thing you want to do when you’re approaching a new piece of music is to sight read it through to get acquainted with it. There’s a fundamental difference in the way you’d sight read a piece when you’re playing it for someone, or certainly when you’re accompanying someone where you have to keep everything moving. If you’re playing with someone else, you must stay together. When sight reading a piece for someone, you do the best you can even though you may have to flesh some of it out leaving out some inner notes. You must surmise what it should sound like and do the best you can. But in this case, when you’re reading to get acquainted (not playing for or with someone), you want to make sure you’re playing everything accurately, even if you have to play slower.
So, I want to start off and sight read this piece. I’m going to do it the way I would if I was playing it for someone and when it starts, maybe I’ll know if I’ve heard this Mazurka before! You can listen on the accompanying video.
That went pretty well. But at this point you will notice, it wasn’t entirely accurate. I was sort of getting the chord changes. Since there is a repeated section, I’m going to stop. If I was playing it for somebody, I’d make my way through it, perhaps not using the best fingering and not quite getting all the notes. However, if I was reading this to get acquainted with it, I wouldn’t do that. Instead, I would take it slowly figuring out the exact notes. I would figure out how to negotiate the music properly. I wouldn’t get too hung up because I wouldn’t want to start practicing yet. I just want to get acquainted. So, you have to draw the line of how far to go with your reading in order to get a sense of the music, yet not start pounding out wrong notes and cementing mistakes. So let’s see how to approach learning a new piece.
I am going to use no pedal so I can hear everything clearly. This will give a sense of the harmony. I had it mostly right! I did spot a double flat that I had missed.
The first time I went through it, it wasn’t perfect, but it was like a performance at least. So if somebody wanted to hear the piece, it could be satisfying for them because I wasn’t stopping and starting all the time. However, when you’re approaching a new piece of music, you want to take a moment to make sure you’re playing the correct notes, the correct harmonies. Double check your accidentals and things of that nature.
Now, the next step, after you’ve read through the whole piece in the matter I’ve described, you really don’t want to read the piece ever again, if you want to read pieces, pick another Marzuka or another piece of music entirely. Why is this? If you continue to sight read the piece, unless you played it perfectly, the first time through, you’re going to continue to miss things. And even though I played fairly accurately most of the piece the first time, there are all kinds of details on the score that are essential for the piece that are important such as, the exact place where slurs end, where dynamic start and end, and other fine details. Composers aren’t haphazard with these details. These are intrinsic to the composition and must be learned meticulously.
The very next thing to do after the precursory reading, is to go to the very beginning and break it down to the smallest possible elements checking everything. I could probably start from the beginning and read it through five or six times and sort of know it and then I could go back and keep reconstructing the score trying to fill in the details I didn’t quite get. But that’s not very effective practice.
On a piece like this, I might be able to get away with it honestly, because I can almost read it! But if I was learning a Bach fugue or a late Beethoven Sonata, or a piece of Ravel, there’s no way that method would work! So, you might as well use this practice technique with everything you learn which is the method I described in a video years ago that’s worth watching.
I’m just going to show you that here with this piece. The very next thing I would do if I was learning this piece, even if it was a piece of Mozart which is relatively easy to memorize, is to break it down as follows.
Start at the beginning taking just the right hand, the very, first tiny phrase.
Believe it or not, that’s all you should take because you can learn that really quickly and it’s satisfying. You will notice things like how the music starts with a decrescendo, and then you have a decrescendo. Also, the very first note starts with an accent. That doesn’t take very long to learn, so you might as well get all these details learned right away.
You want to check your work constantly as you go. Work out the fingering as well as the notes, the phrasing and the expression – everything!
Before moving on, be sure everything is solid. Play it until it becomes automatic and you don’t even have to think about it!
Next, you take the left hand. Solidify the music until it is memorized.
Check everything over and make sure there are no other markings, no indications of expression or phrasing that you may have missed.
Before putting the hands together, refresh your memory of the right-hand part you learned earlier.
Make sure you still remember it. Check it with the score once more. You might wonder why you need to go through such tremendous pains to learn a piece of music. It’s because you never want to have to unlearn something. You must make sure you are learning things correctly.
Next is the hardest parts – putting the hands together!
It’s important to put the hands together from memory the first time. You must challenge yourself even if you have to play much slower. Again, check your work with the score. You will hear subtle differences when you follow details precisely.
Finally, you add the pedal – That’s your reward for a job well done!
Keep playing until you are happy with your performance. Then you can go on to the next phrase and learn it the same way.
If you practice this way, you will be able to play your music exactly as you intend it to sound.
By taking very small phrases, you can spoonfeed the music to yourself. This is important because you can practice like this all day long because it’s relatively easy. Where if you try to memorize eight measure phrases or 16 measure phrases, you may be able to do it. But it would take so long that you may be limited in how many phrases you can emass in one practice session. However, you can work through this entire piece of two measure phrases and never get mentally tired. And better than that, you know it’s secure since you’re looking at every detail and solidifying as you go..
Next, you want to put the phrases together from the beginning.
First, refresh your memory of the first phrase you learned earlier. Check your work with the score. Play many times until it is secure from memory putting the two phrases together. Now you can reward yourself playing with the pedal!
So, that is the secret of productive piano practice. You must take your time focusing your attention on all the details as you learn. Remember, first read through the piece, a little bit more carefully than you’d read it if you were just reading it for somebody or accompanying somebody certainly. Take the time to make sure you have all the notes and at least have an idea of places you need to work out fingering later, even if you can’t quite get it initially. And then get to work and practice. Don’t take more than you can bite off at a time. If you’re taking more than a minute to learn something, you’re taking too much, because that way you can learn something every single minute of your practice and make it really productive and sustain a long practice. Even if you could read through the whole piece a bunch of times and almost have it memorized, and almost is the key word here, you don’t want to do that. You want it to be learned perfectly. You want to get every last detail of the score because that’s what makes it sound so beautiful!
Chopin was a master and crafted his music taking advantage of every marking in the score. Don’t get used to playing it wrong, because the correct phrasing and expression and fingering are going to bring the piece to life.
I hope this has been enlightening for you and you see the way I work and I recommend that you try it with your music. You can go through the whole piece connecting phrases as you go, memorising first just after you’ve just read through it and you won’t believe the difference it will make it your practice.
I hope that’s been helpful for you again, this is Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store. info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729
