Tag Archives: music lessons

How to Learn a New Piece of Music on the Piano

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

Letting Go of Ego in Your Music

Today’s show is intrinsically important for a wide range of people and careers, and it’s applicable to almost everything! The subject is, letting go of the ego in your music. You may wonder what I mean by that? In order to play a public performance, you have to have a great deal of confidence. I’m not talking about preparing a great deal to have the ability to go out in front of people and do your best. That’s important as long as it’s reality-based. Obviously, if you aren’t prepared, and you expect wonderful things to magically happen in performance, then you are somewhat delusional! But having confidence and going out with the right attitude, realizing that no one’s going to get hurt no matter what happens is necessary. Here is where the ego may enter into things.

You must understand that it’s not all about you.

Ultimately, when you perform, you want to be able to let go of how people are thinking and feeling about you, which seems kind of contradictory. You’re in front of people, you’re performing, but this doesn’t apply just for performing.

This relates to composing as well.

You may try composing music you think people want to hear. For example, you hear music that’s popular, that’s getting on a lot of playlists and you’re thinking, “Well maybe I should compose something like that.” This is really not an honest approach. You want to have personal conviction for what you do, and if you let go of the id and just be one with the music you can reach a much deeper level. of expression.

Where this is perhaps most challenging is not in composing where you have time to go over the score again and again and decide to burn it if it’s not an honest expression, or even performing where at least you get a chance to refine the music again and again and have a pretty good idea of what’s going to come out at your performance. But in improvisation where you really let go – that is a time that I find personally is the most intrinsically challenging in order to be honest in expression, because it’s so hard not to have that part looking down on you thinking, “Hey is that cool. Are people going to like that?”

It is necessary to have kind of two brains, the brain that’s doing and the brain that’s watching.

One example of that is at a live performance when you make sure you’re not getting too excited. You’re in front of an audience and things are going great and you’re taking a really fast tempo, possibly faster than you’ve ever taken before. You have to have that other part of yourself looking down in kind of a motherly or a fatherly way saying, “Be careful Bob, don’t get carried away!” keeping things under control even though it’s exciting. There is always that duality. But what I’m talking about is something not about watching over yourself in a caring way, but in an egotistical way, in a way that smacks of, “Am I showing how cool I am? Are those changes sophisticated enough to impress people? I hope people are blown away with my technique. Maybe I should take this section faster so people think I’m great.”

That is dangerous because it alienates the audience.

Audiences don’t care how good you are.

They just want to feel what you’re feeling and if you’re just feeling it’s all about you, then they’re not going to get the sense that you care about them.

On the accompanying video, I’m going to play an improvisation off the cuff with no preconceived notions – totally raw.

I have no idea what it’s going to be, and it is a little scary. It is like being emotionally naked, and I hope I can keep the internal chatter at bay and just give you an honest expression of what I’m feeling wherever it takes me. I don’t know where that will be until I play and get into it. So here we go, and this is all about getting rid of the ego in your music. Let’s see if I can achieve some sense of that here right now for you.

Well you know it’s a funny thing. I play freeform improvisations all the time and it’s so much easier to do them when not being put on the spot. I think I got some nice things there. I wish that everything I played was recorded because I’d love to share them with you! I’ll do more of these for you, because you never know what will come out.

The message today is to let go of the ego, and play from your heart without worrying about how you’re being judged. This goes for everything you do whether it’s writing, painting even talking to people in conversation. It’s not about showing off and showing how great you are – it’s about listening to people and trying to reach people because that’s all we have in this world ultimately, isn’t it? I hope this has been inspiring for you.

This is Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com Your Online Piano Store info@LivingPianos.com 949-244-3729

Is There Editing in Classical Recordings?

I have vast experience with editing recordings, having owned several recording studios over the years and have been present during my father’s recording sessions from a young age. I have produced countless albums as well as demo recordings. Yes, there is editing in Classical recordings and you might wonder how this works. You play a piece, and miss a note. So, can you put the correct note in there? How does it work? With modern technology you almost can! In previous years, not that long ago in the days of tape, it was possible to razorblade edit and you would not believe what was possible even then!

Here’s the key: To be able to get successful edits in music, you have to have a keen understanding of the work. That’s why the producer of a recording and the engineer have to understand music in a deep way. For example, if you were to try to edit a performance to make a perfect recording by playing until you missed something, then started there and continued on to the next place you missed, then going through the whole piece that way, you might get all the notes, but you probably will not get much of a musical performance. Continuity and cohesiveness has to be achieved in the editing process. So what is generally done is to play complete works several times. You choose the best take as the foundation and replace key sections to achieve accuracy.

You don’t just put in missed notes here and there, but you might take the first exposition of a sonata and maybe a development from a different take then perhaps the recapitulation will come back to the first take. If there’s a particularly thorny section of a piece of music that is really difficult to play accurately, it’s important to remember that you cannot edit in anything that you can’t play. You have to be able to play all the notes at some point! If there’s a particularly difficult section, they might have the performer play that section many times so they know it’s covered. In a worst case scenario, it’s possible to cut in before and after that section. It’s critical to know where you’re going to try to cut in later so that you don’t just try to squeeze something in.

If you have total silence, you can always cut in. A strong, decisive chord that punctuates a new section can mask edits as well. So there’s a great deal of editing in recordings, but not the way you may think. It’s not about replacing missed notes even though with digital technology that may be possible. It’s almost at the point where you can do that, but you’ll never get a fluid performance on a high level of expression and continuity trying to edit that way. You’ve got to be able to play the notes, it’s just a matter of saving time. Think how many performances you would have to do in order to get a perfect performance of a work that takes 20 or 30 minutes. You might miss one little thing here or there which may go unnoticed in a live performance, but in a recording you listen to again and again it becomes an annoyance. So, in a best case scenario, editing enables note perfect recordings in the hands of a producer who has the ability to draw out the best performance of an artist.

Should You Play Music Exactly as Written?

Do Classical performers play exactly what is written? There’s a lot to this question. Of course, naturally, Classical pianists strive for accuracy. But what is accurate? There is a real challenge with composers who lived hundreds of years ago. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to look at some of the great composers’ scores, Beethoven comes to mind, there are scrawls on the page and sections scribbled out. Trying to decipher what they meant is no easy task.

It takes a lot of scholarly work. That’s why the editions you look at is critical and there are urtext editions which strive to present exactly what the composers wrote. How do they know what the composers wrote? Sometimes there are autographed scores and early editions and there are often discrepancies. Decisions have to be made as to what the composers’ intentions really were. Particularly with composers with sloppy calligraphy, it can be a real task! Ultimately, the performer must have conviction about the notes they play regardless of what is supposedly authoritative. If something seems wrong, you shouldn’t play it even if it is supposed to be authoritative. Maybe somewhere somebody got it wrong! You must have conviction as to what you’re playing.

There’s an entire other side to this question that is perhaps even more significant which is this: the musical score only has notes, rhythm, phrasing and expression. There is a whole lot more to the music than that! Consider this analogy of a play or motion picture. The words are all written out, yet the actor or actress must take those written words and create a character out of it. The words themselves really don’t come to life until the performer creates that character.

Exactly the same thing is true with a musical performance. The notes are just the skeleton of the work and it’s your job as a performer to flesh out the living, breathing work of music. In order to do that, many decisions have to be made that are not in the score. You might wonder what else there is besides the notes, rhythm, phrasing and expression. There are the ups and downs of the expression as well as rubato (the slight speeding up and slowing down in Romantic period music) which gives flavor and emotion to the music.

All of these things and more are left up to the performer. So it’s more than just a matter of accuracy, it’s all the things a performer brings to a performance to turn it into a piece of music. There are only basic directions in the score. So that’s the job of the performer. It’s not just about being accurate and if you want to prove that to yourself, listen to a computer playing a score of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin or anyone else. You can program in everything and still it’s no music is it?

Thanks for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com info@livingpianos.com

How Can You Hear Lower than Human Hearing?

Some pipe organs can produce frequencies lower than the threshold of human hearing which is around 20 cycles per second. The Bösendorfer Imperial which goes all the way down to the C below the standard low A on other pianos produces notes lower than 20 cycles per second. Part of this phenomenon can be explained by the how you can feel rather than hear those extremely low frequencies. Certainly a massive pipe organ in a cathedral can energize an entire room with sonic energy with low, rumbling frequencies. But there is much more to it than that and it has to do with the overtone series.

I have a video about atonality which touches on the overtone series:

DOES ATONALITY GO AGAINST NATURE? THE OVERTONE SERIES – ATONALITY PART 2

The overtone series is a characteristic of all pitched sounds in nature as well as musical instruments. Anything that makes pitched sounds contains color tones above the fundamental tone. It’s a series of tones that goes up by an octave, then a fifth, then two octaves above the fundamental pitch and on and on. All these color tones affect the quality of the tone. That’s why in its simplest form a trumpet sounds distinctly different from a violin playing the same pitch. It has to do with the overtone series and how these overtones interact. So when you’re hearing an extremely low note, you are actually hearing more overtones than fundamental pitch! Your mind constructs the fundamental pitch particularly in descending lines that go lower than your hearing.

As a young child I performed an experiment utilizing my father’s tape recorder and my tape recorder. I recorded the lowest note of the piano at one speed, then played it back 4 times faster which raised the pitch 2 octaves. To my shock, instead of hearing a single note I head a chord! This is because on smaller grand pianos, the fundamental tone is so weak, that the overtones are actually as loud or louder than the fundamental tone! So, this is how you’re able to hear notes that are below 20 cycles per second such as the Bösendorfer Imperial which goes lower than your hearing as do some pipe organs with immense pipes that produce frequencies in the low double digits of frequencies. It’s not only that you feel the room shaking, but you hear the overtones and you surmise the fundamental pitch that you can’t actually hear. So the question is answered for you very simply, you’re not hearing something you can’t hear but your mind makes an image of that low tone in a convincing way.

Again, this is Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com. info@LivingPianos.com

Should You Learn the Notes of a Piece First?

This is a really loaded question. A lot of people think they should learn the notes of a piece first and later add the fingering, phrasing and expression. There’s a great fallacy in thinking that you can learn just the notes first. You might think that you should at least learn the rhythm with the notes and maybe you might even think the fingering should be learned initially. But can you add the expression and phrasing later? Here’s why this just doesn’t work.

Whenever you play a piece of music, you’re reinforcing the performance. The fallacy is that you can play without phrasing or expression such as dynamics. It’s virtually impossible to play without any phrasing or expression. How can this be? Well, what is phrasing? Phrasing is basically the way in which notes are connected or detached. So, if you play a passage that is written to be played staccato and you’re playing it legato, you are learning wrong phrasing. You will become used to playing it that way. The same is true for expression.

Why can’t you just add the expression later – things like dynamics (loud and soft). It’s because you’re always playing at a dynamic level! So if something is written to be played softly (piano) and you’re playing it medium loud (mezzo forte), you’re learning the wrong dynamic. Not that you’re meaning to, but you can’t play without dynamics. So, you’re learning the wrong dynamics and here’s why it’s so important to learn correctly all of the elements of your score right from the beginning. It’s because

Unlearning is much harder than learning.

Once you reinforce mistakes, getting rid of them is incredibly difficult and it takes massive amounts of practice to unlearn what you’ve solidified wrong.

So you may think you’re going to just get the notes and that you will add other elements later. This is a great mistake that does not serve you well in your practice. Take the extra time as you’re learning your music to learn all the details of the score right from the beginning and you will be rewarded by not having to go through the tedious process of trying to unlearn what is learned wrong.

Thanks for joining me, Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com. info@LivingPianos.com