Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to establish a slower tempo in your piano practice and performance. This is vital in order to cement a solid performance. You might think that there is nothing to it. But I can tell you from teaching for many years that when students encounter a problem and they are instructed to play slower, most of the time they play at exactly the same tempo! So how do you actually establish a slower tempo?
Slow down your counting!
First, find what tempo you’re actually playing. Count along as you play. Once you can play at that tempo, continue counting without playing. Then you can go slower by saying, “one” then wait for just a moment, then say, “two” and continue at that new rate. By taking a moment after you say the first number, then continuing at that rate, that is the simplest way to establish a slower tempo. (You can also utilize a metronome to accomplish the same thing.) Then, play at that new tempo. For practicing, it’s an essential technique. Because being able to slow down to a workable tempo to think through sections that you’re working on is important for solidifying your music.
Solidifying tempo in a performance is vital for having a successful performance.
This technique is equally important in performance. When you play a performance, you’re naturally going to get excited. The adrenaline flows and if you’re not careful, you might take too fast a tempo. So, always lock in your tempo by thinking of the music and counting at that tempo. Then go back and slow it down by delaying after the first count and continuing at that new rate. Then imagine the music at that rate to make sure that it’s the right tempo. I hope this is helpful for your practice and your performance!
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
You can join the Living Pianos Patreon to unlock access to exclusive videos and original music! www.patreon.com/robertestrin
This is LivingPianos.com and I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how to know when to move on in your practice. Sometimes it’s hard to know when to stay with things to solve a problem and when to say, “Enough is enough. I will revisit this later on.” The crux of productive practice is knowing the point of diminishing returns. It can be very easy to give up on learning a difficult passage and say, “Oh, this is just too hard. I’m going to try this again tomorrow.” But, there are many things you can do first before coming to that point. If you can’t get something, slow it down. If you still can’t get it, try hands separately, and revisit the score. There are so many options! Try breaking things down into chords. Take smaller sections and piece the sections together. There are a myriad of things you can try.
You don’t have to stop memorizing just because you can’t get everything together.
The method I use and teach for memorizing music is to take small sections at a time memorizing each hand separately first. Then put your hands together and get a small section memorized. Then go back and connect the sections going back to the beginning. But, sometimes you can’t go back to the beginning. Sometimes you can just go back to the previous phrase and piece together every other phrase. So, you have the first four measures, then you connect them to the next four measures. Then when you connect the next four measures, maybe you can’t go all the way back to the beginning, but you at least connect to the previous four measures. That is one thing you can do to plow through. That’s an example of working past the point of diminishing returns. The next day you can get fluid on the longer sections, and get everything put together. So the general rule is: try to simplify and break things down to digestible chunks.
Eventually, you’re going to come to a point where you’re not making progress.
When you get to a point where you’re not making progress on a technical or musical challenge, and you’ve already tried metronome speeds, you’ve tried taking little sections at a time, you’ve tried different articulations, different phrasing, you’ve tried hands playing separately, you’ve tried everything, and you’ve made some improvement. But it’s not nearly where you want it to be. That might be a good time to work on something else. Then tomorrow, when you’re fresh, you start a notch under the tempo you were playing the day before. Sometimes just sleeping on it will foster growth in your music! You’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that the thing you’d been struggling with the day before now comes much more easily to you. Because when you first learn something, it’s never secure immediately.
Music grows naturally with time as you reinforce your memory and refine your playing.
That’s the lesson for today. I hope this is helpful for you. It is absolutely essential to have productive practice so you know when to move on and when to keep plowing through. And generally speaking, when you run into problems, first, try to simplify by either slowing down, sectionalizing, or playing hands separately, so you’re still making progress. But when you’ve built things to a point and you can’t get any further, move on and don’t feel badly about it. Tomorrow’s another practice day!
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about the importance of setting goals in your piano practice. There are 3 distinct ways of practicing the piano depending upon what you’re trying to achieve. I have an extended video about this on my Patreon channel, which you’re all welcome to join. But I’m going to give you a little taste of it because it’s so important!
Knowing what you’re trying to achieve is a prerequisite for getting anything accomplished when you sit down to practice.
Whether you’re learning a piece of music to memorize it, or you’re trying to develop your sight reading, or perhaps you are working on improvisation skills, these are all important skill sets. So, here are some tips from my Patreon channel for you.
Piano music is extremely complex compared to almost any other instrument.
You have to have a unique way to approach learning music on the piano. For example, if I were to recite a series of twenty random numerical digits, it would be difficult for you to remember all of them. Even if those numbers were repeated several times, you would still struggle to commit all twenty digits to memory. But if I gave you only three digits, it would be very easy to remember them. Then, I could give you three more digits, and three more after that connecting as you go, you could learn those twenty digits in just a few minutes! Because, there is only a certain amount of information your brain can assimilate at one time. That is the secret to memorizing piano music, or anything else!
Look with your eyes, not your head.
When sight reading music, if you need to glance at your hands, do not move your head. It takes too long. Just look down with your eyes instead. Your eyes are quick! Trust your feel and and your ears when sight reading rather than trying to look at your hands.
Keep Your Eyes on the Score
When I was much younger, my father was performing the Tchaikovsky B-flat minor Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall. One day he asked me to accompany him in his studio, since he had two pianos. He put the music in front of me and I felt overwhelmed – all those flats and so many notes, a whole orchestral score reduced for the piano! At that time I could barely sight-read anything. But, I just kept my eyes on the score. I missed more notes than I got, but I got through it! I never lost my place in the score. From that moment on, I knew I could read anything, and I’ve been getting more and more of the notes ever since! So, that’s the secret, keeping your eyes on the music. The best way I’ve discovered to have the discipline to do that is playing with other musicians.
This is just a taste of what’s available on Patreon.
I hope this has been enlightening for you! It’s so important to utilize different methods of practice depending upon what you want to accomplish. That’s a really important subject that I wish all teachers would show their students. If you enjoy exploring pianos and piano playing, you may want to join my Patreon family which offers you even more videos and the opportunity to be part of the creative process. These videos are for you!
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is, “Why You Must Find Your Place in the Score When You Make a Mistake.” Say you’re playing a piece and everything’s going fine. Suddenly, you make a mistake you never normally make. So, you just want to go back to the beginning and go through it again. You probably will get through it okay the second time around. But you’re missing an incredible opportunity.
Whatever you missed has some level of insecurity
I know how hard it is to find your place in the score. You just want to go back and pass that point. But if you take some extra time with the music, you can find where the confusion was that caused the problem. This will prevent future problems. You might get it right nine out of ten times, and every time you miss it you go back and think, “I know I can get this.” But when you do go back, you’re missing the opportunity to find out what the problem was and secure the memory so that it never happens again.
My recommendation to you is to take the extra time, even though it is more difficult
I understand how hard it is. It’s even hard for me! Sometimes I’m practicing a piece of music and I lose my place. It’s frustrating. I get it. But I take the time because I know it will help me in the long run. No matter how long it takes, find where you are in the score. That way you’ll be able to forever eradicate the uncertainty you have in that section of the piece. It will never plague you again! I hope this is helpful for you.
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com,Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is, “Tempo Must be the Lowest Common Denominator.” What does this mean? You may hear a performance that starts at a nice fast tempo and everything’s going great. Then the performer gets to a section they don’t know quite as well as the rest of the piece, so they slow down in order to make accommodations. Maybe they’ll speed up again when they get to a part they know better. This is a a terrible way to perform, but I understand the temptation. If you know a piece and you can play most of it at a nice tempo that sounds great, but there are one or more parts that you can’t quite play up to tempo, you might want to play everything up to that point at a good tempo and slow down for the sections you are struggling with. But, in a performance, you never want to do that. So, what can you do in order to correct this?
If there are just a few key sections of a piece that you can’t quite play up to tempo, work on those sections!
Zero in on the parts of the piece you can’t play up to tempo and work with a metronome. Set the metronome at a tempo you can keep up with, then slowly increase the tempo to get those sections up to the speed of the rest of the piece. Better yet, work until you can play them even faster than the rest of the piece! Then the weakest parts of your performance become the strongest parts. But if you ever find yourself in a situation where you don’t have parts of your performance up to speed, you must take a tempo at which you can play the whole piece, including those parts. This is very important if you are performing. At a piano lesson, or something of that nature, it’s not really necessary to do this. A teacher will understand if you haven’t quite gotten everything up to speed yet. But in a performance, be sure to lock in the right tempo!
How do you find the right tempo for your performance?
Think of a piece you’re playing where you have a couple of sections that you have really put work into, but your performance is still not secure. Listen to yourself play it. Then find the speed at which you can play those sections comfortably and make that the tempo of your piece. You will give a much more convincing and satisfying performance that maintains tempo throughout, rather than changing tempo to accommodate parts you can’t play as fast. You might think that it makes you sound less impressive because you can play some other parts so fast. But believe me, it will be much more enjoyable for the listener and they will be more impressed with you for giving a more cohesive performance.
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today we have a piano quiz! You can take this quiz below. It should be a lot of fun! It’s not very long or very difficult. There are just five questions. I’m going to ask all five questions, then go back and give you the answers. You can see how well you’ve done on this. Also, you can email me and let me know any thoughts you have about these questions.
The first three questions are true or false.
1. If you buy a new Steinway piano, it will go up in value. True or false?
2. Concert pianists practice scales and exercises for many hours every day. True or false?
3. If you see the Yamaha name on a piano, you can be assured that it is a good quality mid-range instrument. True or false?
The next two questions are multiple choice.
4. Why are there repeat signs in music? A.) They provide performers with flexibility of timing for programming.
B.) It saves paper!
C.) They help composers increase their output without having to do extra work.
5. Ideally, how often should your piano be tuned? A.) Twice a year is perfect because of seasonal changes.
B.) Having your piano tuned once a month keeps it in tune best.
C.) Your piano should be tuned constantly, every time you play it.
Here are the Answers!
Now we’re going to go back and see how well you did on these questions. Here is the first question, once again:
1. If you buy a new Steinway piano, it will go up in value. True or false? This is a really tough question. If I just had a choice of true or false, I would say true. Now, you might wonder, how can this be? Let’s think about this. My grandfather bought my father a brand new Steinway baby grand in 1939. He paid $900 for it. That same model Steinway now sells for around $80,000. So yes, if you keep it long enough, it’s going to go up in value. But one thing to consider is inflation. Of course, condition is of paramount importance. I rebuilt that particular Steinway of my father’s, so it’s worth quite a bit. But if a Steinway is completely thrashed over the years, if it’s been subjected to the elements, it can have very little value. So, it’s really kind of true or false, depending on the conditions.
Here’s how it can be false.If you buy a brand new Steinway piano, and then just a few years later you want to sell it, you’re going to take a loss because it takes a long time for the yearly increases in the list prices and the sale prices of Steinway pianos to overcome the new versus used value. Like when driving a car off the dealer parking lot, you know that it’s going to lose a tremendous amount of value immediately. The same is true with pianos. But if you keep the piano long enough, the new ones keep going up, so you could be in pretty good shape, provided you take good care of it.
2. Concert pianists practice scales and exercises for many hours every day. True or false? A lot of you are going to be really surprised about this one. The answer is false. You might think concert pianists practice scales, arpeggios and exercises relentlessly. At some point in every concert pianist’s life, they have spent countless hours working on scales, arpeggios, octave exercises, thirds, trills and other technical studies. This goes on for years. But with touring concert pianists, they are so busy learning repertoire. They get such precious little time to practice. So when they’re practicing, they’re going through their programs, their concertos, their chamber music. Sure, they’re going to spend some time with scales, arpeggios and exercises, but the vast amount of the time they spend is rehearsing and practicing for upcoming performances. They don’t have vast amounts of time to practice exercises and scales every day.
3. If you see the Yamaha name on a piano, you can be assured that it is a good quality mid-range instrument. True or false? This is false. Yamaha is a very large music company. In fact, they’re the largest music company in the world! They have pianos on every conceivable level. Most Yamaha pianos you find out there are good mid-range pianos like the U series uprights and CX series grands. They’re good quality pianos for the money with a sweet spot of price and performance, so they’re very popular. But there are also Indonesian-made Yamahas that are entry-level, promotional-level, bare bones instruments. They are well made, of course, but they are far from what I would call fine instruments. On the other end of the spectrum, there are SX and CF series of Yamaha pianos that can be more expensive than Steinways. These instruments are meticulously crafted to the highest possible standards. So, the name Yamaha doesn’t tell you much about the level of piano you’re looking at.
4. Why are there repeat signs in music? Believe it or not, the answer is B.) It saves paper! Now, you might wonder if that’s serious. It is. Here’s the thing about repeat signs. Sometimes you’ll have one edition of a piece with repeats and you’ll have another edition of the same piece with the repeated music printed out in the score. If you saw the repeat notated, you wouldn’t think of leaving it out. But with repeat signs, somehow people get the feeling they are optional. Repeats are an intrinsic part of the composition and composers do it not only to save paper. Think about composers back when they had to write with duck quills. That was no easy task. Anything to save time was a godsend for them. I’m a firm believer in taking repeats. If you find a piece of music where the repeats don’t make sense and it seems too long, consider that maybe your tempo is too slow. The repeats are put in there for good reasons and they make the structure of the piece gel.
5. Ideally, how often should your piano be tuned? I consider twice a year to be the minimum. My father always had his pianos tuned once a month, and yet, by the end of the month they were out of tune. Believe it or not, the answer is C.) Your piano should be tuned constantly every time you play it!
Think about going to a concert featuring a guitar player. Between each song they tune the guitar because it’s going out of tune little by little. Well, so is your piano! It’s just not practical to tune it constantly. At my father’s recording sessions, as well as many other pianists’ recording sessions, the tuner is there. When they hear any notes going out of tune, which can happen at any time, there will be a break in the session, and the tuner will touch-up the few unisons that are out of tune. In a perfect world your piano would be tuned every day! That might be a surprise to some of you, But in recital halls at music conservatories, it’s not unusual for pianos to be tuned daily.
How well did you do? Do any of you have different ideas about these subjects? I know a lot of these questions are subjective in how you answer them. I hope this has been enjoyable for you!
I’m Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com, Your Online Piano Resource.
Please feel free to contact me with any piano related questions for future videos!
