Tag Archives: piano playing

An Essential Wrist Technique

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to give you an important wrist technique. I’ve talked so much about how to utilize the wrist in many of my videos, as well as with my students. The wrists are almost as important as the fingers in piano playing! There’s so much the wrists allow for in phrasing, the way in which notes are connected or detached. Generally speaking, I’ve talked about how the wrists have to be independent from the arms.

If you play with your arms, there’s a limitation to the speed you can achieve compared to playing with your wrists.

The wrist also has a crisper sound. So, for example, in a Bach Minuet, you would use your wrists to articulate the staccatos. The way to practice that is with various exercises where you just use your wrists without using your arms to achieve staccatos. And one simple exercise for this is to utilize thirds, just using your second and fourth fingers. You set the metronome on 60, and play using just your wrists, not going up and down with your arms.

The arms are important in keeping your fingers exactly over the right keys.

You want to move your arms to put your fingers over the correct keys. It seems so simple, and really it is! But playing in a simple manner might be hard if you’ve never done it before. But this enables you to achieve great speed. Once you can identify the wrists separate from the arms, then you can have the speed and power to play advanced repertoire. And it’s rather effortless, because you’re only using a small amount of mass instead of trying to play with your whole body or your arms. But what I’m talking about today is something entirely different. I’ve never brought this up in any video before. It’s a different type of wrist technique.

Suppose you want something a little bit more subtle, where the staccatos are not punctuated in such a manner.

With the technique I previously described, every single one of the staccatos are accented. Maybe you don’t want that. Maybe you want it to taper at the end, yet still keep it short. For that, there is an alternative wrist technique where you come up, instead of going down with the wrist. You actually come up with the arm, and allow the wrist to just be lifeless. This way it comes off with a gentle staccato, not an accented staccato. So that’s the tip for today. If you want a gentle staccato, you can come up with the arm and allow the wrist to be floppy. You get the opposite of an accent.

Come up with the arm, and let the wrist just gently bend without any force, and you get a gentle staccato that isn’t accented.

So that’s a new technique for you to try out in your music. I’m interested in how this works for all of you! Try it out where you have staccatos that are on the off-beats, staccatos that are not punctuated, that are not to be accented. This is a way you can achieve that phrasing without accenting the staccatos.

I hope this is helpful for you! Let me know in the comments here at 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

When Music is Off the Beat: What is Hemiola?

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about when music is off the beat. Now you might be thinking, “Music that’s off the beat? Maybe it’s jazz or ragtime, like The Entertainer.” But that’s not what this is about at all. This is about hemiola. There are a lot of examples of syncopated rhythms where emphasis is on the weak beats or off the beat entirely on the “ands”, but hemiola is different. There is a great example of hemiola in the Kuhlau Sonatina Opus 55, No. 1. In the second movement there’s a big chromatic scale going up. When it gets to the very top, that’s when the hemiola begins.

You probably have come across hemiola in your music and wondered how to count it, and why composers even utilize it.

Listen to a little bit of the Kuhlau Sonatina. Do you hear the way it comes down after the chromatic scale? The grouping of notes overlap the beats. It’s kind of odd. It’s actually a pattern of two that is superimposed on this piece which is in three. So you don’t have the comfort of the downbeat at the beginning of each pattern. That, in a nutshell, is what hemiola is. It can be a very effective technique for giving a rhythmic accent that you don’t expect in music.

How do you approach hemiola?

You must count and you must count correctly! If you succumb to the hemiola and let it trick you into thinking in a different time signature where the hemiola is, it’ll mess you up. You must maintain the integrity of the time signature in hemiola. You don’t have to accent the beats. You can play it and let it be a flourish that’s off the beat even though you’re counting it correctly. It’s a wonderful compositional technique. I want all of you to check out your scores. Find places you think you might have hemiola. You’re welcome to share them in the comments here on LivingPianos.com and YouTube. I hope this is enjoyable for you and provides some insights into your music. 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

Great Music is Storytelling

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how great music is storytelling. This has many ramifications. For example, a great piece of music sometimes evokes images and emotions that can tell a story. It may not tell a story with words as much as with feeling and direction. Interestingly, this is also true of great improvisations. For example, listen to a great jazz pianist crafting a ballad. As it unfolds, it can remind you of so many things in your life that you can’t even put into words. That’s what’s so great about music!

A performance can sometimes tell a story.

What I’m going to do today is something a little bit different. I thought I’d challenge myself and play the beginning of Chopin’s G Minor Ballade. I will play it twice. The first time, I’m going to try to play it absolutely faithfully to the score. The second time I’m going to try to tell a story. I’ll let the notes evoke something to make you feel it’s going somewhere and keep you on the edge of your seat, wondering where it’s going next. Can this really be done? I’m going to see if I can play this absolutely accurately the first time. Then, I’m going to go back and see if I can do something more than that and tell a story with the same exact notes, markings, rhythms, and phrasing. I will add subtlety of emotion that can somehow transcend the notes. Is this possible? This is what this experiment is about today.

It’s just like the lines of a play.

The lines of a play can be read in so many different ways. Everything the playwright wrote is in there, yet each actor has a completely different feeling and tells a different story. That’s what I’m going to attempt to do now. I’ll see if I can take the same passage of music with all the same markings, the same notes, rhythm, fingering, phrasing, and expression and see if I can tell more than what is on the page.

See video for my performances of the beginning of Chopin’s G Minor Ballade.

I wonder, could you hear a difference? I’m really interested in your opinions of these two different performances. They both are accurate from a technical standpoint, all the notes that Chopin wrote were in both of them. I’m wondering what your feelings are about them, if they evoke different senses. Do they tell different stories? That’s what music is all about. It’s telling stories that can’t be told with words – stories of emotion. That’s what I believe. I’m wondering how many of you feel the same way, and what these two different snippets of the Chopin G Minor Ballade did for you. Let me know in the comments, on LivingPianos.com, as well as 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

Supplemental Content:
Chopin Ballade #1 in G-Minor on Steinway Model D Concert Grand

How I got 100,000 Subscribers on YouTube

THANK YOU SUBSCRIBERS!

My personal story:

It started many years ago. I had somebody who was fresh out of film school and they wanted to do something to showcase their talent. They approached me to ask if they could make a film about my Living Piano: Journey Through Time: Historic Concert Experience. That was a show I was performing all around California on historical keyboards, dressed in period costumes, presenting the history of the piano in musical performance. You can check out some clips from that show here. He made that film, and when it was done, we started embarking upon building a YouTube channel together. I remember him talking about building the brand, and I thought to myself that I would humor him. I really couldn’t imagine where this would take me. All I knew is I had a general direction.

There are 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute!

Think about that. It’s mind boggling! Some of the top people on YouTube have hundreds of millions of subscribers! That’s right. While I’m very happy and pleased to see that I have over 21 million views, the top people on YouTube have hundreds of billions of views! There are less than eight billion people in the world, yet there are people who have hundreds of billions of views on YouTube. If you’re embarking upon a YouTube channel or some other social media and you want to do something with it, you might wonder how you can ever get anywhere. You know what? I could easily feel the same way looking at people who have so many more views than I have. It’s not just with YouTube and social media, it’s everything: playing the piano, for example. You might feel that because there are people who can play so much better than you, there is no reason to do it. Just because people can do something you can’t do doesn’t mean it’s not worthwhile for you to embark upon it.

You have to love what you do!

I remember when I was at conservatory there were those who said, “If I don’t make it by the time I’m 30 I’m going to go into another field.” You know what? People like that should go into another field. You have to love the journey, the experience. I’ve often said that if I was fabulously wealthy and never had to work again or conversely, if I was broke and on the street, I’d be hunting down a piano! Either way, I am committed to playing the piano and sharing my love and my passion for the instrument with people. That’s the modus operandi. You have to have the motivation to share it regardless of the outcome. If you share your love and your passion with no expectations of anything in return, you will find amazing things can happen in your life. Because you will be fulfilled in just the act of doing what you love. People want to be involved in that kind of genuine sharing. People feel it when you have passion for what you are doing.

If you want to get views, be true to yourself.

You can’t second guess. For example, if you are writing music thinking, “I want to write a pop song that will become popular and make millions of dollars.” That never works! You can’t formulaically build a great piece of music. You have to have something come from within that’s genuine. You have to have a burning desire to bring it to other people, to share something you really care about. That is the path you want to take, not just with YouTube, but with everything in life. Otherwise, what’s the point? It has to be more than just survival. There has to be something that’s more important to you than just going through the motions. What’s the point of life if not to share something you really care about with people? If you feel that way, go for it!

Don’t be afraid of what people say.

Early on when I first started doing videos there were some people who trolled. It happens. But as time goes on, people will come to respect and enjoy your content. It’s very gratifying and it becomes a feedback loop because people then have ideas for you. So I would like to reach out to everyone and once again thank you for supporting this channel and being a part of the Living Pianos experience! Any ideas and reflections upon what I offer on my channel and what you’d like to see in the future, let me know. If you have any ideas to help other people, put it in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube, because we’re all in this together. We’re all in life together! We want to share our love and our passion with each other so that we can enjoy our experience here on the planet. That’s my philosophy. 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 Arpeggios: The Importance of Rotation

This is LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about the importance of rotation when playing arpeggios. What makes arpeggios so difficult? Even compared to scales, which have third and fourth finger crossings, as well as thumb crossings, arpeggios can be even more difficult. This is because your thumb and your third finger have to cross so far over, it makes it difficult. The way to practice this is to have the metronome set at a slow speed. Practice preparing your thumb as early as possible, which means right when the second finger plays, the thumb tucks under.

Instead of waiting until the thumb needs to play, prepare the thumb when your second finger plays.

Right after the thumb releases, it tucks under. Train your hand to prepare the thumb early. The left hand does exactly the same thing coming down. That is an essential technique. Practice without moving your arms up and down. Work with the metronome slowly, then increase the speed. Get it to two notes, and eventually four notes to the beat. You might have to work with progressively faster metronome speeds to get it that fast.

There are countless ways to practice arpeggios, but today I’m going to show you an essential technique, which is:
The rotation of the hand.

You don’t want to have an abrupt crossing of the thumb or your fingers at the point at which they cross over. Naturally, preparing the thumb early is a great way to avoid this. But there’s more to it. No matter how much you tuck your thumb under, it’s not all the way to where it needs to be. In a C major arpeggios, the right hand thumb crossing going up from a G to C is really far! So you should rotate your hand slightly to put your thumb over the next key. It’s important that it be a smooth motion, not a jerky one. This allows for playing fluid, faster arpeggios. Practice slowly, preparing the thumb in advance. Eventually you get to the point where you’re rotating the hand slightly, in a smooth manner. That is the rotation of the hands in arpeggios.

You’ll find in scales that this technique is not necessary, because you don’t have nearly as far a reach. But there are many places in music, with broken chords of different sorts, where this rotation of the hand is really important. It is also useful in being able to delegate the weight of the hand for balance, which is a subject for another video.

If there is a subject you would like for me to cover, let me know! I have a whole list of subjects from my students and other people who contact me on a daily basis. I appreciate the support! 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 Test-Drive: Steinway Concert Grand

Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin, and this is Piano Test-Drive! I have a gorgeous instrument to present to you! The first thing I did on this piano is the first thing I do on almost every piano I encounter, which is to improvise. I let the sounds take me where they will. Truth be known, I did record the Chopin G minor Ballade on this instrument. You can find that performance here. But what’s really fascinating is sitting down on an instrument with no preconceived notions and just letting the sound take you.

An instrument like this Steinway Concert Grand from 1952, which has been masterfully rebuilt, is almost like driving a sports car.

Any maneuver you want to undertake, the instrument can handle it. You can go anywhere you like, and it can take you there at lightning speed! For example, the opening chords of the improvisation you’re about to hear, which I recorded last night. They’re massive chords. They blend from one to the next and it’s a glorious big sound. Yet in the middle, I come down and play with delicacy, just like if you’re in that sports car and you decide to take a scenic drive by the ocean to enjoy a little bit of the scenery. There are repeated notes, there’s everything I could throw at this piano! I’m wondering how you’ll like this. Listen for the end, because you’ll hear the massively strong, lowest B-flat octave on the piano at the end of this improvisation. I hope you like it!

The Steinway model D is the Concert Grand you see on stages throughout the world!

If you go to the symphony to see a concerto, 97% of the time it’s a Steinway model D Concert Grand on stage. It’s the de facto standard. To have a glorious instrument like this is such a treat. I just want to record as much as I can on this piano for the time I have it.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this! I would love to hear your impressions of this instrument in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again for joining me, Robert Estrin here 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