Tag Archives: piano techniques

Piano Lessons – How to Cross Hands on the piano

As you advance in your playing this will inevitably come up and it’s going to be a challenge for many people to overcome. But why would you cross your hands? Sometimes it can be the composer specifically writing something that would require it; sometimes it’s just easier to cross your hands in certain passages; either way, you will eventually encounter this technique in your repertoire.

For the video above I use the first movement of the Pathetique Sonata of Beethoven to demonstrate the technique. In the exposition section of the piece there is a part where one hand keeps playing the same group of notes and the other hand jumps around the keyboard. You simply can’t negotiate this easily without crossing your hands.

How do you handle these sections? It’s always a great idea to learn your hand positions before you start playing. Not only should you have your hands over the first note of the phrase, you should position them over as many keys as you can. By doing this you will eliminate having to move your hand more than necessary – which could lead to wrong notes – and you will have a set position you can constantly refer back to. For specific examples in this piece, refer to the video embedded in this page.

It’s always a great idea to be over the keys before you need to play them. It will help you relax and be able to concentrate on actually playing and not just where your hands are located. A great way to achieve this is by practicing your music right up until the moment where you need to move your hand. Keep practicing the same line over and over and when you get to the notes you need to play next just move your hand over them but don’t play them yet, just get your hand in position. Keep doing this until your hand effortlessly glides to the correct spot and keep doing it until it just feels natural. When you feel confident you have achieved a fluid and precise movement over the keys, play the notes. Continue to play the phrase and the proceeding notes until you feel confident enough to move on.

You can really do this for all your music – whether it requires crossing your hands or not. The best thing you can do is to stay relaxed and be ready over notes ahead of time. You should never play from a position in which you feel like you are constantly catching up.

Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com

The Best Piano Exercises (Part 4) – Octaves

Welcome back to our continuing series of piano exercises. Today we will be focusing on developing your octave technique.

I remember growing up as a kid and watching my father Morton Estrin mortonestrin.com and being enthralled by the way he played octaves – I wanted to develop my technique to play like him and my other inspiration, Vladimir Horowitz. At the time my hands were simply too small to achieve the results I wanted but I kept practicing.

My hands even as a full grown adult never became very large. I’ve struggled my whole life developing strength in order to play octaves and large chords well. Today I’m going to share a few tips for how to improve your strength and octave technique.

If you can’t reach an octave I’m afraid this lesson wont be much help to you. You might grow into it over time. The good news is that if you can reach an octave at all, this lesson will help you develop stronger, faster octaves!

The secret to this technique, and octaves in general, is the hand position. The key is to develop an arch between your pinky and thumb equalizing the strength of your weaker pinky to your stronger thumb. Your other fingers should be up and out of the way. If you have time to watch the video included with this article it shows an excellent visual representation of this technique. The goal of this position is to generate an equal amount of force between the thumb and pinky finger – which will help greatly in developing strength to play octaves.

For octave technique you will want to rely on the arms to place the hands over the keys, not for any up-down motion. All up-down motion should come from the wrist. I have explained this technique a number of times before and it’s explained in detail in the video included with this article.

To perform the exercise, set your metronome to 60 and then play a C major scale at one note to the beat in octaves and play the notes only from your wrist using the arms to guide your hands over the correct keys. This might seem like an easy exercise but it must be done correctly in order to be effective.

As you progress through the exercise and feel more confident you can play two times on each note for each beat. As you become comfortable, add one extra note each to each beat until you reach your limit. As you play faster, be sure to keep your hands closer to the keys and lighten up to help increase your speed.

Play through this exercise every day and you will develop brilliant octaves!

Thanks again for joining me Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729

Why is slow piano practice so important? Piano Lessons

Practicing slowly is essential in order to develop and maintain a high level of piano playing. There are actually several different components I’m going to discuss when it comes to the magic of slow practice. Even pieces that you have polished and are on performance level will benefit from the reinforcement of going through slowly. This means playing the piece slowly and definitely looking at the musical score, using no pedal and most often using the metronome. Practicing like this will help solidify your memorization and your fingers. I find this is the best thing to do in the final practice for a performance you are well prepared for.

There is another form of slow practice that you might not have heard about before. I find this to be incredibly important; in fact, I discussed this with my wife www.FlorenceFlutist.com and she had the same exact perception of this concept. Let’s say you sit down to practice and have a whole piece to work out. Perhaps it is partially learned but the piece is not up to performance level yet. You could try to power through and keep working trying to improve it. However, a much better approach is to not worry about the whole piece at all at this point. Simply start at the beginning of the piece; the first phrase. Play it slowly – slower than you are used to – until you have complete comfort and satisfaction with that section.

If you do this you will undoubtedly spend a lot of time working out that first section. You will probably wonder how you will even get through the whole piece learning so slowly! You will be very tempted to move ahead to the next section before you should. However, if you stay with it, the results will be remarkable.

Continue working slowly on the first section of the piece until it is absolutely perfect and it feels very comfortable. Then begin working up the tempo with the metronome one notch at a time. The good news is that most sections of the piece will not require such intense practice and you will get them on a high level without spending much time at all. However, there will be a few sections that will definitely benefit from this slow practice routine. It comes down to the 80/20 rule:

You should spend 80% of your time on the hardest 20% of the music!

Most pieces are not written with equal difficulty throughout. By taking sections that are difficult and practicing them slowly until they become comfortable (and then increasing the speed), your practice sessions will become much more productive. Slow practice is an incredible tool to advance your piano playing. Just practicing a piece slowly and definitely without incrementally speeding it up will be tremendously beneficial. Try these techniques out and see how it works for you. I would love to hear your comments.

How to Play Ornamentation on the Piano – Piano Techniques

Here is a great reference sheet from our friends at Virtual Sheet Music

This is an excellent topic. In fact, there are entire books written on the subject! Ornamentation is used in many period styles of music but the Baroque era is specifically known for its ornamentation in architecture, art, as well as music. That’s why in the video example above I am using the first section of the Sarabande movement of the 5th French Suite of Johann Sebastian Bach.

You’ve probably seen Baroque music with squiggly lines written above the notes. There are many idea how to interpret them. The problem is that over the course of decades and even centuries, perceptions change. In fact, ideas about ornamentation continues evolving over time. So, how do you approach ornamentation?

If you listen to a number of different artists playing the same piece, you will notice that there are dramatically different executions of trills, turns, mordants and other ornaments. This is because ornamentation offers a degree of free license of creativity; To a large degree it’s up to you what to play.

In the video above you can hear the difference ornamentation makes in a musical section of Bach. The section I chose repeats. So I play it the first time with no ornamentation. The second time you will hear one approach to Baroque ornamentation. Thanks for joining me, Robert Estrin – Robert@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-37296

How to Approach Thirds on The Piano

Thirds on the piano can be very difficult. We only have five fingers on each hand so negotiating thirds can be a real challenge. As with other aspects of piano technique, fingering is critical. Here are some related resources for you:
How to Practice Scales & Arpeggios and Brilliant Piano Fingering Technique.

In this article and video, you will find some tips on how to approach thirds and some routines to add to your practice. Of course, thirds can be practiced endlessly. It’s said that Josef Lhévinne practiced the Double Thirds Etude by Chopin for ten years before performing it! His historic recording of the piece is a testament to this fact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XCj-j7TBTY

In the following tips, I utilize a D Major Scale played in thirds.

A great way to practice thirds (this example refers to the right hand) is to play the top notes legato and the bottom staccato; doing this will help to clarify the melody notes. You can make it a bit simpler for yourself by trying to play the top notes and leaving out the bottom notes. You can also try playing every other note on the bottom and then go through and play the notes you left out the first time.

All of these simple techniques will help you develop the muscle memory and strength to play thirds with precision. Try practicing with a metronome to keep consistency and remember that fingering is critical in playing thirds. Check out the videos links above for more fingering techniques.

Thanks again for joining me and keep those questions coming: Robert Estrin Robert@LivingPianos.com (949) 244-3729