Tag Archives: robert estrin

Will AI & The Singularity Transform Music? Ray Kurzweil’s Vision

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about the relationship between keyboards and the singularity. This should get a lively discussion going, and the central figure in our discussion is a man by the name of Ray Kurzweil. How many of you have heard of Kurzweil keyboards?

This is a subject very close to me.

In the 1980s, I had in my recording studio, a cutting edge digital audio workstation, the Kurzweil K 250. This was a keyboard with 88 wooden keys that could sound like a grand piano or a whole orchestra. It was one of a breed of digital audio workstations. Some of them were ultra expensive, like Fairlight, which was well into five figures, or New England Digital’s Synclavier Synthesizer System, which cost over $100,000! What made these so expensive? Well, before MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) if you wanted to have a computer hooked to music, you had to have a whole integrated system. So, digital sampling, multitrack recording, and music printing, all of these fantastic features came at a very steep price. Kurzweil was one of the leaders in this technology. How did this ever come to be?

Ray Kurzweil was a great inventor and still is on the cutting edge.

In 1975, he came up with a reader for the blind. It was a text recognition program that could take written text and read it aloud to people with visual impairment. One of the people who appreciated this was a man by the name of Stevie Wonder! He said to Ray, “You should come up with a keyboard that can sound like any instrument, including the piano.” And wouldn’t you know it, Ray did it! That’s when the Kurzweil keyboard was invented. Ray is a director of engineering at Google. Ray has been known as a futurist. If anyone else made the kind of predictions that he has made, I would scoff at them.

What is the singularity?

There are different definitions of the singularity. One of them is where machines become more intelligent than humans. Once that happens, all bets are off. No one really knows what will happen. Some people think it may create a utopia, while other people think it may be a dystopia. There’s no way to really know what will happen, but there are a lot of fears about it. Now, a lot of people are talking about this because of artificial intelligence. Right now we have things like ChatGPT, which can pass the bar exam, write papers, analyze spreadsheets, and can even write computer code. There are other programs like Stable Diffusion and Dall-E that can output works of art and even photorealistic pictures from text prompts. It’s pretty remarkable what’s happening. Believe it or not, there’s even A.I. that can compose music!

All of this is in its infancy and it’s very exciting, but the type of A.I. I’m talking about is artificial general intelligence (AGI).

With artificial general intelligence, instead of just being able to complete a specific task, it’s really more like what humans are able to do. What does this have to do with Ray Kurzweil? Well, he has been predicting thE singularity will occur sooner rather than later. His vision of singularity goes even one step beyond, where man and machine merge. It seems like a scary concept. There are hints of this out there with things like Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company. This technology could have great ramifications for people who have lost limbs, being able to use their thoughts to control prosthetic devices. Already there has been some progress made in this direction. But imagine your mind being hooked to the Internet. Instead of picking up your phone to have all this information, the electrical impulses from your brain are directly connected to everything. This is a frightening concept and an exciting one all at the same time.

Ray Kurzweil predicts the singularity will occur by 2030.

He believes this singularity will occur such that there will be nanobots going through your body repairing cells. So for every year that you age there will be a year of repair, eventually reaching a state of immortality where you’re aging at the same rate at which your body is being repaired by these nanobots. This sounds like science fiction, and we all hope that Ray is right! He’s been correct so many times before, but this is a wild assertion, naturally. I just thought I’d get this discussion going about AI in general, how it’s impacting music, and whether you feel that it will replace musicians. It is perhaps more likely that A.I. will provide tools that musicians can use as bouncing off points for inspiration, much like ChatGPT is doing for writers.

Do you think Ray Kurzweil is a nut, or do you think there’s some validity to what he’s saying?

Let me know how you feel about Ray Kurzweil’s prediction about the singularity in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. And in general, how do you feel about A.I. and music and the whole direction things are going in the creative fields? Who would have thought that artificial intelligence would be taking over in creative fields before anything else? It’s pretty wild stuff, isn’t it? 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

Musical Solutions to Technical Problems

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about finding musical solutions to technical problems. My teacher, John Ogden, tied for first prize in the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition with Vladimir Ashkenazy, two legendary pianists. I remember John Ogden talking about how he really was taken with Ashkenazy’s performance of the famous first Chopin Etude in C major Op. 10, No. 1, and how he had a lightness to it that he thought was really an interesting way of approaching the piece, because so many people play it really strong. Then I remember hearing an interview with Ashkenazy, who had rather small hands, saying his approach to that etude is because of the nature of his hands. It just falls under his hands better playing more lightly. John Ogden didn’t realize that this was a technical consideration. Ashkenazy came up with a beautiful, musical solution to a technical challenge. This is what it’s all about in piano playing!

Find what works for you with your physiology, your psyche, and your makeup, and find something that is musical.

There is no absolute when it comes to how something should be played. You want to find a way that you can accommodate the music. It’s the same with everything in life. Everybody has a different gait. The way you walk is not the same as the way I walk. Everybody has a unique way of approaching a myriad things in life, and piano playing is certainly no exception. Let’s use the Beethoven Sonatina in G Major as an example. Sometimes students have difficulty with the end of the first phrase because there’s a crescendo, and maybe they don’t have enough strength to be able to pull it off. But there is a great musical solution to this problem! Come way down right at the start of the crescendo so that you can easily achieve it. I think it actually sounds better that way. The crescendo can unfold naturally without having to force anything or struggle at all. This technique applies to a wide range of music.

There are ways you can give your performance more power without expending more energy.

For example, Chopin’s powerful Military Polonaise. Playing that piece in a very loud, strong manner takes a lot of energy. If you take all the repeats, it is a true tour de force, because it goes on and on with very few places where it comes down that much. By coming down wherever you possibly can, it gives you a reserve of energy. You can make it sound more powerful, not less powerful. Having a reserve is the secret to a powerful performance. If you’re at the limit of what you can produce, it sounds weak, no matter how much energy you’re putting into it. But when you have that reserve and you let it go here and there, just little flares of excitement, it leaves the listener wondering how much power is undulating under the surface that could fire up at any time!

Use selective energy in your playing.

For example, by playing the fast chords of the Military Polonaise very delicately, when you land on the strong chords, it gives you a lot of power. By doing this, you have tons of energy reserves. You can play through the whole piece without even breaking a sweat! Trying to play everything strong takes a tremendous amount of energy and bogs you down. Instead, play everything you possibly can lightly. You want to use selective energy, another musical solution to a technical problem.

Discover what works for you and make a convincing case for it.

You can discover countless ways of negotiating scores that are intrinsic to your physiology, instead of struggling for some preconceived notion of the absolute way a piece should be played. That’s what a great performance is ultimately all about. Try this in your playing! Maybe you don’t have a lot of power, or a big reach, or maybe your fingers are so big and clumsy that you can’t play lightly, but there are tons of ways to accommodate your physiology.

We all have our strengths and weaknesses.

My father, for example, had massive hands. Rachmaninoff just came naturally to him. He played all the preludes in a public performance at Lincoln Center! Can you imagine such a thing? It was like nothing for him. But playing a delicate Schubert impromptu was another story, with his big, fat powerful fingers. His secret was to delineate the notes by playing them separated. They weren’t actually as light as you might have thought, but he created the illusion of light fast playing by separating them with staccato fingers. So he found a solution that worked beautifully for fast light pieces that didn’t come naturally to him. Find your strengths in your music and bring them to your interpretation. That’s ultimately what great performing is all about! 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

4 Ways to Develop Speed in Your Piano Playing

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to show you four ways to develop speed in your piano playing. You hear people who play dazzlingly fast, but maybe you’re just struggling to get a piece up to speed. Is there anything that you can do to develop more speed? Absolutely! There are a number of things you can do. Of course, working generally on different repertoire, scales, and arpeggios is helpful. These are essential building blocks of technique on the piano. But what I’m going to show you today are specific things you can incorporate in your practice to help develop speed.

I’m going to use Ballade of Burgmüller as an example. The part I’m going to focus on is the end, where you have a fast pattern of notes in both hands. What better place than this to demonstrate the myriad ways you can practice? Today I’m just going to cover four specific ways of developing speed, to not overwhelm you.

1. METRONOME SPEEDS

One of the most fundamental ways of working with the metronome is to do progressively faster metronome speeds. You find the speed at which you can play the passage absolutely faithfully, and then work up the speed one notch at a time. Why one notch? Because you won’t even notice the difference in speed! You find the speed at which you can play it perfectly, comfortably and securely, repeatedly. Then you put it up a notch and do it again. I would never suggest trying to get a whole piece up to speed by going one notch at a time, but when you have just a few measures like this, it’s an ideal opportunity to do metronome speeds.

The key is to make sure you don’t raise the metronome at all until you have absolute security.

That’s the important thing. Now, you may think it’s going to take you forever, because it takes you so long to really get it solid. But spend the time at the front end to get it absolutely secure! You may have to go hands separately at first and pick a much slower speed than you think is necessary. But don’t even think about raising the metronome speed until you can play it ten times in a row, not only where it’s perfect, but where it feels comfortable. You want to play every note with absolute security and definition. Once you get that, then raise it up a notch. Then once again, keep playing it until it not only sounds perfect, but it feels comfortable.

As you get faster, remember to lighten up and stay close to the keys with rounded fingers.

When you play with flat fingers, you don’t get the benefit of all the joints of your fingers like you do when you’re playing with rounded fingers. Your fingers will naturally go into this position if you just allow them to. And that position gives you much more ease because you have the benefit of all the joints of the fingers. Plus, the thumb is in alignment with the rest of the fingers.

2. NOTE GROUPS

Practice small groups of notes, repeatedly. You can work on a few select notes at a time, even just two note groups! And the secret is to play up to speed. Take different groups of notes and find the ones that allow you to land on notes that are insecure. Ultimately this is training your fingers where the hands play together. Listen strategically to where the hands are playing together and when they aren’t. You can get a lot done just by finding the right notes to land on. When you land on notes, avoid tension. You want to land on them with total relaxation. Practice relaxation in your playing, even if you have to play just two notes! Find groups of notes that help you land securely with hands precisely together, and you can accomplish a tremendous amount.

3. ACCENTED NOTES

Playing with accented notes can be really valuable. You can accent different notes within a phrase. This can be done in innumerable ways. You can do different numbers of notes or any type of accents that help you feel relaxed. You don’t want to be pushing with the arms, just use your fingers. By doing this, you train yourself where the fingers play together and where the hands play together. You’ll discover tremendous things. You might come upon certains accents and realize you don’t know where your hands play together! Those are the places to focus on.

4. RHYTHMS

Rhythms are another great tool. Depending upon the passage, there are many different rhythms that can aid in developing speed. You want to find whatever rhythms solve your issue. Try playing passages of even eighth notes as dotted rhythms, dotted eighths followed by sixteenth notes. Then you can reverse the rhythm playing sixteenths followed by dotted eighth notes. You want to discover where the hands need to be together. If you don’t know where the hands play together, you might be able to play your right hand fast or your left hand fast, but you really don’t know where they land together. So this is what trains your hands to play precisely together.

These are four techniques that can help you develop speed in your playing!

Remember, working on scales and arpeggios is incredibly valuable. That gives you an opportunity to just focus on your fingerwork. You can work on pure technique, devoid of music. It’s a great thing to have all your major and minor scales and arpeggios under your fingers. That will be incredibly valuable for you. Remember, the faster you play, the lighter and closer to the keys you must be in order to facilitate speed, because it takes a lot of work to raise fingers when practicing slowly. Raising the fingers can be valuable, so you can feel which fingers are down and which fingers are up initially. As you get faster, lighten up and stay closer to the keys with rounded fingers. Remember these four methods of developing speed: metronome speeds, note groups, accents, and rhythms. Let me know how this works for you! For those of you who have other techniques, share them in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and 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

How to Bring Out Voices in Your Music

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic today is about how to bring out voices in your music. The great thing about the piano is that it’s almost like a whole orchestra! You have so many different voices. Because of this, you want to call attention to different melodies intertwining within your music. I’ve talked about many ways of doing that in the past, which I’m going to refresh you on right now. Then I’m going to show you an intrinsic skill that transcends everything I’m about to tell you.

One great practice technique is to work on music with different articulations.

Try playing the melodies legato while playing accompaniments and parts you want softer with a gentle finger staccato. This way you can clearly hear the melody. You don’t want all the notes to sound equal. You want balance so that you hear the melody and the bass while keeping the inner voices delicate, yet everything may be in a piano context. The way to practice this is by playing the melody legato and those gentle, undulating notes in the middle with a gentle finger staccato. By doing this you train your hand which notes are melody, and which notes are accompaniment. It’s very difficult to quantify loud and soft, but short and long are very binary. You can hear the short notes on the bottom and the long notes on top. If you can do that, then you can play and control the balance of all the notes.

How do you draw the listeners attention to the voice that you want them to hear?

I’m going to show you a hack for drawing the listener’s attention to the voice you want them to hear. The secret is delineating the very first note of the melody you want the listener to be attached to. Once they hear the first note, they can follow it through. You want to make it very clear on the first note of a new line. After that, even if it’s not brought out that much, the listener is already aware that they should be listening for it. As soon as that first melody comes in. the listener is listening for it and they’ll follow it through. And you don’t even have to punctuate the melody that much anymore, because they’re already attuned to it. It’s in their consciousness.

Sometimes a melody or a counter melody can be contained within the texture.

Maybe the counter melody is at the top or the bottom, as is the case in the middle section of the Chopin Ballade No.3 in A-flat Major. In this section, there is a counter melody in the tenor voice, on the top of the left hand. You can accentuate the very beginning of it, and then just let it float. You don’t need to punctuate it that much after that, because it’s not necessary. The audience will already be listening for it. Once they hear the first note, they’re listening for where it’s going to go next. So it can be a more gentle inner voice, just punctuating that first note so the listener is aware that something new is there to listen to. Just play the beginning of that with some substance to the sound, and then let it be more in the background so that you don’t lose the melody on top, which is the main melody.

So that is the tip for today!

Aside from practicing with different articulations so you have control over all the notes in a texture, remember when you want to bring out a line, bring out the first note and the listener will latch on to it. This is particularly helpful when playing counterpoint like Bach fugues, for example. Whenever the fugue subject starts, articulate that first note. Then the listener doesn’t have to work hard to find the melodies of the subjects of fugues. It’s handed to them on a silver platter! They can easily follow it through even if you don’t punctuate it that much. It doesn’t have to sound labored. It can sound fluid and beautiful, and yet the listener has the experience of understanding the structure of the music, which greatly enhances the appreciation of the score. 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 find Motivation to Practice the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic today is about how to motivate yourself to practice. Sometimes things are going well and you can’t wait to get to the piano. But I’m sure you also experience times when you just don’t feel the motivation to practice. You want to be able to learn music. Perhaps you have a lesson coming up, or a performance, or you just want to use the beautiful piano you have sitting at home. Somehow you just can’t muster up the energy to practice. Is there anything you can do about such a thing? The answer is yes!

You are not alone.

Don’t beat yourself up because you are unmotivated. It’s natural. If you practice correctly, it’s hard work. It may be rewarding to have musical scores you can play, but the process of learning music is hard. So of course there are going to be times when you don’t have the energy to practice because of work, health issues, or other conflicts. Just finding the time can be an arduous task! So forgive yourself for feeling this way. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s normal. There’s an ebb and flow in your energy and your expectations as to what you’re going to achieve. There are times when you can sit at the piano and accomplish amazing things, and other times you’re just hitting your head against the wall.

When you’re hitting a roadblock, you’ve got to change things up.

You don’t want to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. That’s one definition of insanity! Sometimes the best thing to do is to just leave it completely. Go take a walk or a bike ride. Do something invigorating. Physical activity is often the best thing you can do when you’re feeling any kind of a funk. Getting your blood circulating and breathing fresh air really rejuvenates you. It’s important for your health as well as your psyche. You might take a walk around your neighborhood and come back to the piano with renewed energy. That might be all it takes.

What else can you do?

Well, there’s a lot you can do. You can shake up your practice. Maybe you have a routine where you spend some time with scales, you do some memorization, and you do some refinement. But maybe your routine has gotten stale. The whole thing feels like drudgery because you know what you’re going to do next. If that’s the case, that isn’t effective practice anyway. Practicing, as I’ve mentioned so many times before, is a mental activity. You must be engaged in the process or you aren’t really practicing. In fact, you can be away from the piano thinking through your music, and that can be more effective than sitting at the piano when your mind is not engaged!

How do you become engaged with your practice?

Sometimes simply playing through pieces can make you feel good and bring the joy back into the equation. You feel like you should work, so every time you go to the piano, you feel a sick feeling in your stomach. If you think you should be practicing, but all you want to do is play the piano, go ahead and play! What’s all that hard work for if you can’t enjoy playing your instrument? Play for a while! Just the physiological benefit to your fingers is good. It’ll keep you in shape. It’ll keep those review pieces in your memory and in your fingers. Maybe you want to take on some new music. Maybe you just want to read through some popular music that you never normally play because your teacher doesn’t assign it to you. Or maybe you just want to make stuff up. You can explore the sonorities of the piano just for fun too.

Do anything to break away from the rut you find yourself in.

There’s a host of things you can do. You can try practicing piano at a different time of day or night, just to make it feel fresh. Anything that changes the routine can help you. Perhaps just listen to music, whether it’s piano music or orchestral music or anything at all. Check out different styles of music, go to concerts, get together with friends who like music, and play with other musicians. If you have friends who play or sing, invite them over to accompany them. You could even have an informal jam session. Anything that gets your creative energy working again is going to be worthwhile for you.

The big point is, don’t beat yourself up!

If it’s your routine that isn’t working, change it up. You don’t have to be married to your routine. Keep it creative. Keep yourself engaged. If nothing’s working, go outside for a while. Do something different. Go to the gym, take a swim, anything to get your mind relaxed. You don’t want to beat yourself up for not practicing. That’s the worst thing you can do, because then you’ll feel guilty. Even if you practice, if you’re just going through the motions, you’re not really practicing, are you?

So that’s the lesson for today!

I’d love to hear comments from all of you about this! I’m sure all of you have suffered from this at some point. If you haven’t, what is your secret? Share that 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

How to Play At Your Piano Lessons

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The topic for today is about how to play at your piano lessons. You prepare all week and you’re ready for your lesson, but when the moment comes to play for your teacher, everything goes wrong! Why does that happen? Is there anything you can do about that? Yes! I’m going to give you some tips today to help you play for your teacher.

Preparation is key.

First I’m going to talk about the basics of how to play for your teacher. This applies to any performance, even just playing for friends. You practice and practice and everything is going fine. You can play your piece over and over again, no problem. But as soon as you play for somebody, everything goes wrong. What’s going on? There are a number of things you can do. You want to be prepared so that you can play the piece through without stopping. You want to be able to do it successfully a number of times.

It’s important to realize that performing is nothing like playing by yourself.

When you’re playing at home for yourself, there’s no self-awareness. You’re just thinking about the music, which is exactly as it should be! But when you’re playing for other people, suddenly you’re thinking about yourself. That self awareness distracts you from the music. You always want to stay focused on the music. How can you do this? Number one, realize that when you’re playing for your teacher, or playing for anyone, you naturally get a little bit excited. Your adrenaline is pumping, you’re going to be breathing faster, your heart’s going to be beating a little bit faster, even if it’s only slightly. Everything is elevated. So you have to combat this with relaxation. Take a deep breath before you start playing.

Take a moment to establish a tempo in your head.

Think of the tempo you’re going to play, not only the beginning of the piece, but think through a couple of other places in the piece. Think about the hardest part. Establish a speed not just for the beginning, but think through a couple of key sections. When you go to a concert, the performer gets to the piano and then they stop, they adjust how they sit, they put their hands on the keys and they take a few moments before starting to play. They’re doing all the things I’m telling you. They’re thinking through the music! They’re not going to start without thinking about it because they may take the wrong tempo. Once you start at the wrong tempo, you are sunk. You’re stuck with that tempo. You can’t just slow down in the middle of a performance. Take your time establishing a speed. And because your body is heightened, take it a notch slower then you just established and you might be spot on your usual tempo.

What I want to talk about today is how to approach playing at a lesson.

Let’s say you have a piece you’ve been working on for a couple of weeks. Maybe it’s a long piece and it’s taking you a while to learn it. You have the beginning section in great shape, you can play it up to speed and everything is in good shape. But then the next section, you sort of have it, but if you take it up to speed, you’re going to have problems. Then you get to the later section that you just learned in the last couple of days, and you have to take it much slower. So what tempo do you take? Should you take the whole thing really slowly from the beginning so you can accommodate the part you just learned? Or should you take it at the speed you are comfortable with on the second section so at least you can get through the first two sections at the same speed?

I’ll tell you what I do with my students.

If I know they have been working on a piece, I tell them right out of the gate not to just start from the beginning and gradually slow down. That would not be in anybody’s best interest. But if they have a chunk of the music up to tempo, I’ll have them play that part up to tempo. Then when they have to slow down in another section, they let me know. When they get to the part they just learned, they may have to take a much slower tempo. By playing for your teacher that way, they can understand the level you have the different sections of the piece on, then they can help you appropriately. Maybe the first section you’re playing up to speed, but there are problems with how you are approaching it that wouldn’t be revealed if you played it under tempo. Ask your teacher if that is what they want you to do, or if they want you to take everything at that much slower tempo so that you don’t have to change speeds along the way. Naturally, in performance, you never want to change tempo! But for the sake of the lesson, for your teacher to understand the work you’ve done, and the level you have different sections of a piece, I think it’s a great way to approach your performance at a lesson.

I’m interested in your opinion! What does your teacher have you do at lessons?

Does your teacher have you play the entire piece at a consistent tempo, or do they have you play each section at the tempo you have mastered? You can let me know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com or 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