This is a live performance of one of Claude Debussy’s great piano works. The 3 movements were written at different times in Debussy’s life. So there is a great variety of sounds and textures.
Prélude: The first movement, Prélude, utilizes many interesting techniques on the piano including glissandi, as well as notes held with the sostenuto pedal (the middle pedal) creating a great variety of sounds.
Sarabande: The Sarabande middle movement is one of the most beautiful gems of piano writing which explores rich harmonies with haunting melodies
Toccata: The work ends with the virtuoso Toccata which is a tour de force of intricate undulating patterns of music which build to a spectacular climax!
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about how you can make fast playing feel slow. There’s nothing worse than feeling rushed, whether it’s in your music or even in life! When you’re going through your day and you can’t quite get caught up with things, it can drive you nuts! You’re supposed to be able to relax with your music. So many people say classical music is relaxing. Music is more than just relaxing, there’s a whole range of emotions. But when you sit down to play the piano, you want to feel that you’re in the zone. You don’t want to feel like you’re constantly rushing.
When you play in a hurried manner, it’s just not good piano playing.
The problem with playing in a hurried manner is that the notes are compressed. Even playing at the same tempo, but playing all the notes as long as possible within the beat, it provides a more relaxed feeling for the listener and for the player. How do you achieve such a thing? You want to work at a very slow tempo, filling up all the notes for their full value. I recommend working with the metronome doing this. You’ll find that if you’re not really in the zone, even at the slowest tempo, you’ll be rushing no matter what tempo you play.
It’s a matter of filling up all the notes for their fullest possible value.
Wind players understand this in an intrinsic way. I’ve played the French horn almost as long as I’ve played the piano. I haven’t done much with it in the last few years because I’m so immersed in Living Pianos. But the point is, a wind player knows that you must fill up each note with air in order to produce a good tone. This allows for the playing to be fluid, and to create a musical line. Well, the piano is no different! It’s not air that is producing the sound on the piano. The analog of the air is the continuous weight of the arm transferring from finger to finger in slower playing. And in faster playing, filling up all the notes for their full value.
So, practice slowly at first. If you find that you’re not quite with the metronome, find a tempo at which you can play precisely with the metronome and work from there progressively speeding up. This way you can achieve comfort in your playing where you don’t feel hurried, and the audience will be rewarded with a performance that feels more relaxed.
I’m 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
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today’s subject is about what to do with a piece you have learned. There are so many things you can do with it! The first thing is the most obvious thing in the world: Play it! You’d be surprised how many people learn pieces but never play them and they forget them. There are so many benefits to playing the pieces you have learned. One, it’s fun! What’s all the work for anyway if not to be able to play music? Secondly, it keeps the pieces fresh. If you play your pieces every day it gets to the point where you can just whip them off without any problems. So if you ever have a performance opportunity, you’re so used to playing it that it’s almost automatic.
Playing your pieces keeps you physically and mentally in shape on the piano.
A lot of people spend hours a day on exercises to keep their fingers in shape and their muscles moving. You know what? There are many pieces of music that can accomplish the same thing. Now this isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for exercises. There certainly is. Scales, arpeggios, octaves and other exercises are a vital part of piano practice. But in regards to just keeping your fingers limber and the muscles in good shape, playing through your music can accomplish that. You also have the ancillary benefits of developing fluidity and reliability in performance. But like anything else, if you play them over and over and over again, there could be minute changes along the way.
It’s important to periodically reference the score of pieces you have memorized.
In the olden days of analog tape recording, if you ever made a tape of a tape of a tape, the sound gets pretty awful. Each successive generation has a little bit of loss of quality, unlike digital recording today. Another example of this is the old game of telephone that we all played in school, where you whisper a message to the person next to you who then whispers it to the person next to them going all the way around the room. At the end, you have a completely different message! Well, you can end up with a completely different piece of music if you just play it over and over and over again without ever referring back to the original score!
How do you approach reviewing your pieces with the score?
The best way is to take your score out and find a tempo at which you can read it. Now that tempo is going to be far slower than the speed you’re probably playing it. If it’s a piece you have played hundreds of times, you have a tempo that’s much faster than the tempo at which you can actually read all the details of the score. Slow way down, find the appropriate speed on the metronome, and take your foot off the pedal so you can clearly hear everything you’re doing. Then exaggerate everything as you play, delineating all the notes, phrasing, fingering and expression. For example, let’s say you learned the Moonlight Sonata and you want to refresh it. You’ve been playing it and playing and playing it and you want to make sure you’re playing it accurately. And you want to solidify the performance. You want to know exactly where all the rests are, whether chords have two notes or three notes, where the crescendos start and end. There are so many little details. It’s not just the notes and the rhythm and the fingering, it’s every single detail you want to cement and re-cement.
I guarantee this will help you with any piece, no matter how well you play it and how well you’ve learned it.
If you slow it down and play with the score, with no pedal, and with a metronome, you will find little things you had forgotten. You’ll cement your performance and make it much stronger. So the lesson for today, what do you do with pieces you’ve played before that you’ve learned? Keep playing them so you don’t forget them, number one. Number two, review with a score, playing slowly with no pedal, with a metronome to make sure you keep an honest performance. There are other practice techniques you can also employ in strategic parts that need the work, but these are the basics for what to do with pieces you already know. I hope this is helpful for you! I’m 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
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about how to finger octaves. Octaves have a very simple fingering solution the vast majority of the time. Unless you have very large hands, the simple solution is to use your first and fifth fingers on white keys and your first and fourth fingers on black keys. Now, this is great for legato octaves, but it also divides the load of the hand when playing rapid octaves from the wrist. Using the fourth finger on the black keys divides the load a bit on the hands.
Move your arms in to reach the black keys.
There’s another technique I want to show you that is really vital. The wrists accomplish octaves, but the arms have an essential role in getting over the keys. You want to think of going in and out of the keyboard for black keys to accomplish those octaves without having to reach with your fingers. Move your arms in for black keys and out for white keys. It makes it so much easier. By moving your arms in you don’t have to use so much finger strength to hit the black keys. This is a great technique for you in conjunction with using the fourth finger on black keys. Remember to get over the keys by moving your hands closer to the fallboard for black keys, and closer to you for white keys.
Those are the tips for octaves today!
I’ve made a lot of videos about octaves. You can enjoy all of them here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube as well. We welcome your comments! Thank you for subscribing. I’m 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
Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about improvising using diatonic seventh chords. I’ve been to many conservatories and master classes. Improvisation is almost never taught unless you’re a jazz major. It’s really shameful. As a matter of fact, I remember once meeting a pianist who was doing master’s work at Julliard in piano performance who couldn’t play Happy Birthday by ear! Isn’t that a sad fact? I’m here to show you some very simple improvisation techniques you can use in your playing. If you’re a sophisticated jazz player, this might not be of great value to you, although you might get something out of it. But for those of you who think you can’t improvise, you can! A great deal just comes down to having a command of some basic theory.
You have to know what notes to choose among when you’re improvising.
I’ve talked about simple things like improvising utilizing the dorian mode, but today is a little bit different. I’m going to talk about diatonic seventh chords. Now, that’s a mouthful! What am I talking about? First of all, what are seventh chords? I’ll just give a very quick theory primer, because it’s not that complex. It’s only complex if you don’t know your key signatures and your major scales. You have to learn those first before you can do much of anything with improvisation. It also is unbelievably helpful for your sight reading and learning music. So any of you who haven’t learned your key signatures, I highly recommend it. I’m going to assume you know your key signatures for this lesson, because it’s all based upon that. If you would like a video tutorial on key signatures, just let me know in the comments.
What are diatonic chords?
Well, first of all, what are chords? Chords are notes arranged in the interval of thirds. What are thirds? Thirds are notes of the scale that are three notes apart counting the first and last note. The notes in a scale are all seconds apart. If you skip one note between each scale degree, you have thirds. 7th chords consist of 4 notes: a root, third, fifth and seventh. That’s why they’re called seventh chords! The interesting thing is that you can do this in any major key. If you are in C major, you play every other white key going up from C to form a 4 note chord, C – E – G – B. If you are in D major, you can leave out every other note of the D major scale. You’re left with a D major 7th chord: D – F-sharp – A – C-sharp. You can do this in any key. But that’s just the one-seven chord. That’s a seventh chord built on the first scale degree. What about a two-seven chord? You can start on the second scale degree and have a two-seven. So in C-major, a two-seven will be D – F – A – C. You can start on the third scale degree and have a three-seven chord, and so on.
How does this apply to improvisation?
If you just want to play something really simple, you can go from a one-seven chord to a two-seven chord, back and forth. You can use any note of the scale to make up a tune in your right hand. If you find that easy, you can continue going up to three-seven, then to four-seven, then back down to three-seven, two-seven and finally one-seven. It’s a lot less complicated than it sounds. Here’s the beauty of it: you don’t have to play fast. A lot of times, people see great artists playing a mile a minute and think you have to play fast to improvise. You don’t have to play fast! You just have to make melodies. Strive for something that you would want to sing. It doesn’t have to be fast. It doesn’t have to be technical.
If you find that you’re having difficulty, the difficulty is most likely going to be with your left hand, believe it or not.
It can be challenging keeping the left hand rhythmically coherent, where you’re not changing the chords in random fashion, but holding each of them the same amount of time. You can use a metronome for that. Or better yet, find a drum beat on your keyboard or on YouTube to play along with. The best way is to play with other musicians where there’s give and take. But you can get your feet wet just by finding a drum beat to play along with. YouTube is loaded with drum beats. Just come up with any kind of drum beat you can imagine, like lounge drums, swing, or a shuffle drum beat, and you’ll find them at different speeds (BPM, Beats Per Minute). People have posted just about every kind of beat you can imagine on there! Find one that’s a speed you like, and then experiment!
Try it out for yourself!
Start off in C major. If you’ve never improvised before, just go from a one-seven to a two-seven in C major – back and forth holding each chord for 4 beats. Make sure you maintain the integrity of the comping. In your right hand, just play any white keys. Try to vary how long you hold notes. And play some notes at the same time you play the chords, and sometimes play chords without playing notes at the same time in your right hand. If you have friends who play music, comp for them and let them solo, and then let them comp for you while you solo. Comping is playing the chords behind the solo. Improvising by yourself, where you’re doing both the comping and the soloing is hard at first. If you have musical friends, this can be so much fun for you! When you get into things like blues, and if you learn how to read a lead sheet, which has just the chord symbols and the melody line, it opens up vast possibilities of music for you in a myriad of styles from folk to rock to new age, jazz, blues, country, you name it! This is a great way to get your feet wet. Let me know what you think! I’m 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
Welcome to Living Pianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. The subject today is about learning a piece of music from the end to the beginning. This is quite a concept! I once had a long discussion with a pianist who swore by this technique. There is some merit to it. If you watch my videos, you know my practice method is to start from the beginning of a piece. You read it through a couple of times, then get to work learning one small section at a time. Take a little phrase, learn the right-hand, then the left-hand, memorize each of them. Then memorize hands together. Then go on to the next chunk. Connect each section as you go until you get to the end of the piece. Well, what about starting at the end and working backwards?
Why would someone learn a piece backwards?
If you start at the end of a piece and work backwards, when you’re done practicing, the end is already solidified for you. You just get to the beginning and you’re done! It sounds great, doesn’t it? Sometimes you will see a student recital and they’re doing just fine, but when they get to the end, they don’t close strong. The end of their piece is weak and you feel badly for them. Maybe they just didn’t have enough time to get the end of the piece secure. So why not just start a piece from the end? That way, you avoid that whole problem. I have never used this technique, even though this gentleman begged me to do so. He even gave me a score. He said, “Learn this working from the end to the beginning like I learn pieces, and I’ll learn one your way, from the beginning to the end.” And I didn’t take him up on it. You may wonder why not?
Like reading a book, learning a piece of music is a story that unfolds.
There’s a logic to the sequential nature of a musical composition. Dramatic material, motifs, all develop as they go. To go from the end to the beginning is like being in a maze. You don’t know where you are. When you finally get to the beginning you have to rethink everything because it’s not meant to be thought of that way. I just have an aversion to the whole idea. When I’m learning a piece of music, it’s an exciting adventure! I start off at the beginning. I’m always raring to go at the beginning because I’ve often heard the piece before. If I’ve read through it, I’m already a bit familiar with the beginning. As I get further along, I’ll notice similarities to the beginning. It’s fun exploring a piece and seeing the changes along the way. It’s interesting to see how the themes are slightly different in various places.
Learning a piece beginning to end gives you a deep understanding of the structure of the music that learning it backwards would not reveal.
My take on this is that it’s better to learn a piece in order. Afterall, there is a reason the composer wrote it that way! I’m sure some of you have a differing viewpoints. I’d love to hear from you! I’ve articulated some of the benefits of learning from the end to the beginning. Maybe you have others that I haven’t even thought of that would encourage me to try it at least once with a piece of music. For those of you who have tried learning a piece from the end to the beginning and from the beginning to the end, and found one to be better than the other, let us know in the comments here at LivingPianos.com, and on YouTube. I look forward to hearing from you! I’m 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
