The 20 Skill Sets You Need at the Piano

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I’m Robert Estrin. Today I’m going to share with you 20 skill sets you need at the piano. I tried to narrow it down to the absolute essentials for you. You can check to see how many of these skill sets you have. There are some things you might not have thought of that could be really important for you to take your piano playing to the next level. I’m going to start with the most important thing for classical players and something that’s great for anybody, which is…

Memorization

You may think you just have to be born with a great memory, but that’s not true. There’s a system for memorization that can be taught. Memorization makes playing the piano easier. It’s very encumbering to be watching the score. Sometimes it’s necessary, but when you have something memorized, it frees you to be expressive and just let the music come out of you naturally. What else is important? To learn more about memorization, click here!

Sight-reading

Reading music is essential because you can’t memorize everything. Plus, if you’re accompanying other musicians, you want to be able to see the score and their part. So you want to be able to read music to familiarize yourself with a wide array of music without necessarily committing it to memory. That’s another skill that can be developed. To learn more about sight-reading, click here!

Improvisation

Did you know that most styles of music are not dependent on reading every note in the score? Jazz, pop, rock, country, folk—you name it. Being able to improvise is so important. It’s also a great way to have fun with music. If you have a party and people want to sing some songs, being able to play by ear is great. Not to mention the fact that it can save your neck if you ever have a memory slip during a performance. You can get back on track if you can play a little bit by ear instead of starting over again. To learn more about improvisation, click here!

Scales and arpeggios

Learning all of your major and minor scales and arpeggios is one of the foundations of good technique on any instrument, and the piano is certainly no exception. It’s an essential toolbox of technique. The vast majority of Western music is built on scales and arpeggios. Having those literally at your fingertips is of tremendous value. Don’t be intimidated by it. You can just learn one a week, and it will take you about a year to learn all of them. There’s no hurry. If you haven’t done it yet, go for it! I’ve got a spreadsheet that you can check out that can keep track of all your scales and arpeggios. To learn more about scales and arpeggios, click here!

Octave technique

You hear people play rousing octaves, and you wonder, how is that done? Well, once again, a central technique of using the wrist. I have additional videos on that for you as well. And that brings us to the essential technique of the piano. To learn more about octave technique, click here!

Learn how to identify when to use the fingers, when to use the wrists, and when to use the arms.

They all come into play, but in different ways in different contexts of music. One of the most important things about learning technique on the piano is knowing which parts of the body to use. To learn more about finger techniques, click here! For more about the wrists, click here! For more about arms, click here!

Learn how to bring out different voices in your playing.

The piano is an instrument that can play many different parts at once. You, of course, have your left and right hands, but it’s much deeper than that. Sometimes, you have inner voices. You can even have different parts within one hand. Learning how to bring out different voices is such an essential technique. And once again, there are ways you can practice that. I have techniques for this. To learn more, click here!

Learn how to achieve a smooth melodic line.

Did you know that the piano is a percussion instrument? That’s right. When you play a note, the hammer is hitting the strings. You get a strong attack and rapid decay. So how do you get a smooth melodic line? Well, it’s the art of illusion. It’s a matter of using the weight of the arm to smoothly transfer the tone from note to note. The pedal can help with that as well. To learn more, click here!

Learn how to get a beautiful sound out of the piano.

Have you ever heard somebody play and everything just sounds harsh and ugly, and then somebody will play the exact same piano and everything sounds beautiful and warm? How is that possible? Singers have physiology that makes it so, and with other instruments, there’s such a connection with the throat, the breath, and the lips. But yes, on the piano, there are ways of achieving a beautiful sound. And there are ways you might get an ugly sound if you’re not careful. So this is a really important subject for you if you haven’t covered it before in your playing. You want to always get as gorgeous a sound as possible. To learn more, click here!

Interpretation

Interpretation is a wide open area. It’s very subjective, but it’s something important to understand and have a grasp of. You work so hard to learn a piece of music. How do you actually let it unfold? What do you have to say about it? Do you just play it the way your teacher told you to or the way you’ve heard it in a recording? Or do you have something unique you can say about the piece? How do you develop your own voice in music? That’s what interpretation is all about! It’s the reason we play—to express our love and our unique ideas about the music. The reason we work so hard is so we can bring our ideas into these pieces of music so others can enjoy our concepts of them. To learn more, click here!

Appreciate different period styles.

To understand interpretation and many other aspects of technique, you really have to have an appreciation for the different period styles of music, from the Baroque to the Classical, the Romantic, the Impressionist, and the 20th century. They’re all different styles, and there are styles within those styles. Not to mention, the piano evolved over time. So the period the music was written in wasn’t for the same instrument as earlier or later pianos. When you’re playing Baroque music, it might not have been written for the piano at all. It was more likely written for the harpsichord! So understanding the period styles and the instruments the music was written for is very important for being able to play appropriately on the piano. To learn more about the Baroque period, click here! For Classical, click here! For Romantic, click here! For Impressionism, click here!

Another important aspect of piano technique is ornamentation.

There’s all kinds of ornamentation, such as trills. Sometimes in early music, you’ll see different squiggly lines that are representative of things that you do to embellish the music. How to translate those symbols is one challenge, but the other is simply knowing how to execute them cleanly. And there again, there are different aspects of knowing how to measure your trills and things of that nature. For more about executing trills, click here! For more about ornamentation, click here!

Music theory

A solid foundation in music theory can really enhance all aspects of your playing. Certainly, if you’re reading music, it’s helpful to know what key you’re in and to have some grasp of the chord progressions and modulations. When you’re learning a piece of music, a foundation of music theory will help you understand where you are in the structure and the harmonies. It’s going to help you learn it, remember it, and play it. For more about music theory, click here!

Harmony

Harmony is kind of a subcategory of theory. Having an understanding of the keys you’re in and the relationship of tones is what harmony is all about. To learn more about harmony, click here!

Dictation

One way to develop harmony is through dictation. Jazz players do dictation all the time. If you play popular music, sometimes the sheet music can be very drab and not really grasp what the original performance was about. So you listen to it and kind of copy it by ear. You can even write it down. This is a tremendous way to develop your ear and an affinity for different styles of music. To learn more about dictation, click here!

Music history

Having a grasp of music history is so important. I mentioned the period styles, but it goes so much deeper. You want to understand the culture and customs of the time and how the music fit into society. Was it something for the elite or the music of the people? The history of the time can be enlightening and might shed some light as to how the music should be approached. Is it folk music? Is it music for the Royal Courts? Having an understanding of music history can give you a depth to your playing that is really important. To learn more about music history, click here!

Accompanying

I talked about reading and sight-reading being important, but accompanying is an art unto itself. You want to be able to play with other musicians. All too often, pianists play by themselves so much that they lack the camaraderie that you develop playing with other musicians. You learn so much by doing this. You develop a better sense of timing, balance, and nuance. There’s nothing greater than playing with other musicians and learning from them. When you play with great musicians, it rubs off on you. You might feel squeamish about playing with people who are better than you, but take the opportunity. It will be enriching for you. For more about accompanying, click here!

Maintain a repertoire.

How many pieces can you keep in your repertoire? What pieces should you learn next? What is a well-balanced repertoire on the piano? These are really important questions for developing your piano playing and your musicianship. You need appropriate challenges in your repertoire—something that’s not going to take you an inordinate amount of time or something that you’re never going to be able to play at a high level without a foundation of learning other pieces first. You need to know what pieces to play, what pieces to study, and how many pieces you can keep in your current repertoire. It’s not limitless. But you can drop pieces and restudy them. If you try to keep everything at your fingertips and in your head, you won’t have time to learn new music! So maintaining a repertoire is a delicate balance. To learn more about maintaining a repertoire, click here!

Performing

One of the important skill sets that has to be practiced is playing for people. Because if you play by yourself, it never really comes to fruition. The act of playing for people is where the music comes alive. When you’re playing by yourself, you know what you’re doing. When you’re playing for others, there’s a give-and-take. You’ll find that you will do things in your playing that you’ve never done before. Some of them may be unfortunate things, but you may find that, particularly if you have the wherewithal to play for people on a regular basis, it can become an inspiration for ideas because you get the feeling for what people are really paying attention to and the things that leave them flat. It’s just like a comedian working out material. They don’t really know what’s going to land and what’s going to fall flat until they do it in front of a crowd. The same is true with your piano playing. Playing for people is what it’s all about! You might think no one wants to hear you. That couldn’t be further from the truth! People will be impressed with your accomplishments. If they don’t play, everything will seem amazing to them. It’s all relative. There are different things that everybody can bring to the music. You don’t have to be the most virtuoso player in the world to be able to share emotions, feelings, and nuance about the music and taste that you have that’s unique to you. So play for people. People will enjoy it, and you will grow as a musician. To learn more about playing for people, click here!

Adjusting to different pianos and different rooms

When you play on different pianos, it feels completely different, and it can give you ideas about the piece you never had before. The rooms you play in also make a tremendous difference. Have you ever played in a room that’s completely acoustically dead, where there’s no reverberation at all? You end up working harder, and you may have to use the pedal more liberally in order to make up for the lack of acoustics in the room. You might go to a hall and try out the piano before a performance, and it sounds glorious in the beautiful echoey space. Then the audience comes in, and all those bodies with clothing absorb the sound, and it’s a completely different acoustic. So learning how to adjust instantly to a piano and to a room is an essential part of piano playing. And it’s enriching because you will learn more about the pieces you play, even if you’re not performing. Any time there’s a piano somewhere where you can play, play some of your pieces on it. I guarantee that you will learn something from the experience. To learn more about adjusting to different pianos and environments, click here!

I hope these are helpful for you!

But we have just scratched the surface! What about pedaling? Here is more on that subject for you:

HOW TO USE THE PEDAL ON THE PIANO – KEYBOARD KALEIDOSCOPE – ROBERT ESTRIN

And there is also independence of the hands at the piano:

HOW TO PLAY HANDS TOGETHER ON THE PIANO

These are just 20 tips and essential skills on the piano with two bonus tips! Any of you who can think of other skill sets that are important, leave 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.

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Contact me if you are interested in private lessons. I have many resources for you! Robert@LivingPianos.com