Piano Guidance
Piano Guidance
Photo: Osmar Vasques
The keys should never accelerate faster than your fingers, except perhaps when playing staccato. After you've built your strength sufficiently, you should be able to produce fortissimo quite easily without "hitting" the keys. If you need to use the weight or inertia of your arms/hands then something isn't right.
Therefore, one would think they also have a locksmith service or at least some other means for making keys, like a self-service kiosk. So, does...
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Beethoven wrote his Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, better known as 'Für Elise', in 1810, but it wasn't published until 1867, 40 years after his...
Read More »I still remember one of my professors telling me once, when we were looking for a particularly sharp sound on a note in a piece (I think it was somewhere in Copland's "Variations for Piano"), holding his thumb and third finger together and banging down on the key from about eight inches. "That's your 'weapon'!" he grinned. You would be well served by looking carefully at some of the videos of great pianists. You'll notice that there's a good deal of variety in their approach to finger technique, indeed, whole schools of study are built around different approaches to it. The Russians tend to like to hold the fingers up some from the keys and sort of plop the down flat-fingered (look at Shura Cherkassky for a representative example); Americans (who haven't studied with Russians, perhaps) tend to have a more curved hand position. You'll notice that Horowitz appears to do this, but careful inspection will show that while he often holds his fingers out flat, he pulls them in when hitting notes in a sort of plucking motion. You also might notice that his very rapid finger passage work is rather non legato; the notes get his trademark clarity by slightly disconnecting them one from the next. I think that plucking motion rather assists in getting that sound. You'll also notice that he is very still from the shoulders down, getting a lot of his volume from very rapid and percussive arm movements. If you compare Rubinstein, you'll notice that there's a lot more moving around of the arms, but the arm technique is less percussive than Horowitz's. He gets a softer sound with bigger movements. You'll also notice that his finger passage work has less up-and-down movement of the fingers; the fingers start closer to the keys. Look especially at, say, a quick run of notes in a Chopin piece. A lot of how far you raise your fingers when hitting a note has to do with the level of volume that you want. You can get a lot of volume without raising the fingers at all, by putting body weight into it, it is true, but you can't play very fast that way. And, you can also do it by raising the fingers higher and still get a great deal of speed. So, the short answer to your question is that you have all kinds of tools in the box, and each has its place.
"How Do I Live" is a song written by Diane Warren. It was performed by American singer, songwriter and actress LeAnn Rimes and the extended version...
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Kawai pianos offer a warmer, fuller quality of tone when compared to a normal piano built by Yamaha. This has made them the preferred choice of...
Read More »He had a grueling practice regime, sometimes practicing up to 14 hours daily. Franz Liszt was a man driven to break the bounds of all who had come before.
Anyone who has tried to study over 10 hours a day over a long period will realize there is a problem in doing that. Yes you can get through a lot of work but there are diminishing returns as learning efficiency decreases over these long sessions as well as mental/emotional/physical challenges. What is more important is developing practice craft rather than just extend your study time. Minutes of study with a master level of practice craft literally could be worth hours or even days worth of work from lesser practitioners. So saying "wow Liszt was so awesome he did 14 hours a day practice!" is quite unhelpful information really in terms of what one should do with their own studies.
Ideally, you want to clean the surface of your keyboard quite often. Once a week, wipe the keyboard down with a disinfectant wipe. A deeper clean...
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Pro gamers tilt their keyboard to allow more room for their mouse. The extra space allows them to lower the sensitivity and make large sweeping...
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Learn at Your Speed Online learning allows you to learn more in less time. For one thing, when you take piano lessons online you don't have to...
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Those are people who help you every day, like your garbage collector, mail carrier, housekeepers or babysitters. Etiquette experts suggest tipping...
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