La Leçon De Piano (The Piano Lesson) By Marguerite Gérard (1761–1837)

Musical training during a very young age can be strikingly rewarding. In fact, most babies who are frequently exposed to perfectly tuned piano sounds and music have a tendency to automatically develop what is called “perfect pitch,” which is the ability to identify a musical note without any given reference.

This may seem unthinkable, but there is actually nothing extraordinary about this. Nobody can be born with the perfect pitch ability because it is a skill that is 100% learned.

Piano training is most effective when it is reinforced at a relatively young age. Children can begin learning when they are as young as three or four years old.

Exposing infants and toddlers (typically from birth) to classical music is very beneficial from a musical standpoint, because classical music involves the highest musical content out of all different types of music. Classical music is characterized by more complex components.

In comparison to classical music, certain types of contemporary music can hinder a child’s musical development. This is due to the fact that some forms of music over-emphasize detracting aspects like loudness or music structures that are too simplistic, which under-stimulates the brain.

An individual does not have to be especially “gifted” in order to play the piano well, which is why enrolling any child in piano lessons at an early age can be beneficial. Many people think that forcing their child into piano lessons at a younger age will result in their child being unable to sit still or concentrate on piano practice and technique.

Quite honestly, you will never know whether you child grows up to choose the piano or not, until they actually grow up. My sister (age 5) and I (age 8 ) were enrolled in piano lessons at the same time. My sister never truly developed the passion needed for piano persistence and she quit a few years later. I, on the other hand, kept on going to participate in competitions and conservatory examinations. Our difference in age had nothing to do with it (the fact that I was older). It was simply an outcome of trial and error by my parents who decided to enroll the both of us in piano lessons. I never went forward in ballet, gymnastics, curling, or soccer… but piano, I did.

Younger children can also benefit from piano lessons because there is no need to force them to practice for long hours on end. While practice makes perfect, it’s unwise to force a child to practice for long periods of time.

Many famous pianists have recommended practice sessions of less than an hour.

Not only is this beneficial for musical improvement, but it is also easier to keep a child focused on practicing over a half hour-long practice period, as opposed to a two hour-long practice period.

As a final note, advancement in piano practice is highly dependent on the ability to eventually memorize musical compositions.

In piano, it’s recommended that one should memorize as many pieces as possible before the age of 20.

Why? Pieces learned during earlier ages are almost never forgotten. Again, even if they are forgotten, they can be picked up again quickly. Pieces learned after the age of 40 actually require a lot more effort for memorization and maintenance.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Learning the piano should never seem like a daunting or overwhelming task for a young child. The child should be given the opportunity to explore and learn at their own pace. The right piano teacher will be able to observe and guide young children throughout the learning process to help keep them interested in fun, musical exercises, while also rewarding them as they grow to achieve certain goals in music.

Related posts:

1. The Requirements of a Piano Teacher Many beginner piano players overlook the requirements needed for a...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Ragtime!

Ragtime is an incredibly upbeat, jazzed-up, feel-good musical genre that was most popular between 1897 and 1918. It began as dance music in the red-light districts of several American cities lie St. Louis and New Orleans, even years before ragtime music was published as popular piano sheet music.

Known as the “King of Rag,” Scott Joplin became famous after his publication of “Maple Leaf Rag” in 1899. Maple Leaf Rag was a heavy influence on subsequent ragtime composers and their publications for years and years afterward because of the piece’s melody and harmonic progressions.

Here is my very own interpretation of Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag.

Advanced Piano

Scott Joplin: Collected Piano Works

If you are interested in stepping into the ragtime genre, there is no better composer to study than Scott Joplin. I recommend Scott Joplin: Collected Piano Works for a complete collection of Joplin’s greatest works, including rags, marches, and waltzes. This piano sheet music book has received a 5-star rating and is meant for those players who are in the early advanced stage of playing.

Medium Piano

Ragtime Favourites by Scott Joplin – Piano Accompaniment

For those who are not quite advanced, but past the beginner stage, there are several arranged Joplin pieces to fit your level. Ragtime Favourites by Scott Joplin – Piano Accompaniment is meant for the medium-level piano player. It includes 36 pages of amazing rags that are not too difficult, but not too easy for those who need the challenge.

Easy Piano

Joplin’s Greatest Rags For Easy Piano

Now, what if you’re just a beginner? You can still enjoy learning ragtime pieces. In my earlier piano days, I learned several easy ragtime pieces that were specifically arranged to for beginner piano players, with the same great sound of the original composition. If you’re looking for easy ragtime music, I really recommend Joplin’s Greatest Rags For Easy Piano. You don’t have to be an expert pianist to tackle these pieces.


The original publication of Maple Leaf Rag (which I played in the YouTube video) is a grade 9-level piece. When I first started learning this piece, I was studying for my grade 7 conservatory exam. This just goes to show that when you really want something, and you really discipline yourself to study the piece and practice often, you can achieve anything. Luckily, I was prepared with enough technical expertise and training to go beyond my grade-level to learn how to play this piece.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Don’t be intimidated by the fast-paced movements and detached notes of the ragtime genre. If you are really interested in learning ragtime pieces, look at it as if it were a magnificent challenge, and don’t let anything hold you back. Focus on the easy or medium level Joplin pieces if you are not ready to tackle the original advanced compositions. You’ll be happy you did! Ragtime is one of the best genres of music that can help you feel happy, perky, and really good about yourself.

Related posts:

1. Maple Leaf Rag by Scott Joplin Ragtime is one of my favourite genres in piano, and...
2. My Favourite Classical Piano Pieces I've been practicing a lot of piano lately, and started...
3. My Top 5 Easy Piano Sheet Music Books Sometimes it's hard for beginners to find easy sheet music....

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Develop A Secure Mental Play For Performances

Do you get nervous when you find yourself in a room full of anxious relatives, friends, or complete strangers staring at you, eagerly waiting for you to blow them away with your amazing piano skills?

Believe me, I’ve been there. After more than a decade of participating in music festivals, competitions, annual recitals, conservatory examinations, and having my parents force me to play the piano at family gatherings, one could say that I’ve had my fair share of butterflies and sweaty palms at the piano.

Nervousness is a very natural human emotion, just like happiness, anger, sadness, fear, and so on. Generally, nervousness is a product of a mental perception of a situation where performance is critical. Nervousness forces us to concentrate entirely on the critical task at hand and most people don’t like to be nervous because it is normally accompanied by feelings of fear of failure.

Since nervousness is a performance enhancing reaction to specific critical situations, it is almost certainly necessary for a great performance. However, it needs to be kept under control. A healthy attitude toward nervousness should be developed.

History has been documented by legendary pianists of extreme nervousness, as well as completely non-nervous performers, suggesting that the nervousness phenomenon is very well not understood.

Under extreme conditions, emotions can get out of control and therefore can become a liability. Emotions are designed to work under normal circumstances. For example, fear can allow a small animal to escape from a predator. However, when cornered, the small animal may freeze completely with fear, making it easier for the predator to catch it’s prey. The overwhelming fear puts the small animal in a worse position than when the emotion of fear is more controlled.

And so, under extreme conditions, performances can spin out of control due to overwhelming emotions. Playing a piano solo in front of a large crowd qualifies as an extreme condition. In my own experiences, I have felt my heart beating out of my chest, sweaty hands, dry mouth, shaky hands and legs, and even memory loss (I forgot if I had already repeated a section of my piano piece).

There are ways to keep nervousness under control. Some claim that prescription medications such as Inderal, Atenolol, or even Zantac will work to calm nerves. In opposition, you can make your nervousness work by drinking coffee or caffeinated drinks, not getting enough sleep, and so on.

So, how exactly can you help control your nervousness? First of all, remember that you are your worst critic. Your mental attitude has a lot to do with your performance, You may notice mistakes that you make, but instead of worrying about it, smile and move on. In conservatory exams, you are penalized if you make a mistake and go back to that certain note or bar to fix it. Remember than even just casual playing will sound terrific to an audience, and they generally heard less than half of the mistakes that you can identify.

Do not pretend that nervousness does not exist. This is especially important for young performers, since it can cause them to suffer more easily from long-term psychological damage. Performance training is important because it allows nervousness to be discussed and examined in an open manner.

Developing a positive mental attitude is the best way to control stage fright. By helping yourself understand that performing is a great opportunity for you to grow as a musician an individual, you will effectively minimize your nervousness. If you want the best likelihood for a flawless performance, you must develop a secure mental play. You can then start playing from any note within the piece, you can stay ahead of the music, and you can hear the musicality inside your head, and even develop skills such as absolute pitch.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

During a recital, I had to play a very fast piece and I was overwhelmingly nervous. I messed up completely in the middle of the piece, turned around to the audience, and said, “I messed up!” There’s a big difference between creating humor from a mistake or recovering effectively from it and making that mistake create a disaster that affects the entire performance. This is why its so important for a student to play very easy pieces that can be performed with nervousness under control. Even just one performance like this can create an overall, optimistic attitude that performing without nervousness attitude, which can affect you for the rest of your life.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

The Trill

If you are an intermediate to advanced piano player, it’s very likely that you’ve come across the trill in your compositions. Generally, a trill is shown in modern musical notation with the letters “tr” above the trilled note, and a wavy line that proceeds. In musical pieces composed during the baroque and early classical eras, the wavy line on its own is used.

Musical Notation Denoting A Trill

The usual way of performing a trill is to rapidly alternate between the note indicated on the staff with the “tr” and/or wavy line and the note that is directly above it in that given scale (unless the trill indicates an accidental).

This Is The Way You Would Execute The Trill As Shown In The Previous Notation Above

Many of Chopin’s classical compositions include trills. They sound like a fast, flicking motion of the two fingers playing two successive notes very, very fast.

There are two main problems that the piano player MUST solve in order to play the trill effectively: (1) speed and control, and (2) continuity.

With a simple trill, there are only two notes you need to focus on: the note indicated, and the note that lies directly above the one indicated. If the first two notes are not started properly, learning the trill will become a very difficult task.

We can solve the problems of the trill by applying an exercise called “parallel sets.” A parallel set is a group of notes that can be played as a chord, and all parallel sets can be played infinitely fast. Within the parallel set, the delay between the successive fingers is called the “phase angle.”

As an example, if we were going to used fingers 2 and 3 to execute the trill (2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, 2, 3, etc.), you can use the 3 as the conjunction and get those first two notes right. Next, practice 3,2. Then, move onto 2, 3, 2, and then 3, 2, 3, 2. It’s really just this simple.

Try not to focus on speed, as this is insufficient. Experimenting with hand and finger motions is also a must. Try soft fingers, rolling motions, flat fingers, and so on. Relaxation is also one of the most important aspects for executing the trill; more than almost any other technical skill out there because of the need to acquire rapid momentum and balance. Allowing stress to build up will cause the fingers to lock into its larger members, such as the palms, hands, and wrists, which in turn increases the effective mass of the fingers.

Your physics lesson for the day: An increased mass means slower motions. Relatively speaking, a hummingbird can flap its wings thousands upon thousands of times faster than other relative species of birds, and small insects can flap their wings even faster than that of the hummingbird.

Therefore, it’s very important to free yourself from stress when practicing trills, in order to let the fingers do the work without the weight of the rest of your body. Trills are one technical skill that require constant practice and maintenance.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

The chord attack is the best practice method for keeping your trills in shape. See my post on The Chord Attack Method to learn more. Make sure that you don’t treat your trills as a series of staccato notes. Your fingertips should be placed at the bottom of the keydrop as long as possible, and make sure you stay aware of the minimal lift needed for the repetition. If you practice on a grand piano, take a mental note that this lift distance can vary from around twice as high as those who practice on an upright piano. Remember, fast trills mean smaller lifts, so on an upright, you may need to slow down your trills.

Related posts:

1. The Chord Attack Method If you've taken any formal piano lessons, you've probably been...
2. A Few Tips For Getting Up To Speed With Fast Pieces Yesterday, I touched on the topic of practicing by breaking...
3. Three Major Reasons Why You Should Practice Bar-By-Bar Segments My apologies for not updating in quite some time, my...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

You Don't Need To Break The Keys To Get Up To Speed...

Yesterday, I touched on the topic of practicing by breaking down difficult passages into small segments. When you break it down this way, you can maximize practice time and bring your playing up to speed in practically no time.

But how should you know exactly what speed to start at and progress toward? Like everything else, it will depend on your own personal skill and the piece itself, but here are some general guidelines and things to keep in mind in regards to velocity and choice of practice speed.

In general, we want to be able to play up to speed as quickly as possible. However, playing so fast that you begin to feel stressed and make mistakes will not help improve your technique. Additionally, forcing your fingers to play the same way at a fast speed will not help increase your speed.

Your technique will improve the most quickly and effectively when you play at a speed at which you can play accurately. This is especially true when you practice hands separately. When you practice the left hand and the right hand separately, you have more control, and therefore you can get away with playing much faster than you could if you were playing with hands together. Since the main goal of practicing hands separately is to gain speed, the need to quickly get up to speed and to practice at a speed which is optimized for improvements in technique become contradicting.

So, how do we fix this? The solution is to constantly change the speed at which you practice without staying at any one speed for too long.

But what happens when you reach block? A difficult passage? When you come across a difficult part that requires skills that you don’t already have, the best alternative is to bring it up in stages. You can use speeds that are too fast as exploratory excursions to figure out what needs to change in order to for you to accurately play at such a speed. Then, you can try slowing down and practicing those new motions. Keep in mind that if you lack the technique required, you need to go back to shortening the passages to extremely small segments, as explained in yesterday’s blog post.

To vary your speed, you first need to get to a manageable “maximum speed” at which you can play the piece accurately. After you’ve reached this, try to go faster and take a mental note of how your playing needs to be changed or adapted (at this point, don’t worry if you are not playing completely accurately). Next, use these newly discovered motions and play at the previous “maximum speed.” You should discover that it’s easier to play now. You can continue to practice at this speed for a while, and then try to slow down to ensure that you are playing completely relaxed.

You can then repeat this entire procedure. It will help you drive up your speed in manageable jumps so you can work on each skill separately. Generally, you should be able to play a new piece, at least in small segments, hands separately, at the desired speed during the first sitting. This may seem unattainable at first, but you’ll be surprised that you can reach this goal relatively quickly.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Using a metronome can also help with building up speed, but make sure not to overuse it. Metronomes should never be practiced with for more than a few minutes at a time, because your brain will become confused and you will begin to have trouble keeping up with the beat of the metronome. For more information on metronomes, read one of my previous blog posts here: Five Tips For Acquiring Accurate Tempo

Related posts:

1. Five Tips For Acquiring Accurate Tempo The rate at which you play a piano piece is...
2. Three Major Reasons Why You Should Practice Bar-By-Bar Segments My apologies for not updating in quite some time, my...
3. Slow Piano Practice One bad habit of many piano players is their excitement...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Ever Feel This Intimidated With Difficult Passages?

My apologies for not updating in quite some time, my computer had a complete virus meltdown and had to be stripped clean of everything and re-formatted.

Everyone gets frustrated with piano practice. In a perfect world, a piano player would be able to sit down at their piano and play a piece flawlessly. If life was like that, playing the piano would not be special. For me, personally, playing the piano is special because of the challenges brought on by it; the challenge of reading music, making sense of those black dots and squiggles, analyzing them with my brain, and transforming them into art with my hands. It takes discipline, motivation, and persistence to make time for yourself and sit down to practice your pieces on a regular basis.

Since most piano players know exactly what I’m talking about, I’d like to point out three very distinct reasons WHY bar-by-bar practicing is so effective.

1. Practicing the most difficult notes most often results in optimized practice. When practicing difficult passages, there are usually only a few note combinations that obstruct your playing. For example, if you have 10 bars that include 8 notes each, there may only be 4 difficult notes to play in that entire passage of 10 bars. Just by practicing those four notes, you will succeed in playing all 10 bars, which greatly reduces your practice time. Depending on your personal skill and the nature of the piece, the most difficult notes may include a key change, a large jump upward or downward on the keys, an awkward fingering position, a trill, an arpeggio, and so on. Focus on these areas, and you will greatly cut down your practice time.
2. Practicing short segments allows you to practice them dozens, or even hundreds of times in a matter of minutes. Using quick and successive repetitious practice methods is the most effective way to teach your hands new motions. In contrast, if you decided to practice a long passage that included difficult notes, the longer interval between your successive playing and the playing of the difficult notes will lead to confusion of the hands, resulting in much slower and less optimal learning. Moreover, piano players who are more adept to playing by memory and less by sight reading have an advantage when it comes to practicing short segments. Short segments are easier to remember, and as you practice them, you are instantly putting them to memory, thus killing two birds with one stone.
3. The shorter the segment, the faster you can practice it. If you’ve read my other posts, specifically on the topics of slow practice, you should be well aware that trying to play a segment fast that your technical skills allow you is detrimental. This may seem like a catch 22, BUT, shorten those segments, and you will effectively learn very quickly to practice those short segments very fast. Typically, the most common short segments you should choose are one bar or even less; perhaps something as simple as just two notes. When you start off this small, you can literally bring any difficult note combination right up to speed within minutes. This saves loads practice time, and as mentioned, helps put the piece’s segments to memory as well.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Stayed tuned for some great stuff I’ve been planning. Christmas is just around the corner and I’m getting ready to break out the Christmas music. Also, my performance of Scott Joplin’s Maple Leaf Rag is almost up to par, and should be up on YouTube hopefully sometime this month, if nothing gets too busy to prevent me from filming it.

Related posts:

1. A Few Tips For Getting Up To Speed With Fast Pieces Yesterday, I touched on the topic of practicing by breaking...
2. The Three W’s of Memorizing Music Learn who can memorize, what you should memorize, and when...
3. Slow Piano Practice One bad habit of many piano players is their excitement...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Chord B-E-G

A “chord attack” occurs when you play a sequence of notes as chord. For example, say you had to play the quadrulplet, C-G-E-G in the left hand. If you practice this slowly and then speed it up gradually, you will eventually hit a “speed wall,” which is a speed that you can’t pass because stress builds up. To break the speed wall, you would have to play the quadruplet as a single chord, C-E-G. A “chord” is a combination of three or more notes that blend harmoniously when played together. You will then go from slow speed to infinite speed! And that’s why it’s called a chord attack.

Let’s take a closer look. Examine the passage blow:

In the right hand, the passage begins with the triplet, E-G#-C#. The fastest way to play this sequence is to play it as chord, along with the corresponding fingering. When you play a chord, there is zero delay between the playing of notes, so you are playing the notes infinitely fast. Chord attacks are a great method to enhance speed and velocity. You can use then wherever you find a series of notes that can be played as a chord.

Now that you can play a chord very fast with the chord attack method, what happens if you want to slow down? Firstly, you can play the chord while moving the hand up and down at the frequency at which the chord or quadruplet should be played. Try between one and two times per second. Experiment with your movements by varying your bouncing hands, and remember to adjust your wrist, arm, and finger movements as well. If you begin to feel tired after a while, you might be doing something wrong, or you haven’t quite figured out the technical movements.

Basically, practicing the up and down movement over and over again until you do not feel tired is necessary. And if you feel tired by practicing the motions with chords, you’ll definitely have a hard time with quadruplets.

But how should you move? This depends on your own body and level of comfort. You need to find the most efficient motions that personally compliment you. Try keeping your fingers very close to or touching the keys as you increase your speed, and get your whole body involved in the movements. This should definitely include your shoulders, your upper and lower arms, and of course, your wrists. Don’t play from your fingertips, use your shoulders and arms.

How will you know when you’ve done it? When you find that you can play the chord or quadruplet softly, relaxed, and without tiring, then you have definitely made great progress.

Remember that you need to play the notes as perfect chords, meaning that all notes should land one after the other, no stops, delays, or flub; note after note, infinite playing. Without this, you won’t acquire the accuracy needed to play them fast.

Practice the bouncing hand motions slowly. This is the best way to work on acquiring accuracy. Accuracy will improve faster when you practice them slowly.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Practicing chords can solve a lot of problems in piano practice and improvement. I’ve found some great resources for chord practice, even if you barely know a thing about chords.

The Talking Chord Chart

The first is The Talking Piano Chord Chart, which gives you some great virtual piano lessons, allowing you to see and hear each chord and how they are formed. You’ll know everything about major, minor, augmented, and diminished chords in no time. If you use this chart right, it’s quite likely that you can learn up to 48 different chords in a matter of 15 to 20 minutes.

Power Piano Chords

The second is Power Piano Chords, which gives you 39 separate lessons on piano chords. When you study and practice enough about chords, you can actually improvise in your music and even write your own arrangements, because you’ll understand how certain notes fit together to create desirable sounds and harmonies. I advise you to check them out soon!

Related posts:

1. The Arpeggiated Chord I'd like to give a brief introduction to the arpeggiated...
2. The Art And Physics Of Mastering The “Trill” If you are an intermediate to advanced piano player, it’s...
3. A Few Tips For Getting Up To Speed With Fast Pieces Yesterday, I touched on the topic of practicing by breaking...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Don't Fight Gravity!

In my last post, I talked about something called the “gravity drop.” I think it’s important to take a closer look at it for you to really see how physics can work with you or against you when you play the piano. Try this exercise to see how the gravity drop works with your own hands and your own piano:

1. Place your right hand on the piano and your fingers (1, 3, and 5) in the correct position to play the chord, C-E-G.
2. Remember to keep your entire arm and body relaxed.
3. Keep your wrists flexible, and begin to lift your hand about 5 to 20 centimeters above the keys.
4. Allow gravity to let your hand drop, and let your hand and fingers drop as one entire unit, without moving the fingers.
5. Your hands should be completely relaxed during the entire drop, and then as your fingers come to impact the keys, you need to “set” your fingers and wrists to take the shock of landing and depressing those keys (remember to keep flexibility in your wrists).

You are now letting gravity lower your hand, therefore referencing your strength or sensitivity to a completely constant force. Maybe it doesn’t seem that interesting right now, but to really dig deep into piano playing, it’s necessary to look at how physics compliments the structure of the human body to create, you guessed it, music.

Did you know that an underweight 6 year-old and an enormous sumo wrestler dropping their hands from the exact same height onto the piano will produce sounds of equal loudness?

Why does this happen? This happens because the speed of gravitational fall is actually independent of weight or mass and the piano hammer will be launched into free flight as soon as the knuckles are taken off the jack, which are the last few millimeters before striking the strings.

If you majored in physics, you might say, “Ok, what about kinetic energy? Kinetic energy is conserved so the above statements are not precisely true.”

Piano keys do not have the mechanical structure to physically act like an “elastic collision.” In an elastic collision, the piano key would fly off the fingertip at a high velocity, sort of like when you play staccato. However, because the fingers are kept relaxed and fingertips soft, inelastic collisions are produced and kinetic energy is not conserved. The smaller mass, which are the piano keys, can stay with the larger mass, which are your fingers/arm/hands, which results in a controlled key drop.

Now, the sumo wrester will probably create a slightly louder sound because of his arm being 20 times heavier (momentum conservation), but the difference between his sound and the sound of the 6 year-old will be relatively small.

So, what’s so great about practicing YOUR gravity drop?

Using gravity to lower your hands allows you to rid yourself of all forces and all tenseness that cause some of your fingers to land before others. And most importantly, using the gravity drop allows you to practice relaxation.

Gravity is the perfect force for playing the piano, and it’s no coincidence. Human beings have evolved under the complete influence of gravity; walking, running, jumping, and of course, playing the piano. Just remember that you only need the amount of force that is relatively equal to that supplied by gravity. You don’t need to bang the keys or keep your hands tense. This will be detrimental to your practicing. It’s a great idea to practice the gravity drop for a number of weeks or even months, every time you practice. Once you are truly relaxed, you’ll be able to feel the gravitational effect on your hands as you play.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

At the time of impacting the keys, stiffening your hand will ensure that your entire weight of your arm will transfer to the key drop. However, make sure not to add force during the stiffening. This takes practice. A pure gravity drop becomes more difficult as you increase the height of your hand. That’s why I recommended a height of 5 to 20 centimeters from the keys. Choosing a height of 5 centimeters will be easier because you will have a better chance of not adding your own forceful impact in combination to gravity.

Related posts:

1. How To Relax When Playing Piano Relaxation is one of the most important aspects you must...
2. Introduction to Piano Fingers There seems to be a lot of confusion about piano...
3. The Chord Attack Method If you've taken any formal piano lessons, you've probably been...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Relax!

As you build up your speed in your piano playing, it becomes more and more important to learn how to relax at the same time. Generally, this means that you should only be using the muscles that are needed to play. You can achieve relaxation much easier by practicing your pieces hands separately. Here are a couple pieces of advice that I follow during my practice routines:

It is better not to practice at all than it is to practice with even the slightest bit of tension. It’s much more efficient to relax and play a single note, and then advance carefully; only playing those easy materials that can be played relaxed.

Do not forget to relax all areas of the body, including breathing and periodic swallowing. You thought hands and arms and fingers were the only parts of the body needing relaxation? Well, think again. Some students will stop breathing when they find themselves playing very demanding pieces because the muscles are anchored at the chest. If you’re throat is dry after playing, it means that you also stopped swallowing. My piano teacher told me a horror story of her younger years when she had been playing for an audience at a recital, when all of a sudden she started choking on her own breath right in the middle of her playing.

To fully relax, you must find the proper energy and momentum balance as well as arm, hand, and finger positions and motions that allow you to play with the right amount of energy. This may seem complicated, and it can be. Relaxing can require a lot of experimentation. If you have been concentrating on relaxing on a regular basis during your practice routines, then you should be able to quickly execute this. For those who haven’t been practicing their relaxation, you can try practicing an easy piece until you build up stress, and then try to relax. For this, you’ll need to find different motions and positions of the arms, wrists, and body. When you find them, you’ll feel the stress gradually drain away from you.

The most important element of relaxation is energy conservation. There are at least two different ways to conserve energy. Firstly, do not use unnecessary muscles, and secondly, turn off those muscles as soon as their jobs are done. Again, this is easier said than done. You can experiment with this using the gravity drop, During a gravity drop, you allow gravity to pull the arm down, but at the end of the key drop, you need to add tension to the finger for a moment to stop the hand. Then you need to quickly relax all of your muscles, but do not lift the hand. Just rest it comfortably on the piano with just enough force to support the weight of your arm. This is a lot harder than you would assume, because the elbow is practically floating in mid air. You can test whether or not you are pressing down by taking the arm off the keys and resting your forearm on your legs, completely relaxed. Then you can carry over that same feeling to the end of your gravity drop.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Without relaxation, neither music nor technique could be possible. Technique comes from the brain. Non-musical playing actually violates so many aspects of nature that it interferes with the human brain’s natural processes for controlling the mechanisms of playing. Basically, if you spend your practice sessions doing mindless repetitions, you will find yourself going through a long, roundabout way of learning piano.

Related posts:

1. A Closer Look At The “Gravity Drop” Gravity is just the right force needed to play the...
2. Beware of these Five Bad Habits when Playing the Piano There are countless bad habits a piano player can develop...
3. Playing Scales On The Piano Using Thumb Under and Thumb Over Methods When you play a scale on the piano, the thumb...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.