I’m very excited to say that for my birthday (from my dear parental unit), I am getting a PROPER piano stand for my Yamaha P-70 Electronic Piano. It’s been ordered, but I haven’t gotten it just yet. Right now, I just have one of those “X” stands that prop up the keyboard, mostly used for concerts and stuff because it’s portable and you can heighten it if you’re standing.

Anyways, it’s hard to use while I’m sitting, because my knees can’t go under it very well with the “X” legs getting in the way. A proper stand is definitely in order. Not to mention, I finally got a proper damper pedal as well. This is what I was using before:

Damper Pedal I Use Now

Now, I have a proper damper pedal. The Yamaha FC4.

Yamaha FC4

I thought I get could all three pedals into one built-in unit, but I guess I can’t. No big deal, since the damper pedal is really the only one I really use. I used to use the soft pedal on rare occasions when I was studying for conservatory exams.

Now, a bit off topic, but I am so excited to share this with you. Last year, I bought these AMAZING Canadian mukluks, wore them all winter, and now I’ve gone back for more. As an extremely special birthday gift to myself, today I ordered two more pairs. I am now out by $700 in my bank account. (Yes, they are THAT expensive.)

The ones I bought last year are called the Banff Mukluk.

The Banff Mukluk

Today, I ordered the Rimrock Mukluk…

The Rimrock Mukluk

And the Chocolate Mukluk.

The Chocolate Mukluk

How exciting! I swear I’m not usually this crazy about footwear, but these are the most amazing, beautiful, and COMFORTABLE (they feel like slippers) things you could ever put on your feet. They’re also waterproof and keep your feet warm (duh). The fact that I get to wear these are the only reason I am kind of anticipating winter.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Your birthday is a great excuse to upgrade on the music equipment. Tell your friends and family that you want new stuff! It definitely worked for me…

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First of all, what is sound? Basically, sound is a kind of energy produced by vibrations. When any object vibrates, it creates movement in air particles. When the particles bump into each other, they start to vibrate as well. This movement is what we call sound waves. It keeps going until all those tiny particles run out of energy, and if your ears are within range of the vibrations, you can hear the sound.

So how does a piano then create sound? Well, as you push down on a key with your finger, a mechanism inside the piano called the action forces a hammer to go up (in horizontal pianos, such as grand pianos) or forward (in vertical pianos, such as a console) and it strikes the strings.

Piano Hammer

You’ve probably seen a piano hammer before. It looks like a round stick with a head on it, almost resembling a real hammer. The head is covered in very dense wool felt. As the strings vibrate, a musical sound is produced. Connected to the string is a large soundboard, which amplifies the sound a lot louder than the string could produce by itself. As you let go of the key, a felt pad known as a damper drops back onto the string, which stops the sound.

As you may know, when you press down the damper (far right) pedal, it raises all the dampers in the piano sot the strings keep producing sound. The strings then vibrate right across the soundboard to the bridge. The sound is held by the soundboard, cast iron frame, and the case. The sound flows through and out of the piano.

Do you ever wonder why some grand piano’s have their top up and some have them down? When the top is up, a higher tone quality is produced, as well as great resonance. Even the wood used to construct the piano affects its resonance. Obviously, if the wood is of high quality, the resonance will be excellent. If the piano is made with poor quality wood, the resonance will also be poor. And when the top of the piano is left down, the sound is much quieter, but still holds great resonance.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

If you have an acoustic piano, or have access to one, here’s a fun experiment. Sit at the piano and hit the keys, and evaluate how it sounds. Then, lift up the lid (or get permission to lift it up) and hit the keys again. You’ll notice how different it sounds; louder, clearer, and probably with greater resonance. That’s the science of sound! Interesting stuff, if you ask me…

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Anyways, right now I am trying to maximize my practice time for one particular piece that I have written about already, that is, Clair De Lune by Claude Debussy. I can pretty much play then entire piece, but I have a long way to go for perfecting it. I thought I’d share the list of various musical aspects I need to improve on with this piece.

1. Timing, Rhythm, Smoothness. I’m pretty sure I’m either stopping short on some notes or even taking too long on some others. I will need to use my metronome to really find out where this is happening. It’s going to be long and tedious, but it needs to be done.
2. Holding Notes. My piano teacher used to make me practice until my fingers fell off because I wasn’t holding my notes long enough. I probably won’t be as nit-picky about it, but I definitely need to check this out a bit more.
3. Rests. This kind of goes hand in hand with holding notes. I better be sure I’m not holding notes where the rests fall. Again, my teacher used to make me practice over and over and over until I got this. This was an extremely important area for conservatory exams. Those adjudicators just KNOW if you are holding too long or too short.
4. Wrists and Fingering. The piece is all about the flowing of the fingers and wrist action, and some of the notes jump pretty far between piano keys, so I need to slow it down a bit and practice not only getting the right notes, but getting the right flowing motion as well.
5. Arpeggiated Chords. These chords on the second page in the fourth line are slightly difficult to execute with perfection. Either I play them too slow, too fast, or too much at the same time. This is another area where I need to work slower.
6. Thumbs. I think I am banging on some of the keys with my thumbs too hard. I can hear the louder notes coming through the piano when I do this. I need to work on softening up my thumb movements.
7. Key Signature Change. On the third page, the key signature changes from D flat major to E major. All of a sudden I go from working with five flats to four sharps. This part is tricky and I also have some weird fingering that I may need to look at.
8. Diminuendo. This means kind of a gradual slowing in pace as you progress through the bar. There is one on the fourth page at the end of the key signature change. I usually practice this part too fast.
9. Damper Pedal. Oh, the stupid damper pedal. Yes, I have the bad habit of using the pedal to take care of a lot of things, such as holding my notes. When I’m practicing this piece, I usually completely forget about how long I’m holding down the pedal and all the notes get mushed together. I need to work on lifting the pedal in the right places.
10. Dynamics, Crescendos, Decrescendos. Finally, the last thing I always work on is the dynamics. This piece is mostly played in pianissimo (meaning very soft) but there are a few crescendos and decrescendos I need to work on. For those of you unaware of the meanings, a crescendo means “gradually getting louder,” and decrescendo means “gradually getting softer.”

So, there are a lot of areas of this piece that I still need to work on. Like I said, perfection can be a killer, but without it, it probably won’t sound exactly the way it should sound.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

Even though I picked out all these areas that I need to work on for this specific piece, virtually all piano pieces cannot go without these musical attributes. If you are practicing a piece, you can probably pinpoint a lot of these similar problem areas. Maybe yours doesn’t have any arpeggiated chords, but maybe it has some trills. Or maybe you find that your thumbs work fine, but your pinky fingers are weak. Whatever they are, it sometimes help to make a list just like I did, so that you are fully aware of what problem areas you need to work on. Don’t be afraid to recognize that you have problems to work on, as every pianist always will have problems. When learning piano, there is always, always, always room for improvement.

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Well, most bad habits usually appear out of stress or impatience when practicing a piece that’s too difficult. Here is my top 5 ranking of bad piano practice habits. Read through them and see if you can diagnose yourself with any.

1. Always practicing piano with hands together. This is number one where bad habits develop. The best method is to practice the left hand and right hand components separately a few times before practicing them together. You’ll familiarize yourself more with the notes and timing for each hand.
2. Overusing the damper or soft pedal. In my personal experience, I’ve used the damper pedal a lot to avoid holding down my notes. This was a big no-no, and my teacher caught me every time. To fix this bad habit, I had to practice the entire piece without using the pedal at all. Only when I made sure I was holding all the notes could I start using the damper pedal again.
3. Stuttering. This occurs when a piano player realizes they’ve made a mistake, stops, and goes back to fix it by repeating the passage. In other words, this is known as stop-and-go practice. Most of the time, it feels natural to go back and fix what you just played. During professional piano examinations, marks will be deducted if you play with the stuttering habit.
4. Banging away at the piano. As piano players learning a new piece, we sometimes get so preoccupied with figuring out the notes and the timing and fitting together of both hand finger movements. When this happens, we forget to actually listen to the sound coming out of the piano. This can be difficult because we often put all of our energy into playing, leaving nothing left for actually listening to ourselves play.
5. Weak fingers. Most common among beginners, piano players often experience trouble stretching their hands to their desired keys and putting enough force on them when pressing against them. A lot of beginners have trouble using fingers four and five, and depending on whether you’re right- or left-handed, the stronger hand will likely perform more easily than the weaker one.

Elise’s Musical Tip For The Day:

It’s often difficult to diagnose yourself which bad habits you have. My piano teacher picked out all of my bad habits and forced me to fix them, but now that I don’t take piano lessons anymore, I don’t have someone there to tell me what to improve on. I would recommend recording yourself playing the piano and listening to it carefully. You’ll notice how different it sounds because you’ll be focusing all your energy on listening opposed to playing. This makes it much easier to pick out what sounds wrong. Too much pedal? Weak notes? Poor dynamics? You can go back and fix these problems and record yourself as many times as you want until your piece sounds the way you want. I use this method all the time and it works great. It will work for you too.

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