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Posts Tagged ‘how to play piano’

Natural Technique in Piano playing

Pianoforte technique might almost be said to be divided into two schools.

The one seems as if it were exactly adapted to suit the peculiar powers of the instrument, and is that which, having been greatly modernized by Chopin, culminated in the genius of Liszt. The passage writing of both these pre-eminent composers for the piano are unsurpassed as pure pianoforte technique both as regards ex- pression, effectiveness and brilliancy.

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Audio: Ready to Play Piano

Here are some few good tips recommended for you to listen about preparing to play piano.

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Hurrying the Tempo in Playing Piano














Hurrying the tempo is nearly as bad, and is
sometimes caused by nervousness, though
indifference, want of confidence, and the
very general mistake of looking upon a
crescendo as an accellerando also give
rise to it. People who are inclined to be
nervous when playing before others often get a queer kind of defiant sensation
when technically difficult passages hover in sight ; the " let's get it over and be
done with it "sort of feeling, which makes them hurry in an extraordinary manner. 
 
Of course, hurrying may just as well arise from a lack of instinct for rhythm in the
student. Where this is the case, it is rather a hopeless look-out, as it is so hard to
inculcate a real feeling for rhythm into someone who is not naturally endowed with it.
But it has often been my experience to listen to students who were gifted with a
most highly-developed sense of rhythm, and yet who hurried, especially over their
technically difficult passages, until I began to get positively breathless. This kind of
increasing the speed was, of course, due to want of nervous control. 
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Another Blunder in Piano Playing


Now comes along the temperamental student, burning with ardour ardour
for the beauty of the music, longing to make the noble chords of some fine
melody speak out its message! What special pitfall lies ready to entrap his
zealous endeavors? Why, in his enthusiasm that the melody in both hands
should be properly brought out, he gets one hand playing after the other!

For Example is the Prelude in C Sharp minor.
by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Op. 3, No. 2. an
excerpt from the Prelude in C sharp minor of
Rachmaninoff, as written by the composer,
and (below) as often played by enthusiasts
with the right hand striking each note in the first two bars a fraction after
the left. In the third bar of the lower example the chords will be seen
arpeggioed instead of together, and again the right hand coming in after
the left in the last two chords. Another example is the Prelude in C Sharp
minor. by S. Rachmaninoff, Op. 3, No. 2.  

Only a fraction of a second after the left hand does the right hand strike,
but in that loss of simultaneousness of sound the whole grandeur after which
the performer is striving will be dispelled in the irritating effect of one part of
the harmony always reaching the ear at a slight interval after the other. This is
a most frequent failing amongst very musical people who enjoy tremendously
what they are playing; and especially does it occur with them in slow
movements, when they will arpeggio the chords between the two hands so
much that it sounds to me like drawling in speech, or even like stuttering.
These enthusiasts lose their sense of the symmetry of the sound in their
intense pleasure over its component parts, and it is hard that the very virtue
that lies in their love of the music can thus lead them into danger. 

Dragging the time, another tiresome error of judgment, proceeds generally
from the same cause of over-fervour. The player who suffers from this blemish
mostly owes it to lack of sense of proportion and taste, and to a certain want
artistic perception of the guiding line between true sentiment and
sentimentality!? 


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Hints to Master the Piano

SCALES CONTINUED AND ARPEGGI

EVEN TONE is another most difficult object to strive for in playing scales, for the human hand is physically so constituted that certain of the fingers are weaker than the others, namely, the 4th and 5th are the weak ones, and the 1st, 2nd and 3rd the strong ones. From this fact ensues the natural consequence that the notes struck by the 1st, 2nd and 3rd fingers are liable to be louder and firmer in tone than those upon which 4th and 5th fall.

This weakness can only be corrected by pressure from the forearm transmitted to the fingers, as I have already insisted upon when speaking of the articulation in five-finger exercises. The pressure is here used as an equalizer,  in this fashion, that the conscious habit of the pressure having been established by practice, it works upon the mind and forces the performer unconsciously to give an extra compensative pressure to the weaker fingers, according as he detects by his ear that they require it.

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This equalizing of the tone by pressure serves again to illustrate how the theory of its administration through the forearm, working upon the fingers, establishes absolute control of the muscles, not so much by its direct action on the fingers as by its indirect stimulus to the mind, which through it becomes conscious that it has work to do, and is alert to command the muscles properly.

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Later on it will be seen how vital a part of piano technique this control of the muscles by the mind is, constituting, as it does, the principle upon which is based the imparting of light and shade, gradations of expression and tempo, in fact the life which changes the sounds of the mechanical instrument into music.

Scales should be played every day and in all tonalities. Upon the black notes the fingers may be slightly extended, as it will be found difficult to keep them quite as rounded as on the white ones, owing to the lack of space. Finally, it is important in practicing scales that they should be played absolutely correctly, therefore it is always best to practise each hand separately.

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