Old School Piano Teacher Monday, Apr 27 2009
Uncategorized 12:49 am
Playing Accents Tuesday, Apr 21 2009
Uncategorized 9:16 pm
So you’ve passed the first stage of learning piano: you can read notes, play a few songs–maybe even with hands together, and you’ve learned the symbols for loud (f) and soft (p).
Now it’s time to give the songs a little personality. That’s where staccatos and accents come in. At this point things can sometimes get overwhelming. You start to feel like there are too many instructions to keep track of at once. Don’t worry, after a while that feeling goes away.
It’s like when you learned to drive a car. You had to remember everything consciously: foot on the brake, move into drive, foot off the break and onto the gas, check your mirrors, put your blinker on, pull onto the street, etc. But now, do you think about any of those things? No! It just happens automatically.
This will happen to you in your piano studies as well. At first, you’ll have to have a lot of patience with yourself as you try to get all the notes right, all the dynamics (louds & softs), all the rhythm…and oh, while you’re at it, can you add some accent here and a little staccato there?!
Ok, some of you may need to know: What is an accent?
An ACCENT (>) written over a note means to play the note “with emphasis”. This means that the accented note will end up being slightly louder than all the notes around it. Just remember that when you play a note with emphasis, it’s easy to forget to go back to normal with the notes that come after. That’s why I’ve noticed that a lot of times there needs to be almost more focus on making sure the notes around the accented note are not emphasized. Especially when you’re a beginner. If you play an accented note with emphasis, and then accidentally play a few other normal notes with emphasis, it cancels out the emphasis you were supposed to have: the accented note won’t stick out over the rest. Make sense?
Also, we always hear how music is a language. Well, adding an accent to a note is very similar to something we might do when we communicate with each other. “I am not going to do that again” has an accent over the “not”, and “What if we both washed the dishes” would have an accent over the “both”. It naturally that when we communicate, whether it’s through words or music, that some words or notes need emphasis over the rest. When you add accents in your music, you are communicating more to your listener–and making what you say in the music more interesting.
Hopefully, this post has made you well informed on what to do when you see an accent mark. Check out my following post on the staccato music symbol for more information about reading music notation.
Playing Staccato Tuesday, Apr 21 2009
Uncategorized 9:14 pm
The STACCATO (.) written over a note means to play the note short and detached. When you play a staccato note, lift your finger quickly after you press the note down to make it as short of a sound as possible. It helps to think or say “up, up, up…” every time you play a stacatto note to help you remember to raise your finger “up”, releasing the key, as soon as you press it down. One thing to note is that when you play staccato notes, it creates a second of silence in between each of the notes. That’s what makes the notes fit the description of “detached”.
It’s important to warn you of accidentally increasing tempo when you play staccato notes. Often, when my students first learn staccato, they get uncomfortable with the idea of letting there be silence in between notes and try to compensate by quickly pressing down a new note before any silence can take place. This ends up almost doubling the speed they are supposed to play! And it completely defeats the purpose because half of the concept of staccato is to create notes that are detached–so by that definition they have to have silent space in between each note.
I’ve found through trial and error that the students who I have add staccatos, accents, and other notation the very first time they play the song always remember it, and the students who wait to add them until after they know the piece have a harder time remembering to do it. So my advice would be to start playing them right away, when you first learn a song, and make your life easier.
Playing Rhythmically Wednesday, Apr 8 2009
Uncategorized 11:25 am
I know, I know, we all want to be able to sit down and play a piece of music for the first time effortlessly, don’t we?
Well I often find that in the eagerness students feel to rush to the finish line, they are tempted to take short cuts along the way—shortcuts that only end up pushing the finish line farther away. And one of the first items that gets thrown to the wayside (besides sightreading–don’t even get me started there!) is RHYTHM.
Unless you grew up with musicians or are one of the few who just have rhythm in your blood, it may not come naturally. You probably won’t automatically have an inner beat that you can sync all of your music notes to when you first get started. It also may not be easy to understand how rhythm is broken down at first. But don’t skip this part! If you do you’ll just spend the rest of your piano career compensating for the lack of foundation.
Even though you may not understand rhythm as a performer in the beginning, you definitely already understand it as a listener–whether you know it or not. When you listen to your favorite Killers hit, I’m sure you find yourself either bobbing your head or downright jumping up and down to the “pulse” of the music. If this pulse didn’t happen at exactly the same time every time–like a heart beating or a clock ticking–it would be pretty hard to bob to right? Well, that continuous pulse creates a “tempo”–the speed at which you play a piece of music.
I’m sure a lot of you know that, but I find that in both the beginning and intermediate stages of my students learning process, tempo is often thrown out the window. Just remember, you have to pick one speed and stick to it. The problem is, even though we may recognize a steady tempo in the songs on our ipod, we may not have the ability to create a steady tempo ourselves without a little practice. This is where a metronome comes in–that little machine that provides you with a continuous clicking/beeping sound that you can sync your notes to.
So there’s my first piece of advice:
USE A METRONOME! It can be hard to use at first, I know, but the good news is you can mostly use the metronome as training wheels until you can “ride the bike” all by yourself. As you get more advanced, you will develop an internal pulse that you always feel, and you can then sync your music to your own inner tempo. After that point you will use the metronome mainly as a reference for different bpm (beats per minute).
My next bit of advice is a possibly painful truth:
YOU MUST COUNT! Again, you will not have to count every note you play for the rest of your life. But you have to earn the right to be able to stop counting. Don’t skip this part or you will just always play incorrect rhythms-it’s not worth it! And it’s not hard to do–it’s like remembering to brush your teeth…something easy that just requires a little discipline.
Here’s the basic guidline: anything that is one beat or longer (quarter notes through whole notes) can be counted using numbers only. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Any rhythms using eighth notes should be counted as 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &. Using sixteenth notes? You must count in 1 e & a 2 e & a 3 e & a 4 e & a–or whatever method for splitting a beat into 4 parts that you’ve been taught.
Count this way OUT LOUD every time you practice your piece during the first week. You may think you can count in your head, but it’s a funny thing–time does not always move the same way in our minds as it does out loud, and often you will not be keeping even time.
After you’ve practice the piece counting out loud for your first week, you probably will have memorized the rhythm and should be able to play it in rhythm without counting. Again, don’t skip that part! I’m sure a lot of you have already noticed: if you learn the rhythm wrong on a song the first time, it takes 4 times as long to learn it correctly than if you’d just learned it right to begin with!
Ok, now that you know some steps to take to rhythmic freedom, let’s go over some common rhythm-related bad habits:
1) Rushing during the easy parts:
You’ve all done it, you’ve gotten the first 2 lines of the song down perfectly (because you didn’t take my advice in “the best approach to your practice sessions” -http://mypianoteacher.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/the-best-approach-to-your-practice-sessions/) and now you rush through the part you know and then slow down drastically when you get to the part you don’t know. This is bad. Make sure you only play the song as fast as you can play the hardest part of the piece. You will learn the piece faster if you keep a slow, steady tempo than if you constantly slow down and speed up.
2) Rushing during the slower parts:
Don’t rush when you get to slower parts of the song just because there are less notes in each measure. I’ve notice a lot of students doing this even when they’ve finished the piece. It’s very anxiety-inducing for the listener to listen to a piece that feels like it’s speeding up and slowing down. We need a steady tempo. Imagine your favorite rock hit being played at an uneven tempo–how would you know when to bob?
3) Accidentally shortening the longer notes:
Often I find that half notes (2 beats), dotted half notes (3 beats) and whole notes (4 beats) are cut short. After you’ve followed my initial advice to count EVERYTHING when you first start playing and have graduated to being able to mostly “feel” the rhythm, you probably will still have to count the longer notes. It’s just too easy to cut them short.
4) Trying to put 4 beats in every measure when there are only supposed to be 3:
When you’re a beginner, you’re mostly playing songs that have 4 beats in every measure. That’s the most common time signature and most students already have a feel for it. So watch out when you start learning pieces with only 3 beats in the measure. About 60% of the time, I find the students trying to make the last note in each measure 1 beat longer, just so they can force the measures to have 4 beats and turn the song into the feel that their used to.
So watch out for this! Even if you’re counting 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, along with the music, you could still be doing it wrong–I’ve caught a lot of students counting to 3 like they’re supposed to–but saying the 3 longer (“one, two, three-ee, one, two, three-ee”)–essentially adding a 4th beat!
Tricky business huh? But don’t worry, if you’re conscious of the possible problems I’ve noted here, you will be able to prevent the mistakes. A big part of learning rhythm is understanding what the pitfalls are and avoiding them right from the start. It’s much harder to correct later after bad habits have developed. So make sure you take note of this advice and you’ll be fine!
Moving a Piano: Be careful please! Monday, Apr 6 2009
Uncategorized 8:30 pm
I just read an article by Australian pianist, Ruth Searle, about moving a piano. In my last post I was encouraging a do-it-yourself attitude to those who would like to get a cheap piano out of the classifieds or craigslist.com, so I thought I’d better include this checklist for moving a piano safely in case any of you decide to do so.
Pianos differ greatly in size and weight. Some can be incredibly heavy-up to 1000 lbs for some grand pianos! So proceed with caution before moving a piano and follow these steps from Ruth:
“If you need to move a piano, hopefully you’ll have professional
help available. If you decide to ask friends, you will have to give
them very clear instructions to avoid inflicting damage to bodies
and objects.
Move a Piano Within a Room
1. Make sure the piano you want to move is easily accessible from
all sides.
2. Make sure the new location you have chosen is suitable for the
piano. Do not move it into cold drafts or close to heating devices.
3. Lower the lid and lock it before you start moving.
4. Position at least one person on each end of the piano if you are
moving an upright piano.
5. Move the piano endways, not sideways. 6. Make sure you do not
bend your back when handling the piano to avoid severe back strain
or injury. Lift with your knees bent and your back straight.
7. Be certain there are no obstacles in the way the piano is
moving.
8. Be careful not to strain the legs of the piano if you have to
move it on carpeting or over a threshold.
9. Move the piano slowly and carefully, just a few inches at a
time.
10. Put at least three persons around a grand piano, one at each
leg.
11. Take enough weight off the casters to make it roll more easily,
but do not lift it off the floor.
12. Make sure you lift the casters over bumps in the floor, one leg
at a time.
Warnings: Because most of the weight of an upright piano is located
toward its back, it does tilt over easily. When moving it away from
a wall, be absolutely sure no one is standing behind it. Spinets
and console pianos have thin front legs that can break off easily
if caught. Tip the piano back very slightly as you roll it to avoid
damage. “
