Piano Video Lesson: Should You Play Your Melody Notes Slightly Late?

I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com.

The question today is, should you play your melody notes slightly late? Now you might wonder, what am I talking about? You have to play in rhythm, don't you? Well, what I'm talking about is something extremely subtle.

It's an expressive element to playing mostly in Romantic period music.

And it used to be much more popular in the early part of the 20th century.

I'm going to exaggerate by playing every single melody note late in the famous E flat nocturne of Chopin.

Now first I'm going to play it straight where the notes are played exactly together. Then I'm going to play it with all the melody notes slightly after the bass notes and listen to the difference. Once again, first, playing spot on, hands perfectly together.

So, that's playing the hands perfectly together. Now I'm going to delay the right hand notes ever so slightly on every single time the hands play together and listen to the difference in the sound.

That's excessive, but there is a certain beauty to it. Now you might wonder why that would even make any sense at all. And there actually is a physical reason why this makes some sense if done in a very subtle manner.

The sound waves of low notes are slower than the sound waves of high notes.

Therefore, the high notes will reach you just a fraction of a second sooner than low notes when they're played precisely together. It takes a little time for the low notes to actually swell. Listen just to the sound of one note, a low note, and listen to it. It takes a moment for it to get to full volume compared to high notes. The high notes are right there.

But more than that, it creates an expressiveness. Now when it's done the way I did it just now, it's excessive and it's mannerism that becomes predictable and it's distracting from the music.

But if you just do it occasionally on certain notes to add an expressive element, you can end up with something like this, which could be quite beautiful.

You notice at the end I did it just a little bit over here.

Instead of playing them together, perfectly together.

And slightly, slightly off.

But you don't want to make every single note slightly off because just as a mannerism, just a slight bit, a touch, it's like a little bit of seasoning, a little spice in a dish can go a long way. But if you use too much, it takes away, you can't appreciate all the subtle flavors of the cooking.

It's the same thing with an expressive device like this. Listen to some early 20th century great pianists and this expressive device was, for today's standards, was certainly overused. But you'll listen to pianists today and they still will utilize this technique to one extent or another.

And the only time it becomes offensive to my ears anyway is when it's predictable. If it's done right, you don't even notice it's happening. And that is when you know you're doing too much is if you're waiting for the next note to be delayed. But if it just comes as a moment of ah, then you know you're spot on with this expressive device of delaying melody notes slightly so that you get this expressiveness in your playing. Try it out for yourself and see how it works. I'm very interested in what all of you think about this. Leave it here in the comments of livingpianos.com and on YouTube. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is your online piano resource, livingpianos.com, since 2006. Hope you're enjoying this. We'll see you again next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/should-you-play-your-melody-notes-slightly-late/

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