Music Video Lesson: How to Connect Sections of Music

Hi, welcome to virtualsheetmusic.com and livingpianos.com. I am Robert Estrin with a viewer question, which is how to connect sections in music. Now, recently I did a video on the band-aid approach, and I got a viewer asking me, "Well, what about... you fix all the problems, how do you put them all together?" Which got me to thinking, this would be a perfect subject, how to connect sections in music. And there's a lot more to this than you might think. So I'm using for an example, Clementi's Sonatina op. 36 no. 1 in C major. And I'm gonna play the first little section and then I'm going to explain how you might approach connecting a particularly difficult part of it.

So that's the exposition of the first movement. Now you notice in the very first section, there's the part that's a little bit difficult. Lot of students have difficulty with that one part, so you might practice a bunch on that. You might first practice it in thirds in the right hand and then perhaps plays the hands together again, with thirds on the right hand, then break it up as it's written. And you might even work with a metronome, increasing the speed, finally getting it all ironed out with various practice techniques and I could show you other techniques to learn this by the way.

You might think now you've got it. Let's see you do it three times in a row or five times in a row. You think, "Okay, I'm gonna start at the beginning and see if I can do it." And guess what happens. You get to it and you miss it again. Why should this happen? Well, you see, the problem is that if you've always missed it before and maybe you've played it a hundred times and never quite had it solid, even though you've played it five times in a row and you think you've got it, when you get there, you're going to forget to play it the right way because you're so used to playing it with, you know, sloppily. So you must first, here's the secret, start just a little bit before it. So instead of going all the way back to the beginning, start just right before it.

You might even just take a little hesitation at first so you realize, "Ah, this is the part I've practiced". Like this. That moment, just to relax and realize that yes, this is the part I can play perfectly five times in a row instead of just continuing on the way you have so many times before not playing cleanly there. Now after you get rid of that little gap and you can play it smoothly starting just before, then you go back to the beginning. And you might be surprised to find that even though you've played from right before many times perfectly just like you had just that section, now you've connected with the previous section, but when you start at the beginning guess what's going to happen. The first couple of times you play it, you might not have it smooth and it might not be accurate, because you're still used to missing it starting from the beginning.

So the secret to connecting sections is to first iron out the problem; second go back just before it until it's smooth, comfortable, accurate, and reliable, then go back further to either the beginning of the section or the beginning of the piece. I suggest stopping just before the new section many times to get comfortable with realizing you're there. Sometimes another technique is to start on that very first note after the section before, like this. So you play that note but don't continue on. It gives you the opportunity to relax so you're ready to go on, and this is how you solve the problem of integrating corrections within your music.

Just correcting is not enough. Remember, get it solid first, go back just a little bit, get that solid, then go back to the beginning of the whole section or movement and you will be able to integrate your corrections into your music. Thanks so much for joining me, Robert Estrin, here at virtualsheetmusic.com and livingpianos.com.

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