Piano Video Lesson: How to Orchestrate Your Playing

Think of your piano music as being orchestrated because after all that's exactly what the piano offers. That's what is so great about the piano is that you can play compositions that would take a whole orchestra. Take advantage of that and discover the sounds and sonorities you can achieve in your playing.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, I'm Robert Estrin telling you how dynamics are like orchestration in your music.

You know piano is an amazing instrument because you have all the parts of a whole orchestra right under your fingertips and you want to think of it that way. You want to think of your playing as orchestrating the sounds, getting the quality of different sections of an orchestra, the strings, the brass, the percussion, all of it.

And by thinking of your music that way it could be richly rewarding for the audience to hear these kind of dramatic changes of dynamics and total colors.

I'm going to demonstrate this by using the beginning of Mozart Sonata in C minor, K 457. First I'm just going to play you the beginning of the exposition so you can get a taste for what I'm talking about.

Now this is a really good example because of the stark changes of dynamics.

I imagine the very beginning opening statement as the full orchestra, strings, brass, everything.

And then maybe you just have woodwinds.

Then again full orchestra.

Then once again just delicate winds.

Then this hit will be the orchestra with the brass and everything.

Then just strings.

Brass again, strings, brass, woodwinds, brass, full orchestra.

Think of your music as orchestrating each section.

Get a different tonal color, different balance in your playing.

And this goes for every music composition you play. Some can be more subtle than others.

Not all music is going to change this often from one texture and one sound and one dynamic to another.

But whenever you're playing think of orchestrating. So this is also true if you're playing a texture I think there's so many pieces I can demonstrate. If you were playing for example I'm going to use Beethoven's Pathetique Sonata, the second movement.

What melody could be one instrument? So this is not changing orchestrations by each bar or each measure or each note but having a different idea of the strata of instruments. So that the treble might be, what instrument, maybe a clarinet.

So this is maybe a clarinet.

Down here cello, cellos.

And then in the middle here violins and violas.

Probably violas.

So you try to get different sounds on all the different lines you're playing.

So there's two aspects of orchestration. There's orchestrating in different sections dynamically and there's orchestrating by which line of music you're playing.

Think of your piano music as being orchestrated because after all that's exactly what the piano offers. That's what is so great about the piano is that you can play compositions that would take a whole orchestra. Take advantage of that and discover the sounds and sonorities you can achieve in your playing.

You can leave your comments here at livingpianos .com and YouTube where if you haven't subscribed yet this is a great time to ring the bell, thumbs up and once again I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPiano's your online piano resource.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-orchestrate-your-playing/

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