Piano Video Lesson: How to Play At Your Piano Lessons

You ever notice when you go to a concert, the person gets on the piano and then they stop, they adjust, they sit, they put their hands on there, and they're looking, and you're waiting, what's going on? Do they forget the music or something? No! They're doing all the things I'm telling you. They're thinking through the music.

Robert Estrin here at LivingPianos.com. The question today is about how to play at lessons.

You know, you prepare all week, you're ready for your lesson, the moment comes and then boom! You play for your teacher and everything goes wrong and you're going, what happened here? So I'm going to give you some tips today.

Now there's a lot to this question and I'm going to first just talk about the basics, about how to play for your teacher and this applies to performance or even playing for friends. Sometimes you practice and practice and everything's going fine, you can play your piece over and over again fine and as soon as you play for somebody, everything goes wrong and you wonder, what's going on? Is there anything you can do about that? And there are a number of things you can do. Naturally, preparation is key so that you can play the piece through without stopping and you can do it successfully a number of times. So when you get to your performance at a lesson or anywhere, number one, realize a performance is nothing like playing by yourself. When you're playing at home for yourself, there's no self -awareness, you're just thinking about the music which is exactly as it should be. But when you're playing for other people, suddenly you're thinking about yourself. That self-awareness distracts you from the music. You want to stay focused on the music. Well, how can you do this? Number one, realize that when you're playing for your teacher or playing for anyone, you naturally get a little bit excited, the adrenaline is pumping, you're going to be breathing faster, your heart's going to be beating a little bit faster, even if it's only slightly, everything is elevated. So you have to combat this with relaxation. Take a deep breath.

Before you start playing, think the tempo you're going to play. Very important. Not only the beginning of the piece, but think through maybe a couple of other places. If you're playing a sonata or a sonatina, think the beginning part and then think after the double bar, after the repeat, think about maybe the hardest part and play that mentally, think about the speed and establish a speed, not just for the beginning, but think through a couple of key sections. And you know, you ever notice when you go to a concert, the person gets on the piano and then they stop, they adjust, they sit, they put their hands on there and they're looking and you're waiting, what's going on? Do they forget the music or something? No, they're doing all the things I'm telling you. They're thinking through the music. They're not going to start without thinking about it because they may take the wrong tempo. Think about this. Once you start at the wrong tempo, you are sunk. You're stuck with that tempo. What, are you going to slow down in the middle of a performance? Of course not.

So take your time establishing the speed and because your body is heightened, take it a notch slower than you just established and you might be spot on your usual tempo.

But what I'm going to talk about today is something quite different. I brought up all these other things I've just said. What I'm going to talk about today is how to approach adolescent. Let's say you have a piece you've been working on for a couple of weeks, maybe even longer than that. Maybe it's a longer piece. It's taking you a while to learn it. So you have the beginning section, you have it in great shape. You can play it up to speed and everything, but then the next section, you sort of have it, but if you take it at that speed, you're going to have a little bit of problems. And then you get to the later section that you just learned, maybe the last couple of days, and you have to take it much slower. So you're wondering what the heck are you going to do? Take the whole thing really slowly from the beginning, just so you can accommodate the part you just learned? Or maybe you want to take it at the slower speed that you have the second section, so that at least you can get through the first two sections at the same speed. Well, I'll tell you what I do with my students.

I tell them right out of the gate, I know you've been working on this. You probably have the beginning in good shape. Go ahead and for the sake of the lesson, just so that I understand how you have each section, I don't want you to just start from the beginning and gradually slow down. That would not be in anybody's best interest. But if you have a chunk of the music up to tempo, play it up to tempo. And then when you have to slow down in another section, let me know, yeah, this section I don't have up to speed, but I can play it at another speed. And play as far as you can. And then you get to the part you just learned, then maybe you have to take a much slower tempo there. That way your teacher can understand the level you have the different sections of the piece on, so they can help you appropriately. Because maybe the first section you're playing up to speed, but there are problems with how you're approaching it up to tempo that wouldn't be revealed if you played it under tempo.

And same thing with each successive section. Ask your teacher if that is what they want you to do, or if they want you to take everything at that much slower tempo, so that you don't have to change speeds along the way. Naturally in performance, you never wanna do that. But for the sake of the lesson, for your teacher to understand the work you've done and the level you have at different sections of a piece, I think it's a great way to approach the performance of a lesson. I'm interested in your opinion, what your teachers have you do at lessons. You can leave the comments here at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource, or right here at YouTube. Thanks again for all you subscribers, ringing the bell and the thumbs up. Help spread these videos to more people. We want piano to grow in America, right? So that's your job. My job is making these videos for you. There's more to come. Thanks again for joining me. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/how-to-play-at-your-piano-lessons/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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