Short, serious reads on piano technique, interpretation, and the patient work of playing well.
Showing 1–18 of 107 posts
How to apply piano technique to pieces: skills practised one by one don't come together by themselves. Take one phrase and ask one question each time through: where the phrase starts and ends, the tension toward its gravity point, the balance between the hands.
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How to play octaves on piano without tension: when the wrist locks to hold the stretch, the hand tires and the sound turns flat and heavy. Feel the stretch inside the lower arm, keep the wrist level and free, and work a page of octaves in divisions, relaxing your muscles for a split second between them without losing the shape of your hand.
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How to play polyrhythms on piano: set the tempo, tap the rhythm hands separate on the closed lid, and play steadily from one meeting note to the next, metronome on and then off. In the most complex rhythms, feel the movement until the hands come together again.
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How to keep tempo on piano: find the places where the tempo changes without your choice. Often it is slower where you feel unsure and faster where you feel safe. Work the difficult place on its own until it goes in tempo, connect it back in the same tempo, and take freedom from there.
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How to improve tone on piano: work the fingers loud and strong, without force, with the sound picture in mind from early on. Then search for that sound with the arm movement, work it into the fingers, play strong again and work back to it.
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Slowly it works every time, at tempo it misses. Practise slowly with the same intention as at a fast tempo: keep the divisions, the active speed of the fingers and the arm movements also in the slow tempo.
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Some passages stay unreliable for weeks. The notes are learned, and still it misses. Before you repeat it again, look at the divisions and the shape of your hand.
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The quiet tone turns uncertain, and one group of notes comes out uneven. Soft playing asks more from the fingers, not less.
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The notes before and after are fine. Mostly the move in between was barely practised. So the hand arrives late, and the fingers grab at the keys.
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I listen to how a note ends as much as to how it starts. With the pedal up and with the pedal down, how you leave the key is part of the sound.
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The notes are right, the marked dynamics are right, and the phrase still doesn't pull anywhere. I hear it a lot. Mostly the arm gives every note the same pressure.
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The notes are there and the tempo is there. Two minutes into the passage the fingers start to miss, the line turns uneven, and by the end of the page the hand is tired. Most students call that stamina and play the passage again. The tiredness is real. The explanation is the part that is wrong.
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Thumb on E, second finger on F♯, third on G♯, fourth on A♯, fifth on B. The long fingers land on the black keys, which sit further into the keyboard and higher, and the short thumb and fifth stay in front on white. C major is the easiest key to read, and that is why beginners start there. To play, B major is the easier one, and that was Chopin's answer.
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You lean the hand toward the melody and the accompaniment turns uneven, or a note comes out weak instead of soft. That is a finger independence problem, and it is trainable.
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A tempo change that arrives from nowhere sounds like a hesitation, and the listener wonders whether you forgot the notes. Real rubato is prepared: the notes leading in already tell the ear that something is about to give. And it moves in both directions — you can take a little time toward the note the phrase pulls to, or you can go toward it slightly in tempo. Both make that note more important.
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You know the passage. You have played it a hundred times, and notes still go missing. Mostly the brain is running one note behind the hands — which is why a memorised passage still breaks in exactly the same way as one you are reading. The repair has an order: the next note, then the next two, then the whole phrase before you play its first note.
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A passage that feels tight is often not the cause of the tightness. The arm carried it in from an earlier section, and by the time the difficult bars arrive the movement is already partly locked. Start several sections earlier, stop, feel the arm, release — then play.
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After weeks away, the hands feel like someone else's, and reaching straight for the pieces you played in June only stumbles. Start one step earlier — slow, clear finger work to bring the hand back into form first, so the music has a working hand to sit on when it returns.
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