How to Improve Tone on Piano
The notes are all there, and still the passage doesn't sound the way you want. To improve your tone on piano, I start with the fingers: loud and strong, with the sound I want already in my mind.
I was sitting in a practice room in China. Next to me in a room was practising some young girl. She repeated one Schubert passage for hours, loud, with strong fingers.
Good for the technique. I thought: work also a little bit on the sound.
Some piano shops there have a lot of rooms they rent out, "with some kind of completely banged pianos. Because they play with very strong fingers."
She was doing the first step right. I would only add the sound, and early. I told this story before, talking with the painter Zumi Rash about music, painting and the colours of sound.
Strong Fingers for a Better Tone
Do you need strong fingers for a good tone? Yes. In the first phase it's important to work also loud and strong, to get these fingers right. Strong fingers give more control on the sound. So that's the first step.
Loud doesn't mean forced: "We don't force, so we don't use force. We do it in a natural way, but we try to play forte in a natural manner."
I work like this myself. When a passage "doesn't sound as good as I wish, I always make first preparatory, first phase exercises, with lifting the fingers. And then it starts to feel better. And then I start to add the arm movements. And then it usually goes very good."
For "a lot of articulation and brilliance," where "I hear every note," I raise the fingers. Horowitz, for example, lifts the fingers quite a lot. And the lifted work prepares the fingers "even if later on you decide to go more close to the keys."
Sound Picture and Tone Color
Work the fingers lifting each note playing strong, yet, keep the sound picture in mind very early on.
Start from the sound as soon as possible. With a piece that has great recordings, that is easy: listen to great pianists such as Gilels, Richter or Martha Argerich. In the score you read what the composer wants.
All the great pianists have their own individual sound. When you listen to Rubinstein, or you listen to Horowitz, "you only need one chord to know who whose chord is whose."
In a live lesson I compared music to a painting: "There are many layers. The only difference with painting is sound, colours. And we can only experience them in time."
Searching for the Sound With Arm Movement
In the second phase the arm movements come in, and you can still work louder. But with the movement you search for the sound.
In Super Fingers I show it on Burgmüller Op. 100 No. 1. I sight-read it in that lesson, on purpose, so my fingers were "a little bit uncomfortable with it." After the first phase: "I'm going to search for the arm movement. Okay, start low and high, okay, like a wave." Still mezzoforte, not soft.
The arm is not the only thing searching. With my teacher, Avi Schönfeld, let's say you are learning a Chopin Nocturne: he could transform a passage in such a way that the sound is just so beautiful. And to search for these sounds "has everything to do with the arm, with the concentration of the fingers, the form in the hand, and the little micro-techniques that are involved."
You can watch it happen in a real piece, Kabalevsky's Lullaby, Op. 27. "This lullaby is like a dream." On one portato note I say: "Search for the sound, deep, this one." I name the sound, deep, and then the arm goes looking for it: "go up and down, and up, and then up, one movement."
The sound in your mind is what the search follows. I describe that kind of searching in finding the right technique for a passage: with a direction, instead of guessing in the dark.
Building Tone Into the Fingers
Once you find it, you work on it until it sits more and more in the fingers. More and more: one good try doesn't put it there.
So then you can actually work with the movement, playing strong, and then working back again to your sound where you want. The strong playing happens with the movement you found.
Try this
Take a phrase you're not happy with yet.
- Work it loud and strong first, lifting each finger.
- Hear in your mind the sound you want: singing, brilliant, warm, dark.
- With the arm movement, search for that sound, slowly, in small parts.
- Ask yourself every time: does it sound what I like to hear?
- Repeat it until it sits in the fingers.
- Play it strong again with that movement, and work back to your sound.
In the Kabalevsky the question is: does that portato note sound deep? When the balance between the hands doesn't sound right: "One of the good ways is to increase the contrast, so exaggerate it."
Listening for Tone Quality
- Does the thumb give an accent? "Sometimes they are too strong." Give a little bit less, "so that all the fingers are equally strong, but all strong. Not equally soft."
- Do some notes sound empty or shallow, or not come out at all? Then the sound is not concentrated.
- Should it be crystalline or warmer? More concentrated fingers, with an even more flexible arm, give the glass sound you like sometimes in Scriabin. "Every passage, every note, needs its own individual sound color."
- Does a repeat sound exactly like the first time?
That last one came up in a live lesson, with a student's Heller étude, Op. 125 No. 2: "forte, but the second time, then a little bit more intense, not two times exactly the same." Otherwise, "it will be mechanical."
Playing on Different Pianos
A student asked me whether you have to play deeper or louder in a hall. "I never play louder in the hall." In a normal music hall, you "always can hear clearly, also very soft."
The piano is another matter. Some pianos, you try to play soft and it never sounds really soft. "And you have pianos, you can bang very loud and there's almost no sound come out."
So on every piano: "Listen and try to look for the sound while you're playing."
In short
Hear the sound before you can play it, and keep hearing it while your fingers work loud and strong. When the arm movements come in, use them to look for that sound. Stay with it until your fingers find it without searching, then play strong once more and come back to it.
Where It Shows Up
"Sometimes someone can have an excellent technique and have completely nothing to say in music, it's empty."
In Super Fingers the first phase builds strong fingers, and the second phase adds the arm movements to search for the sound. In the live lessons you can bring me your phrase, and we search for it together.
