Transcripts
1. An introduction : Hi there, I'm Ben and I'm a musician living and
working in London. And I teach piano and singing and work with various choirs. And I want these put
together a course about how you express
yourself on the piano. And this requires a certain
amount of technical ability. So I'm gonna go through
some technical exercises, can look at some
scale, some arpeggios. But then I'm going to
look at a specific piece of Brahms, the Internet. So in a major talk you through
some of the areas which you might need to work
on to express some of the emotions
within the piece. I hope you find this
course useful and this is towards the more
advanced level of playing. So I hope that some
of the tips and tricks are useful for
you along the way.
2. A technical exercise : So one of the very
first things to get is to encourage the
independence in the fingers. I've got a little
exercise to do this. And if you take five notes
on the piano and he put all five fingers down at the same time. That's
your starting point. So for this example, I'm going to take C, D, E, F, and G, going to place my
five fingers down. And I'm very slowly, but quite a measured way. I'm going to alternate between the thumb and the second finger, thumb and the second finger. So D, C, and D. The most important
thing is that you keep all the other fingers down
while you're doing this, you don't start lifting them up. Remember all five fingers down? And slowly keeping 34.5 down. We're just alternating
between c and d. Once you've got that
pretty confident, then we want to go between the second and the third
finger, D and E. And then between E and
F, Then between f and g. Let me show you that again.
I'll show you a close up. So have a go at that yourself. You see the key thing
is that you keep all five fingers down as much as possible as
you're playing this. You don't want the fingers
to start creeping up. I often see that with younger players and those a little bit newer to the piano, that the fourth and
the fifth fingers slightly up and you lose a
bit of contact with the keys. I think one of the
key things is to, if you'll pardon the pun, is to keep in contact with the keys. So I always encourage you if you're holding an
orange and that gives you a nice curve to the fingers
and then the fingers just go down over the keys
that were never splaying, peeling off from the keys. Have a little go
at that exercise. Once you've got a
confident in one hand, then try the same thing. But in the other hand,
doesn't really matter which five notes on the piano you use. But this is a really
good exercise just to warm the fingers up and just to start to encourage that better finger independence. If you find the tempo
was a little bit quick, then by all means, slow it right down and try something
a bit more deliberate. Young gun. The key thing is that
you try to pick a speed that you can maintain all the
way through the exercise. So you're not
stopping and starting
3. Scales : Our scales. Here we go. So many students are really fearful of scales that I've got to
practice my scales. I've forgotten to do it,
but they really are one of the most important things about encouraging fluency
in your playing. Because when you're
playing a piece, you want to be able to shape
the piece as you wish. You don't want to be limited by a lack of technical ability. So the more practice you do
with your scales, the better. Now this Brahms into
matters in a major. So I'm going to take an, a
major scale as my example. There's various ways you
can practice your skills. Here's just a
couple of examples. You can just have
a normal scale. Now, we give her a
nice evenness of tone. So we didn't want
any nights to be louder or softer than others. We want to get a nice evenness
throughout the scale. Well, my practice that is
naturally at a slower tempo. You can muster that I then
tried dotted rhythm again. Dotted with them can
encourage strength, especially in the fourth, the fifth, third,
fourth, fifth fingers. So really useful to try dotted. Well, the key things here
is maintaining the speed. And in order to do that, a metronome is a really
good tool to set your metronome at a
tempo that you can maintain all the way
through the scale. Dd, DD, DD, whatever
that might be. And then gradually work to start to increase
the temperature. What you really don't want to be doing is sort of stopping, starting because then you're reinforcing those
errors along the way. So, choose, choose a
really sensible tempo, slightly slower perhaps than
you think is necessary. One other idea is that a scale. While we don't want to pull
the tempo round too much, it is nice to have a
sense of direction. And what can work is
crescendoing towards the top. And then diminuendo,
doing as you come down, you give it that bit of shape, grow to the top, and then come right away. To try to practice you
tried it various tempos. One more thing to think about, Let's have a look at
some minor scale. So let's take a harmonic minor. So now I'm assuming here that you've got kind of
facility with these scales. If you're still at
the stage of learning the fingering, then that's fine. It's good to have a
book in front of you. I think with scales,
a lot of students, their attempts to play
the scales without any sort of concept
of the fingering. But you want to be able
to rely upon learning the fingering correctly
the first time. Because then you'll
always remember it. If you're a bit vague or you're making it up
as you go along, you won't be able to rely on the fingers when
you're under pressure, if you're performing
in a concert or if you're performing
in a recording. So double-check the, double-check
their fingers there. I mean, for a harmonic
minor, for instance, we've got 1231234 with a fourth finger
being up on G-sharp. The harmonic always has that
slightly wider interval between the sixth
degree and then the raised seventh to
every harmonic has that, has that sort of idea that, but yeah, I think that's pretty much it about playing scales. One of the danger
of moments is where the thumb crosses under. You can often get
a bit of a batch. So just be really
careful with that. Maybe preempt it a little bit. By. You want to make the thumb move under sorts of as early
as you possibly can. So as soon as he played
the third finger, the thumb is moving right underneath the C-sharp though if we're talking about a major. So be aware of the
thumb movement. In order to do
that, you actually need to create a little bit of space with the hand
raising up a little bit. So yet create a little bit of
space than the thumb moves under, especially in arpeggios. And we'll go on to
that in a minute. You've got to be careful when
the thumb goes down that it doesn't it doesn't sound louder
than all the other keys. Okay. So just being careful
of when the thumb is playing. Just to the nature of the physiognomy of
the hands as it were
4. Arpeggios: So our next topic
is on arpeggios. And arpeggios are equally important really to
scales in terms of the, the flexibility and the fluidity
with which you can play. So if we look at the
a major arpeggio, a C-sharp E in each octave. The hand naturally has to turn in order to get
the thumb under. Again, there's quite a big, That's quite a big motion. So slow practice, also staccato
practice can be useful. Try that with a left-hand
and forgive me. Bit of staccato practice. You can try dotted as well. The good thing about
dotted practices, it gives a little bit
more tight thinking time on certain notes, allowing you just to process more difficult moments in the music and take a
bit more time over it. Once you've done dotted
long shorts like this, flip it so it's short, long, short, long, short long. See the two versions.
Who got done, done, done, done, done, done that, and that can just shine light on a different moment
in the scale where the arpeggio rather whether
you're filing the thumb, the movement of the
thumb, the more tricky thing or something else. So just practicing these in different patterns
can be useful. Obviously put them
hands together. That was lucky. I
thought that was going to go wrong,
but no, it didn't. Don't be afraid of
making mistakes. We learn from mistakes in these, in these arpeggios
and these scales. So be prepared along the way for it to be a
slightly difficult journey. Now, I'm only
thinking in a major and a minor because
of the Internet. So in a Brahms but actually unique facility
really in all keys. And what I suggest
is you look at the key of the piece
in which you're performing and
rehearsing rather, and get accustomed with the scales and
arpeggios for that key. Or perhaps look at any
moments within the, within the work itself that causing technical
issues and take them apart. It can be useful actually
go through a piece and just highlight sections that you're struggling
with technically because then when you come
to do your practice, you can be a bit more focused
and kind of hone in on those specific areas
rather than just sort of playing the piece
from beginning to end. And I think we're all guilty of doing it always
picking the book up and just playing from the first section,
then it goes wrong. Then we go off and
we've made a cup of tea or something, say, no, just try to be really specific with your practice
to keep improving there
5. Phrasing in Brahms : So now we're on to the meat
of the subject and we're looking at Brahms's
wonderful intimate. So in a, that Opus
118 number two, there were some absolutely
magical moments in this piece, especially for the
phrasing of the shaping. And this is what it's all about, but you can't just learn the phrasing from the
pieces he got to be playing, the technical exercises, the scales and
arpeggios in order to allow you to shake
pieces as you really wish. You don't want to be limited by lack of technique
in one area. I'm not saying that to
discourage you just to say that it will make
your life easier if you're working
on the technique alongside learning new
repertoire as well. So let's look at the
beginning of this brown. I'll just play you
a few bars of it. There's a PDF somewhere down below if you want
to follow along. Now one of the key things
for me is that the first two right-hand notes, I see them as not pizza. Lot army are growing into the
first full bar there rather than just doesn't
quite work as well. This figure comes
back all the time. I suggest you take
the melody out, play it, get used to it. Here It's sealed
and nuance in it. You see the start of
the second phrase that we start piano. The second phrase, the
end of the first line is Mike piano dolce,
quiet and sweetly. We find a different
color there and we have the addition
of this G-natural. That's really got to fade away. They see the end of
the second line. Brands. Thinking about these long phrase shapes
and on the piano, that can be quite a
difficult thing to do. But as you, as, for instance, on the first line, as you entered the
third full bar, we've got a nice crescendo. Towards the top of the phrase. Play right into the keys
at that particular moment. Rather than just using the
weight of the fingers, we're actually starting to
use the weight of the arms. Now, we never want to go just
down like this on the keys. We want to the cultivate
a nicer sound. On each note. There should be a movement with the
wrist down and up, down and up, down and up. And that just allows
us to place the notes a little bit more gracefully
rather than simply down. Yeah. Yeah, one thing that
can be utilized is to think in little circles. The phrase is actually
circular. Sort of. The note goes down then up, down, then up, down, then up. So you always have that
sense of shape to it. I'm an organist as well. And organists are
sometimes told off for being a little bit
mechanical in how they play. But on the piano
It's so important that because you get so
much nuance of tone, you can go from
the very quietest sounds to a loud sounds. We need to explore all
these, all these colors. And then we have a
pianissimo marketing dealt with the end
of the second line. So that needs to be particularly
gentle at that moment. So yeah, in terms of phrasing, I think in Brahms particularly
thinking in long, long shapes and practice
these chords slowly. So for instance, first chord. Really test yourself to go from piano, mezzo, piano, forte. Once you can confident
you can do it slowly, speed it up a bit. I know he, Brahms
hasn't asked us to be forte there in
the first full bar. But to me it's just
sort of makes sense. Also important that you know, that you've
established the tempo in your head before you start. Because what we've really
done with his dad dad, no. Yard D you're joining something
that's already moving? Yes. He joined the track. The train is coming the train is coming
from the distance. And then it gets louder and
louder and closer and closer. And we want to join and we want to be part of that process. Also take a breath
before you begin. It's so simple but so magical if you can
really crack that
6. Pedal technique : So let's talk a little
bit about pedaling. Now, pedaling is
often overlooked, but you'd have three
pedals on most pianos, the right-hand pedal
being the sustain, the left being the
soft, the inner core, and the middle of
sostenuto pedal, which can be useful, but we won't cover that as much today. So the key one I want to look at is the right-hand pedal,
the sustain pedal. And it allows you
to join phrases up, to join notes up, which is one of the key things
we're looking at today. It's getting legato, but
also to create a sort of a spoon full of texture where some of the harmonies sustain so you get
more accompaniment, accompanying figures. I suppose. One thing you want to be
careful of with the piano, with the pedal rather is
treating it as simply on or off. It doesn't really
work like that. You have infinite degrees of
using that right hand pedal, the sustain pedal experiment
with just using 10%, 20% at the top and just
being very light with a pedal and you can
actually create quite a nice sort
of effects there. The bit of a trick
that you can sustain bass notes by half, lifting the pedal as well. And you create those
lower resonance, which can be really
useful in some pieces. So just have a, have an
experiment with that. I just show you an
example over paddling. So for instance,
if you really keep the pedal down here, it just gets really
echoey, really boomy. And it's almost to sustain this two-legged latte that just be a little bit
careful to avoid that, especially when he
gets chromatic. If we look at bar
15, for instance, how many stars to clash? So just use just a
very slight amount of pedal to sustain as
much as you need. The thing is, your ears are the best guide to how
much pedal to use. I'm of the belief that peddling, it's one of these things that
can't really be taught in a specific way because
as you're playing, you really, you're really
listening to when you want to change the pedal to
head into the next chord. And it's a sort of a connection
only you really can find. A couple of tips I can
suggest is to slow, slow right down so that you give yourself time to think
about the change of pedal. Especially if you're
new to peddling. The first reaction is put the pedal down,
pedal everything. And you see a lot of parents, they sit down at the piano and the first thing that
foot goes to the pedal, you gotta be careful
with overuse. One other thing really to
think about is that don't use it to cover up for kind
of like bad fingering. You want to be able to have
two types of Legos, Arctic, the Arctic within the fingers that you've worked
on really hard. And then also the
legato, the pedal, the pedal comes later and
it shouldn't really be a substitute for the abilities play stuff,
legato with the fingers. But let's look at
a moment that we couldn't do without the pedal. If we look at the
second full bar, this F sharp to a, you need the pedal there to
sustain those notes. Otherwise, it would just
be pretty much unplayable. So a moment like that. Obviously, we're fairly reliant, but all I would suggest
when you're playing is slow things down a little bit and you use
a little bit of pedal. The first 20%, 30%. If you find you're
pushing it right down and the harmony
solid clash, then you probably
overdoing it a little bit, be sparing, but use it as a, another color and
orchestral color to create a fuller, richer tone.
7. Dynamics and orchestral colours: Let's talk about dynamics
a little bit now, dynamics have a bit
of a bad reputation because they can take away
a bit of the musicality. Now composers such
as branches are quite specific with Dynamics. So you have a piano at the
beginning than the end of the second system called a pianissimo got
Dolce Gusto piano. The danger with piano is it
can create a very small, thin sound, and it can fuel the nervousness
about playing. If you're playing this piece
in a concert or something, and you've got this
piano and marking, your sound can be very timid and the keys can hardly go down. Try to think rather of
dynamics as of a kind, as in whatever your piano is, you're going to then mark your forte up to a bigger level. And also remember if
you're playing into a big hall through a piano, to be piano at the back, you've actually got a play
quite fully into the keys. And I'm of the belief
that you can play piano, but it can be a rich
and full sound. It's not like somebody
in the audience gonna get there decibel
meter out and say, nope, your piano was a
little bit too loud. It's not going to happen, is it? B? The really purposeful and choose good dynamic colors that suit
the space, suit the room. Obviously, if you're in
a fairly small room. So piano is going to
sound fairly big, nutshell, I'm going
to come back. But if you're on the stage at
Carnegie Hall or something, piano is going to
have to take on a whole other meaning, isn't it? So just choose really carefully. There are different kind
of orchestral colors. One thing that can
help with Dynamics is, rather than thinking in
terms of decibel level, think in terms of instrument. If you're going for a piano,
you might choose, right? I'm going to sound like
a string section here. So you trying to
effectively create that, that there's nothing quite
like a whole orchestra of strings playing a piano,
but it's intense. It's not sort of the
sounds not dead, that they've got a
vibrancy to the sound. And I think that's
quite important as we're playing piano there. And then when you
get forte coming later, you can think, right, some of the woodwinds
coming in now, or the breakeven bras
like muted brass. Think of all those different
orchestral colors, can be really fun trying
to find that on the piano. Because the piano can, the sound of it can just become a little bit one
color throughout. So try to take those
opportunities to find the orchestral
color in the work. If there's a tune, for instance, could be an oboe line or
something, or a Trump. Is it Mark orchestral
colors in the score that can help and just opens the
imagination a little bit
8. Projecting the melody chord voicing : This is the final section
of today's class, and I want to think a
bit about projecting the melody is in how we bring
the two now on the piano. This is difficult and a lot of students struggle with this. And there's no real quick fix. I'm afraid I want to say there is one of the things that can help us, The
finger independence. Remember that 90% of a piano player's wages are made with the fifth finger
of the right hand. That's where the
two normally is. If you've got a, if that's
strong and the fourth and the fifth or the right hand
are really strong fingers. Remember the exercises? You can do that
545-454-5454 regularly, then that's really going to help with something like that. So getting the strength and
the fingers really important, keeping your fingers
allows you to be more deliberate with the pressure
with which we're playing. Rather than curving up. I often see players with a fifth and the fourth
curve away from it. Then all you're
doing is he's adding extra time into your p.sit. So you've then got to add
the time, push the key down. Let me look at some
specific ideas about how you bring
the melody out. Let's take an example. Let's look at page three. The heart beats into page three. It's a beautiful melody and perhaps a slightly easier section because you've got that, you've got that
tune on it saying, what's that suitable
for? Maybe an oboe. Absolutely gorgeous.
And so anyway, you have that sort of
second theme. Is it worth? You see, we've gone into
the relative minor there, so we started in a major, but we've now we've gone
into F sharp minor. Good luck with practicing
that skill that's rather fiendish but
definitely worth doing. Now, if we look at page three, bar 58, you see we've got the indication
to use the Unicode, which is the left-hand pedals. So we put the left
hand pedal down, but still use the right hand. So important on these big
chords that we've voiced them. Now, this is about
bringing the melody out and the more difficult
sections here above 58, then I take the
right-hand on its own. I've voice each of these
chords to the fifth thing at the top of the chord
was just like a bell, a little separate, independent valve that's really
wringing out. One thing you can try is to
miss out the lower notes, but shadow them as in cover your fingers
over the lower notes. Or even play them
staccato like that. Staccato on the learners. Because what you want
to get in your head at the sensation of write this fifth thing of this
top part is the key thing. That's what I'm listening for, and that's what I'm
going to get here. You've got to be quite
strict with yourself, right? That's the bit I want here. So how am I gonna get there? So staccato, inner voices. Once you've got that,
put it all together. You might disagree.
You might think, well, I don't wanna hear that, but I want to hear
the bass part fine. I think it'd be wrong,
but that's your choice. When you have the
technical facility, you can then make the
choice and you can say, this is the bit I want here
could be an inner voice. You could find an
even interesting, more interesting color. I mean, we do sometimes as pianists resort to the top part, more top, more talk, more top. But actually sometimes
you can find those sort of more
interesting inner harmonies, the chromatic writing
and all of that. So I would say with
that last section projecting the melody, I'm afraid there isn't
really a shortcut apart from slow deliberate practice. Inner voice. Inner
voice is staccato. The top little finger
of the tune, sustained. And then gradually
start to build it up. And almost the arm is making that fifth finger
just go down a little bit more heavily to give
you a bit more sound, fair? And keeping the lower
parts more gentle
9. In conclusion: Thanks so much for spending
time with me today. I've really enjoyed
making this class and I hope that you have
found it useful. The Brahms, I hope you agree, is a beautiful pieces
intimate to be lovely, to hear some recordings of it. So if you wanted to upload a recording of it or
send me a message, I'd love to hear you play it. Do just let me know. We covered a lot of areas there. The key thing is to use the
technical exercises to feed into the learning of the
repertoire so that you're not just getting
bored with technique. You're also having fun
learning new pieces, but they're sort of coming together to keep
improving your playing. I'm just setting realistic
practice goals as well. I not playing from the
beginning of a piece through to the end four times and saying that that is
your practice done. Go through highlight
sections that a difficult, one cautionary note is that
in a concert you don't want to see all your
highlighted score with all your panic moments. So I'd photocopy, score, highlight, highlight,
highlight, work on it, and then play from
the original in the concert so that you set your mind a
little bit at rest. But as ever, thanks very
much for joining me, undo check out my other
classes if you enjoy learning more about the piano,
conducting and singing. See you again.
Ben Lewis-Smith, Musician
