Piano Video Lesson: The 20 Skill Sets You Need at the Piano

Octave technique, you hear people play rousing octaves sometimes.

And you wonder how is that done? Well, once again, essential technique of using the wrist, which I've got videos on that for you as well.

I'm Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com with such an important subject, the 20 skill sets you need at the piano.

You know, I went through this list and really tried to get the absolute essentials for you. And you can check to see how many of these skill sets you've got and wait until you see to the end because there are some skill sets you might not have thought of that could be really important for you to take your piano playing to the next level.

I'm going to start with the most important thing for classical players and something that's great for anybody, which is memorization. Now you may think, oh, you just have to be born with a great memory, but it's not true. There's a system of memorization that can be taught. And if you have never been trained in this, I've got videos in this, go to the description because for most of these are going to be resources, additional resources. I'm just going to tell you about the skill sets today, but we can go deeper into this for you. Memorization makes playing the piano easier. It's very encumbering to be watching the score. Sometimes it's necessary, of course, but when you have something memorized, it can freeze you to be expressive and just to let it come out of you naturally.

What else is important? Well, obviously sight reading, reading music. You can't memorize everything. Plus if you're accompanying other musicians, you want to be able to have the score and their part. So being able to read music, to familiarize yourself with a wide array of music without necessarily committing it to memory. And that's another skill that can be developed.

And the other actually essential skill is improvisation. Do you know that most styles of music are not dependent upon reading every note in the score? Jazz players, pop, rock, country, folk, you name it. Being able to improvise, to make something up, not to mention just having fun with music. You have a party, people want to sing some songs. Hey, be able to play by ear is great. Not to mention the fact that it can save your neck if you ever have a memory slip in performance. You can get back on track if you can play a little bit by ear instead of starting over again. What else do we have? Well, one of the foundations of good technique on any instrument and the piano is certainly no exception, is learning all your major and minor scales and arpeggios. It's just an essential toolbox of technique because after all, the vast majority of Western music is built on scales and arpeggios, broken chords and having those literally at your fingertips is of tremendous value.

Don't get intimidated by it. You can just learn one a week. It will take you about a year to learn all of them. There's no hurry. If you haven't done it yet, go for it. I've got a spreadsheet set you can check out that can keep track of all your scales and arpeggios.

And another important technique is octave technique. You hear people play rousing octaves sometimes.

And you wonder how is that done? Well, once again, essential technique of using the wrist, which I've got videos on that for you as well.

And that brings us to the essential technique of the piano, which is how to identify when to use the fingers, when to use the wrist and when to use the arms. Because after all, they all come into play, but in different ways in different contexts of music. And that's one of these most important things about learning technique on the piano is knowing which parts of the body to use. And yes, I have a video on that too. You could check out the description. There's so many great ones here for you. Now, the piano, of course, is an instrument that can play many different parts at once. You, of course, you have your left and right hand, but it's much deeper than that because sometimes you have inner voices. You could have different parts within one hand, how to bring out different voices in your playing. What an essential technique. And once again, there are ways you can practice that. I've got techniques for you.

Going on, how to achieve a smooth melodic line? Well, you know that the piano is a percussion instrument. That's right, you play a note.

Listen to that harsh attack and that almost gone already. How do you get a smooth melodic line? Well, it's the art of illusion. And it's a matter of using the weight of the arm, smoothly transferring the tone from note to note. The pedal can help with that also. I've got lots to say about that in videos as well. And that is kind of related to getting a beautiful sound out of the piano.

You ever hear somebody and everything just sounds harsh and ugly and then somebody will play the exact same piano and everything sounds beautiful and warm. How is it possible? Now, singers, you think they have physiology that makes it so.

And different instruments, there's such a connection with the throat, the lips, the violin, the fingers. But yes, on the piano, there are ways of achieving a beautiful sound and there are ways that you might get an ugly sound if you're not careful. So this is a really important subject for you. If you haven't covered this before in your playing, you want to always get as gorgeous a sound as possible.

Now there's something that is a wide open area and it's very subjective but it's something important to understand and have a grasp of which is interpretation.

You work so hard, you learn a piece of music, how do you actually let it unfold? What do you have to say about it? Do you just play it the way your teacher told you or the way you've heard it on a recording? Or do you have something unique you can say about the piece? How do you develop your own voice in music? That's what interpretation is all about and it's the reason why we play, to express our love and our unique ideas about the different music that we hear. That's why we work so hard to play it so we can bring our ideas of these pieces of music so others can enjoy our concepts of them.

Now, understanding interpretation and many other aspects of technique, you really have to have an appreciation for the different period styles of music, from the baroque to the classical, the romantic, the impressionist, 20th century. There are all different styles and styles within those styles and if you don't really have a grasp of the period styles, not to mention the piano that was written for, because the piano was not the same instrument 100 years ago, it was very similar, but you go 150 years ago, it was not the same. 200 years ago it was different and then when you're playing baroque music, it might not have been written for the piano at all. It might have been written for the harpsichord more likely.

So understanding the period styles and the instruments that it was written for, very important to be able to play appropriately on the piano.

Another important aspect of piano technique that is really a subcategory is ornamentation, trills, arpeggios.

There's all kinds of ornamentation. Sometimes in early music you'll see different squiggly lines that are representations of things that you do to embellish the music. How to translate those symbols is one challenge, but the other one is simply how to execute them cleanly.

And there again, there's different aspects of knowing to measure your trills and things of that nature.

Moving on, a solid foundation in music theory can really enhance all aspects of your playing. Certainly if you're reading music, to know what key you're in, have some grasp of the chord progressions, modulations. When you're learning a piece of music, to understand where you are in the structure, to understand the harmonies, it's going to help you to remember it, help you to learn it, and help you to play it in a way that makes sense.

And this is related to harmony.

Harmony is kind of a subcategory of theory. That's the rich chords, having an understanding of the keys you're in and the relationship of tones is what harmony is all about.

How do you develop that? Well, one way is with dictation. Now a lot of jazz players, they do dictation all the time. If you play popular music, sometimes the sheet music can be very drab and not really grasp what the original performance was about. So you listen to it and kind of cop it by ear. Dictation, you can even write it down. And this is a tremendous way to develop your ear and develop an affinity for different styles of music.

Now having a grasp of music history, I mentioned the period styles but it goes so much deeper. Understanding the culture and the customs of the time, where music fit into society, was it something with a high brow, the elite, or is it something with the music of the people? Having an understanding of where the music you are playing fit in with the history of the time can be enlightening and might shed some light as to how the music is approached. Is it folk music? Is it music for royal courts? Having an understanding of music history can give you a depth to your playing that is really important.

Now I talked about sight reading as being important and reading but accompanying is an art all into itself. Being able to play with other musicians, all too often pianists play by themselves so much that they lack that camaraderie that you develop and you learn so much playing with other musicians. You develop a better sense of timing, balance, nuance and there's nothing greater than playing with other musicians and learning from them. When you play with great musicians it rubs off on you. So sometimes you might feel squeamish about playing with people who are better than you but take the opportunity, it's enriching for you.

Now another aspect of, we're getting there by the way, stay with us to the end because these are all important things for developing your piano playing. And as I mentioned in the description I have many resources for covering in more depth the topics that I'm highlighting here today.

Maintaining a repertoire. You know you learn pieces, you learn more pieces, you wonder how many pieces can you keep in your repertoire? What pieces should you learn next? What is a well balanced repertoire on the piano? You know these are really important questions for developing your piano playing and your musicianship. Knowing what are appropriate challenges in repertoire, something that's not going to take you an inordinate amount of time or something that you're never going to be able to play on a high level without a foundation of other pieces before that.

So knowing what pieces to play, what pieces to study and how many pieces you can keep in your current repertoire. It's not limitless after all.

You can drop pieces and re -study them and if you try to keep everything on your fingertips and in your head you won't have time to learn new music. So maintaining a repertoire is a delicate balance.

Now one of the important skill sets that has to be practiced is playing for people.

Because you know if you play by yourself it never really comes to fruition. The act of playing for people is where the music comes alive. Playing by yourself you know what you're doing. When you're playing for others there's a give and take and you will find that you will do things in your playing you've never done before. Some of them may be unfortunate things but you may find particularly if you have the wherewithal to play for people on a regular basis it can become an inspiration for ideas because you get the feeling for what people are really paying attention to and the things that leave people flat. Just like a comedian has to try out the material they don't really know what's going to land and what's going to go flat until they do it in front of a crowd. Well it's the same thing with your piano playing. Playing for people is what it's all about and you know what you might think oh no one wants to hear you. That could be further from the truth because people will be impressed with your accomplishments particularly if they don't play everything will seem amazing to them. You know it's all relative. You listen to somebody else who can do things you can't do. You think that you're not worthy. It's not true. There's all different things that everybody can bring to the music and you don't have to be the most virtuoso player in the world. People can share emotions and feelings about the music and nuance and taste that you have that's unique to only you. So play for people. People will enjoy it and you will grow as a musician.

And finally last and very very important learning how to adjust to different pianos and different rooms.

It's a funny thing. You play a piano and you play a different piano and it feels completely different and it will give you ideas about the piece you never had before.

Now the rooms you play in also make a tremendous difference.

If you ever play in a room that's completely acoustically dead where there's no reverberation at all you end up working harder and you may have to use the pedal more liberally in order to make up for the lack of acoustics in the room.

I could tell you one thing that really could be shocking. Go to a hall and try out a piano before a performance and it sounds glorious. It's a beautiful echoey space. Then the audience comes in and all those bodies with clothing absorbing the sound and it's a completely different acoustic. So learning how to adjust instantly to a piano and to a room is an essential part of piano playing and it's enriching because you will learn more about the pieces you play. Even if you're not playing performances anytime there's a piano somewhere where you can play it, play some of your pieces on it. I guarantee you, you will learn something from the experience. So I hope these are helpful for you. Now these were 20 tips and essential skills on the piano. Any of you who think of other skill sets that are important, leave them in the comments here at livingpianos .com and YouTube. And as I said there'll be a lot of other links in the description to go deeper in many of these subjects for you. I hope this is helpful for you. Again I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos, your online piano resource. Thanks to all your subscribers and Patreon subscribers. That's what enables this channel to continue bringing this kind of content. We'll see you next time.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/the-20-skill-sets-you-need-at-the-piano/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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