Piano Video Lesson: 3 Ways Active Listening Improves Your Piano Playing

I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com. Today we're going to talk about three ways that active listening improves your piano playing.

What am I talking about active listening? You know, you play the piano, aren't you hearing what you're doing? Well, you know, it's very difficult. Let's say you've been working on a piece for several weeks, maybe even months, and you play it again and again, you practice it all the time, and then finally you're at some kind of performance. Maybe you're playing it for your teacher or you're playing it for friends or maybe it's a public performance and you wonder how can you stay engaged in the whole process and the secret is listening to what you're doing. Now that might seem silly, you think, of course you're listening, but are you really actively listening? Are you just passively playing and just kind of a like routine because you've done it so many times before? This is a tremendous challenge with something you've played so many times and how could you do it? Well, if you stop and listen with fresh ears and allow the music to unfold, maybe in ways that you haven't played it before. Now this can be a scary proposition if you've never done it in your practice.

So this active listening is something that you want to do in your practice. Take the music to new places, listen to inner voices, maybe you've always been looking at your right hand melody and listening to that, well maybe listen to the left hand. You could even try bringing out different voices.

You've always favored the right hand, favor the left hand just to hear what's there, keep you engaged. The more ways you have of playing your music, the more creative you can be in a performance and once again it keeps you engaged listening to what's happening. So that's one important benefit of active listening. What else? Believe it or not, active listening is the secret to keeping your audience engaged.

If you're not listening to it, nobody else will either.

I can't tell you how many times I've been at concerts where there's been an accomplished concert pianist playing and I found myself getting bored and thinking what's the matter with me? I'm listening to this and everything sounds fine, there's nothing wrong with it at all and then there's a memory slip and I go aha, he wasn't actively listening because at that point you realize that if they aren't really listening you can't stay engaged either. So the secret to being able to have a performance that's compelling to listen to is for you to be listening to what you're doing. So that's the second benefit. You keep yourself engaged, you keep your listeners engaged in the process.

And the third benefit which is maybe the most important one of all is creating a beautiful sound.

You know you practice so much after a while you're focusing on what you're doing with your fingers, you're focusing on the keys, you're focusing on counting, fingering, a myriad of things but the actual sound you're creating is the most important thing of all and it can be easily neglected. Now this is particularly important if you're playing on a different piano from the one you practice on all the time.

Let's say you're at a friend's home or you're playing a recital somewhere and you sit down on a different piano, you must listen.

Maybe that piano is a lot brighter than yours at home. You have to completely change your whole approach to the keyboard in order to get a beautiful sound because you might overplay the instrument. Of course the inverse could be true also. You may have to use more energy to project sound on a piano that's got a kind of dead sound compared to the piano you play at home.

So these are three important benefits of active listening. Practice in your playing at home first. Try to go different places with your music, different tempos, bring out different hands in your playing or inner lines. Try different things to keep yourself engaged in the process listening and your audience will be rewarded and you'll be able to create a more beautiful sound in your playing.

I hope this is helpful for you. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/3-ways-active-listening-improves-your-piano-playing/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

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