Piano Video Lesson: Master the 5 PILLARS OF PIANO to Dramatically Improve Your Playing!

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com. Today we're going to talk about the mastering the five pillars of piano to dramatically improve your playing.

Now this is something I've been working on for years and I finally got it to fruition. I've got several people lined up and I'm going to introduce it to you to see how it can help your piano playing. If you like what you see, go to the description and you can learn way more.

Before I talk about these five essential pillars of piano playing, I want to explain what I even mean by this. Just imagine for a moment a house being built. Now there's several aspects of a house to be structurally sound.

Of course the framing of the house is really important, but if the foundation isn't laid right, it doesn't matter how it's framed does it? Now what about the electrical? The house could be framed, it could have a good foundation, but if the electrical isn't right, the whole thing could burn down. You get the idea, the same thing with the plumbing. The house could just have toxic mold if there's leaks. The roof could cause little problems with the house. Every single part, all the pillars of the structure must be intact for it to be a viable structure to last for a good long time. It's the same thing with your health. You might be able to run marathons, but you might have a tooth infection which could infect your brain.

So every part of your health is important and every part of the structure of a house is important and the essential five building blocks or pillars of your piano playing must be intact and if any one of them are weak, then the whole structure crumbles. So maybe you can identify which of these pillars you're lacking or what you need more help with. Now of course is reading or sight reading on the piano.

If your reading isn't really up to snuff, it's a tremendous hindrance to your piano playing. Even if you can memorize pieces, how could you even go back and read them if your reading level is that low? And if you have this experience, you learn a piece of music, but then you go back and look at the score and it looks totally foreign to you, you can't even read what you've learned. How can you check your work? How can you keep it at a high level? So that's certainly a skill, not to mention being able to explore a new repertoire, being able to accompany. There's a host of things that reading is absolutely essential for the piano. But I made reference to memorization. Yes, learning music. I know people for example, they're good readers. You can put a piece of music in front of them and they can do a reasonably good job of coming close to what the piece sounds like.

Give them the music for six months and it doesn't get appreciably better. You have to know how to practice, how to learn, how to memorize. And some people say, memorize? Do I have to memorize to learn? Well, I sometimes put it like this. Go ahead, ask me what's my name? What's my name? Oh, what's my name? Let's see, do I have my license? If I have to read it, do I know it? Learning is memorizing to some extent. Yes, you can learn music and do reading, which is a conglomerate of the two, which we'll get to later. But let's go on to the third essential pillar. And you might be surprised at what this one is. This is improvisation.

Now why do you think you need to improvise? You might think, I never want to play jazz or pop or rock or new age or blues or any of the myriad styles where, you know, being able to play by ear is essential. Well, you know what? It's also essential even in your classical playing. Shocker. Why? Ultimately, you must hear what you're doing for it to be able to digest and unfold the way you intend it to. Not to mention the fact that if you have that inevitable finger slip or memory issue, if you can play by ear just a little bit to get back on track, it's your beat stopping, starting from the beginning, which nobody wants to hear.

It can save you and all great pianists know how to improvise, which is why you listen to great concert pianists and you never hear them break down and start over, ever, because they can get back on track because they have a connection between what they play and what they hear. Very important.

Now what are the pillars are there? Well, there's obviously technique, pure technique. You know, scales, arpeggios, octaves, wrists, trills.

There's thirds. There's a myriad of essential techniques, kind of a grab bag of techniques that you must have at your disposal. Otherwise, every time you have a new piece of music, you have to learn the technique just for that piece. Now, having said that, the fact of the matter is in the piano, every new piece does employ new techniques and new musical challenges. But at least you should have the essential techniques and know the appropriate parts of the body to use, when it's appropriate to use the fingers, when it's used of the wrist is needed, and when the strength of the arms you need to use and how to negotiate these three essential elements of technique is going to be a lifesaver for you when you're playing the piano.

Last and certainly not least is music theory. Now what is theory all about? Well, being able to understand the structure of music is really essential. To be able to learn efficiently. If you just look at a bunch of random notes and try to remember them and try to see how they fit together, you'll be lost. But if you see the logic behind it, it clicks.

It's kind of like in math where you understand a principle, then you can fill everything in, you can figure things out. But if you don't understand the principles, you're lost. And what a feeling that is.

Well, the essential element in theory is having the building blocks so ingrained that you know your scales, your key signatures, and from their intervals and from their chords and inversions, everything is logically laid out as long as the foundation of theory is solid. All too often people are lacking that foundation and it builds to a point of mass confusion. Well, it's a pleasure when you have those fundamentals down. Imagine trying to do algebra and you still don't have your multiplication tables down.

That's basically how lost you can be with theory and what a godsend it is for learning music and reading music. So those are the five essential pillars. How about this new program? Imagine having a step -by -step system of how to work effectively at the piano guided by a concert pianist educator along with a support group of like -minded individuals so you can supercharge your piano playing, showing exactly how to take your reading and your playing to new levels so you can play music that has always been out of reach. That's what this program is all about, where everybody is aligned towards the same goal, dramatically improving your piano playing so you can feel confident at the piano.

I will be coaching so you have professional guidance every step of the way.

You know, I've been teaching since assisting my father, concert pianist Morten Estrin, while I was still in high school and I studied with great pianists from John Ogden to Ruth Slenchinska, Constance Kean, master classes with Carlo Zecchi and Byron Janis. I've been very fortunate in my life, which is why it gives me great pleasure to share this with you. The focus of this program is on implementation and collaboration so you don't have to endure long trainings all by yourself.

It feels like hanging out with friends so you get real results in your piano playing. So if you're interested in this, go to the description, you can learn way more about it and I am Robert Estrin, this is LivingPianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks to all of you for joining me and your subscribers. Look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you, good luck with your piano playing.


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