Piano Video Lesson: Living in the Comfort Zone in Your Piano Playing

So these are two ways of approaching relaxation. To go slowly enough that you can play with complete relaxation, have the score in front of you so you can check your work. You'll be surprised to learn what you know and more importantly, what needs clarification in your playing. Hi, I'm Robert Estrin, you're watching LivingPianos.com. Today is about living in the comfort zone in your playing.

Have you ever had the situation where you have a piece and it's a fast piece and you're struggling to make it fast and you have tension and yet you want a beautiful, relaxed quality to your playing with fluidity? For example, in the beginning of Debussy's Children's Corner Suite, the beginning of the first woman I'll play for you, this is Dr. Gratisett Parnassum and you want to have a beautiful, relaxed quality like this.

So, you might wonder how to achieve this. Well, if you keep struggling trying to play it just a little bit faster than you're able to play it with comfort and relaxation, you'll never be able to achieve that kind of fluidity in your playing where there's a lack of tension that you want to be relaxed in your playing. And the secret comes down to slow practice. Find the speed at which you can play it. Really relaxed, completely relaxed. It might surprise you how slowly you have to go in order to achieve that. Now, there's a flip side to this that I'm going to get to in a minute, so stay tuned for that. But first, of course, the metronome is such an invaluable tool. Just finding the speed you can play it in a relaxed manner is the first step.

Now, right there, there was a little bit of a little tension. You can hear it in the unevenness of the playing. So, I'm going to try it again at this speed. I might even slow it down myself just to really feel totally relaxed and cement this performance further.

Now, really, you should have the score up when you're doing this kind of work. And you may find that when you slow things down, you realize you don't know it as well as you thought you did.

That's why having the score in front of you, putting the metronome at a speed you can play with absolute solidity is a great way to live in that comfort zone. Once you can play it at a slow tempo with total relaxation and consistently with accuracy, then you finally have the capability of speeding up your performance. Now, I've talked about the yin -yang of performing and practicing, and one aspect is slow practice is invaluable, but sometimes it's hard to translate that slow playing to the... So it's taking small note groups, once again, with total relaxation, even if you're just playing one or two notes.

I'm playing with complete relaxation because it's such a small amount, and that's too much.

So these are two ways of approaching relaxation. So remember to go slowly enough that you can play with complete relaxation. Have the score in front of you so you can check your work. You'll be surprised to learn what you know and more importantly what needs clarification in your playing. So you can either do that very slowly or you can take very, very small groups of notes and little piece them together. So you're working on two fronts. One is to get a feel for what it's going to be like when it's up to tempo, even if you're playing small groups of notes that you string together. And the other one is to play once you have all your music in good shape at a slow tempo, living at that slow tempo, live in the slow zone, in the comfort zone, and you'll be rewarded with relaxation in your playing when you do finally get things up to speed. I hope this has been helpful for you. I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos .com, your piano, online piano resource with, last time I counted was over 1500 videos with accompanying articles at LivingPianos .com. Thanks so much for all your subscribers, ringing the bell, thumbs up. It helps to reach more people with these videos. We'll see you next time.

Bye.

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