Piano Video Lesson: Is Playing the Piano Hard?

I won't kid you, practicing is really a very difficult process if you're doing it right.

Welcome to LivingPianos.com, Robert Estrin here with a question. Is playing the piano hard? You know, you see people play and they make it look effortless. Is that hard to do? Well, I've done that so many times. The whole Chopin, G minor, Belan, I don't know how many, hundreds or thousands of times, there's an excerpt. I wouldn't say it's particularly hard, it does take concentration, but for the average person is playing the piano hard? Before I answer that question, I'm going to reference an article that was in the New York Times Magazine years ago. It was an article not about the piano, it was about the human brain. And in this article they cited piano playing as the single most complex activity of the human brain. That's right, because it involves motor coordination of the fingers, you have to coordinate the sound with the visual, and it just encompasses long term memory, short term memory, and it really is complex. So in a nutshell, yeah, basically piano playing has a lot of elements that make it difficult. However, it really depends upon what you're after in your piano playing. For example, somebody who hasn't even played or practiced, never even touched a piano, if they have some degree of exposure to music and appreciation of music and a little bit of modicum of talent, they might be able to sit down the first time and just play different black keys and make it sound reasonably good. Now, having said that, playing classical compositions and learning them and being able to play them faithfully and accurately with security is very difficult. I won't kid you.

Practicing is really a very difficult process if you're doing it right. If practicing is easy and you just enjoy it, oh, this is fun, you're probably not accomplishing that much. I always feel that practicing should be hard, so performing is easy. Like when I played that little excerpt of the Chopin at the beginning, was that hard? No, because I practiced it so much I could whip it off, you know, hardly thinking about it. Of course I have to think about it. But if you make your practicing intense and every minute absorb some little detail and keep your concentration by not overwhelming yourself with too much at a time, you can sustain a long productive practice. Yet it takes immense concentration and focus to do that. So practicing is hard, the harder practicing is, assuming it's productive, the easier performing is. So is piano hard? Yeah, it's hard, but if you practice well, you can make playing enjoyable and much easier than your practice, which I think should be the goal, don't you? I want to hear from all of you. If you think piano playing is hard, if you think practicing is hard, and what kind of enjoyment do you get out of the instrument, once again, Robert Estrin at LivingPianos.com where we have thousands of videos and articles you can check out for yourself. And if you haven't subscribed already, here on YouTube or LivingPianos.com, go for it. You'll get new content. Thanks so much for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/is-playing-the-piano-hard/

Automatic video-to-text transcription by DaDaScribe.com

Thank you for your comment, question or request!

Comment/Question deleted successfully.

Post a comment, question or special request:

Comments or questions must be between 3 and 10,000 characters long.

You may: Login  or  

Otherwise, fill out the form below to post your comment:

Add your name below:


Add your email below: (to receive replies, will not be displayed or shared)


For verification purposes, please enter the word MUSIC in the field below

---