Music Video Lesson: The Importance of Relaxation in Playing Music

Concentrate on everything near your neck, shoulders on down, playing in a relaxed manner, and listen to the difference of the sound. See what you notice in your playing.

Hi, this is LivingPianos.com. Robert Estrin with a really important subject, the importance of relaxation in playing music.

Now this isn't just about piano. This relates to all instruments. Now there are so many aspects to this. There's one in particular I'm gonna get to which I think is going to be surprising to you. So wait till the end of this video. So you hear about relaxation all the time. Like you should relax when you play. And of course you want to avoid injury. Being tight when you play, it's bad to do almost anything with tension. And of course if you're a weak player, sometimes you might contort just to make the notes come out. If you have spaghetti fingers like I did as a child, and trying to get the sound you want, you know, contorting. And of course this is to be avoided. But if you're on a beginning level, it's very difficult to avoid tension until you develop an effluency and strength. You can even approach the keyboard in an ergonomic manner. But it's so vital that you be aware of being as relaxed as possible. But it's much deeper than that. Now there's some obvious parallels to other instruments. For example, if a singer has tension, you can hear, oh, it's a horrible sound that can be created instead of a beautiful, lovely, ah, ah, ah, ah. Of course I'm not a singer, as I just proved, but you get the idea. There was a drastic difference even with my voice. You could hear the tension adds ugliness to the tone. Now this is equally true on wind instruments. Listen to somebody who has got a closed throat, trying to play a trumpet or a clarinet or a float, and the sound, it's going to impart that tension is gonna come through the tone. Same thing with a violin, the tense with the arm, relaxing those shoulders, and it's the same thing with the piano. And I'm gonna do, and this is gonna be an interesting experiment for me as well as for you, I'm gonna try to play with tension briefly just to show you the sound it creates, because that's the remarkable thing, is that on the piano, you can hear tension. Let's see if you can. I'm gonna play the beginning of the famous E flat, Nocturne of Chopin, and I'm gonna play it with tension. How am I gonna do that? I don't know. Maybe I should sit wrong or something. So we're gonna try it with tension. I'm gonna try not to play it badly. I'm just gonna try to play it and not be relaxed.

Well, that felt horrible doing that. Oh, now I wanna play it just relaxed as possible, just letting the arms float from key to key.

Can you hear the difference? But it's not just in a beautiful melody. If I were just to play chords and play with tension compared to playing them without tension, here's playing with tension. ["Eleven Piano Chords"] Now playing with a relaxed manner, with power, but shoulders relaxed, just feeling at one with the instrument.

["Eleven Piano Chords"] Let me know in the comments here at livingpianos.com your impressions of the sounds you heard in these two examples, and experiment with your playing. You sit at the piano, take that extra time to adjust the bench to the right distance of the keyboard. Make sure you're sitting at the right height. Consciously take a breath and relax. Concentrate on everything near your neck, shoulders on down, playing in a relaxed manner, and listen to the difference of the sound. See what you notice in your playing. Love your comments here at livingpianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again for joining me. Ring the bell, thumbs up, makes the videos reach more people. Thanks again for joining me. Robert Estrin at livingpianos.com, your online piano resource. Thanks for joining me.

Find the original source of this video at this link: https://livingpianos.com/the-importance-of-relaxation-in-playing-music/

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