Piano Video Lesson: Three Secrets of Tone Production on the Piano

Hi, welcome to virtualsheetmusic.com. I'm Robert Estrin with a great show today, Three Secrets of Tone Production on the Piano. The piano really is a unique instrument. I remember in third grade, I had a general music class. And at the end of the class, my teacher sometimes would let me play for the class which was always something I was really into. And one time, I remember asking, "Can I play for the class at the end?" And she said, "Well, I don't think we have time."

But the class was all about the classifications of instruments, the brass, the wood winds, the percussion, and the strings. And so at the end of the class, she went to me with a smug face, she said, "Okay, what classification is the piano in?" And something made me realize by the way she was asking that it wasn't the obvious string instrument that would have been what you'd think to say. So I thought about it for a moment and I, in all my wisdom at third grade, I said, "Percussion." And she was shocked and she had to let me play.

So yes, the piano is a percussion instrument. I digress for a very important reason. Because when playing a lyrical piece on the piano, to get a sense of a line, a singing tone, which is what all instruments ultimately imitate, the human voice, how do you do it on a piano where you play a note and it almost immediately is dying away? How can you get this round phrase like in a Chopin nocturne?

We're going to use the f-sharp major nocturne of Chopin to demonstrate three possible solutions. Now, while I'm showing you three ways, it's not a scientific method that you're going to say, "I'm going to choose method two and that's what I'm going to use." I'm just giving you a bag of tricks that you can use to explore things with. Ultimately, it is using your ears. But this can provide some excellent starting point for you.

So the first way to produce a singing line on a piano is simply to get louder towards the middle of the phrase and softer towards the end of the phrase. And this is done, not by calculating note to note, but by using the weight of the arm which increases towards the middle of the phrase and decreases the downward weight at the end of the phrase. And you get this kind of a sound which is quite beautiful.

This is really intrinsic to playing melodic music on the piano is the rise and the fall of the phrase. So you might wonder, what other types of tone production are possible to...evocative of the human voice? Well, another method is simply playing louder for the high notes and softer for the low notes. The reason why this works so beautifully is that when singing or playing most wind instruments, it's a natural tendency to have more volume as you get to higher notes because it takes more air and energy. And if you do that on the piano, you also create a beautiful sense of line. Listen to the difference.

So it creates a different sense of phrasing but beautiful and lyrical nonetheless.

The last method that I'm going to show you is something that is intrinsic to the piano and it's almost the art of illusion. In the hands of someone like Vladimir Horowitz for example, he utilizes this technique a great deal. I remember growing up, studying with my father Morton Estrin, and I was always enamored with Horowitz because it was a completely different type of tone production. And while this isn't exactly...you can't just say, "Oh, Horowitz does this," because obviously an artist with a depth of Vladimir Horowitz had many, many different ways of approaching melody.

But one of them, I believe, is to simply play longer notes with more energy than shorter notes. Why does this make sense? Well, it comes back down to the physics of the sound of the piano. Notes that have to last longer, you have to play with more energy for them to last longer because they're fading away. If you do that on the piano, it actually works beautifully to create a sense of line, evening out the sound of longer notes that carry through to the faster notes.

Now there's subtle difference in expressions, those three different methods. I suggest you experiment with your music and try these methods and see what is really genuine for you. Ultimately at the end of the line, you just listen and you do not calculate any of these methods in your performance. These are just jumping off points to give yourself ideas of what might work, to give yourself an arsenal of expressive tools you can use in your playing.

Thanks so much for joining me. I'm Robert Estrin, once again here at virtualsheetmusic.com. See you next time.

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