Musical Tips For The Pianist Musical Tips for the Pianist by Malinda Joy, Aug 31, 2008 Playing the piano is a very demanding and complex neurological challenge for a person. Simply stated the whole body must be involved. This is designed to give you some of the techniques that I have developed in my personal piano practice. These ideas, tips, that I share with you have helped me play with greater ease. It is my sincere hope that they may be of benefit to you. As you practice, I encourage you to work with these ideas. May they enhance your comfort in playing and in the making of beautiful music. Eyes Leading When we learn a new piece of music we tend to focus on individual notes and patterns of notes in the early stages of learning ---perhaps even over focusing and staring. If you use music as you play and this habit continues, as you bring the piece to performance level you will stumble---make mistakes, interrupting the flow of the music. To combat this-----let your eyes move as well as your fingers----- let your eyes be one step ahead of your fingers. In other words know where you are going before you get there. While playing the current measures you will be moving ahead with the eyes to pick up the next pattern and yes your fingers will move into the next pattern with ease. Reversing the Order Would you like to play an arpeggio or run of notes freely and with ease? Try playing the notes backwards, sequentially, with the last note in the run being the first, the next to last being the second and so on. For example---Middle C, E, G, C would be played as C, G, E, Middle C. For some neurological reason, playing a sequence of notes in reverse order makes it easier to play the notes in the correct order. This is akin to a baby learning to crawl backwards before he or she will crawl forward. This may seem somewhat laborious when one has a series of notes of 20 or more to play. Reversing the order of playing notes is laborious at first. The reward comes when this seemingly laborious effort becomes easy and enables you to produce a beautiful, polished musical rendition. Chording Runs Let's move on to Chording Runs. What does this mean? Chording Runs is simply identifying a sequence of notes and playing the sequence as a chord. How is this done? With a long arpeggio or run identify the first sequence of notes that would make the first chord . Identify, next, the second sequence that will make a chord. Then, continue on to the third and fourth sequences to the end of the run. Be aware that the sequence played as a chord often sounds rather strange or disonant. This technique is particularly useful when the run requires crossing one hand over the other to play the run. Now, let's put it all together. Chord each run first. Play the individual notes. Now, add in TIP No. 2, REVERSING THE ORDER. Soon you will play arpeggios and runs like a pro. Learn The Hardest Part First You have a piece of music you just love and want to perform. But---and there's the big but-- the music has a part which appears overwhelmingly difficult. Our natural inclination is to spend more practice time on what we know. Do just the opposite. Tackle, figuratively, the most difficult passages first. First, assess what kind of passage it is. Does it have runs which need breaking down? Does it have a difficult or faster rhythm? Is there a key change? In general, consider why a part is difficult to play. Next, break the difficult part into its smallest parts and build from the smallest parts. In performance, your practice on the difficult part first will have its reward. What seemed ovewhelming initially will flow easily.