Piano Technique: Folding in Thumbs for smooth keyboard transit

Most piano students experience the nemesis of hard-falling, accident-prone thumbs during their scale and arpeggio romps. If unchecked, these power-grabbing fingers of each hand have a tendency to interrupt smooth-playing keyboard journeys. As a start, a player should imagine a scale or arpeggio as a seamless outflow without "bumps" or undesirable "accents." Even in a…

Forward Arm Rolls and Rotations

We clarify and refine our teaching skills through self-examination at the piano. As mentors, we simultaneously enjoy a window into our students practicing from week to week. Together we grow as music sharing partners. This leads to what I periodically post in the form of self-teaching tutorials that reach my pupils and well beyond in…

Discoveries: Horowitz, A Reminiscence, and Seymour Bernstein in conversation-Chopin and Pedagogy

I'm always combing through You Tube videos to unearth treasures that have escaped me. One gem turned up recently that was celebrated in my blog a few weeks ago: Gina Bachauer at the Jerusalem Music Center with teenage prodigy, Yefim Bronfman. It preceded my dip into the well of Seymour Bernstein's amazing talent. He's in…

Arpeggios filled up a week of wildfires!

With unhealthy air quality alerts and record breaking temps keeping many Californians indoors, my own piano practicing was strategically planned to offset unexpected environmental changes. (Unlike those residing in the hills who received a RED FLAG evacuation warning, I could, in the flats, cling to my Steinway in a closed door, sealed window space--Ugh!) An…

Tailoring lesson recording options to meet a piano student’s needs

During Shelter in Place, where students and teachers are adjusting to virtual instruction challenges, the role of recording segments of lessons, or creating a supplementary video to review practicing goals, becomes pedagogically valuable. Mac users can use the Quick time New Screen Record option during a Face Time lesson in progress, capturing the teacher image…

Historic Masterclass: Gina Bachauer mentors young Yefim Bronfman (1973)

I was practicing well past 2 a.m.--in fairyland, as it happened, rekindling Grieg's Dancing elves, (Op. 12, No. 4) when I took a break to check comparative tempos of the greats on You Tube. In my rapid transit through renderings of Rubinstein (41 seconds), same for Richter, I stumbled a upon a gem from the…

Knabe upright out for repair, computer out for repair, but life goes on!

My living room, formerly known as the piano room, seems empty now, though a favorite woven octagon rug has been an eyecatcher on You Tube. While I'd hardly been playing the singing nightingale Knabe piano before its departure due to unremiting downweight resistance, it remained a nice companion to Steinway M, 1917--dimming the grand's ultra…

A Lesson in Breathing into scales and arpeggios

I vividly recall my first exposure to the art of breathing through musical phrases. It was at Merrywood Music Camp in Lenox, MA where I played second violin in a string quartet coached by Boston Symphony Principal violist, Eugene Lehner. The Berkshires nestled cabin that reverberated with Mozart's G Major chamber offering, K. 387, was…

Don’t Think! Play, Listen, Feel, Breathe

Recently, I sprang upon a schemata that was an immediate turnoff. It amplified all the nitpicky processes that the brain performs while an individual plays the piano. Almost without thinking, I copied the colorful map, sending it to my crop of adult students, many in their senior years. As expected, the first reply was a…

(HD) Piano Gym Romps through Arpeggios!

Besides my daily elliptical workouts, I add in piano routines that mobilize the arms, wrists and fingers with full blown natural breath support. Enlisting free flowing energy coming down relaxed arms and supple wrists, one experiences a player's "high" that fuels a sense of well-being streaming into other activities. Most of my students will devote…