One of my favorite verbal prompts to students who have a choppy approach to scales and arpeggios, is: "drag" your fingers from note note--"feel" the weight transfer with imagined resistance. I often talk about flowing "vowels" not consonants through an arpeggio. Other mental images are equally effective: Think of the piano as a bowl of… Continue reading Piano Technique: Playing LEGATO can be a drag!
Tag: playing legato on the piano
Piano Technique: Exploring contrasting emotions when practicing a piece (as Daniil Trifonov, pianist, recommended in his videotaped interview)
I put into "practice" one of Trifonov's recommendations, as I mentored a second year piano student this evening. We started the lesson by playing "happy" and then "angry" consecutive staccato thirds. ("Hopping" from Dozen a Day) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaGlz5pKDZI Eventually after completing our scale and other technical routines, we applied the emotion shifts to the opening of… Continue reading Piano Technique: Exploring contrasting emotions when practicing a piece (as Daniil Trifonov, pianist, recommended in his videotaped interview)
