A Teacher/Student fueled discovery about Staccato playing

I never cease to be amazed by a mutual discovery process that's ongoing between me and my adult students. Without our learning partnership, we would not have periodic awakenings that feed our reciprocal musical development. Case in point, is the attainment of Staccato refinement in its most crisp and animated form. In the past month,…

A London piano student fine tunes her F# Major scales and arpeggios (staccato and legato)

Yu has been my Skype student for a few years now and she's made big gains in producing a singing tone with supple wrists, relaxed arms, and hand/finger weight transfer. Today she assiduously practiced her F# Major Scale and Arpeggio, energizing forearm and wrist staccato. Using "cupped hands" for her power driven forearm staccato on…

Piano Technique: Remediating peak octave scale paralysis (Staccato)

Choking up is probably the best description of what often happens to final scale octaves and their turnaround. Students get anxious at the terminus, and tend to crowd notes as if they're racing to the finish line, when in fact, they're only half way through. So psychologically, it's best if the peak octave is viewed…

Piano Technique: Playing scales without bumps or accents

It's common for piano students to divide their scales into well-boxed rhythmic compartments, emphasizing the fundamental beat that interrupts a smooth flowing legato (connecting from note to note). Sometimes players are unaware of their reinforced "beat" counting impulses and need occasional reminders of what's communicated to the listener. (who happens to be the innocent bystander…

Piano Technique: Stabilizing tempo, presence of mind, and breathing through scales and arpeggios

This has to be one of my favorite reciprocal teaching/learning videos because it fleshes out the importance of breathing through scales with mindful concentration. Framed by a singing pulse, the scale becomes a model for all playing. Here's B minor in Contrary Motion (legato) with my annotations that reference the BREATH and mindfulness. https://youtu.be/kVmCWbA32bg Important…

Piano Technique: Student/teacher echo exchanges stabilize rhythm and refine articulation

Of my favorite teaching strategies is bouncing warm-ups back and forth with students. We echo short phrases in legato and staccato as a form of rhythmic rehab. The recordings of these interactions become valuable practicing aids between lessons. Yesterday, an adult pupil and I had fun sharing E Minor/Major penta-scales and five-finger position thirds from…

Piano Technique: Practicing 4 varieties of detached notes

This evening Big Mike, whose hands are impressively large, finessed various types of staccato. He proved that elasticity is more influential than finger length (and related) in producing clearly articulated notes in diverse colors. We started with a B minor (Natural form scale) enlisting a forearm FORTE staccato, then continued to a soft range, still…

A Piano Gym Workout in Staccato before J.S. BACH

The Piano Fitness Club was in full swing as a well-prepared adult student and I romped through C# minor scales (3 forms) and B Major Arpeggios. Shaping detached notes in piano to forte dynamic ranges was the focus of a quick-paced hour. The B-Major arpeggio, rendered in sprightly 10ths, was remediated in articulated paired sub-groups…

Piano Technique in the PLAY-ground: Thumb to thumb swings and more

The playground can be the best music teacher. Thumb swinging, for example, to smooth out shifts through scales, is practiced by an adult student. (She had initially lost her "feel" for spacing between long and short tunnels, through which her thumb passed). A blocking approach preceded the swing routine that carefully marked out groups of…

Practicing J.S. Bach’s Gigue from French Suite No. 5 in G, BWV 816

My "block-headed" journeys continue. They take me through landscapes of chordal outlines solidifying my learning. In J.S. Bach's A minor Invention 13 I'd recently absorbed organized clusters of notes in my palms as they moved in harmonic rhythm, while featherweight thumbs became little rulers, measuring and spacing out distances between inverted chords. Once unraveled, these…