Legato, Staccato, and everything in between

 

As you are probably aware, legato means smoothly connected without breaks between the notes, and staccato means the notes are detached. However, there is a great deal more to know about this, but most importantly, how to achieve these sounds.

In all likelihood, at your earliest piano lessons, your teacher showed you how to play legato by holding your finger on the key until the next key is played, thus having no gap of silence between them. If you lift your finger off the key, the damper comes down onto the string and the sound stops. So therefore you'd want the second note to be played just as the damper is going to come down on the first note, not too late (creating a gap) or too early (blurring the two notes together). While technically correct, there is a LOT more to playing true legato. You could hold each note until the next one plays, but if you play with exaggerated separate finger actions, or a separate hand/arm action on each note, you get what I call a "note-wise" sound. This note-wise sound is the hallmark of an absolute beginner. It may technically meet the definition of legato, but the music would have no "flow," no phrasing, no forward motion. It would lack "musicality." To create and convey a legato sound in the larger sense, there needs to be connection between the tones which is created by an integrated technique of arm, hand, and fingers. The legato would be heard in the phrase, not just from note to note.

We could say that legato is the default. That is, if the composer has not indicated otherwise, we assume we want a connected sound.

When your teacher taught staccato, she may have said to hop quickly off the note, or use your finger in a plucking motion, or any number of other descriptions as to how to achieve a very short sound, meaning the damper comes down quickly and stops the sound. However, I always like to ask "how staccato is staccato?" It can be very short, moderately short, or only slightly short. The little dot above or below the note doesn't tell you which; it is up to you. It depends on the music. If it is in a very fast piece, it is likely to be quite short. If it is in a slow piece, it may be only slightly detached. Your musical judgement will come into play. I prefer the word "detached" to the word staccato because it implies there is a range, not just one value.

You might assume that to detach the notes you'd need finger action. However, detached (or staccato) is just an absence of holding they key. Is not essentially a different technique than playing legato. If you are "hopping" off the key, or trying to "pluck" it, or doing other extraneous movements with your fingers, you are going to have a choppy sound. And, you are being quite inefficient, and would have trouble doing staccato at a fast tempo.

Even with staccato, we want a feeling of legato underneath it. We still want the music to have the flow and the phrasing mentioned above. We don't want it to sound mechanical just because the notes are detached. In other words, staccato passages must still be beautiful. The fingers, hand and arm are in a coordinated technique just as they are for legato playing; the fingers are not working in isolation.

In my next post, I will discuss slurs, which are widely misunderstood.

The Wrist

 

In previous posts I've discussed issues surrounding pain, and even injury, that can result from using improper techniques at the piano.

Unfortunately, some of those techniques are actively promoted by many other teachers and so-called experts.

I just happened to come across a blog post by someone who teaches (I'm assuming), who talks about the importance of the wrist. Although he is a big proponent of finger-based technique, he does admit that you can't use just fingers for octaves and big chords. He says for this you must use your wrists. He gives an exercise to do to strenghten your wrist. He says you "must not use the arms" and also that the "arm is not fast enough."

After reading his post, I felt compelled to immediately write this post.

Sorry, but there is no way "not to use your arms." I often say your hands are not going anywhere without the arms taking them there. Can you do a jump from the lower register of the piano to the upper without using your arms? Or an ascending or descending broken chord or scale that spans a few octaves? Of course not. (If you want a simple illustration, take one hand and hold your other arm very tightly at the forearm so it cannot move at all; then try to play. There is almost nothing except a simple five-note melody you could play, and even that will be awkward and stiff.)

Your arms are your "power source." The upper arm is not only strong, but efficient. If you want fortissimo chords or octaves, for example, there is simply no way to get them with the wrist alone. You need the power of the arm.

The exercise he gives for the wrist is very dangerous. I cannot stress this enough. The wrist is a somewhat delicate joint. You cannot strengthen a joint! The only thing that can be strengthened is a muscle and that is not going to happen with the exercise he suggests. (I cannot resist adding here that he doesn't seem to understand basic music terminology; he uses the word "diatonic" to mean all the white keys, which is absolutely incorrect. So this makes all his advice suspect, in my opinion.)

Almost everyone probably knows someone who has had carpal tunnel syndrome, or tendinitis in the wrists, or even a broken wrist from a minor fall. People who work at a computer keyboard for hours a day know that they must support their wrists, to prevent them from sinking below the hand, to avoid problems. If it's true for the light touch of the computer keyboard, imagine how much more important it is for the piano.

The wrists needs to be aligned with the forearm, without twisting side to side, close to 100% of the time. In effect you are using the arm and hand as one unit. The wrist needs to be elastic, not rigid, and will definitely have some flexing and extending (so that the hand points up or down from the wrist) to a moderate degree. However, if your hand and forearm are at a 90 degree angle to each other, you are over-flexed. This will cause strain if you do it too much.

I realize that my advice is the complete opposite or what some others may say. This is a conundrum for someone studying the piano. I address this is my previous post titled "Who Can You Believe?" I strongly urge you to read that post now to help put this whole discussion in perspective.

How Do You Measure Your Progress

 

Most people are interested in making progress, whether at the piano or other aspects of their lives. Of course there are many who just enjoy playing the piano and are content to just do things as they have always done them. There is no problem with that. After all, having fun and enjoying your music-making is the best reason to do it.

However, if you are taking lessons, or even if you are not, you may wish to improve your skills, deepen your knowledge, and be able to play progressively more difficult and challenging repertoire. It stands to reason, then, that you will want to assess whether this is happening, and at a rate which is encouraging rather than discouraging.

For classical music, many people assess their progress by the percentage of "right notes" or "wrong notes" they have. (Jazz pianists and others who improvise would probably not have this view.) Fewer wrong notes means you're getting better, right?

Unfortunately, no. I would ask, fewer wrong notes at what cost? If you have to play the piece, or the passage in the piece, dozens or even hundreds of times in a sitting, that is a terrible trade-off. More often what happens is that in the pursuit of 100% correct notes, the musicality of the piece is lost. There is no room for expression -- for nuances of timing, phrasing, and dynamics. There is almost always a lack of real "flow" or continuity. You may feel anxiety over the "notes" and your muscles may be tight, which can lead to other problems. And probably the "fun" aspect is also gone.

Instead, I would offer these metrics for assessing your progress.

1. Continuity. Are you able to play the whole piece (if it is short) or at least a large section of the piece, without stopping, pausing, or back-tracking in order to "fix" notes? Whether or not you are interested in performing, or even playing for friends, surely everyone would agree that this is how the music is meant to be heard. No one enjoys hearing someone play in fits and starts. Playing start to finish may not sound that difficult, but if you have made a habit of stopping and "fixing," you will see that it is not so easy. Focus on changing that habit more than the notes themselves.

2. Musicality. This is that word which can be hard to describe, but you recognize it when you hear it, or when you don't. If your playing sounds stiff, mechanical, even somewhat harsh in tone, then you aren't playing musically. See some of my previous posts for more discussion of this issue. But it is safe to say that if you don't have continuity (see above), it is even harder to play musically. I like to say that no one cares how many right notes you hit if the playing is mechanical and unpleasant to listen to. Focus on always playing with 100% emotional engagement regardless of right or wrong notes. If you feel you cannot play musically until the notes are all correct, you will never play musically. Your habits of playing without it will be too strong to overcome. Love the wrong notes as much as the right ones. That is my mantra.

3. Ability to play more challenging music. If you have a teacher, she/he should be selecting music which continually exposes you to new challenges, and of course, teaches and guides you in developing the physical techniques which enable you to play the music. If you are working on your own without a teacher you may not be sure how to do this. When people come to me for lessons after having worked on their own, they almost always have chosen pieces that are too difficult. Naturally, in the struggle to learn "the notes," everything else gets lost. If it's too much struggle, they may not actually gain the technique they need which would make it easier because they resort to methods which don't work, such as playing too slowly too much of the time, too much time spent hands separately, too many repetitions, and all of the above at once. You may notice when you are struggling for notes, the actual listening takes a back seat or gets almost completely lost. If you are not listening to your own playing, how could you possibly assess your progress?

4. Fun. Last but certainly not least, don't forget the reason you are doing this: fun. Or maybe, more than fun, a deep-level satisfaction. If you don't have continuity, expression, some level of feeling "relaxed," and true, open listening, you probably aren't going to be having fun. You know the saying: "If it ain't fun, you're doing it wrong."

If you make these your priorities, your technique and your ear will improve, and, ironically, you will have a greater percentage of "correct" notes. 

Pain

 

Many pianists ask if it is normal to have pain while playing the piano. The answer is unequivocally NO! If they are asking, chances are they have already experienced some pain. 

Many people might assume that having some pain while playing is to be expected, as it might be when doing an athletic activity or a workout where you are building muscles. They may assume that when their muscles get stronger, the pain will go away.

However, this is far from the truth. As you've read in previous posts, learning to play is NOT about building muscles. If it were, you wouldn't be seeing the amazing young children who are playing Chopin and Rachmaninoff and all the difficult pieces. They simply do not have large muscles. And they can play pieces which last 30, 40 minutes or more, and have no fatigue. If you have pain and fatigue, it is not because your muscles need to get stronger, but because you are over-using certain muscles and using them in the wrong way.

The most common pain pianists get is in the forearm. This is because they are over using the small muscles in the hand and fingers. It is not due to your forearm muscles. Although many people think the fingers are doing all the work, this is not true. You may already have been instructed to do finger exercises to get them stronger. You are probably never going to have highly-muscled fingers, and even if you do, that still would not give you the ability to play much of what the piano requires. If you are working on building muscles in the fingers, you might expect to have pain in the fingers themselves. Yet I've never encountered anyone who gets pain in the fingers themselves, or in the palm. The pain is almost always felt one level "back" up the arm, so to speak. Thus, over-use of fingers is felt in the forearm.

Another place where pain may be felt is in the wrists. Again, it has nothing to do with your wrists not being strong enough. Most likely you are sitting too low (or slouching as you sit) and letting your arms sink below keyboard level, which strains the wrist (and can lead to carpal tunnel syndrome). You could get pain from sitting too high and having your wrists higher than your hand, but I've never actually seen anyone have this issue. You could also be twisting your wrists and pivoting them back and forth, which also is a strain on them. You may have been taught techniques which employ a wrist twist, but these are not good techniques.

If you have pain in your shoulders, you don't have a muscle definiciency. Most likely you are hunching your shoulders up when you play. Consistently reminding yourself to let the shoulders down will remove the pain.

I am not saying that no muscles are used. Of course they are; muscles must move the bones. However, the muscles of your upper arm are already strong enough from your day-to-day activities to play the piano. The technique that I teach relies much more on the upper arm and less on the hand and fingers. The fingers do transfer the power of the upper arm to the keys themselves, but do not initiate the movements. This concept may not be easy to understand just from reading about it. You need to experience it yourself, and you will probably need a teacher who can guide you in order to change to this type of technique.

Please don't subscribe to the "no pain, no gain" philosophy when it comes to the piano. Having pain is the signal to you that something is wrong and needs to be changed.

The Miracle that is Musical Notation

 

I've often marvelled at how musical notation conveys so much information with just a combination of various dots and lines, and wondered how it developed the way it did. I recently read a book on this subject titled Capturing Music by Thomas Forrest Kelly. (Yes, I admit I am a total musical theory geek.) Although it didn't answer all my questions, I did learn a lot.

There is no known written record of music from the Ancient Greeks and Romans and we know very little about it. In the Middle Ages, music was learned by rote, that is, by copying another person. Almost all music was sung at first, and had words, taken from the various liturgical texts in the church. Many scholars were quoted as saying they believed it was impossible to notate music. For centuries, music was simply learned by listening to another person, and the various chants, hymns, songs and so on were passed down generation by generation in this way. 

Eventually they began to use symbols over the words to indicate a vocal embellishment over a given note or notes. This led to other innovations, and dots on lines were used to show the direction of the melody (up or down) and by how much. They still would have had to depend on having heard someone sing it, but perhaps this primitive notation served as a sort of "reminder" of what they had heard. Undoubtedly, someone saw the potential of this, and there began to be notes written on lines which did correspond to actual notes.

The hardest nut to crack was rhythm. When music was sung, the words determined the rhythm, to some degree. And again, you would just copy someone else to get the rhythm as well as the notes. But when notes began to be written, there would have to be something to indicate the rhythm. If someone was singing solo, they would have a lot of leeway to do the rhythm as they saw fit, but if multiple people were singing together, they would need notation so they would all be in sync. The written record shows all sorts of attempts at this. For example, the reason we show eighth notes with a bar across the top is that these "faster" notes were sung over one syllable of a word, so the line connecting them indicated that.

Music was probably a lot more fluid-sounding before rhythmic notation. But of course it also had its limits, especially where multiple people sang or played together. Harmony, which evolved from multiple lines of music sung together, would have been impossible without rhythmic notation. So it was a small price to pay, I think we would all agree!

For years I have wondered why our notes on the staff correspond to the white keys on the piano, or the scale of C Major. Notation preceded the invention of the piano (or harpsichord) by many years, so it wasn't because of the keyboard. If anything, it's the other way around. Although the book I read didn't answer this completely, I speculate that the staff we use today was based on the scale that we call A Minor, which the Greeks called Aeolian. This may have been the primary scale that the early chants were sung in. (Is it just a coincidence that the first note on the piano is an A? Probably.) Later on, there was a need for an occasional "out of scale" tone, and it seems that the flat sign evolved first, and later the sharp sign. It appears that they didn't think of notating in different keys as we do today, and there was no "key signature" as we now use.

When you compare musical notation to our alphabet, it's pretty incredible. Although every novel, poem, treatise, essay or memo is written using just our 26 letters, and once we know the alphabet we can read or write an unlimited amount of material, the alphabet itself doesn't give us any information about inflection, rhythm, speed or other nuances if you speak the words aloud (or even silently in your mind). We need punctuation, and such indicators as italics, underlining, and other methods to convey more specific meaning. Yet music notation, with fewer actual symbols, tells you a tremendous amount, not only what to play, but how to play it, yet still allowing for a great deal of flexibility which is necessary for music to be interpreted differently by individual musicians. (We still need the addition of other symbols and directives, just like the alphabet does, for the composer to indicate qualities as dynamics. I will discuss this in a future post.)

We who play an instrument (or sing) probably take our musical notation for granted. But it's good to appreciate the amazing evolution which enables us to experience and communicate the beauty of music.

Independence

 

Today is July 4th, Independence Day, and I want to talk about the subject of independence of the fingers.

Most traditional (read: "old") methods promote the idea that the fingers must work independently from each other. There are many exercises given to students that involve such things as holding several notes down while playing another note with a different finger. You are probably told to lift the finger as high as possible before it comes down onto the keys. Supposedly this is to increase the strength as well as independence. 

If you think about it for just a moment, you will realize that you already have independence of the fingers. Virtually all of us type on the computer keyboard (and our phones) with a good degree of skill, and probably accuracy and even speed. How could you do this if your fingers didn't work independently? You don't find yourself smooshing down several keys at once because the fingers can't move individually. Place your hand flat on a table; hold three or four fingers down while another finger moves; unless you have arthritis or some other condition in your hands, you can already do it. Playing hours of exercises will not make it appreciably better or easier. These exercises are awkward at best, and painful at worst. There is absolutely no reason why pain is necessary to learn to play the piano!

Some people mistakenly believe that playing the piano is similar to typing, and that typing is good preparatory work for playing the piano. However, this is not the case at all. If it were true, there would be a great number more good pianists out there than there are, since virtually everyone types. Many of my students have jobs where they type at the computer all day long, but they don't start out ahead of the game at all when it comes to learning the piano. Playing the piano involves a tremendous number of skills that don't get developed at all by typing!

If you do exercises to supposedly improve your strength and finger independence, your playing will probably start to sound like an exercise, that is, very clunky and stiff, what I call "note-wise." How can it be otherwise? You can't practice one way and then think you will flip a switch and play beautifully.

In fact, the real skill in piano is learning to have the fingers, hand, arm, and even torso, work in conjunction with each other. The fingers already want to "get in the act" and take over, so to speak, but a dazzlingly fast and smooth arpeggio, for example, involves a lot more than just the fingers each doing their own thing. I often say we need to "tame" the fingers. If they work independently, as mentioned above, the sound you produce will not be as smooth, even, and with good phrasing as if they work together.

As you've heard me say before, we also do not need additional strength in our fingers. Most pianists do not have muscular hands. We need agility and flexibility. All the strength we need comes from the larger muscles of the arm. If this were not true, how would we see so many young prodigies who play all the big and difficult pieces? They simply haven't had time to develop muscles in their tiny hands.

The only endeavor that I can think of that requires finger strength would be rock-climbing. You can see that an experienced rock climber has muscular hands. If you think therefore they would have an advantage when it comes to learning the piano, because they already have finger strength, you would be wrong. They would have a much harder time, in fact, because they have probably lost a great deal of flexibility in the aquiring of those muscles.

The whole issue of strength and independence of the fingers is a moot point anyway. Almost ALL of what goes into learning to play an instrument is neurological. It's happening in the brain. I like to call it the "wiring" in the brain. There is no physical skill you can develop without it first happening in the brain. Every time you practice, it is good to be mindful of that. The brain, in my experience, responds to intelligently designed technical work done in smaller amounts, rather than brute force strength training.

There was a well-known pianist who, after a long career of concertizing, suddenly developed a type of paralysis in his hands. He was diagnosed with dystonia. Doctors and physical therapists tried many different treatments, all to no avail. Not a lot was known about dystonia, apparently. Ultimately it was discovered that it was a "scrambling" of the part of the brain which controlled the hands. No amount of work on his hands was going to change that. Later on, he was able to return to playing, but only if he played pieces that didn't require a lot of "finger-action." Pieces with more chords and more dependence on the arm were possible for him. 

You probably won't develop dystonia, but pianists who force their hands and fingers into unnatural exercises for "independence" do develop tendinitis and other conditions. Please don't be fooled by the old idea that you need independence of the fingers.

The Problem With Piano Lessons

 

I've been teaching private piano lessons for many years. In the past I also taught at a private music school and a community college. I am a very committed teacher, as you must have deduced from reading this blog. I have a degree from one of the best conservatories in the country, Manhattan School of Music. After my degree I had further studies with a masterful teacher, Joseph Prostakoff. I have a website which lists my experience, has testimonials from students, recordings of my playing from concerts I have given, and, of course, I have been writing this blog for 12 years.

When I meet people and they learn that I teach piano, I very often hear "Oh, I took piano lessons when I was a kid." Some of them say they really enjoyed it, and others say they hated it. Almost everyone took private piano lessons from a local teacher.

However, I see a lot of problems with private piano lessons, and also with some schools. Many people who teach privately are simply not qualified to teach. You wouldn't send your child to learn math or science or most subjects to just some person in your neighborhood. In a public or private school, the teachers must be certified and have proven competency in their fields. In addition, they may be required to have continuing education to keep up to date. A private teacher may not have a degree in music, or any kind of certification, and has no proof of their level of expertise that they can show you. Some just teach a few lessons "on the side" to pick up a little extra money. Furthermore, their own education in music may have taken place many years prior, and they may not be up to date on modern theories and practices. You might think, "what could really change in learning to play the piano?" I can assure you that much has changed in our understanding. (Read my post "Are you using 300-year-old ideas?")

Many private piano teachers learned to play when they were kids; maybe they even played reasonably well. But teaching is an art. Just because you played for a few years when you were a kid does not make you automatically qualified to teach others. And most teachers will teach the same way they were taught. If they had a bad teacher, they are probably going to also be a bad teacher. Unfortunately, they may not have even realized they had a bad teacher, so they have no impetus or reason to change how they teach.

Virtually all my adult students who come to me having had lessons previously have some level of bad habits they will need to change if they want to play well, make progress, and really enjoy the journey. I hate to use the word "bad," but there is no point in sugar-coating it. They have learned technique either based wholly on a wrong foundation, or they have not really learned technique at all. Often their abilities in sight-reading are sorely lacking. They really have not learned how to practice effectively. And they sometimes have no idea how to play expressively. Theoretically, it's possible they had a good teacher and just didn't follow the teachers' instructions. But when I question them about their previous lessons, I can tell with a high degree of certainty that the teacher didn't know how to teach, and/or was teaching the wrong things.

You may think I sound quite arrogant, saying that others are wrong in how they teach and I am right. I'm sure most teachers think they are skilled and doing a good job with their students. If the student doesn't do well, they just say the student didn't have enough talent or didn't work hard enough. This seems to be quite a conundrum. There is no absolute "test" that you can apply to ascertain the quality of the teacher. It is not until you've studied with them for a period of time that you may have an inkling. But by then you will regret that you spent all that time, energy, and money on a teacher who didn't help you. I suppose there is simply no substitute for using your own good judgement and honestly assessing your own progress at the piano. (See my post "Who can you believe?")

Finding a small neighborhood music school is also not a solution. I am aware of several chains of music schools who teach a variety of instruments, including piano. However, these places usually hire young teachers, just starting out, and they pay them very poorly. The school takes the rest of your tuition money for overhead, and profit, of course. There is no guarantee that the school has chosen teachers with actual teaching skills. This may a be a good way for a brand new teacher to get some experience under their belt, and I sympathize with them, because everyone has to start somewhere. But you may not want your child, or yourself, to be the guinea pig for a brand new teacher. And don't assume that a teacher who teaches at a piano store is a good choice; the store is simply renting out the space, and make no guarantees as to the quality of the teacher.

When parents decide to send their child for piano lessons, they also may not want to spend too much, thinking that if the child doesn't like it and wants to stop, that they will not have lost too much money. But sadly, if the lessons are "cheap" and the teacher is not good, the child probably won't do well, and will want to stop. On the other hand, people have limited budgets and may not be able to afford a top teacher. A high-priced teacher isn't necessarily a good one either. I have known of many high-priced teachers who are still promoting 300-year-old ideas. It's a real dilemma. I sympathize with parents who are trying to do the best they can.

Unfortunately I don't have a magic answer. If you are exploring the idea of private piano lessons for yourself or your child, ask the teacher a LOT of questions. Ask about their approach to all the many subjects I have discussed in previous posts. Also, you MUST ask them to play something for you and assess how you think it sounded. If they say they can't play because they are "too busy to practice" or some other such excuse, that should be a red flag. See my post "Finding a Teacher."