7 Piano Tips That Will Help Any Piano Player Sound Better
7 Piano Tips That Will Help Any Piano Player Sound Better
Now let me say this first. There are certain people that are so talented that don’t need these tips. If you see Billy Joel violating these tips, that’s okay. Billy Joel could probably play the piano upside down. That’s true of lots of stars that you recognize, recording artists and so on. For the 99% of the rest of us which certainly includes me, here are some tips that will help you and me and everyone else.
1 – First of all when you’re seated at the piano, make sure that your bellybutton is pointed at middle “C”. Some people sit off center so that they’re too low or too high and that puts them at a distinct advantage. Also, make sure that your piano bench is high enough that your hands can come down naturally like this. See it’s kind of a slant from my elbow down to my fingers. If you’re reaching up then you’re going to play with flat fingers and it’s really awkward so make sure that you’re high enough, but make sure that bellybutton is pointed at middle “C”. That way you have access to the whole keyboard. That’s tip number one.
2 – The second tip I’d like to share with you is when you’re reading music don’t crank your head to the left or the right. When you’re looking down, when you have to look down away from the music and down at your fingers perhaps, we all have to do that now and then. Use eye flips, in other words flip your eyes down. Don’t move your head at all. Keep your head pointed straight ahead at them music. Otherwise, you’re much more likely to lose your place. That’s the second tip, use eye flips instead of moving your head up and down or back and forth.
3 – The third tip I’d like to share with you is to keep your hands like I have them now, in parachute position when you play. I call it parachute position because if you parachuted out of an airplane and landed like that your hands would be curved, your fingers are nicely curved. Nobody can play with flat fingers. It just doesn’t work that way. You need to have your fingers curved. Can you visualize a runner in the Olympics running without bending their knees, just running with stiff legs? No, that’s not possible. Same way in piano playing; you have to have your fingers curved. That’s the third tip that I have for you. Keep your fingers in parachute position.
4 – The fourth tip that I have for you is use dynamic variation. You don’t have to play normal all the time. In other words, you don’t have to play the same sound like that same level of loudness. How about doing this? You see, it’s much more interesting to get loud and to get soft and to modulate between the two. It’s like a speaker. You don’t like to hear a speaker that speaks like this all the time, it’s a monotone. No, you like a speaker that raises his voice, lowers his voice, and so on. That makes it just more interesting to follow. The same with piano playing so use dynamic variation.
5 – The next tip I’d like to share with you is after you learn to play the piano and if you do play the piano now, develop a repertoire. There are too many piano players around that they play the piano, but when somebody asks them to play the piano they say, “Well I don’t know what to play. I don’t have any pieces memorized or I can’t play all of them all the way through.” I advise you to develop a repertoire and you can do that by simply writing down the songs that you master.
For example, if you master let’s see: if you master Music Box Dancer then write it down so that you have access to it in the future. Develop a repertoire of I would say ten or more songs.
6 – The sixth tip I’d like to share with you is that you should massage the keys. I’m talking about the piano touch. The piano is not a drum. You can play it hard at times, but massage it. In other words, treat it as you would a massage. You don’t bang, bang; you hear too many players play like that, all one level and percussive. You have much better results and you can sound a lot more advanced is you use massage, if you massage the keys instead of bang on them.
7 – The last tip I’d like to share with you is to stretch your fingers naturally. When I used to play in public, I don’t do that much anymore. When I used to, I used to soak my hands in the basin of water, with warm water not scalding water, but warm water. I stretched them like that. Pretend this is the bottom of a basin. I held them underwater for maybe 60 seconds or so. Then when you take them out and dry them they feel so relaxed and supple. You can’t always do that, but what you can do is you can stretch fingers, just like that.
When a cat wakes up they stretch like that. Stretch your fingers often like that. When you’re sitting around watching television in the evening, I used to tell my students to take a rubber ball, a small rubber ball and squeeze it as they’re watching television. After a while you don’t even think about it anymore, you just do that. That exercises your fingers and it stretches your fingers. Stretch your fingers, okay?
Now there are seven tips that apply to every piano player and that will help you to sound better eventually. Hang in there and develop those seven tips, okay? Thanks for being with me today and if you enjoy this kind of thing come on over to playpiano.com and sign up for our free newsletter about chords and chord progressions. Then come back tomorrow and I’ll probably have another video for you. Till then I’ll say goodbye.