Can you really improve your piano playing without practicing?

Here is a transcript of the video in case you might like to follow along:

Good morning. This is Duane and today I would like to talk about 3 ways that you can improve your piano playing right away without any practice. I know that sounds impossible, but stay with me here and I am going to show you 3 ways that you can really improve the results of your piano playing without doing any practice at all. These are techniques that you can use right now. This does not apply, by the way, to classical music. Some of it applied to classical, but not all. I am talking about playing pop music or jazz or gospel or whatever. Let’s say we are playing a song like “Fools Rush In.”

The first way is that you can play rubato. Rubato means free time. Robbed time, actually. You don’t have to keep a steady beat all the time, unless you are playing with a group, of course, but I assume that you are playing solo piano. No matter what song you are playing, you can speed up and slow down when it is appropriate. Let me illustrate that on “Fools Rush In.” You are going to keep a steady beat there. Did you hear me slow down there? I was playing a steady beat back here, but when I got to that center section, then I can go back to the steady beat. That doesn’t take any practice at all, it just takes a mind set to remind yourself that you are the captain of your ship. You can speed up and slow down. By doing that, you make it a lot more interesting.

The second way you can improve your piano right now is by using a contrast in dynamics. Most people play all one level. It’s like a speaker that talks at all one level. You don’t like speakers like that because they are very, very boring. You like speakers that get loud and get soft. They keep your interest better, so be sure and do that in your piano playing. For example, if you start out like this, you see, I played the first part loud, the second part I softened up quite a bit right away. You can do that throughout the song, as appropriate. Usually it is phrase by phrase, but it could be anywhere. Let me give you a little more example. That’s average. That was softer. That’s average. That’s a little louder. You hear a louder sound there, so you can get softer and louder. That makes your playing more interesting, too, doesn’t it? So far we have 2 ways. You can play rubato. You can speed up and slow down. You can play louder and you can play softer.

The third way to improve immediately is you can get higher and lower, can’t you? You don’t have to play everything in the center of the keyboard. I started out here. In the second phrase I might do this. In that last example, I combined all 3, didn’t I? I got higher, I got lower, I got louder, I got softer and I sped up and I slowed down.

3 simple ways that you can improve your piano playing right away. Just file those away in your memory bank and use them. That’s the key. You know how to do it, just use them. That will make your piano playing for interesting right away. It doesn’t take any practice at all. If you enjoy this kind of tips, come on over to play piano and sign up for our free piano tips. They are free. You’ll get something like this most every day, not every day, but most every day. It adds up over time when you have a few weeks or a few months or a year of tips, you have learned a lot of stuff, just random stuff, but it all mooshes together to make you a much better piano player. Thanks for being with me and we will see you soon. Bye bye for now.

Here is the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeQKwCZv6Uw&feature=youtu.be
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