HOW TO CREATE A GOOD TONE QUALITY IN FAST AND TECHNICALLY HARD PASSAGES // Piano Tutorial

Hi everyone, this is Danae, and today's video is going to be all about sound production on the piano. This was actually a video that was requested by one of you, and today I will be talking about how to produce different tones, different colors on the piano, but especially also about how to produce a beautiful sound while playing extremely loud passages, or very soft passages, or very fast passages. So basically, how to sound good while playing technically hard or technically extreme passages. I recorded the playing part of this video in a concert hall, because I thought it would be better for the demonstration. I recently had a recital in the Bruckner house, the house of Bruckner, in Linz, in Austria, and during my rehearsal before the concert, I just set up the camera and recorded a couple of passages that I will now talk about. So you're going to see me playing in the hall, because I thought that this would be a better example when talking about sound production. So if you're interested in all of that, then keep on watching. I would like to start with an example of a soft and fast passage, and for that I chose the beginning of Mendelssohn's Fantasy in F-sharp minor. It starts with the left hand playing a soft F-sharp, and then the right hand plays pretty fast arpeggios, but they're supposed to be soft. So now, a couple of things to think about in order to produce a secure sound where no note is missing, but at the same time a very soft sounding sound while still playing very fast. So the first thing is that in my brain, I try to think slower than I am playing. So I try to picture myself playing the passage slower than it actually is. I know this sounds a little bit paradox, but actually it is very possible and it helps a lot if in your brain you just picture a slower tempo, because it is going to prevent you from rushing, and also it's going to help you articulate every note the way you want it to very consciously. The second tip for this passage is to really do the minimal movement that is necessary. So try not to lift your fingers extremely high, try to really be close to the key, and to just do the movement that you actually need to in order to press the key, because a lot of excess movement only takes away from you actually being able to produce a beautiful sound. And then the third tip for this passage is to remember the sound production of a piano sound. So piano meaning of the piano, but soft sound. In order to produce a piano sound on the piano, you need to simply press the key slowly. Often we have the association that we need to press it softly, but actually physically it's not soft, it's slow. So it's all about the speed in which you press the key. So remember that the slower you press the key, the softer it's going to sound. So in a passage like this, where you have so many fast notes, just try to remember that the speed at which you press the key needs to be slow, the speed at which the next note follows needs to be fast. It's not the speed with which you press the key that needs to be fast, otherwise it's going to sound loud. And then my final tip for this passage is to really think legato, think as legato as possible. This is going to help you in producing this piano and maybe a little bit also mysterious sound. Think legato, really make a point of not lifting the first key before you press the next. And even if you hold the key for, let's say, one or two notes, it doesn't matter. I would say it's better to hold them a little bit too long than for them to be too short. My next example is from a different passage in that same piece. Again, in the first movement, there is a passage where the left hand has many fast notes and the right hand is playing octaves. This whole passage is pretty loud and majestic. So I chose it in order to explain a little bit how I would create a beautiful sound in a loud octave passage with fast notes in the other hand. So my number one tip is voicing layers. It is so important when you get into those fast passages, especially when you have different voices in your hands, to create different layers, identify which is the more important voice and which is the less important voice, and then really bring out the more important voice. Sometimes it can be as extreme as thinking mezzo piano for the left hand. In this case, I would say the right hand is the more important one. So I will really consciously think mezzo piano. Even though the entire passage is forte, just in my mind, I'm thinking mezzo piano for the left hand because of the so many notes and the pedal, the sound is going to accumulate anyway and it is going to sound forte anyway, so there is no worry about not being loud enough. The more important thing is to kind of compartmentalize the left hand in a lower layer and then have the right hand octaves shine above it. The next passage that I chose is the beginning of the third movement of this piece, of the Mendelssohn Fantasie in F sharp minor. As you might know, the third movement is a very virtuoso movement, it's very fast and many passages are also pretty loud. This can immediately be a danger because a movement that is in its entirety fast and loud can sound incredibly boring, it can kind of get on your nerves if all you hear is just loud without any dynamics. So this is what I'm going to be getting into right now. When you have a passage like this one, which has long virtuoso stretches that is loud, try to create dynamics and phrasing in order to make it sound more interesting and more musical. So even though the score doesn't indicate every single thing that I do, I try to create tiny crescendos, tiny diminuendos, I try to exaggerate a little bit the phrase going up, the phrase going down, in order to bring some shape and form into it. Here, as opposed to the first passage that I mentioned, which was fast and soft, this one is fast and loud, I focus on the opposite speed. So here, I need to really focus on pressing the keys very fast. I try not to think about playing it harsh or putting in accents, I just simply think, okay, press the key down very fast, then you're going to create your loud sound. Again, I still try to remember to implement minimal movement, because pressing it down fast doesn't mean that you need to come from up here. You can still be very close to the key, and just press it down fast. This will ensure that your sound is also more beautiful, because if you're banging the piano from high up, the chances of you creating a beautiful sound are not very high. But if you are playing the piano from very close to the key, at a very fast tempo, then most probably the sound is going to be more beautiful, but still loud. What I do in order to control my sound production in such a technically hard passage, is I focus on sound production while practicing it slowly. If you've been watching my videos for a while, you know how much emphasis I put on practicing slowly, so this will not come as a surprise to you. But practicing slowly is such a powerful practicing technique, and here, once again, if you practice it slowly, and not just think about the technical aspect, or getting your fingers in order, understanding where each finger has to go, but also focus on the sound production, you will automatically learn how you need to move and place your fingers in order to produce a beautiful sound, when this passage gets into the final tempo. So when I practice this slowly, I really try to focus on sound production already. And my next example are the final bars of the Mendelssohn Fantasy, of the third movement, and it ends with a very virtuoso passage, going downwards, and then two chords. And I want to focus especially on those two chords, because so often I hear pianists playing final chords, usually they're final chords, but of course they can also be in the middle of the piece, and just kind of bang them in order to make them loud, or maybe they think that it's a nice effect, but I always find that it results in kind of an ugly sound. So what I try to do when I have big chords like that, that mark the end of the piece, or the end of the section, is focus on a couple of things. Firstly, I try to focus on a warm tone. I never want my chords to sound cold and harsh. I want them to sound big, grand, and warm. So whenever I produce a loud forte chord sound, I try to focus on it having some warmth. This can be achieved by focusing on the bass. The bass gives a sort of warm vibration to the whole mix of the chord. It can also be achieved, once again, by not banging the piano from high up, but by really pressing the key from close to the piano. Now, if you do something like this with your hands, some motion like this, which is kind of inevitable, you can still focus on stopping yourself right before you'll press the key and not going at it with the whole speed from up here. So even if you do this and you just stop yourself for a split second and then press the key from here, this is also already very helpful. The second thing I focus on is something that my teacher actually told me a couple of years ago, and he said to focus on weight rather than strength. What he meant by that is that don't focus on how you would imagine, for example, an impact if you hit something. If you hit it with a lot of strength, it's louder, it's stronger. But try to imagine weight. It's more of a slow procedure. So put more weight onto it, not necessarily more hard strength. It's not about the volume, it's about the weight. And he actually gave me an example of a recital that he had heard by Radu Lupu, pianist that very sadly passed away last week, an incredible pianist. And Radu Lupu was very famous for his distinct forte sound that never ever sounded harsh. It always sounded so warm. And I remember my teacher telling me that he was playing a piece and there was a long forte passage, and he said Radu Lupu was basically playing between mezzo forte and forte, but the weight that he put on his chords created the feeling that he was playing a triple forte. But he said if you actually listen to it closely, the volume was not crazy loud and it wasn't banging, it wasn't harsh. It's just the illusion that was created because he was putting so much weight onto every note. So this is an image that helped me a lot. I don't know if this is going to be helpful for you, but I always imagine put weight on it. Don't focus on being loud per se, but try to focus on the sound being more heavy. And then the last thing I want to say when playing loud chords like these ones is that especially when they are short, so these chords are quavers and then they have a pause in between them. What I do is I lift my hands up like this. And some people think this is for effect or for show, but it is not for show. It's for the sound production because I imagine the image of a bell. The sound to me has the shape of a bell. So basically, there is something that goes into it. And then from the moment that it, let's say, hits the string or the piano, it forms and it grows like a bell. And this is something that is very helpful to me. So for my mental image, when I press it and want to produce a big sound, I kind of put my hands up and sounds kind of silly, but mentally try to produce the sound by it going up. Now, of course, I'm not sitting there playing the piano like this and producing sounds, but it translates into me in those two chords kind of lifting my hands up because I feel like I don't want to stop the sound down here. I want to bring it up. Of course, this is all mental and not actually physical, but sometimes creating mental images and moving in a way that supports your mental image can be very helpful and very powerful and actually translate into you sounding different on the piano. So if you have a mental image that is very helpful to you and you make a movement that is connected to that, I would encourage you to keep on making it if it doesn't stop you from being able to play something technically. Since we were talking about chords in the last example, I now wanted to get into a piece that is basically entirely made up of loud chords. It's the final piece of Schumann's Fantasiestücke, Op. 12. It's called Ende vom Lied, so basically translated end of the song. And the entire piece is basically made up of chords and it's all pretty loud. Here, once again, I really want to mention this weight aspect. I think it would be so sad and such a pity if you would just play this in a kind of hard quarter way, everything the same. And with this harshness coming into the sound, I really try to focus on not playing it that loud, but kind of giving it the weight and thereby creating the illusion of something very grand. Here also, I definitely have the bell image, that the sound production is not finished when I press the key, which if we are honest on the piano, it actually technically is. But in my mind, I try to imagine that the sound production goes on and grows and connects me to the next chord. And this is kind of what we need to do in order to create a phrase and a beautiful musically sounding phrase made up of forte chords on the piano. Here also, I really try to be close to the keys when producing the sound. And one more tip is that I really try to relax my shoulders. It is so common and it is one of my most common mistakes that I tense up in my shoulders, that my shoulders go up when I have a technically hard passage, especially when I want to play something very loud or I want to really create something special or create something impactful. My shoulders go up, but this doesn't help at all. So really try to focus on relaxed shoulders when you are playing forte chords. And if anything, I would say lean back a little bit. Don't go forward, but lean back and kind of try to create the sound in this type of a manner, where it comes to you rather than you being in there and kind of creating the sound as if your life depended on it. I think that by now we've covered almost all the basic scenarios where you would have to create a sound when it's technically a little bit uncomfortable. One more example that I would like to mention is Schumann's Aufschwung, which is the second piece of the same cycle that I was talking about, the Fantasiestücke Op. 12. The reason why I want to put this in here is because it starts with fast forte chords, which is something a little bit different from the slow big chords. The technique is the same, but I'm just going to put in the clip of me playing it in here. It's just the added difficulty of having to do all of these things that I mentioned at a fast tempo. Also, the initial forte fast chord passage is followed by very fast notes in piano, which we've also already discussed in the beginning. But I will put in the clip of me playing in here, so you can see a different example of that technique as well. And then my final example is Schubert's Liszt. So it is an arrangement by Liszt of Schubert's song Das Wandern. And it is a short piece, but it starts in a rather uncomfortable way, I find. You have to have the feeling that you have been playing it for a while. And I chose this piece because I wanted to get into this tip that I just mentioned. If you have something that starts kind of in the middle of the piece or of the technique, or it just right away starts hard, there is no introduction, so to speak, it's always very helpful to imagine that you've been doing this for a while. Now on stage, this can be very hard and tricky, because of course you just walked on stage, you're nervous and you need to get right into it. But it has helped me to, when I'm at home, actually practice the first couple of bars, let's say for a minute, then stop and then try to get right into it again and imagine that I've been doing this already for a while. So when I have pieces like that, where it needs to sound perfect right from the start, and it's kind of a technically a little bit uncomfortable situation, I really try to mentally put myself into the situation that I've been playing it for a while. Backstage, I might be going through the beginning in my head, just mentally over and over again, so that when I walk on stage and sit at the piano, I really am in that headspace of, okay, I know exactly where I am. It's not kind of a surprise and risky feeling when I'm starting. Also with this piece, as in different passages that I mentioned in this video, voicing is incredibly important. So here it's the upper voice of the right hand that needs to really sing above all the other voices. So I really try to, once again, compartmentalize the other voices and put them on a completely different layer than the upper voice of the right hand. And sometimes this can really be piano, mezzo-forte, so big differences. Exaggerate the voicing so that it can also be heard in the audience and so that the audience can understand the piece right away. Because remember, you have been studying the piece for many hours and know every note of it, but the audience might be listening to it for the first time and they need to understand it with just hearing it just once. So you really need to make sure that everything is clear, so that an ear that has never heard the piece before can get it immediately. I really hope that you enjoyed this video. It was a little bit different. Let me know what you thought. Let me know if it helped you. I had a lot of fun making it. I have a piano course with basic technical exercises that is an online course that you can take a look at if you want. It's linked in the description box. Also, my new album just came out. If you want, check that out. You can also purchase a signed copy if you live within Europe. Everything will be in the description box down below. If you enjoyed this video, please like it and subscribe to my channel. That would help me a lot. And I will see you again in the next video next week. Bye!