Practicing details

I currently have a piano student who is learning a piano rendition of “In the Hall of the Mountain King” by Edvard Grieg and she’s having trouble playing some of the details.

So what I have her do is practice the details, but exaggerate them. If you’re practicing dynamics changes, make the changes bigger. If you’re practicing staccato versus legato, make the difference bigger. Make the legato more legato and the staccato more staccato. Make the changes larger.

What this does is get you in the habit of thinking about the changes as being noticeable and it expands your own playing range. If when you play staccato and legato they sound similar you need to expand your range of articulations to make sure that the difference between those two can be heard.

If when you play mezzopiano and forte they sound the same, you need to expand your dynamic range so that those two are much more distinct.

This is something that’s likely fairly easy for musicians to hear in other musicians, even less experienced ones, but it’s much harder to put into your own playing and play yourself. Creating this large dynamic range, or range of articulations, takes quite a lot of effort and thought because you need to notice that you don’t have it and make sure you figure out how to play much quieter and much softer than you’re already comfortable with.

At first it’ll feel like you’re playing way too loud and way to quiet and that it’s useless to do so, until you need to do it.

You’ll be happy you have a dynamic range when you need to play a ballad that develops to forte in the middle or end. It’ll make the whole piece sound much more beautiful and much more musical.

Without those details it might not sound as musical or beautiful.

ISJ