Piano Forum
Piano Board => Performance => Topic started by: liszmaninopin on September 30, 2004, 04:35:04 AM
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I've often been struck with the importance of really careful listening to one's progress at the piano. Just today, I had another revelation, where really listening carefully to what I was playing yielded great results. In the past, a number of times I have encountered passages that I just couldn't seem to play correctly, I could never get them to sound right. Then, what I did was listened extremely closely to what I was doing, and then listened to what it was supposed to sound like. Just a change in the way you hear what you play can eliminate some barriers-just a change in the way you hear the rythms of a piece can help a tricky passage make sense. Has anybody else ever experienced this?
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I have many times. I think this is what separtes a piano player from a true performer of music. If you can actually listen to yourself playing, then you have the ability to shape your music in any way. Just watching your hands pressing the keys won't help you at all.
A couple of days ago I took out the good ol' raindrop prelude after a few months of it collecting dust and played it as expressive as I could listening and soaking up every note and trying to fit in all of the nuances and all that good stuff. It was very hard and tiring! After a week though, it got easier and easier. I had never tried playing it like that and had never tried to place myself as the listener for once. My teacher commented on how much better the piece sounded. I could feel myself making the music and listen to every note of it while playing, which ultimately helps give you the benifit of performing for yourself. If you don't like what you hear then listen closely and try to fix it. This is why recording is so useful!
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Yeah, sometimes I get caught up in the mechanics of the piano and how my hand, wrist, arm, and body move, I forget the whole reason for everything I do IS the sound produced. If silence is what is to be listened to, we must respect that! I have remember these things and am so lucky to have a great teacher to remind me.
donjuan
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Silence is not the absence of music, but a part of music.
Silence is the absence of sound, there is the difference.
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I think this is what separtes a piano player from a true performer of music.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I have a wonderful teacher who is always urging me to listen, listen, listen.
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Silence is not the absence of music, but a part of music.
Silence is the absence of sound, there is the difference.
Some people think of silence as a sound.
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Technically speaking,
sounds or noise is transferred and traveled by sound waves and has sound energy. Silence is the lack or absence of sound energy.
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I have found that it is the pianist's major disadvantage that he cannot understand the total effect of his sound on the listener, by virtue of the fact that part of his being is devoted to its mechanic production, wheras none of the audience's being is devoted to anything but receiving the effect. We can try to imagine what it would sound like, and the best musicians can be pretty close but until we can perform without using our brains, we will forever be firmly on the side of the producer, not the listener.
like someone sewing clothes- they can look at it and think that their design will be comfortable but they never get to wear it, unless they stop sewing. pianists unfortunately, can not do that.