Sound control

[rtheunissen]

Dear all,

Recently I've come across a problem in my playing, a lot of the time it's mostly up to chance (and the temperature in the room) how loudly a note will play. I understand that this has to do with sound control and that that's something you need to improve in yourself (with experience I presume). Most of the time it's not a big problem and lots of practice will improve it drastically. However, with pieces where very soft playing of some notes is required, it's a lot more difficult for me. At the moment I'm mostly struggling with this in the 'inner line' of Schumann's 'Von fremden Ländern und Menschen', the first of his Kinderszenen, but also a bit in the thirteenth piece 'Der Dichter Spricht' and Debussy's eighth prelude 'La Fille aux Cheveux de Lin'.

Can anyone give me some tips, advice, exercises, or just an explanation on how this works and how to improve in this?

Thank you in advance!

[jaquet]

In my experience, the dynamics are completley in control of the performer not any other things like temp.
The way to practice playing quietly is by playing loud so your fingers can get used to how far they will need to press down. I found this video by Josh Wright very useful

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[palmtree]

Jaquet beat me to it! I planned to link the exact video, but I see he already did. Here's another one which you might want to consider:

[pianistavt]

Good question!
Agree with jaquet that it's okay to practice a section F to iron out the technical challenges, but if you do this all the time you're setting up a problem  - you'll have to relearn it at the dynamic indicated.  How you handle the arm/hand weight, the wrist movement, changes based on dynamic level, plus you're building muscle memory on the repetitions, so practice the section p or pp as much as f.

The finer elements of a piece - dynamics, pedal - have to be practiced with intention.  Students often think that those can be handled in the moment once the notes are learned but that kind of unpreparedness shows in the performance.  You come to you're pp section and find you're playing it MF instead - why? because you practiced it F, and you can't take it down 3 notches at run time.

BTW, thanks for posting the YT tutorials

[lelle]

I was originally taught to practice forte to establish technical security. Unfortunately it resulted in me being quite forceful and "holding back" from my default to play softer which was not a good way to establish control. I think it's better to learn how to appraoch technique so you always feel secure regardless of dynamic and can just choose to adjust it in accordance with how you prefer things to sound. This will depend on the room and the instrument too so I think it's good to learn how to be that flexible from the get-go.