Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
ππ¦ΆWatch my foot, not my hands
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Your score tells you when to pedal down and when to release. That gap is where most of your pedaling decisions are happening on autopilot and you don't even know it. In this YouTube short from the recent 50 Shades of the Damper Pedal workshop, I'm playing 24 seconds of Debussy Reflets dans l'eau. {Come back here after you've watched the short excerpt.} In Mozart and early Beethoven, I pedal fast as the texture demands clarity. In Chopin and Debussy, I often pedal slow, creating a veiled sound before it clears. The score never told me that. That's you making an interpretive decision instead of just executing one. Want to learn how to let your ear guide you when pedaling? The full workshop replay is available for $27 today, it goes up to $37 tomorrow. ps Reply and let me know which music you chose to experiment with pedaling on. |
Lisa Spector, Piano Ninja
Juilliard graduate helping dedicated adult pianists who love challenging repertoire practice less while learning more.
Growing up, I swore by altered rhythms. Hours and hours of dotted-rhythms drilling my Chopin Γ©tudes. Five of them, on my debut recital at age 14. I don't practice that way anymore and haven't since high school. I posted about it on Instagram last week and it did not go over well. Most people pushed back hard. Fair enough, Instagram reels are short, I didn't have room to explain the alternative. So here it is. My real problem with altered rhythms comes down to one thing. When I'm doing a whole...
I've been playing Amy Beach's "Dreaming" at the same tempo for years. It felt like an andante tempo, as the composer wrote. Then I heard Greg Anderson play it slower. I'm talking seriously slower. π’And I stopped mid-scroll and was mesmerized, because something clicked that I didn't want to admit. My tempo wasn't wrong because it wasn't Andante. It was wrong because I'd never questioned it. Here's the thing nobody tells you about tempo: it doesn't just live in your fingers. It lives in your...
You know the moment. You're three lines out from That Passage and your stomach already knows it's coming. π³ Hands tense. Breath gets shallow. You start playing the mistake before you've even reached the measure. I used to think the fix was more reps. Drill it until the fear goes away. But no matter how many reps, it was hit or miss for years. The fear isn't about the notes. It's about what your body does when it feels it coming. Here's the first thing that changed it for me. SMILE π Tension...