The dynamics doesn't simply relate directly to loud or soft, they are the sensation of expression, people have very complicated emotion and expression in thousands of situations, so try to imaging the tone while you are expressing yourself, like telling a story, whispering, not just simply loud/soft, this is how I explain to the other people
Choosing the minute waltz as background music was such a torture for me hahaha. Im currently learning it, so the video seemed to agressively remind me not to watch youtube videos, but to practice. Anyways, thanks for the tips.
I'm also learning this piece right now too, I just managed to get my right and left hand to work together from bar 21 to 36 at a painfully slow pace.... and it's the sign that this will be a piece that I can learn before too long! If it wasn't midnight, I'd go practice.... i know what I'm doing in the morning :D
Thanks for this, especially the discussion of _forte_ . In my Latin studies, I always read and translate _fortes_ as "strong" or "brave" or similar words. It didn't connect well to music for me as my teachers have never interpreted it in terms other than "loud," but you explained all those words in relation to the music.
A wise musician will consider your lesson as an added piece in the ever-growing encyclopedia of "how people perceive music", in which to be used in the effort to create sounds that people will register as music. Thanks!!
Rubato... I knew it from belcanto. Explaining it in terms of piano... left vs. right hand, then naming Chopin... it just made "ding ding ding ding!" in my head, giving me a connection between stuff that wasn't previously there. -> *subscribes*
6:40 "Hit the bell" - of course provided that the bell does like to be hit, unlike the piano, which doesn't like to be beaten as we established at 6:24 😅
Rubato (from the same root of the verb: to rob. Rub/Rob. See the connection? You rob from one part of the bar and give back to the other part of the bar so that each bar begins on time creating a steady pulse. Of course, where the bars are very short or the music is very fast, rubato can apply to longer phrases or short sections where you rob time from one part of the phrase and give back to the other part. This makes sense to the listener. It is also why it is different to rit. because in that case you don’t speed up so the overall speed doesn’t change the time it takes to play a phrase or even a whole piece (depending on the piece’s length). Forte = Strong. If someone is good at something then we say: “It is his forte.” because it is one of his strengths. Legato, as you put it in this video, without physically connecting the sound is achieved through singing silently in your head portamento (sliding) from one key to the next (either up or down depending on the direction of the notes). Once practiced, this gives you an edge over other performers and will always sound like you have a deep understanding of the phrasing and character of the music. I reckon that one could spend a good 20 minutes describing each of these 3 concepts and so well done for your worthy definitions in this enjoyable video!
So true about forte. Some students see that f as a green light to immediately start slamming the crap out of the keys. I was always taught to use your body weight to "pull" the appropriate volume out the instrument instead of recklessly beating it out.
About legato I could Say It Is not an energetic connection but a perceptive one, both finget legato and not. (Sorry for my english 😅). Very nice video!!! 😊👏
There are 2 definitions of rubato. The one that is common sense today is, play the beginning of a phrase decidedly and on time; slow down at the end of the phrase; breathe before the next. This emulates human speech. However, the definition given by Mozart is the one referenced in the video. This means the melody and the accompaniment are sometimes out of sync. Out of sync rubato is not about speech, it's about singing. What happens when you accompany a singer? That's right, the diva gets out of sync. Mozart's rubato is about putting a singer inside the piano. This kind of rubato has almost never been practiced, since its results can sound very arbitrary. You will have a very hard time pointing to a recording of async rubato.
Adding to your first definition, one of the classical greats (maybe Rubinstein) was saying rubato means "stealing." When you steal time from one place, you need to give it back to another place. It's nice to imagine time as a fabric, where when you pinch, pull, and stretch in one direction, the fabric gets compressed and squashed on the other side.
I'd say Rubato is much more nuanced and period/composer-specific than you've described. Compare writings about Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, romantic, etc., and you will find very different definitions.
She is a wonderful teacher and someone I’m sure students will be happy to learn from. I can imagine students being attract to learning from this woman. Obviously an applied steady mix of both relaxation and non-interruption help with learning. Thank you. I enjoy listening to her tutorials and am happy to have received yet another random recommendation for yet another expert female piano player. I think that’s four or five to date.
How much do facial gestures count when it comes to legato? I notice Chopin Contest contestants use it extensively. Of course there is also the Zombie approach: ruclips.net/video/2rUsZlXFhcc/видео.html
Annique, I’d love a video where you talk only in German. It would be so interesting, since I really love the language, and you’re so good at playing piano 💜:)
You don't know how important this video was for me Can you plz make a video about the repeated notes technique U know Some tricks and tips Currently i am practicing chopin's grande valse brilliant op 18 And i am having some problems Keep it going. I love u
I thinik a piano just sounds awful when you bang on the keys, even for a bar or two. Yes, it is louder, but then you lose the nuiances in the sounds and get an out-of-control booming effect. So it is important to play within the nice sounding range of the instrument. Forte is like driving fast and keeping the car under control at the same time.
Does Lang Lang play rubato very pronounced? Slowing down the « main » rhythm? In art, it always the same: you can brake the rules if you can make it work.
On guitar, you can't play finger legato at all, except within a very small range. There's no way to play a one-octave scale iin finger legato. Between chord changes, there's no pedal you can use or finger legato, you have to break the sound. I think of legato on the guitar like 'impressionism' in painting, I try to create the impression of legato so that the listener doesn't hear the breaks.
Forte definitely not equal to loud, also piano is not soft either. When people soft, it still need energy, I also call that solid sound, but when most people play soft, it is unheard.
The piano has the option of playing softer then a harpsichord. Originally the piano was called piano-forte. Soft loud. Literally. Imagine the instruments prior had no volume dynamic control.
I view dynamics in a relative sense. There is no dB rating for any dynamic marking. Ill give an example. In Ravels Ondine, measure 1, marked ppp. Whatever dynamic level you actually establish here is now the baseline "impression" of ppp. So pp is a little louder than what you establushed as ppp, p is a little louder still - in relation to what you established in measure 1 as ppp. It doesn't matter if you actually played measure 1 at kind of a mf level, when you see pp or p notated, play it a little louder than the mf you established as your baseline ppp dynamic. The actual dynamic level you play at thoughout the score should be relative to the previous level you actually played the immediately prior dynamic. Regardless if it was marked pp, p, mf, and so on. So if you can't execute a phrase or passage at a ppp or pp level, don't. Just make all the other dynamic changes relative to one another. Not absolutes. So make it sound like it wass pp by playing the next dynamic louder for p, or softer for ppp. Regardless if its actually played ppp. This is a bit hard to descibe because there are no absolute levels of dB. You can give only the impression of getting louder or softer in a relative way.
Yes, this relative dynamics thing makes a lot of sense. I don't think I could play anywhere near a ppp level without soft pedal and even then, it's hard. And this also explains why I treat dynamic markings differently in Mozart vs Beethoven, them being relative. In Mozart, I hold back, my forte isn't too loud, just a bit of weight, and my piano isn't too quiet either, it's all towards the middle range. In Beethoven though, I don't hold back, I go from the extremes of loud to the extremes of soft. If you were to compare the dB levels of my Mozart and Beethoven dynamics, you'd get something like this(Mozart on the left, Beethoven on the right): pp = p p = mp f = mf ff = f It's not quite exactly this, my Beethoven range goes a bit wider than that, but for simplicity's sake, that's the closest. For pp in Beethoven, I will use a softer touch than I would in Mozart, and sometimes I'll even use the soft pedal, even if I don't see an una corda marking, just to make that soft even softer. For ff in Beethoven, I go all out, full body weight into it. Like I'll literally bend down my body as I move my fingers into the keys when I'm playing ff in Beethoven, especially for long notes. This I feel is good for me to do with Beethoven specifically for 2 reasons: 1) Beethoven tends to use dynamics in a way that emphasizes contrast. He shifts suddenly rather than using a bunch of crescendos, diminuendos, and swells as I see in Chopin for example. 2) Beethoven's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be a struggle to play a sonata of his, and this extreme dynamic stuff combined with the hard technical things(like the tremolo passage of the third movement of Appassionata that goes between thirds and octaves with 1 hand) gives the sense of struggle to others, even if it's easy for you.
Yes, relativity already existed in the real world before Einstein. And while f will always mean forte, it has a relative quality in the dynamic range of an instrument, where fff, I would say, is the loudest an instrument can play without distorting the sound. Even in that definition of fff, a Steinway D is a lot louder than Chopin would have played at home, in the Paris salons, or even on the concert grand pianos of his time. In a more absolute sense, we should remember that Chopin would say to Franz Liszt that he could not play as loud as Franz and I guess there was a pejorative aspect in that. I heard one of the greatest pianists of the past 40 years play Chopin-only in a concert hall with 1,000 people in it, on a Steinway D. His ff made the piano distort and the intimacy of Chopin's music was totally wasted, all concert long. A Steinway B in a significantly smaller room would have been much, much better. Or Blüthner, or, or.
Schade das alles auf Englisch ist. Vielleicht kannst du auch mal was auf Deutsch machen. Kommst ja aus dem Schwabenländle glei bei mir ums Eck. Ansonsten immer wieder erfrischend. Auch wenn ich nicht alles verstehe.
Dislike the point about forte. If you use the word "energy" you had better be talking about physics. Sound has only 4 parameters, try to make your point in terms of sound - something concrete and clear, not vague and obscure. I will give you an example. As a composer, if you see an f in my score, you had better play it with some force. The only thing extra that I realize happens is, in wind and string instruments, p and lower tend to have a slow and subtle attack (of the phrase), while f and above imply a confident attack, faster. Of course none of this applies to the piano.
Musicians often sound quite esoteric when talking about music, and you are unfortunately no exception here. Pianos don’t feel anything, but we do. And nothing but the downward force creates a tone, no matter what other magic around. However, the „other magic“ may help us to create appropriate downward forces... Instead of talking fuzzy, we should rather try to identify the physical parameters that evoke a certain feeling. That would probably get rid of all exclusive elitism and pretentiousness (both so sadly common in „classical“ music) in one sweep.
![Chris Langan - The Interview THEY Didn't Want You To See - CTMU [Full Version; Timestamps]](/img/1.gif)
The dynamics doesn't simply relate directly to loud or soft, they are the sensation of expression, people have very complicated emotion and expression in thousands of situations, so try to imaging the tone while you are expressing yourself, like telling a story, whispering, not just simply loud/soft, this is how I explain to the other people
Choosing the minute waltz as background music was such a torture for me hahaha. Im currently learning it, so the video seemed to agressively remind me not to watch youtube videos, but to practice. Anyways, thanks for the tips.
I'm also learning this piece right now too, I just managed to get my right and left hand to work together from bar 21 to 36 at a painfully slow pace.... and it's the sign that this will be a piece that I can learn before too long!
If it wasn't midnight, I'd go practice.... i know what I'm doing in the morning :D
It's a fun piece, I played it! Good choice guys
Thanks for this, especially the discussion of _forte_ . In my Latin studies, I always read and translate _fortes_ as "strong" or "brave" or similar words. It didn't connect well to music for me as my teachers have never interpreted it in terms other than "loud," but you explained all those words in relation to the music.
A wise musician will consider your lesson as an added piece in the ever-growing encyclopedia of "how people perceive music", in which to be used in the effort to create sounds that people will register as music.
Thanks!!
Rubato... I knew it from belcanto. Explaining it in terms of piano... left vs. right hand, then naming Chopin... it just made "ding ding ding ding!" in my head, giving me a connection between stuff that wasn't previously there. -> *subscribes*
6:40 "Hit the bell" - of course provided that the bell does like to be hit, unlike the piano, which doesn't like to be beaten as we established at 6:24 😅
Rubato (from the same root of the verb: to rob. Rub/Rob. See the connection? You rob from one part of the bar and give back to the other part of the bar so that each bar begins on time creating a steady pulse. Of course, where the bars are very short or the music is very fast, rubato can apply to longer phrases or short sections where you rob time from one part of the phrase and give back to the other part. This makes sense to the listener. It is also why it is different to rit. because in that case you don’t speed up so the overall speed doesn’t change the time it takes to play a phrase or even a whole piece (depending on the piece’s length). Forte = Strong. If someone is good at something then we say: “It is his forte.” because it is one of his strengths. Legato, as you put it in this video, without physically connecting the sound is achieved through singing silently in your head portamento (sliding) from one key to the next (either up or down depending on the direction of the notes). Once practiced, this gives you an edge over other performers and will always sound like you have a deep understanding of the phrasing and character of the music. I reckon that one could spend a good 20 minutes describing each of these 3 concepts and so well done for your worthy definitions in this enjoyable video!
I haven't heard rubato explained as you had in this video - very informative, thank you!
Great! you are the first who explained Rubato clearly on RUclips!
Interessantes Video, ich wusste da vorher auch nicht so wirklich drüber Bescheid
So true about forte. Some students see that f as a green light to immediately start slamming the crap out of the keys. I was always taught to use your body weight to "pull" the appropriate volume out the instrument instead of recklessly beating it out.
This was super informative and entertaining, even though I’ve been playing piano my whole life and am a professional piano teacher now. Lové it!
6:19 "And no one likes to be beaten.. I guess? or maybe there are some strange people" 🤣🤣🤣 THIS WHOLE VIDEO THO 10/10
Amazing video! Any tips for a good pianissimo? How do we control the volume properly, without missing the sound of the notes? Very good channel 😉
By controlling the weight that you sink into the piano with your wrist.
Reduce the volume on your E Piano 😅
That's a very good way 😅
By hitting the key softly lol
Is < pp even possible without a high quality grand? I don't think upright pianos, even expensive ones, have the required dynamic range
Excellent episode. I especially liked an interesting take on legato. I wish my teacher thought the same (and RCM examiners).
About legato I could Say It Is not an energetic connection but a perceptive one, both finget legato and not. (Sorry for my english 😅).
Very nice video!!! 😊👏
Loved your Arnold impression at 4:41 🤣❤️
Very helpful . Thank you for making this video
When i see FFF with pedal on an octave passage at the end of a showpiece i think i'm supposed to play it quite loudly (le preux octave coda)
Playing rubato always makes me feel like im falling forward and gives me tension in my belly :DD
There are 2 definitions of rubato.
The one that is common sense today is, play the beginning of a phrase decidedly and on time; slow down at the end of the phrase; breathe before the next. This emulates human speech.
However, the definition given by Mozart is the one referenced in the video. This means the melody and the accompaniment are sometimes out of sync. Out of sync rubato is not about speech, it's about singing. What happens when you accompany a singer? That's right, the diva gets out of sync. Mozart's rubato is about putting a singer inside the piano. This kind of rubato has almost never been practiced, since its results can sound very arbitrary. You will have a very hard time pointing to a recording of async rubato.
Adding to your first definition, one of the classical greats (maybe Rubinstein) was saying rubato means "stealing." When you steal time from one place, you need to give it back to another place. It's nice to imagine time as a fabric, where when you pinch, pull, and stretch in one direction, the fabric gets compressed and squashed on the other side.
1:26 I think your Iooking for the word "tied" 😀
I'd say Rubato is much more nuanced and period/composer-specific than you've described. Compare writings about Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, romantic, etc., and you will find very different definitions.
As someone who struggled with making these same mistakes… thank you?
Great lesson
4:40..geil lets go😂👍🏻 so bin ich auch immer wen ich forte sehe
Absolutely loving the videos!
My Teacher always emphasised that forte doesn't mean loud but strong. Aswell as piano meaning soft
Is there a standalone recording of your Minute Waltz performance anywhere?
i’m gonna need a skincare routine!!! even if it’s just a reel
Would love to see a technique video from you, for eg how to get fast scales/arpeggios/various staccatos etc
Virtuoso piano playing is enjoyed by many though practised by fewer
“As soon as they see forte, it’s like- ‘oh, oh, niCe’” (video game music)
😂
Chopin said the opposite of 'keep the left hand stable'. Interesting.
Reference please?
Roboto? Domo arigato Mr roboto?! STYX FTW
Debunked und unleashed!
Great video!
Brava!! 👏👏👏
Great video
She is a wonderful teacher and someone I’m sure students will be happy to learn from. I can imagine students being attract to learning from this woman. Obviously an applied steady mix of both relaxation and non-interruption help with learning.
Thank you.
I enjoy listening to her tutorials and am happy to have received yet another random recommendation for yet another expert female piano player. I think that’s four or five to date.
You are so cute. And thank you so much for all the information, helped me a lot in my self-taught process ❤
what's up early gang!!
Practicing rach op 33 n8, what's about ya?
Somebody please PLEASE tell me the piece she plays at 0:46 I’ve been looking eveywhere
Chopin op 64 no 1
How much do facial gestures count when it comes to legato? I notice Chopin Contest contestants use it extensively. Of course there is also the Zombie approach:
ruclips.net/video/2rUsZlXFhcc/видео.html
Annique, I’d love a video where you talk only in German. It would be so interesting, since I really love the language, and you’re so good at playing piano 💜:)
Maybe some strange pianos like getting beaten?
You don't know how important this video was for me
Can you plz make a video about the repeated notes technique
U know
Some tricks and tips
Currently i am practicing chopin's grande valse brilliant op 18
And i am having some problems
Keep it going. I love u
I thinik a piano just sounds awful when you bang on the keys, even for a bar or two. Yes, it is louder, but then you lose the nuiances in the sounds and get an out-of-control booming effect. So it is important to play within the nice sounding range of the instrument. Forte is like driving fast and keeping the car under control at the same time.
Try Boheimian Rhapsody by Jarrod Radnich in 1min, 10min, 1h Challenge
Rubato means to practice without a metronome :)
But after watching this video, rubato means that only the right hand practices without metronome :)
Does Lang Lang play rubato very pronounced? Slowing down the « main » rhythm? In art, it always the same: you can brake the rules if you can make it work.
On guitar, you can't play finger legato at all, except within a very small range. There's no way to play a one-octave scale iin finger legato. Between chord changes, there's no pedal you can use or finger legato, you have to break the sound. I think of legato on the guitar like 'impressionism' in painting, I try to create the impression of legato so that the listener doesn't hear the breaks.
Forte definitely not equal to loud, also piano is not soft either. When people soft, it still need energy, I also call that solid sound, but when most people play soft, it is unheard.
The piano has the option of playing softer then a harpsichord. Originally the piano was called piano-forte. Soft loud. Literally. Imagine the instruments prior had no volume dynamic control.
Haloo
I view dynamics in a relative sense. There is no dB rating for any dynamic marking. Ill give an example. In Ravels Ondine, measure 1, marked ppp. Whatever dynamic level you actually establish here is now the baseline "impression" of ppp. So pp is a little louder than what you establushed as ppp, p is a little louder still - in relation to what you established in measure 1 as ppp. It doesn't matter if you actually played measure 1 at kind of a mf level, when you see pp or p notated, play it a little louder than the mf you established as your baseline ppp dynamic. The actual dynamic level you play at thoughout the score should be relative to the previous level you actually played the immediately prior dynamic. Regardless if it was marked pp, p, mf, and so on. So if you can't execute a phrase or passage at a ppp or pp level, don't. Just make all the other dynamic changes relative to one another. Not absolutes. So make it sound like it wass pp by playing the next dynamic louder for p, or softer for ppp. Regardless if its actually played ppp.
This is a bit hard to descibe because there are no absolute levels of dB. You can give only the impression of getting louder or softer in a relative way.
Yes, this relative dynamics thing makes a lot of sense. I don't think I could play anywhere near a ppp level without soft pedal and even then, it's hard. And this also explains why I treat dynamic markings differently in Mozart vs Beethoven, them being relative. In Mozart, I hold back, my forte isn't too loud, just a bit of weight, and my piano isn't too quiet either, it's all towards the middle range. In Beethoven though, I don't hold back, I go from the extremes of loud to the extremes of soft. If you were to compare the dB levels of my Mozart and Beethoven dynamics, you'd get something like this(Mozart on the left, Beethoven on the right):
pp = p
p = mp
f = mf
ff = f
It's not quite exactly this, my Beethoven range goes a bit wider than that, but for simplicity's sake, that's the closest.
For pp in Beethoven, I will use a softer touch than I would in Mozart, and sometimes I'll even use the soft pedal, even if I don't see an una corda marking, just to make that soft even softer. For ff in Beethoven, I go all out, full body weight into it. Like I'll literally bend down my body as I move my fingers into the keys when I'm playing ff in Beethoven, especially for long notes. This I feel is good for me to do with Beethoven specifically for 2 reasons:
1) Beethoven tends to use dynamics in a way that emphasizes contrast. He shifts suddenly rather than using a bunch of crescendos, diminuendos, and swells as I see in Chopin for example.
2) Beethoven's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be a struggle to play a sonata of his, and this extreme dynamic stuff combined with the hard technical things(like the tremolo passage of the third movement of Appassionata that goes between thirds and octaves with 1 hand) gives the sense of struggle to others, even if it's easy for you.
Hi, Annique... how is your finger? 😐
Love to be beaten :-)
maybe there are some strange people :-D
Contextual volume in short. Relativity.
Yes, relativity already existed in the real world before Einstein. And while f will always mean forte, it has a relative quality in the dynamic range of an instrument, where fff, I would say, is the loudest an instrument can play without distorting the sound. Even in that definition of fff, a Steinway D is a lot louder than Chopin would have played at home, in the Paris salons, or even on the concert grand pianos of his time. In a more absolute sense, we should remember that Chopin would say to Franz Liszt that he could not play as loud as Franz and I guess there was a pejorative aspect in that.
I heard one of the greatest pianists of the past 40 years play Chopin-only in a concert hall with 1,000 people in it, on a Steinway D. His ff made the piano distort and the intimacy of Chopin's music was totally wasted, all concert long. A Steinway B in a significantly smaller room would have been much, much better. Or Blüthner, or, or.
Schade das alles auf Englisch ist. Vielleicht kannst du auch mal was auf Deutsch machen. Kommst ja aus dem Schwabenländle glei bei mir ums Eck. Ansonsten immer wieder erfrischend. Auch wenn ich nicht alles verstehe.
When will Unravel 2.0 be coming? :D
Dislike the point about forte. If you use the word "energy" you had better be talking about physics. Sound has only 4 parameters, try to make your point in terms of sound - something concrete and clear, not vague and obscure.
I will give you an example. As a composer, if you see an f in my score, you had better play it with some force. The only thing extra that I realize happens is, in wind and string instruments, p and lower tend to have a slow and subtle attack (of the phrase), while f and above imply a confident attack, faster. Of course none of this applies to the piano.
Erster aller ersten der ersten !!!
@@jpdj2715 solche Kommentare braucht man nicht.Lass mir doch einfach meinen Spaß
@@lemo9316 ruclips.net/video/Vtmo5ZwWb6c/видео.html
First :)
Musicians often sound quite esoteric when talking about music, and you are unfortunately no exception here. Pianos don’t feel anything, but we do. And nothing but the downward force creates a tone, no matter what other magic around. However, the „other magic“ may help us to create appropriate downward forces... Instead of talking fuzzy, we should rather try to identify the physical parameters that evoke a certain feeling. That would probably get rid of all exclusive elitism and pretentiousness (both so sadly common in „classical“ music) in one sweep.