I'm only 15 minutes into your video and have to pause it to think about what you are saying. It is such great content! I hope your analytics don't make it look like I've just left the video--I'll have to come back after a bit of "thinking time". Thanks so much for putting this out for us.
This is an epic video. I struggle to let myself go when I’m playing but this has highlighted many of the problems I encounter. Thank you for tackling this head on.
I absolutely like your musical approach! Playing music yourself is an intensified way of listening to music. Most people like to listen to music. Even if they do not know much about it, they have strong feelings for it. This intuitive understanding is so important and should not get lost when learning an instrument.
I'm a retired adult vocational education teacher. I always tried to bring neuroscience research into my teaching as I believe that understanding how we learn strongly influences how well we learn. Bob, I am really enjoying your approach as I am currently revisiting my music learning after playing piano/organ for sixty years. Thank you and please continue this series which has much to offer musicians of all levels. 😊
This has made a world of difference to my piano playing. I’m definitely on the analytical side, and have often wondered why my music wasn’t actually musical. What a revelation! Thank you so much for this video.
Yes!!!! This is what I needed to hear. I've known the life of the piece is missing in my playing but couldn't put my finger on what precisely was missing......your video on this really pushed me forward. Thank you so much Bob! ❤️🎼🎶🎹
You're 'allowed' to imagine anything you want! 😂 What I will say is that I think one of the most useful things a piano teacher can do for their student, and what I spend a good chunk of time on when I'm teaching, is to help the student find the most effective character, mood and sense of narrative for what they're playing. If a student was imagining a happy pigeon, I'd say there was a very high chance I'd probably be able to find them something more effective that helped the music to really resonate with them and come to life much more. Unless the music really did embody a happy pigeon!! 😂 But this is not about 'correct' and 'incorrect'- more what do we prefer? 😎
I don't generally sense visual depictions when I play the piano. For me music is more "just" aural depictions of the interplay of emotions and "soul states." I've never been able to imagine that such and such a piece is "a woman in her thirties,," or a landscape, etc. Some people are more visually "attuned" though, just not me. But the more important--by far, in my view--point that you make is that we should always be looking for things to love in the music that we play. I'm very fortunate in that I find many things to love in music at the piano. Musical performance without a feeling of that love can be dry and lifeless, so I really agree with you about the need to zero in on the the things that we love in the pieces we play. There are those who say musicians must be "selfless servants of the composers" and do their best to not inject anything "personal" in their performances. I disagree with that notion since I think music can be performed convincingly in many different ways. And the last thing I would want as a listener is to be faced with nothing but boatloads of "selfless" recordings in which musicians have tried to be as "objective" as possible in their performances. Personally, I like to get a sense of what is moving to a pianist, and some "underlining" is something that I look forward to hearing.
Yes, it's quite difficult to really do justice to this in a relatively short RUclips video (compared to how long I could talk about this for!! 😂), but I'm generally not all that 'visual', despite using quite visual language when I describe it. It's much more to do with physical feelings, moods & emotions, a sense of narrative, etc. So if I describe a piece of music as a woman in her 30s, I don't really visualise exctly what she looks like- I get a sense of how I would feel her energy if she was there in front of me! I agree about doing our 'own' thing when interpreting music- but there's a subtle thing here that my own thing is really my own unique perception of something that really does feel outside of me, rather than what my 'ego' wants. It's all quite hard to put into very concise language!! 😝
Although I don't talk about it much in my videos, I do think a lot about how teaching methods apply to neurodivergent people. ASD can be an absolute minefield to talk about, and obviously any answer I give as a short RUclips comment is going to be very superficial and generalised! What I will say is that there is a lot of strong evidence that music therapy 'improves' ASD symptoms (again, a huge minefield there!), so given all the evidence it's my belief that yes Autistic people can develop this parasocial relationship with music (with practice) even if social relationships are challenging.
@@HeartofthePiano Thankyou for your detailed response, I will keep watching your videos and try to become more in touch with the human story behind the music when listening to the sound after playing the notes.
I'm only 15 minutes into your video and have to pause it to think about what you are saying. It is such great content! I hope your analytics don't make it look like I've just left the video--I'll have to come back after a bit of "thinking time". Thanks so much for putting this out for us.
This is an epic video. I struggle to let myself go when I’m playing but this has highlighted many of the problems I encounter. Thank you for tackling this head on.
I absolutely like your musical approach! Playing music yourself is an intensified way of listening to music. Most people like to listen to music. Even if they do not know much about it, they have strong feelings for it. This intuitive understanding is so important and should not get lost when learning an instrument.
I'm a retired adult vocational education teacher. I always tried to bring neuroscience research into my teaching as I believe that understanding how we learn strongly influences how well we learn. Bob, I am really enjoying your approach as I am currently revisiting my music learning after playing piano/organ for sixty years. Thank you and please continue this series which has much to offer musicians of all levels. 😊
This has made a world of difference to my piano playing. I’m definitely on the analytical side, and have often wondered why my music wasn’t actually musical. What a revelation! Thank you so much for this video.
Thanks for this great video.
Yes!!!! This is what I needed to hear. I've known the life of the piece is missing in my playing but couldn't put my finger on what precisely was missing......your video on this really pushed me forward. Thank you so much Bob! ❤️🎼🎶🎹
❤ 🎹 Interesting ... enlivening video 🎉
When I was young I always connected to music... bit less has i got older... point taken.
Thank you 😊
Am I allowed to imagine anything that I can relate to, such as a happy pigeon?
You're 'allowed' to imagine anything you want! 😂
What I will say is that I think one of the most useful things a piano teacher can do for their student, and what I spend a good chunk of time on when I'm teaching, is to help the student find the most effective character, mood and sense of narrative for what they're playing. If a student was imagining a happy pigeon, I'd say there was a very high chance I'd probably be able to find them something more effective that helped the music to really resonate with them and come to life much more. Unless the music really did embody a happy pigeon!! 😂
But this is not about 'correct' and 'incorrect'- more what do we prefer? 😎
I don't generally sense visual depictions when I play the piano. For me music is more "just" aural depictions of the interplay of emotions and "soul states." I've never been able to imagine that such and such a piece is "a woman in her thirties,," or a landscape, etc. Some people are more visually "attuned" though, just not me. But the more important--by far, in my view--point that you make is that we should always be looking for things to love in the music that we play. I'm very fortunate in that I find many things to love in music at the piano. Musical performance without a feeling of
that love can be dry and lifeless, so I really agree with you about the need to zero in on the the things that we love in the pieces we play. There are those who say musicians must be "selfless servants of the composers" and do their best to not inject anything "personal" in their performances. I disagree with that notion since I think music can be performed convincingly in many different ways. And the last thing I would want as a listener is to be faced with nothing but boatloads of "selfless" recordings in which musicians have tried to be as "objective" as possible in their performances. Personally, I like to get a sense of what is moving to a pianist, and some "underlining" is something that I look forward to hearing.
Yes, it's quite difficult to really do justice to this in a relatively short RUclips video (compared to how long I could talk about this for!! 😂), but I'm generally not all that 'visual', despite using quite visual language when I describe it. It's much more to do with physical feelings, moods & emotions, a sense of narrative, etc. So if I describe a piece of music as a woman in her 30s, I don't really visualise exctly what she looks like- I get a sense of how I would feel her energy if she was there in front of me!
I agree about doing our 'own' thing when interpreting music- but there's a subtle thing here that my own thing is really my own unique perception of something that really does feel outside of me, rather than what my 'ego' wants. It's all quite hard to put into very concise language!! 😝
Is it possible for an autistic person to do this, who finds it hard to connect to people in general...?
Although I don't talk about it much in my videos, I do think a lot about how teaching methods apply to neurodivergent people. ASD can be an absolute minefield to talk about, and obviously any answer I give as a short RUclips comment is going to be very superficial and generalised! What I will say is that there is a lot of strong evidence that music therapy 'improves' ASD symptoms (again, a huge minefield there!), so given all the evidence it's my belief that yes Autistic people can develop this parasocial relationship with music (with practice) even if social relationships are challenging.
@@HeartofthePiano Thankyou for your detailed response, I will keep watching your videos and try to become more in touch with the human story behind the music when listening to the sound after playing the notes.