Bonnie Debu Piano Studio 

Monday, May 13, 2024 by Bonnie Debu | Tips

Some awesome musical rules: 

• Two notes in a row are never exactly the same: They have a progression, a different meaning, a different place on the dynamic rainbow
• If your music has two short ideas followed by a long idea, play the long idea louder! (usually!) 
• If the music repeats itself, make the repeated music softer so it sounds like an echo. (Usually! another option is to emphasize the repeat, or make a crescendo)
• If the music gets STUCK on the same pattern, hit the “panic button”: Increase the volume like the music is freaking out until the last note in the repeating pattern snaps out of it and calm down. (Unless the composer says get softer!)
• If there is a written-in crescendo, grow loud late, but grow louder than we were expecting you to. If you would graph the shape of the volume of a crescendo, it would look like the end of a trombone rather than a ramp going up
• If there is a diminuendo, grow soft later and softer than we were expecting. If you would graph this shape, it would look more like the nose of a submarine rather than a ramp going down
• When the harmony sounds dissonant, this is musically intense/alarming, and you should play the ugly sounds stronger and lighten up on the consonant harmonies. 
• Always help the mood change with your dynamics and your body language, and even the expressions on your face! (as long as it doesn’t get weird) Every time you vibe the character of the music in your body language and put the energy out there to exaggerate, you add drama to your performance
• Play everything like your audience is listening with rapt attention but isn’t very smart and needs things spelled out to them. For example, REALLY do the dynamics, don’t just kind of hint at them. 
• Play like there are Piano Competition Judges listening to you who are absolutely LOADED with prize money and a crazy amount of scholarship money on the lookout to recruit musicians to their music school and you are the only applicant- your only requirement is that you have to look calm and be expressive!  
• Bar lines and beam breaks they do not add ANY TIME at all to the rhythm. Bar lines are there to show you where the next strong beat (Beat 1) is. Beams are there to show your eye where the beats are. 
• Your seating position needs to be such that your wrist to elbow is level with the floor. 
• Your technique has a VERY important foundation- your feet! Imagine a skyscraper whose foundation is rods pounded deep into the bedrock, like roots. Your feet will never slip and slide, but stay rooted to the floor (or footstool if you use that). Your feet offer support to your upper body which can now be free and flexible, like a fountain in the wind. 
• Your legs will be at work and your sitter-downer won’t necessarily be squished and static against the bench, but at work as your arms are tossed loosely forward to play the piano. 
• Your shoulders and elbows should rest loosely in the lowest most relaxed position they can, as far as your muscles go. Shoulder-shrug (as if you said “I dunno”) is a great exercise to find this relaxation. 
• Arms should feel “tired” like all your joints are water and you are using the least amount of muscles to raise your hands to the keys. An exercise to practice this is to lift your hands to the keys saying “I’m so tired!” 
• Hand Shape should resemble an arc- the whole hand is the arc, from the wrist to the fingertip. The highest part of the arc is the knuckles that connect your hand to your fingers. When you strike a key, don’t prepare too quickly, but let the finger land in a singing way rather than a hitting way, and very slightly roll the arm weigh forward to promote the arc in your hand. 
• Fingertips will not slide on keys (99.9% of the time… it might be useful in a few feathery pieces to have sliding fingers, but generally train to avoid it.)
• You should feel the keys pushing back when you strike each key: Don’t overpush
• The key will repeat without it going all the way down. And it can repeat even without going all the way up. It took people a long time to invent that! Therefore, repeated keys do not necessarily have to be staccato. Experiment with playing repeated notes legato – it’s possible to do this!
• Take videos of your 5^th finger. Never carry the wrist so low that the 5 lies flat on its tummy. Keep the 5 and the thumb pointing a little more down toward the key instead of flat. This helps you have smoother arm action.  
• Search for your notes in peace! Don’t run the hands back and forth really fast while mentally sorting out where your hands need to go. 
• Playing incredibly short staccatos adds a TON of energy to a piece
• Analyze: WHERE is the highest and lowest point of the piece, pitch-wise, AND emotionally? You sometimes find these points correspond.
• Rests are silent notes! Play them on time. Think of them as the end of an upward lift your arm slowly started making even before the phrase’s last note. (depends on the phrase length, though) 
• Just like there is a broad range of grays between Black and White, there is a broad range of touches between staccato and legato. Enjoy the silences between all staccatos and measure carefully the lengths of all the silences.
• All the time keep the pulse steady 
• COUNT and check with MM to make sure you are really correct
• Pedal is addictive once you start, but don’t think more pedal is better: Only very young elementary students do this- they think it’s cool to pedal all the way through Twinkle Star or whatever. It’s not. Pedaling is a very specific art that needs guidance from your ear and from your teacher. It’s too hard to write about adequately but a few rules are:
• Don’t pedal steps down low
• Pedal according to the harmony
• When in doubt, throw it out
• Pedal is hardly ever completely down and completely up- fine players save foot time and are using the top part of the pedal action for control
• Keep the foot on the pedal even when the pedal is not engaged: otherwise the pedal can release too quickly and make a big thumping sound. 
• When you are going to start a piece, the foot going to the pedal first is ideal, otherwise if your arms go to the pedal first, you can block your line of sight to your feet and end up getting the wrong pedal

5 KEYS for memorization are: 

1. Section work - Divide and Conquer
2. Analysis - chords intervals black and white key landscape BEAD 
3. Repetition - 4x in a row 4 days in a row
4. Review after practicing several days in a row the same section, test the section
5. Listening to the piece to build Aural memory

 5 KEYS to musicality 

1. Counting, out loud - because music is poetry without the words, and you want to feel the cycle of the meter
2. Feeling the harmonic journey tensions and release
3. Always bring the melody out
4. Shape the phrases like lines of a song and look for the places where the music breathes
5. Imagine the story and enhance it for the listener – never be afraid to be expressive

5 keys to technique

1. Don't press after you strike the key
2. Choose the right joint for the right speed so you consciously stay relaxed
3. Master the keyboard (scales, chords, arpeggios, keys,)
4. Write and use good fingerings in your pieces 
5. GIVE IT LOTS OF TIME!! THIS TAKES TIME. IT DOES NOT HAPPEN IN 20 MINUTES A DAY. 20 MINUTES IS YOUR WARMUP! WORK/OBSESSION ALWAYS BEATS “TALENT’

Performance Tips

Relax Physically, Consciously 

Drill pieces, even the ones you KNOW 

• Sections starts work 
• Hardly any piece is all the same level throughout: identify the tough spots that are either technically challenging or anomalies, or unexpected forks in the musical trail. break them into smaller puzzles to solve and give them all more time than parts that repeat or are naturally easy for you
• Mentally practice while looking at the music. If you THINK your way through the piece you have a chance to plan what you will think ahead about as you perform. This mental strategy is brilliant, but does not sound like you are doing anything- warn your family that for the next five minutes you will be sounding very unproductive but that great things are happening in your brain!
• Hands alone work is always valuable, and especially when you start with the LH first- this way you ensure your accompaniments will be quality, and that you HEAR them. 
• Slow practice often! 
• Perform for family in recital dress! This might seem like a cringy and uneccesary thing as you are doing it until you are up on the actual recital stage realizing, “I am good at this because I did it before.”
• Practice stopping and skipping ahead – because if you mess up you need to survive. PREPARE so you don’t need the skill of skipping ahead, but then GET the skill of starting sections by memory. 
• Remember to be musical. Many times people ARE but have to give themselves permission to be as awesome as they really are
• Rushing is a problem produced by adrenaline. It makes you feel different! Butterflies can make you feel shaky and make you play too fast or too strong. Practice performing and practice relaxing
• When starting your performance, Take time to look at the piano until it feels familiar, then imaging the sound you want. When you are ready, start foot on the pedal (make it sure it’s the right one) then the action of lifting your hands actually comes from your back. Hands will touch silently on the keys and then you will only breathe life into the piece when you feel ready. The lift to the keys is not your beginning – you should take a second “breath” or lifting of the arms to settle into the first notes that is NOT the same gesture as placing your hands up to your starting keys. You can make your audience wait! 
• It’s normal to feel nervous, little nervous or a lot, but train yourself to cope, and prepare to handle it.
• Know the expectations for the event, and, if possible, play the piano beforehand.
• If you are not sure if you should dress up or not, dress up! If it is a recital or competition, you can hardly be too dressed up. Performances classes is still worth it to dress up.
• Be aware that pedals respond differently from each other. Take time to make sure the bench is right height and distance. Adjust to the piano as you perform
• If you can’t hear the notes play harder and if the pedal doesn’t change, put a lot of effort into your lift, or take foot off. It’s better to have no pedal than to destroy the whole piece with too much pedal.
• Always bring your books and always take them home again
• Know titles and composers
• If you have to announce, practice that. Slowly, extremely clearly, loudly
• The best bow has a slight stopping place at its depth, and a smile at the end