Many thanks to the Wonderfull artist Matese Fields for his image used in this article. I downloaded the image from Unsplash.com for free. To see more of this artist’s great images click below:
I feel ashamed. I feel sad and I feel the worst possible piano teacher on Earth — Not that I am not, but that’s another story.
This online lessons charade has taken me by storm — I feel I am currently at my most pompous and self-important mood, living in a most melodramatic stage of my bumpy educational career.
I haaate online lessons — In case you haven’t noticed, read my previous article…
However, here am I, talking about online piano lessons, following their caprices to the letter, and do them with a massive (albeit fake) smile on my fat face. So massive is my fake smile, that if casting for the movie Batman Begins was to take place today, I sure would be snatching the part of the Joker in a jiffy.
But, once again, I digressed…
So, let me talk about online pianistic equipment. Who would have thought after more that than ten years, I would write another article on pianistic equipment, but this time on the online pianistic equipment — The lowest of the low.
So, here is what I use and what I generally suggest you, the piano teacher, should aim to have in your studio to make this online journey less painful:
SETUP
A Good Microphone: A microphone of excellent quality will convey your instructions more clearly to the student. As of the early February 2021, you will be probably having your online lessons with one of the major communication platforms, such as zoom, Skype, FaceTime, etc., And that means, you are connecting your microphone to a laptop, or a desktop computer or, (hopefully not) a mobile device, such as a tablet or mobile phone. An external microphone will “offload” the CPU (central processor) of your computer and allow it to work optimally. Here, you need to remember that internal recording sound-cards are not optimised to record with high fidelity. This is the job of an “external” sound card that has been specifically designed to reproduce and receive sound to the highest of qualities — I would strongly recommend that you invest in an external recording device/microphone. For example, an external USB microphone that connects directly to your device, or an external sound card with an extra microphone that it also connects to your device — I use the zoom H6. It is perfect for online lessons. You can do almost anything with it. You can record your playing, you can use it as a sound card and connect to it microphones though XLR, and you can record your live concert to the highest standard. The H6 is also great in the field, in filming, for interviewing and simply on every imaginable live-performance situation. I strongly recommend it.
And talking about computers, you need a Good Computer/Device to make the most of your wonderful microphone. There are zillions of laptops, desktops and tablets around, but only a fraction of them are capable for prime-time. I am not an expert and I couldn’t suggest which is the best computer that will flow naturally with your equipment today, but I go with the flow and I am currently using a MacBook Air. Very good choice and works perfectly well with all cables and bits and pieces. Ideally, however, you would have a desktop computer connected to big external monitor and avoid the laptops and the mobile devices altogether.
A Good Camera: A good camera would compliment the audial side of your studio setup, allowing the students to see in clarity your illustrations. I currently use a Canon M50 DSLR camera connected to my laptop. The advantage of having a DSLR camera, as opposed to a web-camera, is that it can zoom in & out on your fingers, and it can produce HD video that has unparalleled quality compared to any present-day webcam used by consumers. Plus, again, it disengages the internal webcam of your laptop, which is basic, and suited for less demanding applications.
A Good Set of Headphones/Monitors: If you are working with subtle sound nuances though the medium of the internet, you are not in luck, I’m afraid — you would need to hear the piano clearly. Dogs barking, birds chirping and cars passing by do not help in this respect. Through my use of both studio monitors and headphones over the years, I have come to realise that both fit-for-purpose. However, I am currently using the Marshall Major 2 Headphones since I live in a city and the noises of the passing vehicles can be distracting. So, unfortunately, I cannot use my studio monitors and need the headphone ear-pads to seal my ears as much as possible in order to hear my students through their often mediocre recording setups.
Other secondary equipment you might need to compliment the above list:
Α camera tripod to adjust the shooting angles of your playing with greater flexibility.
A secondary camera to show your fingers from above (placed right above the lid to show your demonstrations up-close). A second camera can also act as a means of simply making your footage more arresting and less rigid — I use my iPhone or my Nikon D340.
A second microphone placed in close proximity to the piano for even higher sound fidelity — In that case, you might opt for a “lavalier” microphone (I use the Rode SmartLav+) on your sternum, so your voice is not picked up too much by the piano mic. For the piano I often use a pair of AKG Perception 100 mics when things get savvy…
Good Lighting: Since the available light is not always sufficient, I would use a spotlight with varied colour temperatures so you can adjust it depending on the season and part of the day — that is, however, when you have windows in your studio, because if you don’t, your lighting conditions cannot be affected, anyway.
Quality cables!
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That’s all for now. This I believe is a most basic setup a decent professional piano studio should have.
Now, what about the students and their equipment? Who knows — I care about their equipment and constantly make suggestions, of course, but then again, it’s their life.
Most of the students’ parents prefer to buy a Mercedes and have lessons through their android phone, so good luck to them!
All images where used from the Wikipedia.com website. Many, many thanks to all contributors the images of whom I used to create the bold composite image above.
In this article we talk about what is forte in music. Then, after defining forte we shall attempt to describe how loud forte should really be.
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Asking what is forte in music, is like asking what is sweet in baking. Being a pianist, and not a baker, if someone was to ask me what is sweet, I would probably answer that sweet is something that has a sizeable amount of sugar in it. If then I was asked how much sugar, I would answer that perhaps it depends on the size of the sweet I bake. Then, I would elaborate that if I wanted a sweet cup of coffee I would add no fewer than two teaspoons of sugar and if I wanted to bake a chocolate cake, I would add no fewer than five big spoonfuls of sugar. And if I was asked how much is too sweet, I would say that it would depend on one’s own personal preference…
You see? ‘Sweet’ is a subjective matter — For some sweet means two spoonfuls, for others three, and for some others it would mean perhaps one-and-a-have spoonfuls…
The same applies to piano; forte translated means loud — but what is forte for me, it could be too loud for you, and for an exponent of the Russian piano school, my forte could mean that it lingers in the sphere of mezzo-piano…
Again, parallelizing music to baking, how sweet is something also depends on what you are baking; a coffee to be sweet might need two teaspoons of sugar, whereas a cake with two teaspoons of sugar… won’t cut the mustard — transferring this to musical terms, the Mozartian forte would be our coffee, that would sound like a wimpy cry in the context of the cake, if cake was Rachmaninov’s second piano sonata. Oh, the convenience of the contextual interpretation, eh?
What is forte
“So, what is forte then, can you define it for me already?” I hear you ask…
Well, forte means that I play quite loud. Not just loud, but with a sizeable amount of loudness.
Let me elaborate: When we play forte (especially on composers after 1945) we should really go for it and be head and shoulders above the dynamic of mezzo-forte; we should be blown away by the sheer velocity of the piano as it sings like most brilliant operatic soprano on her corona.
“What? Really? But what happens to fortissimo?” I hear you ask. “How loud fortissimo should be then, if I play forte quite loud?” Here, you need to remember that dynamics in music do not increase sequentially. For example, the table below is illogical:
Dynamic
Loudness
p
1
(pp x 2)
mp
2
(p x 2)
mf
4
(mp x 2)
f
8
(mf x 2)
ff
16
(f x 2)
Illogical sequence in musical dynamics; I.e. it doesn’t go like that.
Fortissimo in music is, in essence, a fake dynamic — a made-up dynamic to literally mean…even more forte, but not twice the forte. So when Rachmaninov asks the pianist to do ffff, he doesn’t mean to play four times the dynamic of forte (impossible), but he insinuates that the pianist should be banging the piano mercilessly and to the fullest of her/his physical capacities. And that “merciless banging” of the piano is, of course, a subjective matter.
Factors to consider when playing forte
Before playing forte, we should consider the following factors to help us in its prompt delivery:
Whose forte we are playing: Do we play Schnittke’s forte? Is it an editorial forte on a Scarlatti sonata? is it Mozart’s forte, or is it forte on a fake arrangement of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance? We should treat all those fortes with a completely different technical approach. For example, Mozart’s forte is too quite loud, and since the fortepiano of his era could not produce a very high velocity sound, nowadays we erroneously try to imitate his then perceivable softer forte on the grandiose and more rigid modern piano. We should really be playing much louder than the self-serving, delicate fantasy we try to produce on the Steinway nowadays. See on the start of his C minor K. 457 sonata, for example: Mozart surely wanted a glorious, orchestral ascent, and if he could savour on the immense, 7 ft pianos of todays, he would have begged the pianist to really “smash” the keys with some serious velocity. It’s a pity nowadays pianists maintain such a distorted version of how Mozart’s forte should be played, relying on letters, films and on other voguish doctrines to reduce his forte to a whimsical laughter.
The sheer number of dynamic levels in your piece: For example, if a piece had only two dynamic levels (p and f) we often might have to choose to not differentiate substantially between the two and avoid assuming that there are two more dynamics in the middle of them (mp & mf). We should not play them too far apart from each-other in case the piece becomes eccentric or even comedic. Scarce dynamics can be found in elementary level piano works, where the composer simply wants to teach the pianist how to handle softer and louder passages by just indicating p and f. However, in a piece that has, say, six different dynamic levels (pp, p, mp, mf, f, ff) we may choose to be more subtle with our velocities in order to be able to distinguish between all those dynamic levels; here, f will sound even more contrasting to p.
The style of a piece from the same composer: Do we play forte on Chopin’s e minor nocturne or do we built up on the finale of the same composer’s monumental third piano sonata?
The articulation of the forte: Is it forte on the start of the op. 111, or is it forte on the semiquavers of the Op. 2, Nr. 2? (Beethoven): Surely below, some of those fortes should be more reserved. Can you tell which?
The actual piano we are playing: For example, If we are to play Liszt’s B minor sonata on an 140cm upright from the late 90s, we might have to resort to produce a more down-to-earth forte since it might be harder to produce more extreme velocities, such as pp or fff; uprights in general have more dense dynamic ranges compared to, say, an Imperial Grand that can beat us for pace and can produce the subtlest nuances or the speediest velocities a pianist’s mind could handle.
The room we are playing: Guilty your honour! I failed an audition in a spectacular fashion many years ago, when I butchered Prokofiev’s 5th piano sonata in a 20 sq. m room with an audition panel of no less that six distinguished examiners, some of them being celebrated pianists. The shame. They looked at me startled, too kind-hearted to cover their ears with their hands! Little did I know, though. Those failed auditions (there was actually another one of the same pianistic “calibre”…) made me quite conscious of the venue of my performances, and the sound I should produce. Mind you, I felt equally guilty of my inability to produce p that had presence, in a few other legendary pianistic massacres of mine, but hey ho, that’s life…
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So, forte? Play very loud! Fortissimo? As loud as you can! Fifteen fortes? Give your whole! And just relax, stop being uptight and stop reading pointless writings like this on how to do piano. Three things you need: Stool, piano, and teacher. That’s it. Oh, and to get off your hi horse while at it.
Non-legato is a common articulation found in a pianist’s pianistic vocabulary.
It goes without saying that non-legato is poles apart to legato, but it is also different to its “shortened” relatives, such as the staccato and tenuto. Staccato, for instance, is more commonly understood and honoured, but non-legato on the other hand can often be misinterpreted or conveniently neglected, since, well, there’s nothing to indicate its presence. No special sign (like the dash on a tenuto note) or anything to, at least, make us feel guilty if we failed to act upon on this discretely nuanced articulation.
And here comes one of my eternal internal questions, that I every so often bring up in gatherings, and it usually goes like this:
“ Hi guys!” (me talking)
“Oh…. Um…. Hi Nikos, we are very…. um… happy that you caaame…”
“How’s things?!”
“Well, not so bad. Yourself? How’s…. um… life?”
“Yeah, not too bad at all. Should a non-legato have its own, special and unambiguous sign?”
Well, most of my partying “interviewees” would laugh and promptly dismiss my question, and, to be honest, I wouldn’t blame them.
Firstly, because this non-legato versus mezzo-staccato, versus tenuto, versus detached-playing extravaganza has baffled one too many pianists since the advent of the modern piano. Secondly, because, who am I to even ask this juvenile question and, thirdly, because not everything in life should be served on a plate. Right? Sometimes in life we should just do something not because it is just spelled out to us but because it may belong to a customary tradition; that means, in our piece we may just play non-legato because that’s how that particular piece is always being played.
Figure 1: From Rachmaninov’s prelude No.3 Op.32; Did Rachmaninov wanted staccato here? Maybe he desired tenuto or mezzo-staccato? Maybe. Who knows? I think he wanted non-legato: very energetically and non-mellowing playing.
Non legato is an articulation in its own right. Even though we can argue that non-legato literally means the absence of legato, however it is not wise to just determine that non-legato articulations are either attached to the staccato or the tenuto denominations.
Here are some of the main points that we should be able to call to mind when we are faced with the conundrum of the non-legato:
Non-legato is indeed a unique articulation. For many pianists and scholars non-legato signifies a group of articulations that are not legato. Read some more about non-legato here.
Non-legato is (obviously) different to staccato, staccatissisimo and any other articulation that includes staccato in its body and, frankly, should not emanate the… staccatiness of the staccatoed
Non-legato is different to tenuto since it does not require the sense of ceaseless compression—as if you were to crescendo a note.
Non-legato is different to portato since there is no need to pronounce a note (more obvious is long non-legato passages).
In non-legato there are normally no slur or dot marks above a note—or any other marks, for that matter.
Non-legato interpretation depends, amongst others, on:
Type of passage (non-legato could be articulated differently within the same piece).
Composer; It could have a different essénce amongst composers.
Provenance of a particular musical interpretation of the same work.
Duration of all non-legato notes within the same passage should be comparable.
If we were forced to declare the precise duration of a non-legato note (be it quaver, crotchet or other) we would say (albeit hesitantly) that it should be held for 80% of a note’s original duration—a bit less and it should linger on the staccato sphere, a bit more and it could be mistaken to leggiero.
Nothing in music is set in stone, fortunately, and thus reading on paper and trying to make sense of the ever-changing attributes of a musical articulation is no mean feat; tradition passed through the capable hands of an instructor is always paramount here, but various means of passing knowledge are in vogue today, such as trivial articles like the one you are reading right now, but that’s ok. So, please allow me to try to oversimplify the ever-defined Staccato:
Staccato is when a note sounds equal or shorter than half of its original value.
Still, is it always the case that a note that doesn’t sport its full sounding-length is indeed a staccato note?
Staccato differs from non-legato, mezzo-staccato and, of course, staccatissimo, even though it shares with them the same principle of duration-deprivation. However, what makes it different to its siblings and, more importantly, how can we be certain we are articulating it correctly in our piece instead of something else? Let’s find out a bit more:
Main characteristics:
1. To start with, for a staccato note to emanate the aesthetic of shortness it must not carry its full value—that goes without saying, of course, and every pianist would firmly make this assertion without qualification. 2. Then, a note should not sound “pointy” and sharp, because if it does, it would lean towards the staccatissimo sphere; so, yes, staccato is short but not that pointy. 3. The aftertaste of staccato (or aftertouch as we call it) should not linger around but should be prompt. So, pointy is again the word here, and as a general rule, we should avoid playing our staccato notes in that manner. 4. If we were forced to define staccato in “mathematical terms” we would say that it should occupy up to half of the length of a note’s full duration: If, for instance, we had a staccato on a crotchet, it should only be able to divide the crotchet in up to its half—no more, but it could be less. See example below:
Like many of my colleagues, in my annotated edition of Petzold’s minuets in G, I support that the crotchets on the second bar of the G major minuet should be short to facilitate the sense of optimism that this minuet arguably manifests—the facsimile, of course, does not explicitly indicate this universal editorial preference. Ideally, those notes should be held until we have reached to the midpoint of the note’s length—however, we must make sure here not to play non-legato if our intention is to play staccato. So, let’s see staccato graphically:
If music ever makes us feel uneasy or weary, it’s not because of its own “fault”; It will always be because we wanted music to fit our own small-time callings.
Music is never at fault. It has a life of its own and can never be chained to ambitions by mere mortals, as we all are. Music is the one who decides upon us, I’m afraid, and not the other way around. Music by itself never traps you. It will never set you up for a trick or make you feel vulnerable. Music will never fail you. It will always be a most supporting companion.
So, music stops making sense and disappoints, when we expect to tame it and force it to fulfil our needs. And, when music doesn’t do what we want it to do, what do we do? Amongst others, we start comparing ourselves with the others. And the others are no less than mere mortals like us, and they equally compare themselves with others, they have needs and passions, and clashing thoughts, too.
Coming to piano, we often compare our playing with that from people whom we consider accomplished. “Not a bad thing”, a wise and principled teacher might say to his pupil. “You should always look up and compare yourself to the best!” he might have innocently said to his student. But when comparing ourselves to people with accomplishments, accomplishments that we, individually, see important, we are putting ourselves up for inconvenient truths; we will simply learn that we are, naturally, not as good as those people.
So, the faults that will spring from comparing ourselves with our peers indiscriminately, can be endless; we compare ourselves to people with different life-stories than ours, people that have reached their own limits through their own, unique, musical journey, that we cannot possibly comprehend. We put ourselves against beings that have had a different provenance in their musical lives, and will more certainly have a different ending. That comparing endeavour on our part is arguably not a reasonable thing to do.
Having said that, however, we can never escape from our humaness. Due to our very nature, we will never be able graduate to full growth, and so we will naturally compare, gloat, hate, gleefully anticipate the failure of our peers, smile horribly to their artistic “defeat”, and all this to be able to play some wonderful music. Is this horribleness worth it, though?
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Mozart surely wanted a glorious, orchestral ascent, and if he could savour on the immense, 7 ft pianos of todays, he would have begged the pianist to really “smash” the keys with some serious velocity. It’s a pity nowadays pianists maintain such a distorted version of how Mozart’s forte should be played, relying on letters, films and on other voguish doctrines to reduce his forte to a whimsical laughter.
