Piano Video Lesson: Why Slower Means Louder on the Piano

Hi. I'm Robert Estrin. You're watching LivingPianos.com. Today's subject is why slower means louder on the piano. Now, you might think I've lost my mind. Obviously, composers write things that are slow, things that are fast, things that are loud, things that are soft. And how can I say that slow means loud? Well, think about it for a minute. The piano is actually a percussion instrument. Hammers are hitting strings and the notes are dying away as soon as you play them. So longer notes have to last longer. And the only way for that to happen is to play them louder. So if you were to play equal volume and you have one hand that's playing faster than the other, the hand that has the faster part will sound louder. Good example of that is a Chopin E Minor Prelude. I'm going to play the hands absolutely equal in volume. You can barely hear that melody because the melody is very slow.

Now, I'm going to play it and I'm going to accentuate the melody tremendously for two reasons. First of all, the fundamental reasons of the acoustics of the piano are such that longer notes have to be louder just to last long enough to balance with the other notes that are faster. Secondly, the melody is on top and you want it to be louder anyway. So even if I were to play it such that they were equal in volume by making the right hand slower part louder to try to equalize it, you still wanted even louder still because it's the melody and it should be louder. And there's actually a third reason I'll tell you about in just a minute. Listen first though, by playing the melody drastically louder than the accompaniment in order to make it come through over those repeated cords. The way to achieve that sound so even though the right hand is drastically louder than the left hand, but it still has a piano sound to it is something I talk about all the time with my students and here on YouTube, which is using the weight of the arm so you get a smooth volume from note to note. Otherwise, you get this sound. If I did the same thing and just punctuated each note separately without supporting with the weight of the arm to get that natural beautiful legato, you get an ugly, harsh sound like this.

It's lifeless. You hear a bunch of separate notes, but no line because it's such a challenge on a piano of form a phrase that has a rise in a fall that's smooth, that has the analog of the breath of the singer or the bow of the string player, and that's where the weight of the arm comes in. So much more beautiful. What a great piece, huh? So that's the secret.

I mentioned there was one other reason why slow notes have to be articulated so much more than fast notes. And that's because also the higher up you go, it becomes even ... it exacerbates the problem because the notes up here, they don't last very long at all. Down here it keeps going, and going, and going. And think about it, most of the time in the piano, you're playing the melody in the trouble and the accompaniment in the bass. The accompaniment usually has more notes than the melody and the melody should be louder. And yet the notes don't last as long. So it has to be louder, and then they're higher up till they're even last as long as it's down there. And this is true of so many pieces, whether it's Mozart. You notice that most of that, the melody is slower than the accompaniment. So that is key for the acoustics of the piano. Slow notes have to be played louder than fast notes. And that's the way you achieve a balance, is using the weight of the arm and slow melodies, exaggerate the difference between melody and harmony when the melody is higher than the accompaniment or the notes are longer than the accompaniment, which is so often the case.

Let me know how this works for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and YouTube. Thanks again for joining me. Again, I'm Robert Estrin. And you can subscribe and ring the bell to bring these videos to more people. See you next time.

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